Technology + Society

Technology + Society

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i'm tony bernardo dean of ucla anderson and  it's my pleasure to welcome you to the ucla   anderson eastern technology management center's  tech and society conference it goes without   saying that today's business environment is  rapidly changing and increasingly complex   shifting and creating multiple opportunities and  challenges as you might expect from the nation's   number one public university with our mission to  serve the greater good one of the fundamentals we   are focusing on here at anderson is the role of  business and society a core question we explore   with our students is how can businesses serve  multiple stakeholders not just shareholders and   customers but employees communities and society  at large to ensure shared value issues such as   climate change inequality and changes in  the future of work all demand leaders who   can build organizations products and services  that effectively serve multiple stakeholders   achieving broader aspirations and in minimizing  unintended consequences technology is one of   the biggest factors in this discussion  technology can be a huge source of gains   in areas such as health care transportation and  education offering better outcomes at lower costs   but it can also be a driver of issues such as  workforce disruptions inequality and challenges to   privacy and other rights as individuals is against  this backdrop that our easton center is delivering   its second annual tekken society conference the  goal is to further understanding of these issues   opportunities and importantly the role of business  and its leaders i'm especially excited to hear   from our kickoff keynote speaker juan enriquez a  futurist investor entrepreneur and thought leader   who i'm certain will bring new insights into  the relationship between technology and ethics   i also want to take just a minute to express  my gratitude to our centers at anderson who are   supporting this event our centers at anderson act  as a hub for leadership insights faculty research   student and alumni engagement and service to our  communities and society they operate in such areas   as finance real estate entrepreneurship technology  media and entertainment marketing analytics   and global issues that transcend borders i hope  that throughout this tekken society conference   today and tomorrow you will engage learn and  advance your own journey as a leader we appreciate   you being here now i'd like to introduce professor  terry kramer faculty director of ucla anderson's   technology management center and the moderator for  today's program so let me welcome all of you here   my name's terry kramer i'm the faculty director  of the easton technology management center   and i wanted to welcome you to the first day of  our tech and society conference now to give you   a little bit of backdrop here we as every day goes  by live more and more in an interconnected world   interconnected across domains interconnected  across geographies across disciplines and   most broadly interconnected between business and  society and that was a lot of the rationale behind   the foundation of this conference specifically  we have three goals in this conference the first   goal is to better understand the role of  technology and whether that be artificial   intelligence cloud computing and edge computing  high-speed mobile networks internet of things   the role the technology plays in addressing  areas of societal need so health care education   financial services etc the second goal of the  conference is to look at the growing tech lash   and what are all the areas of tech lash that are  most prominent today and whether that's andy trust   whether that's data privacy concerns whether  that's future of work digital divide global   divide etc and it's interesting if  you just look over the last few weeks   the increased number of issues that are tech  lash oriented are increasing so the hearings in   washington regarding facebook and concerns about  management of their platform and misinformation   and disinformation actions that the chinese  government is taking against its own chinese   tech companies with notable actions breaking  up companies data privacy fines suspended ipos   etc so understanding all of that tech lash is  the second goal of the conference and then the   third goal of the conference is to understand  the leadership imperative how do leaders look   at all of the issues that are going on and  say what direction do i want to head on here   how do i get the best of technology and mitigate  the negative aspects of technology so i hope   you'll find that this conference is helpful in  all of these areas now we're going to kick off the   program this evening with my key keynote fireside  discussion with juan enriquez who's the author of   right wrong and how technology transforms our  ethics he's also the managing director of excel   venture management and then we're going to do a  virtual networking session right after this one   then tomorrow for our second day of the conference  and that's going to run from 9 00 a.m to 1 p.m   we're going to open up that discussion with  a fireside chat with john kelly john kelly   is the father of ibm watson so executive vice  president of cognitive solutions and research   at ibm that's going to be moderated by heather  caruso who's ucla anderson's own assistant dean   of equity diversity and inclusion and that  session is going to get into ai for good   and then we'll have two other discussion themes  after that one one is on global technology   innovation so all the innovation going on across  the world and in many cases we see leapfrog   innovation and then a final panel on green tech  how technology can help in areas of climate change   and sustainability so i hope you'll enjoy all of  those uh all of those elements again tomorrow 9   a.m to uh 1 p.m pacific so as i mentioned this  whole opportunity of looking at technology for   good against the negative externalities all of  this raises this fundamental question about ethics   in the tech sector how does technology impact  ethics and this is juan's book and a lot of   the work that he's done now many of you may  have thought that i reversed that reference   many of you may have thought it really is how  does ethics affect technology juan's got some   very interesting views about that not necessarily  being the right way to uh to look at it   a little bit about juan's background and it  is just fascinating and aspirational when we   talk about interdisciplinary cross-boundary  um juan's background is probably one of the   best that i've seen at really manifesting on  that so several elements of his background   he was the founding director of harvard  business school's life sciences project   and a research affiliate at mit synthetic  neurobiology lab he's a chairman and ceo of   bioteconomy which is a life sciences research and  investment firm after he got his mba at harvard   business school he became an angel investor  and then he founded excel venture management   he's basically been a business leader an advisor  and a speaker he advises a variety of ceos   from a number of fortune 50 companies he advises  a variety of heads of state all about how to adapt   to a world where the dominant language is shifting  from the digital towards the language of life   he's written a whole slew of best-selling books  he wrote as the future catches you how genomics   will change your life work health and wealth he  wrote the united states of america polarization   fracturing and our future he wrote evolving  ourselves redesigning humanity one gene at a time   and then the book that we'll talk about the most  tonight right wrong and how technology transforms   our ethics really interesting um read he's a  ted all-star with nine ted talks on a variety of   topics uh serves on a variety of for-profit boards  non-profit boards the non-profit boards that he's   involved with include the national academy of  sciences the american academy of arts and sciences   wgbh the boston science museum harvard medical  school and harvard's david rockefeller center   he graduated from harvard with both a bachelor's  and an mba both with honors now in terms of the   form that we're going to use tonight i'm going  to ask juan a variety of questions to really   get at some of these important issues in  his views and then we will go to slido   for a moderated q a so if you've got a question  you'd like to post go to slido.com slido.com and enter in the event code tnsje so for  technology and society one enriquez tnsje   you can either enter your own question or you  can upvote an existing one and all endeavor to   pose the most uh popular questions so one first of  all a big welcome it's great to have you with us well thank you so much i have don't have  anything to say after that introduction   wonderful well you know i looked at the number of  questions i've got in my own mind and this could   have been an eight-hour session so my biggest  challenge is to get this all in less than an hour   and i want to start because we're on tech in  society to start with genomics um you know you've   been very involved in the human genome project  you wrote the book as the future catches you   how genomics and other forces change life work  health and wealth um tell us about the human   genome project tell us about the opportunities  here both for individuals societies uh etc   so i wrote that book in 1995 and not everybody was  familiar with the word genomics as they are today   and not everybody was as familiar with dna back  then so it seemed like an absolute obscure subject   um but it turns out to be one of these things that  people like to focus on more and more every year   and i guess the way i'd explain it i i missed the  boat when i was in college because i had a couple   of classmates who were working on this you know  strange ability to string together ones and zeros   and what they were saying is um you know you can  collapse every word written and spoken in english   in the ones and zeros and you can collapse every  image and you can collapse every bit of music and   this is going to be really powerful and of course  because i was focused on mexico and politics and   changing mexico and cleaning it up and making it  less violent less corrupt i paid no attention to   science i paid no attention to this digital stuff  and if i paid attention to it you know those two   guys were steve ballmer and bill gates and they  ended up making some difference in the world   so once i realized i missed the boat on that then  i started meeting a series of people who looked   a little bit like walmart gates except they were  scientists and the argument that we're making is   all life is based on four letters of dna and if  you string those letters in particular orders   they will execute life code and so let's let  me put that in very simplistic terms imagine   for a second that you're holding an orange in your  hand and the orange drops to the ground and and it   begins to execute code but it's not like ones and  zero code it's a a t c a a g and that means make   me a little root and then gtca make me a little  stem and then gca make me some leaves make me some   flowers and then make me some more oranges and so  what you've got is every orange has seeds in it   that are a little bit like computer  programs except that they make   orange trees and the fascinating thing about this  code is just as you can edit the sounds in english   or you can edit a bit of music you can edit  that orange and substitute aac a for tcga y   g and and that will make an orange a grapefruit or  if you put in gca it'll make that orange a lemon   or a lime and and it's the same thing with  human beings everybody listening to us today um   differs from everybody else by  about one in a thousand letters   so if you shift 1000 letters then you become  somebody else just be very careful who that is   so what are the opportunities you see in this what  are the implications what are the opportunities   what will it do for individuals in society so i  think this is a particularly important topic for   a business school because you know if somebody  had said the biggest company in the world is   going to be a minute subcontractor of what at  that point was the dominant tech company ibm   people said what are you talking about right i  mean there's there's no way that ibm is going to   be overtaken but you know microsoft stock went up  by about 214 000 from when it launched and ibm did   okay but you know it was in the hundreds percent  not in the hundreds of thousands percent and so the argument that i'm making is that how  we make things and where we make things is   going to shift fundamentally and between the  time that you and i were in college and today   we went from almost no digital code to 98 99 of  the information in the world being digital code   and something very similar is going to happen in  the future you're going to start using life code   to make almost everything else and there's one  great big difference with digital code and that is   this software makes its own hardware so no  matter how you program you know one of these   silly things next to your bed you're not going  to have a billion of these things in the morning   but if you program bacteria then  you'll have a billion or 10 billion   and let me make that anecdote a little  bit more specific for our audience if i were to ask you who is the most public what  is the most published book across all history and   all time in all languages you know depending on  where you are you get different answers there are   some audiences that will tell you the bible there  are some audiences that will tell you the quran   there might be some audiences that  would say fifty shades of grey   and they would all be wrong the most published  book across time is a book by harvard medical   school professor called george church and it's  called regenesis and the reason why is because   in the same way as you can take any word that  we are saying and put it into ones and zeros   you can take the four letters of  dna and put them into ones and zeros   so if you say a equals zero zero t equals one  one g equals one zero and c equals one one   you can tie any letter in digital code to life  code and so what george did is he wrote his book   into a bacteria and the bacteria reproduced a  billion times so his first addition was a billion   copies and and you can literally hold the entire  library of congress in about a teaspoon of dna   and so this stuff really scales and and makes  stuff in in a way which is very hard to understand and where what applications do you see here  disease eradication what do you see as the   art of the possible as an outcome here we'll see  as soon as you know how life code operates you   can begin to design it so the the first vaccines  against codewood were designed in about nine days   and the rest of it was testing and the rest  of it was making sure it was the right code   making sure you could scale it making  sure you go through regulatory approvals   but but the ability to to write life code for  vaccines we're beginning to build on that you   know i helped found a company that's now called  codex which basically is a desktop laser printer   except it prints living things it prints cells  that are programmed to do stuff and so we're   not that far away from having the gene code  for every known fluke bird pig human whatever   and being able to plug that into a printer that  will print a vaccine as an airplane is flying so   it will land with a mate vaccine or it will fax a  vaccine to your house and it'll print the vaccine   and and that stuff what ventricles biology  at the speed of light is is not that far off   and that's just the first stage of this  where another company that i helped start   is now programming algae to make fuels but there's  no reason why that algae can't be programmed to   make proteins or to make oils and so what you  can do is you can cut the agricultural footprint   of oil producing plants or of protein  producing plants by 100 fold or more   and you know you could give back half the amazon  and produce the same as everything that you cut   down and burn um so you can make textiles of  this stuff you can store information in this   stuff you can think of it as a second industrial  revolution except it's living machines making   whatever the hell machines make today yep and  i assume it goes without saying that there are   risks if this is misused misapplied etc but the  gains as you've just given a couple of examples   are massive and far outweigh the risk because  is that fair to say that in that in that way so you know it it used to cost you know  billion dollars to sequence the human   genome that costs about 400 these cost  curves are moving faster than moore's   law means we cannot build computers fast  enough to store the information in triage   which means one of the biggest single drivers  of it scaling today is life sciences and and   so as you're thinking about the stuff and  thinking about the implications of this stuff   we're in this period where we are distributing  the power to understand life read life map life   edit life and scale life and in you know strictly  scientific terms that's called sometimes a bfd   this this this is something  that changes a lot of stuff   and and so as you're thinking about that the  ethics and the distribution of this stuff   it becomes really important not to get into fights  with people who have a lot less to lose than you   do it becomes really important not to leave huge  swaths of the world behind and angry it becomes   really important not to polarize each other and  spend a couple of billion dollars convincing   51 that the other 49 are hideous creatures that  you never want to associate with that is a very   destructive thing to a country to a society  and possibly to our own life styles excellent   excellent let me uh drill down on a related  topic here about synthetic life forms so you   did a tech talk in 2019 about the age of genetic  wonder and you talked about the first synthetic   life form tell us what that entails and again  implications on this short term long term etc so if you take this notion  that life is code seriously   then what you want to do is you want to build  the first chips the first transistors and so one night after a great italian  meal in virginia and a few scotches   four of us started really thinking seriously  about could we ever build a cell and take the   entire gene code out of that cell and insert a  new gene code and make that cell of different   species in other words could you take all the code  out of something and reboot it as something else   and you know it took us about 30 million  dollars and almost a decade but we got it done   and that was science discovery of the year  that was a cover of science and nature   and the economist and the wall  street journal and yada yada and it you know it's it's a  classic case of amaro's law every new technology tends to be overestimated  to begin with and underestimated in the long term   and you know when somebody built the first  transistor you know it was important but didn't   look that big when somebody built the first ships  it was important but it didn't change our lives   and and now of course you know  ships are everything i mean   just try to talk to an industry  that can't get a shipment of chips   cars um something very similar is happening  in life but it's happening a lot faster   so we can now build the chips we can now  program the chips they're living and they scale   and it's not quite at your neighborhood drugstore  yet but uh pretty much everybody who's listening   is going to have their industry overturned by the  ability to program life code and i don't say that   lightly actually what what is the implication of  that maybe give us the best of and worst of that well i mean the best of is you know it gets very complicated because once  once you can print stuff like chemicals or or   once you can print cells or once you can print  biotech and i want to stress we're not there yet   but once we get there it changes everything and  let me put in terms of you know those of us who   are getting a little bit older and have a  little bit of white hair occasionally we   worry about our bodies and our bodies falling  apart and you know the solution is you go and   you get a titanium knee or you get you know  some sort of screws because you broke whatever   the fascinating thing about the human body is  there's big chunks of the human body that are   programmed to regenerate so if you burn your skin  you know all right fair enough it hurts but you   regrow your skin if you break a bone you know  younger ages especially it just regrows if you   you know lose part of your stomach your stomach's  constantly remaking itself because of the acid so here's the part that's really interesting  each of your 10 trillion cells contains your   entire gene code with the exception of some  blood cells and and what that means is the full   human genome code to make every part of your body  is in every cell in your body it's in your hands   it's in your muscles it's in your stomach it's in  your eyes it's in your throat and and what we're   learning how to do is not just to read the human  genome code we're learning how to execute the   genome code this happens when you're  a child you are born with no teeth   you grow a full set of teeth you lose all  those teeth you give them a tooth fairy   and then you regrow a set of teeth now  the fascinating thing about that is huh   so your body knows how to make a  full set of teeth it's done so twice why do most of us not regrow teeth unless  if we become lawyers or sharks right and   and if you know how to do it twice why can't you  do it a third time and the answer is you can so if   you go to the harvard school industry or you know  schools of dentistry near you you're going to find   that there's a whole series of people working on  taking your cells and regrowing your own teeth   you're going to find that there's a whole series  of people working on regrowing your tracheas or   regrowing parts of your heart and we're not at the  stage where the complex organs are being implanted   but we're getting damn close on tracheas cartilage  um bladders you know all those things are starting   to get implanted and and so if you project that  forward 10 years what's going to start happening   is just the same way as you redo your house and  you redo the windows in your house or you redo the   living room or you put in a new fridge you're  going to start doing that with your knee   and eventually you're going to do it with your  heart and with your lungs and your stomach   and and you know how to do that because you've  already built two knees you've already built   two kidneys right so there's no reason why your  body if given the right instruction shouldn't be   able to do it again and so this is just  a really interesting time yeah what are   the implications one is this immortality  kind of taking it to its full conclusion   so it's not immortality so the reason why i  switched to synthetic neurobiology research   six years ago out of genomics after  you know a few decades is because   that's where the that's where the barriers so  i'm pretty sure that we're going to be able to   remake all of our body parts in the next  few decades you know you want a new heart   okay we'll do it you want a new liver fortunately  we'll do it you can keep having reunions um   the part that's the limitation is the brain  because until you can remake the brain and implant   the brain and download the memories all these  people who are telling you that human longevity is   going to increase massively no they're not right  you've got a life span limit of 120 130 years really stretch it maybe 140 maybe 150. but  until you can remake the brain and the way   you can remake your the other organs  in your body and download the memories   there's a limit on longevity and immortality then you get into some really weird  questions right and the experiments get   gruesome and very strange very fast imagine for a  second that you have mickey mouse and minnie mouse   and you swap the heads   so you put minnie mouse's head on mickey  mouse right you know gruesome experiment but the questions that you could  answer are really interesting questions   and they're questions that aren't  dissimilar to the first heart transplants   where some of the surgeons would bring the wife  or kids of the donor into the room and ask the   recipient of the heart transplant do you recognize  these people do you feel anything for these people   and the reason was because for you know tens of  thousands of years i gave her my heart she took   my heart he broke my heart i lost my heart  i gave my heart so so as human beings what   we've done is we we've taken this muscle and  we told each other that emotion was transmitted   with that muscle that love was transmitted  that muscle and it turned out not to be true   okay now ask the same  question about these two mice   does minnie mouse still recognize and love  mickey mouse does that mouse still remember   how to navigate a maze does that mouse know what  it's afraid of does that mouse know what it likes   and if the answer is you can take these memories  from this body and put them on this body   that has absolutely massive implications because  it means that memories can be transplanted   from one body to another and then the second part  of that thing which is really complicated is is   the only input output system for those memories  a body and then things get very weird very fast   right um and you know there's all kinds of stuff  going on right now in brain research that is   just at the bleeding edge and and that's why  i shifted careers because i think that's where   the most interesting stuff is these  days yeah fascinating fascinating   let me get to some other topics here because each  of these is kind of spawning more questions we've   got a whole bunch of questions already from the  audience let me get into the area of technology   and ethics one of your latest uh books and one of  the comments and i'm going to ask you a couple of   questions here but one is explain your broad view  about technology and ethics and what affects what   and then you make a comment in your book  about um ethics are not static they're not   absolutist they're dynamic in nature  say a bit more on that as well   so let me if there's a whole lot of  people who were taught you know by   religion or by government or by their parents  or by people they res they most respect   that there's a right and a wrong and it's  almost like a white statue it's pristine   it's marble it never changes every time you look  at it it's the same statue and that is a bunch   of molars and and so we are a very adaptable  species and and we kid ourselves on how often   right and wrong changes so i'll give you a couple  examples it used to be normal natural legal and   expected in fact the survival of the society  depended on sacrificing a lot of human beings   because otherwise the rain wouldn't come  otherwise the sun wouldn't shine otherwise   the society wouldn't survive and we look at that  today and we say who were these savages okay fast   forward that it wasn't that long ago before the  state and the dominant religion used to torture   people as long as possible and then burn them in  town squares because they differed from our faith   or they questioned our faith and you know these  were public acts in you know the plazas of madrid   and we look at that we kind of go who were these  people i mean how dare you do that fast forward a   little bit main you know plazas in paris used  to hold public executions with guillotines   and hold up the heads to children as part of the  rule of law as part of showing what you do to bad   people as part of what you do with bad government  and we look at that again and we say who were   these people but of course it was normal natural  part of the rule of law at that stage and expected the point of all this is a lot of stuff  that was legal and expected and right   in commas is today looked at and  we kind of go what were you think where it gets complicated is it's not just that ethics  change it's the technology   is becoming a bigger and bigger change agent  in ethics becoming 180 degrees different   and so if you believe ethics changes over time  if you believe that technology can change ethics   and if you believe that technology is moving  at ever faster speeds the logical conclusion   of that is what we think is right and wrong  is going to flip 180 degrees more and more and let me bring a couple examples home again to  people who are a little bit older on this call imagine a time machine that brings your  grandparents back they're 21 years old   you're having a glass of wine with them and  you're talking about the birds and the beast   and of course it's an uncomfortable  conversation it's you know it's grandpa grandma   you know they're hot 21 year olds  and they're happy to talk about it the first thing you tell them  that would really freak them out   is we can now consistently have sex and not have a  child and yes birth control existed back when they   were there except it was illegal for everybody but  married people and even then it was frowned upon   and it wasn't consistent so the notion that  you can have an act with no consequences it   was completely alien then comes the second part  where you say and oh by the way i'm going to have   a year abroad my hubby is going to stay home  and we're going to conceive a child using ivf   and and they're going to scratch their heads i'm  going to say ivf so did i just understand that   you're going to be on one continent your partner  is going to be on another continent you're never   going to have physical contact and you're going  to conceive a child and so you've now separated   act consequence from physical contact and that  used to be called the immaculate conception and then you talk to them about oh by the way i'm   also going to have cancer treatments and  so therefore i'm going to freeze my eggs   i'm going to have a surrogate mother and i can  now have identical twins born 10 years apart   and so now you've separated sex and consumption  from time right and and all of us on this call   we may agree with it we may not agree with  it but it's not something that is miraculous   and you know against everything that i ever  believed in and completely wrong for most of us now imagine the same conversation going forward  your 60 year old grandchildren bring you back   and begin to talk about the birds and the bees  with you and what they do with gene editing   and how children are born and what children  look like do you think it's going to look   anything like what it looks like today do  you understand how much what they take for   granted is going to freak us out as what are you  talking about i would never do that um and and so things change and they change very very quickly  and businesses often get caught in the stuff   because they're teaching that this stuff doesn't  change and it does change and it changes very fast 1997 two-thirds of the united states was  against gay marriage 1997 and and today it's   probably not very good for your company  to take that public position just saying so one the implications are our children  grandchildren great gen grandchildren   will look at us and say you didn't do  things right any any examples you'd   raise if you were to guess you know 50 years  from now 100 years now people look back on our   generation what would they  what will they criticize us on how long do we have um that's that's why  you know some of these debates criticizing   people in the past or founding fathers or   authors of little house on the prairie everything  else you have to distinguish between two things is what they did right no  it's not it can't be justified   should they be judged as harshly as we would  judge anybody today doing the same thing no   because they were taught different right by  their parents by their peers by their preachers   by their doctors by their lawyers by their  government and if you or i have been 14 years   old living in charleston south carolina and  have been taught by richard furman who was the   leading preacher of his day or had been taught  by jeremy aryan sims who was the founder of   gynecology or had been taught by mr cooper  who was an oxford don who came and ran the   university of south carolina and went from being  an abolitionist to being an architect of secession   you know the chances that we would have known   what to do that was right like some of  the very brave people who did take a stand   that was not a two-thirds majority that was a  very very small segment of society and it is   great arrogance to say well i wouldn't have  done that maybe right but boy you would have   had to be the 0.01 or the 1 of that society that  realized just how wrong this was at the time   so i think in this whole debate about how we  treat each other and how we judge each other   destroying each other because of a single stupid  comment a joke something we did a costume we wore   20 years ago something stupid we wrote 20 years  ago or a month ago is a really dangerous thing   to do because we're going to be caught off base  and and we need to bring back in this debate some   you know the other person i may not agree to that  person i may think that person is fundamentally   wrong but the fundamental question is is that  a decent human being and not is that the other   because right now we are really judgmental we've  forgotten two words humility and forgiveness we tend to stereotype people who disagree with  our views on an ever-increasing bunch of topics   forgetting that if we were caught in a snowstorm   in the hinterlands of whatever and  you went and you knocked on any door   that person would likely let you in would likely  offer you a warm drink would likely try and fix   your car and would likely try and get you back  on the road or call a mechanic or something   out of a sheer basic human decency that person  wouldn't open the snowstorm door and say are you   a this are you a that tell me what you believe  about x they would try and help you right and   we forget that humanity in each other in in these  battles we spend two billion dollars every cycle   convincing one half that the other half you  know baby killers or fascists or this or that   what we have to understand about this stuff is the world is really good at ripping  nations apart there are three times   more flags borders and anthems in europe  today than there were a century ago   and there's still questions as to whether scotland  stays corsica and southern finland northern italy   the basques the catalans it goes on and on do we really want to rip great nations to pieces   yep and and you know boy some of the stuff i wrote  this book the untied states of america in 1998 and said look folks be really careful subtitles polarization fracturing in our future  and it wasn't meant to be a how-to it was meant   to be a warning yeah and one on this topic of  technology driving ethics and the bad behavior etc   when you look at companies like facebook  and god they've been in the news so much   i just interviewed roger mcnamee last week  etc is facebook and and obviously they've   done a lot of great stuff but the worst  of facebook whatever you believe that is   is that a living example of your point that  it's created this giant echo chamber that has   accelerated divisiveness and judgmental  views and a whole bunch of other bad stuff yeah there's no question it has  done stuff that's really awful   it has also allowed groups that could  never talk to each other to come together   and not just groups that are groups that are like  it comes back to the basic notion of humanity   there's a whole bunch of people who may believe  stuff that's different from what you and i believe what's really dangerous about this debate is  when you stereotype 49 of the population as   the other you begin to do things that  ethically are absolutely indefensible   so everybody on this call knows the horrible  instances of japanese internment in world war   ii right it's just drum ninjas and you know they  took japanese families japanese american families   and they put them in concentration camps and  you know how dare they have done that okay   fair enough what the hell is wrong with  us that we allowed over the past few   years for families that came across without  papers they didn't pick the right parents to not only be placed in  prisons with an indefinite term   but to deliberately separate  the children and lose them   right and somehow as a society we thought  hey um well yeah that's going on but when you   criticize the past and when you criticize what was  happening in the past you know i hope most of you   did something when they started taking children  and losing them from their parents because that's   the kind of stuff that the brazilian hometown  did that's the stuff that the argentine generals   did that's the stuff that pinochet did and  they would deliberately take the children of   people they disagreed with or who they considered  radicals and lose the children and put them up for   adoption with military families and the parents  would never find them again if they survived   that is not something i ever expected to see  in the united states yeah ever i thought those   lessons will work and and somehow when  we when we make the person the other   you get back to voltaire those who can make you  believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities   yeah and and by not isolating the half  percent or the 0.1 that is truly evil by  

putting those people together with 50 we  forget the basic humanity in one another   and and that's where you rip apart nations let  me ask you one we got a whole bunch of questions   i want to make sure we get to them let me ask  you one other question on this topic and then   we'll go to the the audience questions you know  you've made a fairly compelling argument that   technology and the rate of change has affected our  ethics let me ask you the opposite direction for   for a second about where ethics um has either  had a good effect or bad effect on technology   and i'm thinking of the the somewhat active debate  going on between mark zuckerberg and mark benioff   mark bettinghof founder ceo of salesforce who  will regularly say if you're not guiding your   organization by a north star you're going to  do horrible stuff and we'll talk he talks about   his north star and how that drives a lot of the  actions of salesforce and said listen um facebook   does not have a north star you know growing at all  costs is not doing that is is there not an example   that is the mark betting off example that said  listen if you had quote-unquote ethics if you   thought about things in a thoughtful way and  weren't pointing out the other and doing all these   other that you would then drive technology-based  product services and companies in better   directions do you buy that or you know that's kind  of the exception to the rule not the not the rule you know what you and i were taught in business  school is so completely different from what a   ceo has to do today so if you look at  the edelman you know global barometer   it's not just the us phenomenon all of a sudden   business is seen as the only big institution  that is both ethical and effective   ngos are seen as more ethical than business but  less effective and government is seen as not very   ethical not very effective and the consequence  of that is again in this poll that and it's a   global poll that 68 of people think that ceos  are responsible for pushing societal change   and a similar number think that the ceo should act  before government forces anybody to act because   ceos are responsible for societal change and so  when you think of you know what we were taught   you know the milton friedman stuff and  shareholder and that's who you're responsible   right you are now a substitute government because  government's so ineffective you are now supposed   to be the leader in terms of achieving ethnic  equality ethnic opportunity access to wealth   and power for people who haven't had it you know  there's a whole bunch of societal engineering   which is now dropped into a ceo's life and and so  the chances for a ceo to make the wrong comment   to do the wrong policy to ally with the wrong  people to give a donation to people that somebody   else is going to get very upset about those  things have become astronomically important   and you can make and unmake a brand in an  afternoon through a tweet through something you   say because this whole humility and forgiveness  that just ain't everybody wants to punish   they're not in a forgiving mood right now this  is this is a very angry polarized society and   the consequence of that in a society that is  highly armed and weaponized is really dangerous   right this this is not a trend that we want  to push so i love the idea of celebrating   people like the founder of patagonia  people like the founder of chobani   i think we're seeing more and more examples  of people who are doing well on doing good   and there's some very hard questions for econ  economists and capitalists out there and and   of course as venture capitalists i'm in this right  i'm not excusing myself i'm not saying this in the   abstract but when you and i were taught economics  it was the allocation of scarce resources   and now all of a sudden we're in a situation  where we've got an abundance in fact   extra you name it antibiotics aspirin textiles  computer whatever i mean you know put the supply   chain stuff aside right now we have enough  for everybody in the world at a basic level   and then you get into really complicated  questions like should a few dozen people   concentrate 49 of the wealth on the planet is  that okay how about 60 how about 80 percent at what stage do we begin to and and there's more  and more people who i haven't been as lucky as you   and i who are really angry about the system yep  and reacting to the system in a very nasty way and   i think we ignore that anger at our peril because  i think the ethics on who has what and how much   are going to shift and i think are going to shift  very radically fascinating okay let me ask a few   questions we've got a whole bunch of questions  here i'm going to start out martin and quite   a few other people that upvoted this are you  concerned about genetic modification in humans   it could increase inequality the wealthy  could modify their children to be super   humans how does that movie play out  and how concerned are you on that uh yes and yes and no so let me unpack that um thinking of that example of grandparents thinking  about sex there was a really stupid incident by   a chinese doctor who modified the genome of  two babies to avoid getting aids and he did it   without the right overview he did it without the  right supervision he did it without the you know   controls in place to make the thing safe without  enough informed consent make a long story short   law school-sized laboratory destroyed  scientist ends up in jail big scam that same story in 20 or 30  or 50 years may end up very   different you may have a conversation  with your kids or grandkids where they say   why were you so backward that you didn't bother to  edit out the genes that gave me cancer why did you   leave me with a k-ras g why did you leave me with  a p-53 why did you leave me with a bracket why   were you so primitive because as as the price of  gene editing gets faster better cheaper and safer   what seems to us a yuck which i agree with  we shouldn't be editing babies especially at   this stage may end up being something that is  normal natural and expected for two generations   the second point which i think was really  interesting is if you're going to modify longevity   in a serious way and if you're ever  going to live on mars or anywhere else   you really have to think about engineering  and things like radiation resistance   right it just doesn't work without you know a  dinococcus radioduran's type genes allows these   things to do the backstroke and nuclear reactors  and the amount of you know sheer radiation   that you're exposed to in space means that your  dna were replicating mechanisms haven't adapted   to that and that's going to require some really  serious engineering if we're ever going to leave   this planet now you can agree or disagree as  to whether we should that's a different debate excellent excellent good another question  this is from jorge and against several   others thinking about legal implications of  printing biotech cells and rewriting a genomic   code who regulates this how  does this work on a global basis i spent most of the morning debating that with  a lot of people who were a lot smarter than i   um there's a national academy study   right now thinking about how you regulate  emerging technologies in medicine   and that is a front and center question and  we've been working on that for two years   um i think rule number one you're transparent  when we did that first synthetic genome   we asked every major religion in and told them  what we were going to do and asked them to study   it for a year we took every security agency and  brought them in and said look this is coming   we brought in a whole bunch of business  leaders and said this is coming so   people knew for four or five years before  that was sprung on but this was coming and   the consequence of practicing open science  is that the science discovery of the year was basically the vatican and a bunch of  other religions and the security agencies   and the white house came out within 72 hours  of the announcements that we're okay with and and that's because we spent five years  telling people what controls you want in place   how do you want us to do it what do you  want us to do what don't you want us to do   how far do we go and that that kind of societal  debate is going to be incredibly important in   building trust in building security in getting  technologies adopted the arrogance of i'm going   to do this because i can do it and i'm not going  to tell you bad idea not the way to do science excellent let me ask one last question  and then i want to do a wrap up and   then we can get to our uh the breakouts um on  the social networks right now and everything   we're living through with facebook etc how  do you envision free societies managing and   mitigating the toxic effects of social media  what should the government do or society do i'm going to say something which i found  to be very unexpected when i researched   untied states and i said  98 that's wrong it was 88. one of the most interesting  countries in the world is canada   and that's not a phrase you often hear unless if  you're talking about hockey or a couple of other   things and the reason why canada is so interesting  is because it came so close to splitting right it   was just so close to being french and british  and the maritimes almost became part of the   united states or an independent country in  1949 and that vote was really close and and   what you've seen canada do time and again  is to take some very deep-seated divisions   that are historical divisions and and be able  somehow to restitch the country back together   in in a in a very humanitarian way and what  you're seeing them do right now which is brilliant   is when hong kong first announced it  was going to leave the british sphere   the canadian consul in hong kong basically  went out and gave out passports with no   requirement of residency to the smartest and most  entrepreneurial people you could find in hong kong   and and that's the reason why vancouver today has  the highest degree of patents in universities in   canada that's the reason why it's one of the most  vibrant real estate markets that's the reason why   when you come out of the airport in vancouver  you see just this strip of stuff as you go over   that first bridge that looks like hong kong i mean  the degree of entrepreneurship in that migration   okay now fast forward that to the  last few years in the united states   while the united states was adopting a  immigrants are rapists and murderers posture   canada basically went out and just sucked a lot  of the brains that used to go to google that   used to go to facebook they used to go into the  national laboratories that won 50 percent of the   us nobel prizes and said come here and you watch  what happens in canada over the next 10 years   because they have a community that is very good  at adopting immigrants adopting different cultures   doing so very quietly doing so in a  non-confrontational way mean you don't have big   problems in canada but it means that's a country  that when you look to how do you restitute society   really interesting country fascinating one  let me do this i always like at the end of   every session to share a few of my own takeaways  so you can uh upgrade them or share any final   comments you've got um you know first of all  i gotta start out and just say i always kind   of think about the people that speak and you  know i interview them and what defines them   your ability to think laterally and expansively is  just very impressive because i look at the range   of things that we covered and the rationale so  several things that uh to me uh came out of this   um the discussion on genomics and writing life  code that can drive biology at the speed of light   and what this opportunity can create if harnessed  uh uh well the second point and it's a broader one   about technology technology is overestimated in  the short term underestimated in the long term   and it's a little bit of a beware message you know  we tend to look at early failures early challenges   and then kind of pooh-pooh it and we don't see  the long-term trajectory of the the technology   um a third area here about synthetic life forms  redoing the body you know uh that can create um   not immortality but certainly much longer life and  much better uh health health outcomes fourth area   ethics are not static and a lot of what you  talk about is make sure we look at context   and what's going on uniquely with an individual  a community of society that might have driven   decisions as opposed to looking at things in the  abstract that may get a more static look at uh at   ethics your view about technology changing ethics  which is kind of countered a lot of how a lot of   people refer to it technology is becoming a bigger  and bigger change agent in our lives and thus in   uh in our our ethics and then a bunch of kind of  personal warnings about how we look at one another   avoid stereotyping avoid judging don't make the  other person the bad person it's very easy to kind   of go down that trail and actually your canadian  example is one of you know good outcomes you get   if you don't behave about the the other guy um the  idea about business people and are they becoming   a substitute government and interestingly a bit of  a warning that that may not be a sustainable model   and get get government and our system working  better and don't completely punt on on business   people and then the final thought is again it  gets back to this kind of it i always think about   people's mental map how they think about things  and you've transcended so many boundaries and   borders but your message about think about the  problem you're trying to solve how big is that   problem and how great is it before you get to all  the negative things of what needs to be stopped   think about knock-on effects so what can that  lead to think about the context broadly you're   operating in and then form your views as opposed  to starting with all these truisms and and self   held beliefs about things and letting all  that kind of guide how we look at the world   those are the things i took away your upgrades  on that or other thoughts parting thoughts   better than i've ever said thank you okay okay  hey juan just a massive thank you you know i   said you know you're lateral in your thinking and  you're expansive and that couldn't be a better   set of of learnings and style for  us to start the the conference with   um let me thank you we're gonna go to zoom  breakouts and juan and i are going to roam   around each of the zoom breakouts um you're going  to see the link to the zoom breakouts in the chat   feature so just look at that and click on that to  get to the breakouts and then again tomorrow we're   going to have hybrid format 9 a.m to 1 p.m both in  person and remote for a tomorrow's session thank   you all and we'll be seeing you in the virtual  assessions juan thank you huge thank you thank you

2021-11-19 20:03

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