His talk today will be on what he calls the law of amplification. So its a very interesting talk because, you know, here at mit our motto is let us build technology and, obviously, that will solve all of the worlds problems. [laughter] and its kind of a heresy in some way to have this talk, and the talk is aptly named geek heresy rescuing social change from the cult of technology, something thats very interesting because it provokes, you know, important conversations. Technology is important, but its also important to think about what is the impact of the technology and how do we design the technology in the best way we can. So without further ado, i will introduce kentaro here. [applause] thank you for that introduction, and id like to thank the center as well as mit for hosting this and all of you for coming. So, you know, when you have a book titled geek heresy, i feel like i need to establish my geek credentials. [laughter] and in an mit audience, thats particularly difficult. I want to do it in a slightly different way, i want to talk about policy issues. So over the last four decades or so, the United States has not seen a dramatic change in its rate of poverty. Here in america, basically, poverty, the poverty rate declined from about 1940 til about 1970, but since then its hovered somewhere around 12, 13, 14 , and meanwhile inequality has risen, and social mobility has stagnated. Now, during the that same period, we have witnessed an explosion of digital technologies. So everything from the internet to the personal computer, from mobile phones to facebook all appeared on the scene. And these are all technologies that we think are transformational, they have changed the world in a dramatic way. But if you combine these two facts together, then it should be clear that any narrative that suggests that the tools of Silicon Valley automatically address social ills like poverty, inequality and social mobility, its somehow flawed. And what im going to try to do for the first half of the talk is, basically, explain why that is, and itll become clear later on why. Let me start off, first, by acknowledging that technology is, in fact, transformational in certain ways. It certainly changes a lot of things. So in this audience, raise your hand if you send or receive over a hundred Text Messages or other messages on your smartphone every day. Okay. If you look around, for the most part with some exception, youll find that the people who do this are somewhere around age 30 or less. And those of you who are not have done a great job of catching up with the technology. Basically, what happened is in the span of five or ten years we have gone from a society which believes that, you know, doing this all day is a little bit strange to a society in which, you know, people think that that is the dominant form of communication. I teach undergrads at the university of michigan, and, you know, they have a very difficult time living even for an hour without their smartphones, primarily because it is the primary means by which they communicate with their friends and their family. So on the one hand, Technology Changes very rapidly and causes these dramatic changes in society. And if you believe that same technology causes significant social changes, then youre certainly not alone. So, for example, Mark Zuckerberg, whos the see eau ceo of facebook, is on the record saying Something Like the following. He say that is the worlds 500 million richest people have way more wealth than the remaining six billion come binded. You solve that by getting everyone online. His claim is that inequality can be addressed through spreading more of the internet. Now, you might say, well, you know, hes, you know, hes a tech tycoon. Obviously, hes going to say that about technology. But there are also very many serious leaders like Hillary Clinton who also believe in the same way that the technology itself is going to fundamentally change the world. So in 2011 while she was secretary of state, she announced a Foreign Policy called internet freedom. And the basis of that policy was that by spreading the internet throughout the world and making sure that it was free, free to communicate, that it would allow citizens to keep their governments accountable. And thats been a strong part of the policy of the state department ever since then. Or consider our secretary of education, arne duncan, who is also on the record saying that technology is a game changer in the field of education, a game changer we desperately need to both improve achievement for all and increase equity. So these are all claims made by very prominent leaders, and theyre largely uncontested. They make these claims very casually, and the general population doesnt seem to think that they need to be to contested. But im going to suggest that they do, and im going to draw on my personal experience. I used to work at microsoft. I was there for 12 years. And the last five year ors or so i went to years or so i went to india to help start a new research lab for the company. And i switched from research that was primarily technical in the area of Artificial Intelligence called Computer Vision to one in which i looked for different ways to use Digital Technology for Poverty Alleviation of various kinds. Now, indias a very unique place. On the one hand, theres a thriving i. T. Sector. We have hard about india being an i. T. Superpower. Much of the software that we use every day has, you know, at least had some portion of it written in india and so forth. But at the same time, the country is still extremely poor by our own, you know, by the standards of the United States. So probably about 80 Million People still 800 Million People still live on Something Like 2 u. S. A day, and they get their livelihood in some way connected to agriculture, subsistence agriculture. So this is a country of extreme con contrasts. And what i felt was working in that kind of environment actually helped me see the situation with technology and society here in the United States as well. So ill give you an example of the kinds of projects that we were engaged in. At one point we worked with a sugarcane cooperative that had set up through a government grant a network of computers that were initially meant to be internet connected, and what they wanted was to provide agriculture information to the farmers, health care through telemedicine, Distance Learning and education for the kids in those villages. But when we got there several years after the project had started, what we found was that most of the computers were in disrepair, and the primary use of the existing computers was for farmers to, basically, query how much of their sugarcane was harvested and sent to the cooperative, how much it weighed and how much they ultimately received. So we thought there was a very simple fix to the situation, you know, the computer maintenance costs were rising, and the cooperative was thinking of shutting the whole system down. So we replaced the Computer Network with a system of mobile phones where, basically, farmers could individually send Text Messages, inquire about their harvests and then get their results back. We did a pilot in seven villages, and we found that the farmers really enjoyed the interaction. They liked the fact that they could do it privately on their own. We logged queries as early as three a. M. In the morning when many farmers get up. And overall we estimated that if the cooperative were to use this system in all 54 of the villages that it operated in, it could conceivably save them Something Like 25,000 a year which is not dramatically significant, but enough that it would, you know, it would change the way that it operates, possibly contribute back to the farmers. But ultimately, we were not able to get this pilot to run in the remaining villages, because there was some political rivalry between the people that we worked with most closely in the cooperative and the managing director. It seemed like he felt some kind of threat with this, you know, technology that was being promoted by the i. T. Department. Now, you might think thats a kind of exception. You know, this is a situation where the technology solved the problem at hand, but there were some institutional dysfunctions that did not allow the technology to work. In ore projects other projects i found, for example, with education, where we had, again, Interesting Technology projects, but as we tried to roll them out beyond a research pilot, we ran into very, very common and stubborn problems of things like administrators not really being, caring about additional instruction for the students, teachers being undertrained, teachers being afraid of the technology, often times there not being sufficient budget to actually provide any kind of i. T. Maintenance. So heres another context where the technology that we devised worked very well but did not actually have much impact on larger rollout. And similarly, we had another project where we tried to provide a kind of kiosk for women who live in slums in bangalore to find, to search for jobs where they were employed as domestic laborers in private households. And we set up, basically, a terminal in which the system was designed to be without any texts so that the women who were nonliterate could still navigate the ui. And again in Research Pilots we were able to show that the women could navigate the ui, find jobs and so forth. But we eventually found that actually getting the employers to sign up on this particular system and then providing the kind of training that many of the women needed to qualify for those jobs was ultimately a much, much, much bigger task. So here again we had working technology that addressed a particular kind of problem, but it didnt handle the endtoend issues at hand. In fact, we found that the technology maybe solved, at most, 10 of the larger issues. Over a little over five years, i worked on 50 or more projects in india, all of which were about applying some kind of Digital Technology to the problems of health care, government, education, microcredit, agriculture and so forth. And very, very often the situation was exactly like ive described where we would design a Technology Solution that worked in a Research Context, but as soon as we tried to take it to larger scale, the technology failed to have an impact because of either institutional deficiency in capacity or because individuals were unable to make use of the technology on their own. So, you know, im a scientist by training, and so i wanted to find out, you know, why this was the case. Why was it that things that we had done, spent a lot of time trying to design well and where research showed that there was some positive impact did not actually have impact at a larger scale. And the ultimate conclusion that i came to was a very simple premise which is that technology in and of itself only amplifies underlying human forces. So what that means is wherever the human forces are positive and capable, you can use technology and things get better. But where those human forces are either indifferent or possibly corrupt or fundamentally unable to take advantage of the technology, then no amount of Technology Turns things around. And this goes in direct contradiction to some of the earlier quotes that i mentioned where people believe that technology in and of itself causes the kind of social changes that were looking for. So, you know, to say that Technology Amplifies underlying human forces is, at some level, obvious. And ive heard people say, you know, thats obvious, technologys a tool, but it has direct corollaries that actually go against, i think, more deepseeded intuitions that many of us have. So what im going to do in three different questions is, basically, try to drive that intuition home. So the first question is the following imagine that you are the ceo of a company that has a very good product but for whatever reason the sales team is not able to meet its sales goals, right . Which of the following several options do you think is most likely to turn things around. So, a, replace the leadership team; b, set up a new strategy; c, provide extensive training for the sales team; or, d, buy a new be ipad for all the employees. So im guessing from your laughter that you dont really believe that, d, buying an ipad for everybody, makes much of a difference. Nor will, e, setting up a brand new data center or, f, buying Software Productivity tools for all the employees. And the fact that you have that intuition is terrific because you should immediately understand that any idea we can take technology, put it into a school that is not meeting its academic goals and believe that thats going to be the thing that turns around a school is flawed. Basically, you know, in our country we have a situation in which there are plenty of welltodo kids who have managed to get a good education, but then there are many, more schools that are failing their studentings. Partly its the fault of the school, but partly the fault of the Larger Society that is not basically providing the necessary readiness for the students who come in. And in those contexts, you cant theres nothing we can do through technology thats going to turn the that situation around. The underlying human forces are not set up and aligned in the right direction. So technology in and of itself doesnt fix broken institutions whether theyre corporate, educational or health care or otherwise. So a second question. Imagine that this time think of, think of the poorest person that you have either encountered or can imagine, somebody whos involuntarily poor, right . And imagine that youre in a contest with that person to raise as much money for the charity of your choice, and you have one weeks use of free, unlimited high bandwidth internet to achieve that goal. Who do you think would be able to raise more money . So who thinks you . Okay. Who thinks the poor person . All right. So most of you, most of the hands went up for you. Why is that . Among the people who raised your hands . Any ideas as to why youd be more successful at this task . Social capital. Right, you have richer friends. Good. What else . Yes. Right, absolutely. Youre more likely to know how to use the tools, and you might be a better organizer overall. You might be able to get your friends to help you. Anything else . Okay. Right. So one week might be so you have some Prior Experience that helps you in this case, right. I would say, you know, lets try to experiment with one year if you think that the time limit is an issue. On the whole youll do much better, and its because the interesting thing about this particular thought experiment is that the technology is the same, but the outcomes differ directly in proportion to what you believe the capacitying capacities that you already pez, experiences that you have, people that you know. So you can flip this around. Imagine youre competing against bill clinton or bill gates. Whod be able to raise more money . We know that the Clinton Global Initiative does very well as a fund raiser, and he has access to the same technologies that all of you do. Again, this is a situation where your underlying, the underlying person that you are, whatever advantages you already have, ultimately, get amplified by the technology. So a third question cha that im going to ask this time has to do with which of the following countries do you think has the most Democratic Free speech online, okay . So there are going to be four countries. North korea, china, russia or the United States. So my guess is that most of you believe the United States. Now, if you believe that its the United States, then the question is, well, is it the case that the other countries dont have the internet . Because we all think of the internet as a democratizing force. The reality is in all of these countries there is Something Like the internet there, but its different in each country. In north korea, they have reconstructed an entire internet that used the same internet protocols as in the United States but which is completely disconnected from the rest of the worlds internet. A few government officials have access to both the internal and external one, but you cannot access the regular facebook and google from inside north korea. On the other hand, there are other services there that look a lot like google and facebook which North Koreans use, and you can be pretty sure that nobody on that internet is criticizing the Supreme Leader there. In china they have, you know, they have, again, internet that in many ways mirrors much of the internet outside, but its not completely disconnected from the rest of the world. Other than, china employs Something Like 300,000 people who basically are hired for the specific purpose of censoring all social media content. And their Response Rate is amazing. Apparently, within 4 hours of a post 24 hours of a post 24 hours of a post, anything the government deems sensitive is immediately taken off. In russia theres almost no censorship online. I guess the government has given up on that. On the other hand, the government employs, apparently, a small army of internet trolls who basically pretend to be regular citizens and spread misinformation, you know, basically spread government propaganda. So in all of these countries the interesting thing is what you see is not, you know, the american internet that we see here in which theres a lot of thriving discourse online and a lot of free speech, but an internet that basically is reflecting and amplifying the underlying political situation in those countries. This idea that the technology in and of itself brings democracy or democratization to other countries itself has some issues. So, you know, that brings me to the original two facts that i brought up which is this idea that over the last 40, 45 years we have not seen dramatic improvements in poverty, and inequality has skyrocketed, but weve had a golden age of digital innovation. So how is it possible that these two things are happening at the same time . I basically argue that as a country, we are not politically, cultural, socially or economically focused on eliminating poverty. And so even though we have great tools which might advance that cause, because of this social situation the technologies are not contributing to the elimination of inequality in this country. And if you believe that Technology Amplifies underlying human forces, then there is no amount of technology that we can pile on that is going to undo the political situation in and of itself. The ultimate engagement has to be social and so on in nature. So just to summarize the talk up to this point, im going to say again that technology amply nice underlying amplifies underlying human forces, and it means that technology by itself does not fix broken human institutions. It does not bring political democratization [inaudible] and in and of itself decrease inequality. In fact, you could argue the technologies amplify existing inequalities. So, you know, my ultimate interest, of course, is to see ways in which we can cause positive social change in the world with or without technology. And so one question is how can you, you know, how can you use this idea of technology m amplifying human forces in a way that points to what we should really be doing. So i think there are five Different Things that we should really be thinking about. The first one is that in some cases we have to be willing to say no to technology. There are many instances in which the dominant use of the technology is either counterproductive or negative. So, for example, you know, i teach in a university context, and as of several years ago, i basically started banning the use of screens in my class except when a particular class activity requires their use. And i find that dramatically theres a change in the degree to which theres actual discussion in the class. I no longer see the situation where the students are doing this and occasionally smiling because theyre seeing something funny on facebook. And overall, the students are paying much more attention. Theyre actually absorbing the material as opposed to being distracted. And i know this is true even for me. If im in a meeting with my laptop open, im hardly paying attention to whats happening in the room, all of my attention is going to emails, to facebook and so on. To the technology so the technology has an immense quality to distract us exactly because we have a tendency to seek novelty and distraction. So the Technology Amplifies that. If we dont say no in the right contexts, that can spell bad news. And its true, i think particularly, for children, for young children. At this point, you know, ive given this talk in multiple contexts, and almost every time there is a teacher or a former teacher who comes up and says, you know, i have faced this issue with my, the students in my class where they are increasingly distracted by technology. And its not, its not a problem that you can fix with additional technology. Its something that you have to do either through, you know, eliminating the technology in the classroom or making sure that the class is sufficiently structured in such a way that the technology is used for learning purposes. So thats point number one. Just say no. Point number two is that in some contexts you will have a technology, and you will be looking for something positive to do with it. And my guess is especially in an mit context, many of you are in that situation. In those cases what i recommend, and its a recommendation that i have not yet seen fail, is that you should look for an existing social trend or organization that is already achieving your end goal. So lets suppose youre interested in, you know, helping to address you want to decrease the incidence of malaria in the developing world, and you want to use technology to solve that. I would say find an organization that is already doing well against malaria, and then see how you can use the technology to amplify the impact. In my own work, im the chair of a nonprofit called digital green in which we use digital video in a particular way to help farmers gain better knowledge about agricultural practices. And even though this particular technique uses a lot of digital tools, what we do is we look for organizations that are already working well with farmers, and they have some established rapport with farmers, and we basically help them amplify the impact of their works by using this particular way of using technology. So the message again here is that if you have a technology, if you have a technological hammer and youre looking for ways to use it, find good carpenters and help them do their task better. The third point is that there are many contexts in which increasingly those of us who are involved in the Technology Industry have immense amounts of power at our, under our control. One of the interesting things about our move towards digital in the last, you know, decade is that increasingly more and more of our time is being sent spent on platforms that are owned by private companies. And those companies see as their moral mission the increasing of shareholder value as a primary goal. I was at microsoft before i knew exactly how this works. Employees actually feel like it is their ethical obligation to find ways to make more profit. So my guess is, you know, some of you may have heard about in this idea called the singularity which is the moment when computer intelligence, you know, outstrips human intelligence. And my guess is, you know, however you construe that idea, that singularity is likely to happen somewhere within a 900mile 100mile radius of san francisco. And if that does happen, it is again likely to happen within some privately held corporations which is not directly accountable to the public, not governed by democratic means, but which sees the increase of shareholder value as its primary goal. And if we dont provide some larger policy framework by which we address those kinds of issues, then that technology which were not sure what shape, form its going to take, how powerful its going to be is going to be focused on increasing profits for a very small number of people as opposed to contributing to society more generally. And so, you know, for those of us who might end up working at some of these very powerful corporations, you know, id like you to consider, you know, is there some way of insuring that the technologies that are unleashed are fulfilling goals other than increasing profits for companies and also contributing more to general society. So now let me flip tracks. So those are points one, two and three. Number four is that for many of us we often see the fruits of our ingenuity as being the thing that we contribute to the world. But if you really think about it, the reason why people become wealthier or better off with respect to technology is not so much because theyre users of technology, but because they are producers of technology. So, you know, think about the situation where you buy an iphone. Its true your life might become a little bit more vehement, but my guess is you more vehement, but my guess is you dont become dramatically connected to other people. On the other hand, in the process of purchasing an iphone, what youre doing is helping to make apple shareholders and employees more wealthy. And that transfer of income can work many our favor as long as everybody has the kind of job that allows them to earn significant income. So in 2002 before i moved to india, for a short while i taught mathematics at a new university there called, a new university in ghana. And this university was set up by a former microsoft employee who was himself georgia nay january, and he felt the thing that changed his life the most was his scholarship to university. He was doing very well, went to uc berkeley to attend business school, and his single minded focus was how can i set up a similar university in ghana. In 2002 that university was begun, and i was there in the first year to teach the new incoming students, about 25 students, calculus. And i remember one student in particular, she was my top student. You know, when i met her, her primary goal was to basically secure a wellpaying job for herself. And soon after she graduated, she ended up being a Software Engineer for a local bank. But about, i think about ten years after she started, she started sensing Something Else that she wanted. She felt like, okay, i know how to get and work a good job, but at least in the College Environment that i was in, i was constantly told that i should work towards being an ethical leader. So she quit her bank job and then established two organizations. One is called soronco solutions, and it basically provides Software Services for small and medium businesses in ghana, and the other is a foundation. And what she does is she pours 80 of the revenue from this Consulting Firm into the foundation which teaches underprivileged girls in ghana how to code so that they can eventually have the opportunities that she has. So this is a situation where you see somebody, patrick [inaudible] who was the founder of the university who was himself, who was himself going into engineering education. And, you know, after spending years in the tech industry, he didnt decide im going to go out and build new technologies that help people in ghana, rather, he said how can i help those people that i ultimately left behind get the kind of education that i got so they could have the same kind of lifestyle that i have . And he managed to pop a gate prop a gate that to multiple students. The university is in its 11th or 12th year. Every year they take 400 students from ghana, and you end up with students who are basically propagating what he did in different forms. So patrick, whos the founder of the school, basically says especially in places like africa maybe 5 of the population will graduate with a college degree. So if you can educate just that 5 well and instill in them a sense of responsibility for their own communities, then in a generation they will inevitably be the leaders of their countries. And that, conceivably, will change the country in a much more impactful way than, lets say, spreading more laptops to more people in ghana. Finally, i want to talk about point number five which is that in the same way that you can nurture individuals, you can nurture society. And to do that, im going to tell a story that has nothing to do with technology, and its a story about venezuela which in the 1970s, because of its oil wealth, managed to have several Different National orchestras. And these National Orchestras were peopled by musicians who were hired from europe and north america. Because venezuela itself did not have a deep well of Classical Musicians. Now, there was an economist and a man who was trained in Classical Music, jose, who said, you know, why is it that we cannot have a venezuelan orchestra that has venezuelan musicians in it . So he started a small orchestra, youth orchestra, which grew from Something Like 17 people on its first day to within a month having 77 people. Many of these people could not play an instrument on their own, but within a couple of years they were performing for people like the president of mexico, and then a couple years after that they were on International Circuits where with they basically performed in, you know, all kinds of Classical Music outlets. That orchestra was called the simone bowl very orchestra, and it is the flagship orchestra of a movement which today involves Something Like 400,000 students across venezuela, many of them in the very poor parts of both the city and the rural areas. Apparently, if you go to the rural areas, there are people who have cows named beethoven and mozart because the phenomenons now international. In 2007 the los angeles Philharmonic Orchestra tapped a man who was in the program to be its musical director. In the space of 40 years, this country went from having no serious Classical Musicians to having a country that appreciates Classical Music much more than, probably, the United States and which produces some of the top conductors in the world. To me, that is social change. Thats the kind of thing that i think is behind, for example, gender equality in the United States or, you know, equality with respect to Sexual Orientation or changes in our views with respect to whether poverty is something that we should allow not. And it requires the same kind of effort that learning a Musical Instrument requires. So the interesting thing is we all know intuitively that it doesnt make a difference how Much Technology you have, you have to put in hours and hours of practice over years and years to be a musician. And we understand that intuitively. But somehow when it comes to things like Economic Growth or political change, we assume that the changes can come much more rapidly and they can go viral. And what i want to suggest is that those changes are just like musical changes in the sense that they require deep changes in ourselves at individual level and at a societal level and that, you know, if we focus more on causing those kinds of social movements, well have, well be in a situation in which all of our technologies will magically realign and end up working for us rather than, you know, doing things that emphasize whatever social situation were already in. Just to summarize what i wanted to suggest as the law of amplification of technology, the very simple idea, but if you believe it, it means technology doesnt fix broken human institutions in itself, it does not shrink inequalities. It does mean that especially in a world where we already have so many different technologies that the more we address the human forces and make sure theyre going in a positive way, the more the technology will also work. Thank you. [applause] i guess we can take some questions. We have time for questions, but wait for the microphone because its getting recorded, before you ask a question. Make sure that it is a question. [laughter] thanks. Kentaro, would you Say Something more about how mentees need to be, take the lead, and mentors need to let their aspirations step aside a bit . Thank you for that question. Youve obviously read my book. So in the last chapter, i talk about, you know, how people who have advantages can assist those with fewer advantages. And, you know, in International Development which is the area that i do most of the work in, there are always, there are these, there are these debates about whether we should be, quoteunquote, paternalistic or whether we should treat everybody as an equal. Wherever there is a status difference, it is really impossible to be total equals. But you can be on a journey together where youre both trying to grow in some way. And i think that if you think of the relationship as being one of mentorship, you know, enlightened mentorship, good mentorship, what that allows you to do is simultaneously, you know, grow your own aspiration to be somebody whos providing something or for the world while helping other people gain their own capacity to achieve their own aspirations. Mentorship, i think, is very difficult to get right, but i think its, you know, the most useful kind of frame to think about bilateral engagement. You mentioned that Mark Zuckerberg pointed out that there are 500 people that control 500 million. 500 million, yes. But actually theres also something about the top 500 to be said. Sure, thats true. I completely agree. Of which hes probably one. Yes. Also, i mean, of those 500 very few are using facebook. And if you want to address these inequalities in the system, to suggest that we use interfaces that are implemented and provided by those that have installed the system and profit most from it seems to not be very convincing as an avenue. To if you do not want to break the system and actively change the system and a case might be made for or against that shouldnt we focus on reduce the absolute level of poverty . Basically, increase the baseline, the absolute baseline of those at the bottom rather than reducing inequality if you cannot be address it without breaking the system and breaking too many things in the process . So if i understand correctly, your question is whether or not to address inequality directly or simply try to cause growth overall. I think thats a very interesting question. I dont get it into too much in my book, but i do think that increasingly we are in a world in which we cannot ignore inequality if youre really concerned about people who are extremely poor, and the reasons are the following. One is we, as a population, are increasingly hitting the upper limits of various resources on the planet. And so what that means is it is not an infinite world in which everybody can all tie, all boats can rise on the same tide. Were actually competing for similar resources. And one very clear way to see that is that increasingly theres a land grab in africa where people who live outside of the continent are buying, farming Agricultural Land in africa. The last time i saw a statistic, Something Like a country the size of france is basically owned by entities outside of africa. And, you know, basically, they are planning for a future in which farmland is scarce, food is scarce. And you can imagine that is certainly not poor people in the world who are purchasing the lammed. Its very wealthy entities. So given that there is a finite, you know, planet, i think that we have to address inequality. Theres no way around that. The other thing is that there are some things for which inequality is the issue. So, for example, power is limited, right . If you think of power as the ability of one person to cause change in another person without their direct interest, then, you know, the degree to which i have power over myself is less power for you to change me and vice versa. Which means there are some things for which the inquestioningty inequality itself is the problem. I do think its worthwhile to help people wherever they are grow in terms of their socioeconomic aspirations. But if you only look at a narrow scope, i think it ignores the systemic inequalities that are very hard to address. I was wondering if you see distinctions sort of within the broad category of technology from, like, Power Infrastructure or, like, human computer interfaces or, you know, Machine Learning . I mean, like, theres a lot of variation within that. Its all kind of technology. Yes. And whether you see differences there in terms of their ability to kind of be amplifiers or some, like, actually could be agents of social change in some way. No, thats a great question. So i do think that technologies vary in what they amplify and how much they am plify Different Things. If youre mathematically inclined, different technologies amplify them differently. Conceivably, you could cause rotation. But i think that one thing that i have never Seen Technology do is turn things 180 degrees around. So where people really dont want to do something, it is nearly impossible to design a technology that causes them to do that thing or vice versa. Where people really want to do something, there are very few technologies that truly prevent them from doing it outside of other human beings who are imposing technologies on those people. So i do think technologies are different. You know, in the talk i certainly talked about them, you know, with one broad stroke, but, you know, with respect to the ultimate goals that i have, i dont think it makes too much difference, you know, that its not the design of the technology that matters at the first step, its, first of all, are people willing to do the right thing with the technology. And after that you can talk a lot about design in terms of helping the people that you do want to help make better use of the technology. Hello. I was wondering if you could expand more on the idea of a policy framework and a policy framework that could be set forth to amplify the beneficial effects possibly of technology and help reduce inequalities. Sure, thats a great question. I actually think the policy frameworks are the same ones that we would implement with or without technology. So just to give you an example, lets say, you know, youre concerned about the inequality of education in the United States. The United States has a very unfortunate system of Public Education in which Public Schools are basically funded by local property taxes. Which means that if you come from a poor neighborhood, youre going to end up with kids who have less money spent on them for their education. Now, you know, there are various debates about, oh, money is not the cause of better education and so on, but i think those are true at some, you know, very thin level of analysis, but theyre certainly not true overall. Obviously, rich parents know if they spend more money on their kids education and send them to the right schools, Better Things happen for their children. So in that condition text, you know context, you know, the right policy solution is we should be collecting property taxes at the state level and then redistributing them for students or at the federal level and redistributing for students. If you do that, then even if youre not thinking about the technology, then the technology will naturally follow where the money goes. Right . So i think in most cases the policy issues, you know, similar to the last question are, of course, important. And as you get more and more granular at levels of analysis, some of them have to incorporate discussions of technology. But at the higher level, we can do much more simpler, very obvious things with respect to solving our, you know, social challenges, and that will naturally cause technology itself to be better used as well. Hi. First, thank you for being here and having this discussion, because i think its very important. I come from a background of humanities and social sciences, and i was im old to. Ive been in technology forever. Way back when the people who kind of started the internet stuff, no one had tech degrees because there werent degrees in these things. So at this point is there a door that still exists for those people to help . Meaning which group is those people . For people like myself and friends that i know who created handouts and started some first classes and web page startups, you know . We used to be able to just do what we could, and now if i go onto an angel startup, they want they have the person, the owner who has the idea, and they just hire, you know, programmers. Right. Students from the Dalai Lama Center for ethics. Do they hire those people in value . Is there a door for them . Id have to say, i dont know if i have a great answer to that question. I mean, i think youre addressing a much larger question of, you know, how do we assess peoples skills such that they can be hired into, you know, into the jobs that theyre actually qualified for regardless, you know, of their paper credentials, right . I do think that will probably change over time and, interestingly enough, possibly technology will be one way in which that happens as we become better at assessments delivered through technology. Hi. So kind of related to that perhaps is you mentioned how in some corporations it is ethical to, you know, support the companys financial goals. Here i feel like theres a lot of focus on entrepreneurship as way to create positive impact, but it also sounds like it could go maybe not the right direction. So do you have some thoughts on how, you know, as a student or a person whos just beginning to want to share their technologies, how to do it in way thats for impact and maybe, you know, doesnt go sideways . Yeah, thats a great question. Let me address it in two different ways. So one is if you are really interested in social impact, it is better to have no constraints on how youre going to solve the problem at the beginning. You know, whether its through a business or through the use of a particular technology or some other constraint. Because, you know, the space of solutions for any given hard problem is vast, and you want to find the optimal one you can find without having to say, okay, im going to ignore half of these solutions because they dont meet constraint acts. If youre really a interested in addressing the problem, you want to stay open to what the solutions might be, what kind of business models, organizational models youre going to use until youre pretty sure theyre the ones that are actually going to work. With respect to the second question, you know, the reality again, if you believe technology amply nice underlying human goreses, in any organization it is very typically the leadership in some conversation with their stakeholders, employees and customers and so on that is really deciding the direction that that, you know, companys going to go. I do think its possible to have social enterprises that are really focused on impact, but it takes an immense amount of discipline on the part of the leaders to insist on that impact. Because you will be bombarded with impact investors who want to see rois that rival regular corporations that have no impact goals. Or, you know, youll have this constant desire to make sure youre making enough revenue just to keep the Organization Going along. And inevitably what happens is that it is much easier to sacrifice the impact goals as opposed to the revenue goals which might be the end of your company if you dont meet. And so i do think that there are social enterprises that can pull this off, but it is actually very difficult, and its very rare. You brought up this very interesting point between resources and inquestioning the i inequality. One aspect of resources has been addressed in the past. Paul ehrlich had this [inaudible] but then because of productivity, you know, we came out of it. But now when you couple that with inequality, now it seems that someone whos, like, really low income level, he has no choice to but to [inaudible] because resources will distribute themselves so that everybody can afford them, people with money can afford them. So how does someone, i know, get out of inequality without adapting to technology, you know . Given that . Well, so i do think efficiency and inequality are two different questions, and we tend to, you know, the illusion much along the lines youre saying that some people have which is this idea that if you address the efficiency question enough, eventually we will get to a point where inequalitys also disappeared. And that has just not been the history of the world. Inequalities come and go based on many other social factors, and efficiency can contribute or not to lessening inequality. We live in a world today which many people say has sufficient food to speed everybody in the world with to feed everybody in the world with a good amount of calories per day and good nutrition. But, you know, there are plenty of people in the world who are mall four riched malnourished. That is not a technology problem, it is not an efficiency problem. It is a social, economic, cultural, political as a global civilization we have not solved. And so as much as i do think more efficiencys great and, you know, people who work on that should continue to work on that, but its not in and of itself going to address inequality issues. So it was really nice to hear you complicate this whole narrative around technology. I think something id like to hear a little bit more about is also complicated or acknowledging also the International Development narrative which is also quite oversimplified off, especially around education, right. So weve been doing education initiatives since, you know, the 40s, 50s, and we havent really seen significant improvements especially as translating into opportunity in the labor market and things like that. So, you know, as somebody who came to mit coming out of, like, an International Development background, one of the things that really appealed to me about technology was this idea it could actually potentially bypass some of the huge headaches you see in bureaucratic implementations of certain kinds of Educational Initiatives and thicks like that, right . Things like that, right . Seems like youre really right on the nail in thinking about it has to be more nuanced. But im curious to know is there a better way instead of saying maybe technologys not the answer, us to think of a framing that is more about how can we thoughtfully implement technology in a way thats going to serve the public good and promote these ends . I think particularly it was interesting when you were talking about the idea of corporations driving this and, therefore, the incentives behind the design and the types of problems theyre soing. Are there ways we can think about fostering a pipeline of innovations that are explicitly designed to serve the public good and serve these things in a more thoughtful way . Yeah. I think the short, unfortunate answer to your question is, no. [laughter] i dont think that the technology in and of itself can be designed in such a way that it has a positive polarity that wherever you take it will magically cause education to get better or, you know, health care to get better or any of these things that were interested in in International Development. In fact, you know, my book is in some sense an extended argument about why we should stop trying to do that because, basically, whats happening is that very talented people, possibly including yourself are distracted by these potential solutions when we actually know the solution to how to deliver good education. You know, again, many of you come from, you know, good backgrounds with reasonable amount of financial capacity, and if you send your kids anywhere, it is going to be to good schools. How do you know theyre good schools . Somehow you do. And somehow those schools know how to run themselves. That know how is not evenly distributed in the world, and it is not, to me, a technology problem. It is to a problem of other kinds of, you know, it is a problem that has to do with, you know, again, inequality in the way we distribute funds, it is a problem of management, it is a problem of leadership. But in and of itself, not easily solvable by technology. Now, on the other hand, i would say that there are plenty of places in which you can use technology in a positive way. So, again, if youre interested in using technology in education, i would say find an organization, find a school that you think is already doing a great job at educating kids and the kind of kids that youre interested in seeing better educated. And inevitably, you will be able to find a way to help Technology Reach more students. Kentaro, can i ask you a personal question . Sure, of course. So when i hung out with you in 2005, we were mostly doing technology. And i dont remember having these conversations at that time. No, thats right. [laughter] and not every engineer goes through this journey, you know . So my question is what was, what was your sort of internal journey in accepting these truths . That is a very good question. So, yeah. As you mentioned, in 2004 when i first moved to india, i was in the same class as Mark Zuckerberg and Hillary Clinton and arne duncan in believing that, you know, i wasnt quite as optimistic that just spreading the internet was going to, you know, change the face of inwhalety in the world, but i did think more Technology Overall was somehow better. And, you know, i went specifically with the intention of using my Computer Science skills to alleviating some of these problems. Except that i ran into the reality on the ground which is that project after project would do well in a Research Context, and it did well in a Research Context because we controlled all the human conditions, right . We picked partners that seemed to be good at what they did. We made sure we provided enough funding that any holes in that social system were fixed, right . If we needed i. T. Support, we were there to provide it. If we needed political support, we were there to find a way to get it and so on. And then, but exactly in those places where we most wanted to have impact, where the schools were dysfunctional, where the governments were corrupt, where the Health Care Systems didnt work, that other stuff that we provided mostly human and institutional didnt exist. And so when i kept seeing this over and over and over again, and i come from, you know, a background in which, you know, im trained to look at human beings as part of the design of technology. And i kept saying, you know, look, if you take what if i take my training and apply it specifically to this problem, what im seeing is that the technology is not the thing that causes positive or negative outcomes, it is the human beings that are involved. And where those human beings are trying to do the right thing and do it well, they can make technology work. But where the people are not like that, it doesnt matter how Much Technology you have. And as you hinted, this was a very difficult process for me. It took me, you know, probably two or three years to really digest this issue and, ultimately, led to my leaving microsoft because i no longer felt that work at a Technology Company was the most effective way to cause, you know, social change. Interestingly enough, i find myself still having a difficult time transitioning to areas of research that i think are more impactful, because my own training is so much technical, right . So its not easy for me, for example, to do work in economics or psychology or sociology even though i think thats where a lot of the Real Solutions are. And even and on another plane, its not even Academic Work that really matters. At some level we have all the knowledge we need to create a developed world, right . We do it in the United States. So that means we dont need new knowledge as much as much better implementation of what we already know. And, you know, that suggests somewhere, you know, somewhere in the back of my head im very conscious that more research isnt what i should be doing. But thats also a very difficult personal transformation for me to make because i so much identify as a researcher. And, you know, the only thing i can say say is that, you know, im trying to do as much as i can to nudge myself in directions that i think are more beneficial. [inaudible] one of the more vexing and threatening areas in which Technology Amplifies is in the military affairs. And its very difficult to see how the technological juggernaut that produces military spending and applications is going to be turned around or is going to find a way to put the genie back in the bottle. And it may actually be one of the most, you know, cataclysmic forces. Do you expect really that technology can be restrained or redirected away from that type of development . I think its up to us as, you know, individuals and as a society. I mean, i agree that many of these things seem to have a life of their own, but the reality is we can say no, you know . We can say no to certain kinds of technology. We said no to beta max, you know . [laughter] it can be done. And my guess is in the same way that as a generation we kind of look at television and say, you know, why did we ever think that television at one point was going to solve our educational problems, my guess is in another 20 years well look back and say why did we think the internet was going to solve educational problems . If that learning cycle speeds up, well get to the point where we start thinking about technology as the way to address these bigger issues. Hi. Thank you so much for your comments this afternoon. I wondered if you could comment on theres a longstanding conversation at mit dating back at least to 2007 about what kind of ethics and values should we have not just for ourselves as individual alumni students or faculty or administrators, but the way we Work Together with the world as we go out with our edex and as we get into the thing where were telling other people what to do while not doing it ourselves [laughter] you know, from, you know what, how can we what would you advise us to look at because you did say before look at yourself. So what advice do you have for us . No. I think, you know, reflections important. Im a fellow at the call the lie llama call the lay ram ma center here, and i think theyre trying to cause more reflection, selfawareness. And, you know, its a slow process. You know, im aware of my own kind of, you know, personal demons, and ive been aware of them since i was 15 years old. And im now 45. So for 30 years ive been battling, and not much seems to change. But i think the effort is worth it. I think, you know, these things are fundamental to being a human being, and its because theyre hard problems that they are meaningful to tackle. You know, i find it a little bit strange in our society we think of chasing after low happening fruit as a virtue, right low hanging fruit as a virtue. We should be chasing after the hardest problems in our own, you know, in our own souls, so to speak. And its by doing that that i think we transform ourselves as human beings and as a society. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming, and [applause] the book is geek heresy. Kentaro will be signing the books. Theyre set right outside. And thanks to the patient and gracious crew from cspan who was recording this talk, so hopefully itll be available at some point in some format so you can recommend others to watch it. And ethics initiative, which is part of the series, is one of those places where we can have sort of candid conversations at mit and around relevant issues like this one. Breaks some of these [inaudible] thank you again for coming. Thank you. Thank you, kentaro. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] of this years president ial candidates have written books to introduce themselves to vote exercise to promote their views on issues. And here now is a look at some of the candidates books. In reply all, jeb bush catalogs his email correspondence during his time as the florida governor. Ben carson argues that a better understanding of the constitution is necessary to solve americas most pressing issues in his latest book, a more perfect union. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton looks back on her time serving in the Obama Administration in hard choices. And in a time for truth, texas senator ted cruz recounts his journey from a cuban immigrants son to the u. S. Senate. And Ohio Governor john kasich calls for a return to what he sees as traditional American Values in stand for