 Technology is all around us. What are we doing with it? Where is it taking us? What is it doing to our kids? Pound away these questions every day and let's get some political candidates who run with different visions. Let's get some companies that get funded with different visions and let's see if we can change this enormous ship. This is Rob Johnson, president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. I'm here today with Simon Johnson. The behind-the-scenes community would be quite familiar because of all the extraordinary work he did at the outset of iNet around the great financial crisis and many other issues. He's been a leading voice in economics. People like Dennis Keller and others sing his praises every week to me so I've stayed in touch and I'm glad to have you here today. Today we're here to talk about his book Power and Progress, Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. Simon and Deron Osamoglu wrote this book together and I will tell you at the outset of all the books I've read in the last two or three years. It's as well written and it's about as important subject as I have ever considered. Any rate, Simon, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. So you have this book, extraordinary book, 500 pages plus all kinds of beautiful explorations as Dr. Sun, diagnosis, potential remedies, the yin and yang of each perspective, scenario and remedy and possibilities, etc. It doesn't come all across as dogmatic, it comes across as thoughtful, it comes across as deep. What inspired you to write this book? What did you see and what did Deron see that brought you to the focus on this effort? Well, Rob, as I think you know, Deron and I have been working together a really long time, actually 25 years, pretty close. And we've been talking about when societies do better and when there are problems. But it was really the election of 2016, I think that catalyzes to think that maybe perhaps we needed to focus a bit more on the technology of today and the technology of tomorrow and understand why what many people, including me personally, had thought was going to be the promise of the internet, the promise of digital technology, why that had not only failed to deliver, but why that it actually created some problems that we had to now deal with. And of course, as we started to write, it became clear that artificial intelligence and now what everyone's calling generative AI or versions of chat GPT, this was going to become really very important for the discussion about economic policy as well as everything else. So all these threats sort of came together as we wrote the book, Rob. And I remember you saying at the outset, it didn't seem as though, I would have to say, broad based public, which my own what might call fantasies at the outset were that the broad based public was going to become invigorated and broader based participation would be the result. What you seem to indicate right from the start in your first chapter called control over technology is that there seems to be how we say very little, what I might call commons or governance influence over the structures that have evolved and some of the things like excessive tantalization leading to advertising, surveillance and other things have created tremendous moral dilemmas and that those good pieces that were part of mine and others and perhaps your fantasies may still be achievable. But there's some other things that have crossed the road and we've got to address as well. Yeah, absolutely. The digital transformation of our economies over the past 40 years has been quite quite disappointing. And I think it's actually contributed to the polarization of our societies in the industrial world, certainly because of what it's done to jobs and also what it's done to political discourse. So there's a lot of work to be done, Rob. And that's before AI arrives and for the complicates. Yes, what it does seem that the, which I might call fear of displacement is not just an American problem. I'm doing a lot of work now on the relationship of climate change to subsistence farming in the global south, particularly the African continent. And people in Africa hold out the promise that forms of education and accumulation of human capital might be at their fingertips. But at the same time, the, we might call east Asian development model, infant industry protection, labor intensive exports, learning by doing and essentially climbing up the ladder to be a developer in industrial economy is not going to happen in the era of machine learning and automation and foreign direct investment with those methods rather than labeling labor intensive methods. So I see the echoes or the impactfulness being a planetary phenomena, not just about distribution of wealth and income in the United States, though that is certainly a catalyst as your book explains to discord lack of trust, lack of faith in governance, expertise, academia, the media, whatever. Yeah, absolutely, Rob. I mean, we have only a few pages on it because the book is already too long, but we're very worried about what you can call inappropriate technology going to developing countries, which will be exactly as you say, technologies that displace workers and create fewer opportunities in these economies that really needs jobs that could derail development for a billion or two billion or three billion people in the coming decades quite easily. How do you see how concentrated power, say the ownership of these platforms, the billionaires that result from their success? How are they able to exercise so much control over what societies adopted implement? Well, I think it's because we allow them to have those positions, Rob. And I think we defer to the people who run these large tech companies, we assume that they know best. There's also this broad assumption among many people, including economists, that technology is just something that happens to you and you have to deal with it. We wrote the book to try and make the argument that you can shape technology and you can change the direction in which it goes. And if that's the case, then you can say, well, you know, who's involved in that shaping? Who can decide to change what technology actually delivers? And that, we think, is the beginning of a different narrative and a much more healthy one. Yeah, it seems there's a confusion in economics that the market and so forth are treated a little bit like deities. And technology is being wonderful, as opposed to being tools for society to realize its goals. And I think that confusion is coupled with another confusion. The notion that capitalism is morally legitimate because it's governed by democracy may suffer a little bit. Bob Dylan had a song called One Too Many Mornings. I often sing it as One Too Many Markets, but it might be three too many markets. And you mentioned this explicitly in your book. The market for politicians' survival needing campaign contributions affects laws, enforcement, regulation, who's on the committees who gets elected. Secondly, the media doesn't want to affect negatively with scrutiny the people who are its biggest advertisers. So the watchdog is perhaps a little oft course as well. And then finally, you allude to how universities are increasingly dependent on private funding, whether it's plutocrats or big corporations, how experts are being channeled away from what we might call the public good or the common good in light of these financial dependencies may play a role. And maybe Bob Dylan had One Too Many Mornings. We might have three too many markets. But I saw how you explored all this and you do some beautiful work that's not just conceptual abstract. I mean, those framings are great. But you take us through a series of chapters like the formation of the Panama Canal and what you call the canal vision. What are you guys trying to say? I don't want to tip my hand and have read the books so enthusiastically, but what are you seeing in those chapters? It seems to me like you're telling us that this isn't the first time that technology has gotten off course or been implemented unmindfully for its social ramifications. Yes, absolutely, Rob. I mean, we think it's a pretty common feature in human history. And there are some very prominent examples in the 19th century. The Suez Canal and Panama Canal is a particularly compelling example because Ferdinand de Lesseves, who led the charge on the Suez Canal, which was an application of technology that was actually quite well done, when he turned his attention to the Panama Canal, he had the same sort of blinders on and he thought it has to be done my way. My way is the Suez Canal way. There's no other possibilities allowed. And that vision led to disaster in the case of Panama during the French-led effort to build it. So it's really, I think, a cautionary tale about letting visionaries have all the power and not being able to challenge them when it comes to what exactly you're doing here and what's going to be the social impact. And sometimes powerful people are making things like canals, but when in this case they are making the new communication system, you have a chapter on the power to persuade. And that power to persuade when they control the distribution system has to be turbocharged in terms of its capacity to serve them rather than the common good. Yes, very good point. Absolutely. I mean, the people who control the newspapers, of course, in the 19th century were very powerful. The press barons, they used to call them in England. But if you think about Facebook, if you think about Twitter, other social media, or if you go on the other side and think about what's developed in China under obviously an authoritarian regime, but also really focused on developing and controlling new means of communication, I think you realize that these things are so central to our societies that it brings inordinate influence and power when you control those. And one of the things that isn't, how would I say, just blocking you from printing and disseminating or arresting you if you do is when you set up a system like you're describing in China, you deter people from even speaking. They see that which you might call the cost benefit analysis for their own life is having no upside and tremendous danger. So you get what you might call uncomfortable silences that are quite deep and prolonged. Yes, sometimes people call that self-censorship. I think that's a misnomer. It's not self-censorship. It's really effective censorship. The really effective censorship stops you from even thinking about saying certain things. And that's definitely what we see in China, for example, now. But I think also in other authoritarian states, Rob, we're going to see that more and more. And I think we're going to see the world increasingly divided into places that are quite authoritarian, using a lot of surveillance technology and a lot of censorship and places that are much more open and where you can be. And we have seen a couple of what might call rascals who worked with the intelligence community that you cover in your book, illuminate that these things are going on even in the United States. Yes, absolutely. I think the tendency to surveillance or the preference for surveillance is strong among all government officials. And if you don't have sufficient constraints, then there will be abuses, including in the United States. So we need to be very honest about that with ourselves and very forthright and proactive in forestalling those kinds of efforts, I would suggest. And we're seeing some of the whistleblowers either hiding out in Russia or being put on trial. In other words, if we portray what a system is and everybody votes for it, that's different than in the quiet imposing something and not allowing anybody to describe its strengths and weaknesses. And one of the things I want to comment on in this is as leading economists at MIT, you and Deron deserve a lot of applause for the ways in which you not, you know, hostile way. I feel like you're trying to help us build the next North Star, but you put forward what you think is going on in a very courageous way. Well, I appreciate that, Rob. I think we are trying to be honest with ourselves and with our readers and friends and colleagues. And, you know, if we can't do it in the United States, if we can't do it from positions of tenure at major universities, where can we do it, honestly? So we'll see how that discussion goes, of course, and we'll see what can't just hold in the U.S. and around the world. It's quite gratifying that we've already lined up about 18 or 19 translated versions that will be published. So there's a big demand out there for engagement with these issues, and we hope to stimulate that as much as possible. Let's talk a little bit about the different things that you see that give you heartburner or cause for you and Deron's uneasiness. I've seen, we talked a little bit earlier about the tantalization with, how do you say, raising advertising by telling people what they want to hear and studying the audience and giving different audience members different things. But there are all kinds of things that refract that sense of common purpose that these communication channels create, and surveillance being won. But you had a menu of three or four things that you thought were, we might call the categories. You could explain each title and what you see inside the box that are what I'll call candidates for reform. Right. Well, I think the first and most important is control over data. It's very clear that what has happened is we've put a lot of our own information, our data, our photographs on the Internet, hoping to share them with friends and family, and they've been acquired without our permission to train generative AI. That's a major problem that needs to be addressed. I think the second piece that's really quite salient is surveillance, and that's something that obviously predates AI. There's been plenty of surveillance building up, but it's really, we think, going to reach a new level of efficiency, which means squeezing workers. And that is also something that needs to be prevented. And then there are also, as you mentioned just now, various forms of manipulation, the ways that we as consumers allow ourselves to be manipulated by the people who have these data, who have the algorithms, and who are being pretty cynical about what they want us to do. So there are plenty of minefields all around these issues. Do you see things like congressional hearings about the issues, or antitrust committees worrying about something that I would guess many of these platforms, you would say, are almost a different kind of monopoly. There's increasing returns to very, very large scale. But then, once they dominate the environment, they can exercise a will not, it's not them serving the market, it's the society implementing what furthers their financial well-being. Yes, look, I think some of the congressional activity, some of the think tanks that are focused on monopoly abuse and monopoly power, they've done a great job in raising awareness. But I think that we need to go beyond some of the traditional antitrust measures and really think about other ways to put pressure on these large companies to break themselves up. For example, I like the idea that Kim Klausing from UCL Law School has of imposing a surcharge on corporate profits if you're above a certain level, let's say $10 billion a year, because that will give the companies an incentive, and our shareholders will want to know why we don't break up the company and get into the lower tax bracket. So I think that's sort of encouraging the companies to allow a proliferation and a diversity of business models and ways of thinking about the development technology. That's a very important goal that we shouldn't lose sight of. I've noticed through many of the chapters how much what I will call applied micro of incentive structures and deterrents and so forth that you explored. It's not some abstract thing. You seem to have, you and Derran have zoomed in on particular things, and one in particular is not to let AI choose the path of displacing workers entirely, but perhaps augmenting, being a complementary with an E, raising of the productivity of workers which will augment their wage or augment their training or how do you say inspire further employment. And so I thought you're particularly in your last, I guess it's the chapter before the bibliographical history, which was a beautiful chapter into itself, but because it's really nice to know where you were inspired for people who want to dig deep and that last chapter does that, but the one just before that, which is exploring remedies. I remember hearing about forming narratives and then creating movements, sometimes foundations or public goods, and then you did some work on the analogy with essentially decarbonization, energy sector, and how we inspired with warning of what could happen or what was happening, and how we could move, and then you create incentives and then the private sector comes in and what you might call implements the new design. But the narrative, the how you say political organization, rising awareness and then the incentives, I thought was a really nice mix. Well thanks, thanks Rob, that means a lot. We've had a lot of experience with attempted to turn our ideas into not just policy, but also messages that people could relate to and around which different people in the policy space can rally. And I think the kind of combination you're talking about where you show people a link from the general framing of the issues to the specific measures that could actually change incentives, I think that's what you need to show people. That's what people ask for and for good reason. And you showed a little bit how it worked in the past, the monopolies after the Civil War, the muckrakers, various different new organizations particularly related to labor unions, and then essentially by the time of Franklin Roosevelt and so forth, the tide was turning, or even Teddy Roosevelt, the tide was turning, but these what you might call recipes that you create in an abstract sense do have historical precedent. This isn't just a pipe dream of good feeling. It's actually worked in the past in some of the analogies that you illuminate in the middle chapters. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, it's probably the only thing that's worked in the past role because you need countervailing power to offset the very large monopolies that develop around new technology. It happened in railways, it happened in oil, it happened to some degree in electricity, it happened in cars, and in some of the post-war developments, semiconductors, for example. So in each one of these instances, you needed to have some civil society organization, some governmental regulation and official action, and people need to understand why does this make sense? Why can't we just leave things to the market? So I think you always have to have a conversation of this kind. Every generation has to redo it, I suppose, but it's unavoidable. But what you're showing in your book is there are repeated challenges and there are methods for addressing those challenges. We happen to have a new challenge on deck right now, but this kind of process has been activated in the past with substantial success. So the last chapter where you're putting together how to address this challenge is a great guiding light, but it's also backed up by the fact that these methods have been successful previously. Yes, and I think that's important evidence, Rob, and it's quite reasonable for people to say when they read a book like this, you know, why should we believe that your approach is going to work? So to the extent you can anchor it in history, primarily American history because we think that the US is at the forefront of the technology and has a particular responsibility and need to address these things, but it's also, I think, a lot of West European history and the history of that tradition of democracy because, again, that that's very relevant for thinking about what has happened over the past 300 years. Well, my own career started after finishing a PhD. I went to the Senate Budget Committee and I won't name the senator, but I mean, I worked for Pete Domenici, but it was another senator who was sitting next to me on the floor and he said, I'm really worried about these deficits exploding. And he looks at me and he says, well, you're an economist, so what would you do about it? And I said, I would have every media company have to set aside what I'll call public windows of time for political debate and not charge you like you were selling soap. And I would make federal expenditures for all the campaign financing. So you didn't need donors because I said, then you wouldn't sell policy and then you would have a much smaller deficit. And he started laughing. He says, God, you're right on target. He said, but the problem is if I did that bill, I might lose 99 to one because incumbents want insurance that they can come back and they got to have an edge relative to challengers. And so some of these things might make a more responsive democracy. But the people who have to make the decision are more concerned about how I say their own security and future in position than something that puts all their feet to the flames that might lead to some of them leaving. Well, maybe we should put that one back on the table though, Rob, precisely because it addresses one of the key markets that you pointed out that is problematic. And remember that in the progressive era, they did introduce direct elections to the Senate and they did make other adjustments as sort of the constitutional operational side of the Constitution. But direct election of senators was a big one in terms of undermining some of the power that very large companies have. So I think you should all be in play. Yeah, the only chapter I didn't see in your book was about the Supreme Court and whether the people who determine whether what passes fits with historic precedent, they can't be on the payroll either. Absolutely. There's a particular level of concern that one would have if they lose their legitimacy. Let's talk about what you think, particularly the Union Daron wrote about in the last chapter, are the things to do now vis-a-vis what I'll call digital transformation, whether it be in the workplace or in our communication system? Well, I think we already touched on the main ones, the ones that we feel have the best chance of getting traction, particularly bipartisan traction, Rob, because I think that's very important. The first one is securing data and securing people's rights to data and then using that as a bargaining chip with the large companies. So, Geron Lynnier has this idea of data unions and using that as a way to exercise power and pool some of our market power, including around images that are on the Internet that are being freely used without permission. The second point is around surveillance, very strong safeguards on workplace surveillance that we need some new regulations on that, but also the use of surveillance in society. I think Shoshana Zuboff's age of surveillance capitalism really pioneered work in this space and we agree with her that it's a huge problem that needs to be confronted. And then there's the issue of what are you going to do about the monopolies, the data monopolies that develop. And I think there, we like the idea of Kim Klausing, which is to have extra high profit tax on mega profits to create an incentive for the companies to figure out how to break themselves up and create more competing business models for which way technology is going to go. If all of technology develops in the hands of two companies, I don't think we're likely to get, we're not likely to enjoy the outcomes from that process. And you do cover a lot of what you might call the historic evolution of Google and Facebook and others. I did see in your references that you saw some people who, which you might call already embody the spirit of what you'd like to see. There was a woman in Taiwan who you said had been quite a leader and Eli Pariser and his colleagues that were, which you might call mapping the way forward to what a good system would look like. Because I do think because we're almost in the realm of science fiction, meaning the existing systems you can diagnose are new, but seeing what to build, seeing how to get it built, which is the political economy, I thought you did a masterful job. But I'd like to also feel comfortable that we have three or four principle architects for the common good system. And I thought at least two of them you mentioned quite enthusiastically. Yes, so those are people we have a lot of admiration for, they're definitely pushing in the right direction. I think more broadly, we're big fans of Wikipedia, Rob, and the way that Wikipedia structures data, shows the sources, forces people to think about what they're seeing as opposed to relying on a chat GPT, which pretends or purports to give you a definitive answer. I think this is about encouraging human cognition, human information processing, human critical thinking. And that's the cornerstone of everything. If we become overly reliant on one single supposed oracle, then I think we become compliant and we become dependent on that oracle. And that would be regrettable. So we're big advocates of supporters of people who are trying to encourage various forms of what's sometimes called plurality in the world today. What you might call the historic and the literary influences that you bring to bear. People like George Orwell or Aldous Huxley, they seem to paint pictures of dread. In other words, they are bringing to our consciousness what isn't right. But these people I mentioned that I learned about from your book are actually trying to take us to what is right. And I think in a period like you mentioned earlier, after the 2016 election, when the polarity and the hostility, which might call tactics of refutation are so vivid, it's very important to have people that aren't just critics, but are visionaries of a constructive future, which I believe you and Darren are as well. But bringing those other people to the table, I think is more the medicine now than clever imaginative critiques or protest songs or anything of that sort. I agree, Rob, wholeheartedly, and that's part of what we try and do at MIT is encourage our students and support our colleagues who are developing technology we think could move in this kind of direction. Because we're not against technology, we're not against technological change. We want to encourage it to be more human centric and more useful to people and less focused on displacing people or pushing them aside or causing them to lose their jobs. Because while some of that might be unavoidable, that's not the right focus if you want shared prosperity. When I came back from India recently, I was going to ask you about because there is another place where there is very concentrated wealth like plutocracy and many, many people at the lower end. But there seem to be there a great enthusiasm because essentially the marginal cost of integrating people into the market or teaching them through digital channels or whatever, they seem to be holding out a tremendous hopefulness for the elevation and development of India because of the advent of digital transmission paths. Do you sense that kind of enthusiasm in other parts of the development world or in your own experiences related to India? Well, there's definitely enthusiasm Rob, but I think we're also very worried about what generative AI will do. So while I don't, I wouldn't say anybody has fully established exactly how it impacts the organization of work. One thing that chat gpt seems to be doing is is taking away jobs for low level people, people who are doing relatively simple tasks, or you could call them entry level positions. And there's quite a lot of those jobs as you know in India. In fact, that's the India's big stepping stone into the global economy. So I think we worry that while there might be an impact on manufacturing, which you put, you put that earlier, we might lose some of those labor intensive textile jobs, for example, we may lose even more of those labor intensive text jobs, right? The people who input text, the people who do medical records processing, the people who run call centers. I think that losing that rung in the ladder would be a really bad blow to India. I think that's right. I know a number of I'd worked for years on Wall Street, and I know a number of firms that had essentially created research departments in India. That and now I'm seeing things like trade Smith, which has got a new system, which is an AI system for picking stocks or analyzing stocks. That is by all my sense would be it might be its annual fee might be two months of what a wage is in India. It's not a big expensive thing. And it would be very dangerous to the security analysts wherever they sit on earth. Yes, I think there's a particular threat that we can see to anybody who writes things that are permutations on things that have been written before. So if a good example is the mailings you get from realtors, which are obviously there's a formula, the characteristics of the house, some fluffiness about the neighborhood, and then some words about how the market's doing. But that seems somewhat formulaic and it seems relatively straightforward to use an algorithm to write that. In fact, I think sometimes that's already being done. So that kind of writing, I think, and those jobs, which are quite well paid in this economy and other economies, those jobs are absolutely in the line of fire. When I was in India, people were talking about this kind of new horizon, unknown nature of technology, unknown potentials and so forth. You and I have worked on the analysis not only of the political economy, but the advent of financialization. Do you see an analogy or similarities between your study of finance and which you might call the common platform related to the bailouts and so forth and the regulation systems and the international integration and what now people are experiencing with regard to tech? Yeah, I'm afraid I do, Rob. I mean, as you know, we worked long and hard that we, me and you and our friends to sort of change that what was the predominant vision that finance could do no wrong and that the finance guys had all the answers and they could have any degree of leverage, any amount of debt they wanted, they could do any kind of options trading they wanted. And I think because of the financial crisis of 2008, the view that came out of that was that you need tighter constraints around what the financial system can do with regard to systemic risk. Individuals can do things that are risky. Fine. If it's their money, but if they have a knock on effect for the entire system, we need people to be much more careful. And I think today in 2023, we're grappling with at least echoes of what we saw in 2007, 2008, but the echoes are not that strong at the moment, Rob, in part because the vision changed and the rules changed and the behavior changed. Now, on tech, I think it's very analogous that there is a vision of machine learning, creating machine intelligence, which is this, I think, completes misleading term. But the idea is they're going to replace humans in production in service sector everywhere in the economy. And that they can do. I mean, sometimes it's not very effective. Deron and Pascal Restrepo coined a term so-so automation, like self-checkout kiosks at the grocery store. They don't boost productivity that much, but they do tilt the balance of power between the owner of the grocery store and the workers. And then they're also popular, perhaps with analysts. So that technology does get adopted. And I think we're grappling with another vision, Rob, that's become too predominant, too prevalent, and somewhat dangerous. It doesn't mean we're anti-tech. I'm not anti-finance. We need a financial sector. I don't want a financial sector that blows up. I don't want a tech sector that destroys millions or tens of millions of jobs without giving us an opportunity to build new jobs, new tasks, new things humans can do. In the spirit of transformations that innovation often bring, there seems to be, perhaps on an enlarged market, for education. In your mind, I think I remember reading this in the book that this could be a platform for subsidies or grants or for whether it's companies retraining people to step up to the new technology, whether it's people changing from what you might call working with their hands to working in the digital realm at a different place, but having what I call a running start, the qualifications, is there perhaps something that could be publicly funded that is what you might call the conveyor belt of transformation through education using these technologies? Yeah, I think that's a great idea, Rob, something we'd strongly encourage. We don't think that education alone is enough. We do think that changing the direction of technology is super important, number one priority. Yes. But if you change the direction of technology to make education more effective, that could be extremely helpful for many, many people and help them connect with the new opportunities, the new jobs, and really make the participation, that new prosperity, much broader. So I want to be clear for our listeners about that. You don't want to leave technology alone to smash up all kinds of people in their careers. We've got to be mindful of what's implemented ex ante, but in the event of transformation, we might be able to enhance or turbocharge the transformational assistance using technology. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a good formulation, Rob. Very good. We'll put that on our Amazon web book site. Well, I think you guys have almost opened a floodgate. I don't think there's a week when I go to convening about what INET's doing or a dinner party with people from China or whatever, where these issues aren't at least broached a little bit. And now you've created a focal point around which we can all explore, invigorate our imaginations, look at some history, go deeper. And I think making this a centerpiece conversation, we have a commission on global economic transformation at INET co-chaired by Mike Spenson, Joe Stiglitz. The questions of globalization, what is a nation state anymore and how can it protect its people and how can it keep its big money from running offshore and hiding so the resources can't be taxed? The financial system, which you and I've worked on and talked about, climate issues and climate issues as a public good and all over the planet. But technology, Mike Spence, James Monika have been the quarterbacks in that realm. But seeing technology, I mentioned earlier, how to deploy it constructively to invigorate India and Africa, as well as what to do to channel it, not to damage other people, but to enhance other people. And I don't know whether, how would I say, one can be spiritual or religious, and there might be the equivalent of St. Peter or not. But if you want to get through the pearly gates, doing well and doing good at the same time might make a better chance of getting a pass to get into that arena. What's the scariest place from your and Deron's conversations? What's the scariest place on earth related to the technology challenges now? Well, I think the situation, the Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Rob, is very dangerous in many ways. But if you think about the technology, when we developed technology in the past, and when we've intensely looked for malevolent applications like during World War One, where the technology that was behind artificial fertilizer was turned into poison gas, the production of poison gas by the same scientists, I think that sort of distortion of technology and focusing on killing people, that's very problematic. And I think there is always potential for more of that, particularly when technologically advanced countries are drawn into prolonged conflict. So I think we really need a de-escalation. Well, we need Russia to leave Ukraine, actually, and then we need a de-escalation around Russia, and we need China to recognize that. And we should recognize that ourselves if we can quiet down the world and push more of the technology into productive, peaceful purposes, everyone gains. And do you think that the, how would I say, new digital technology has played a big role in the onset of the or the implementations in the Ukraine war? There's certainly a lot of applications, I mean, based on what I read in the newspapers, there's certainly a lot of applications of drone technology, and that's definitely digital technology. And there may be a change in the sort of digital control and digital interface used on the battlefield. Again, there's the stories about that. And of course, missiles, Rob, are very prominent. How do you protect your civilians? How do you protect all the civilians in your countries against any single one hypersonic missile that's fired from far away that comes at you at five times or 10 times the speed of sound? I mean, these are very hard technological questions. And we don't seem like we're negotiating, like Gorbachev and Reagan did in Iceland, about how to de-escalate and tune these things down. And I know Daniel Ellsberg, who appeared at one of my young scholars events a couple of years ago, is very concerned that it's not just say a fight between two countries that matters, that the upper atmosphere can be destroyed by the explosion of these bombs, which can destroy the ability to create food and feed all the animals and humans on planet Earth. His book, The Doomsday Machine, shows, and this is not what I'll call a science fiction writer or some ominous, these are things that are published in Science and Nature magazine by very, very capable scientists. This, he just happens to have worked in that realm of national security and illuminated. But do you, how would I say, a lot of, I have young children, so I'm asking a question. A lot of people are very concerned about what's happening in brain development and formation of children, say from ages eight to 12, because of iPads and iPads, iPhones, it's all that kind of, or the equivalent on Samsung, I'm not picking on a company. But the digital consumption, in preparing for this book, did you come across some concerns from the medical world or the neurological world about that facet of either what I'll call biological health or mental health? Well, there's certainly a lot of concern, Robert, and plenty of debate. I'm not sure that the evidence is yet definitive on that. But we do emphasize that the need for people to continue thinking critically to understand what is being done to them in their environment by various forces of attempting to manipulate them and so on. And I think that many of those abilities are best developed early on without over-reliance on digital technologies. The question though on digital would be, how do you use the access to all of these data, data that, you know, you and I, when we were young, didn't have access to a tiny fraction of that, even in the best public library. But young people can access a lot of information, what do they do with it, right? To what extent does it help them make better decisions, or are they just more confused, more angry, more polarized? I think those are absolutely pressing issues that we need to continue to work on, even as AI probably exacerbates some of those issues. So with regard to AI, the key fear is that it will displace the need for people? Yes, absolutely. I think that is the main problem, that it will replace people in jobs very quickly. Now, automation always replaces people, that's the definition. If it's very productive automation and it creates a lot of new tasks, which is what happened in the U.S. auto industry in the early 20th century, then you get better outcomes. But if the form of AI just displaces people, doesn't generate new tasks, and also it's not very productivity enhancing even, then you have a problem, then you have much less likely to get good outcomes. Having grown up in Detroit and watched automation, machine learning, and globalization without much transformational assistance, how would I say, what they call the diseases of despair were quite evident among the adult community in those years when I grew up. And so I have a, which you might call, a haunted memory of transformational despair. And hopefully it all ends up, but as somebody said to me, this digital thing will all take out in two or three generations. I said, what are you going to do with the human beings for two or three generations? Yeah, I think that's two, three generations. I mean, that's not acceptable, right? I'm from Sheffield in the north of England, Rob, and I left as a young man. But that's a part of the world that really struggled, not with digital transformation, but with other earlier industrial transformations. And it's quite sad what happens to many people. Who's the guy who wrote a book, The Long Revolution? He talked a lot about the need to transform education in the different regions. And the elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge are in one path, but people from Wales and others are not going to get admitted because they were considered a different kind of worker. And creating, which might call the rungs in the ladder for transformation creates perhaps a more enthusiastic or less despondent society. We'll come to close to the end here just quickly. You've offered this book. What would you like to see happen? And how can people, like my audience as activists, we have 20,000 members of our young scholars initiative, they will be highly curious. We all read the book. What do you want us to do? Let's have lots of arguments, I think, Rob. I think arguments, discussions, proposals, counter-proposals, that's the way we progress on finance, I would say, right? Very active engagement in lots of people. Lots of people for whom they might say, well, it's not my job. Good. If it's not your job, make it your passion. Dive into these issues, confront them. The technology is everywhere. Technology is all around us. What are we doing with it? Where is it taking us? What is it doing to our kids? Pound away these questions every day. And let's get some political candidates who run with different visions. Let's get some companies that get funded with different visions. And let's see if we can change this enormous ship, which is technology development, change its course. Or maybe it's not one ship. Maybe we need to break it up into lots of smaller ships that go in different directions, and then we see what those can deliver. But I do think the energy of readers, the energy of people who participate in your network, for example, Rob, is incredibly important. That's what gave us previous waves of reform in the U.S. and elsewhere. And I think that's our main hope going forward. Well, how would I say? I'm with you. I'm going to work hard on this one. I watched your beautiful work, and I want to make another quick advertisement, your book with James Kwok, 13 bankers. Everybody that just saw Sun Valley Bank, ought to order a copy of that and catch up with the echoes, because they got to sort out what's really dangerous now and what's not. And that book was another guiding light in that other sector. Anoddit Mahdi and others all love that book. I remember when you presented it to us. But right now, I think when I think about scholars, I think of multidisciplinary integration. I think of their emotional maturity and compassion. And I think about something that's almost magical of choosing the right thing to focus on. You're three for three, man. Way to go. And congratulations to Deron as well. Right. I really appreciate it, Rob. Your words mean a lot to us always. Thank you so much. Thanks for being with me today. And I'm probably going to be calling you back as young scholars in this. You're going to want you guys to do an event with them shortly. Delighted. We always like to work with you and your colleagues, Rob.