
Mark Zuckerberg -This Week I Talked with Yuval Noah Harari - pirocks
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10107258620822481
======
tomComb
Harari is great and I really hope Zuckerberg has read and absorbed some of his
stuff.

Harari's most recent book got some negativity for promoting meditation, which
I think some took as a self indulgent detour but it actually makes sense...

His point is that the forces trying to manipulate people (eg. on Facebook)
have become so skilled that they verge on knowing you better then you know
yourself. One way to innoculate yourself against this manipulation is to
really get to know yourself and what you believe - in a strong and stable way
- much better and he feels that meditation is a good way to acheive that.

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dredmorbius
Audio only:

    
    
        $ youtube-dl -f '321685328510993ad' -o - \
        'https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10107258598621971/' |
        mpv -

------
pirocks
Text part of post:

This week I talked with Yuval Noah Harari as part of my series of discussions
on the future of technology and society. He's a historian and author of
Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons For the 21st Century.

Many historians focus on the past but Yuval has a unique perspective on how
technology will shape the future, and that's what we spent most of our time
on. We discussed things like whether the internet is connecting or fragmenting
society, the different ways artificial intelligence could be developed, how
algorithms will continue to impact people's lives, and why it is so important
that we don't store sensitive data in countries with weak rule of law or where
governments can forcibly get access to that data. Thanks Yuval for such a
memorable conversation.

I've included a transcript of a few of my thoughts below, lightly edited for
clarity:

Minute 39:27:

When I look towards the future, one of the things that I just get very worried
about is the values that I just laid out [for the internet and data] are not
values that all countries share. And when you get into some of the more
authoritarian countries and their data policies, they're very different from
the kind of regulatory frameworks that across Europe and across a lot of other
places, people are talking about or put into place.

Recently I've come out and I've been very vocal that I think that more
countries should adopt a privacy framework like GDPR in Europe. And a lot of
people I think have been confused about this. They're like, “Why are you
arguing for more privacy regulation? Why now given that in the past you
weren't as positive on it?” And I think part of the reason why I am so focused
on this now is at this point people around the world recognize these questions
around data and AI and technology are important, so there's going to be a
[regulatory] framework in every country.

I actually think the bigger question is what is it going to be? And the most
likely alternative to each country adopting something that encodes the
freedoms and rights of something like GDPR, in my mind, is the authoritarian
model, which is currently being spread, which says every company needs to
store everyone's data locally in data centers and then, if I'm a government, I
can send my military there and get access to whatever data I want and take
that for surveillance or military. I just think that that's a really bad
future. And that's not the direction, as someone who's building one of these
internet services, or just as a citizen of the world, I want to see the world
going.

\---

In response to Yuval playing devil's advocate and asking about non-
authoritarian governments adopting data localization policies...

Minute 45:53:

I think someone with good intent might argue, "Hey, maybe a different set of
data policies is something that we should consider." The thing that I worry
about, and what we've seen, is that once a country puts that in place, it’s a
precedent that a lot of other countries that might be more authoritarian use
to basically argue that they should do the same things and then that spreads.
And I think that's bad.

And that's one of the things that as the person running this company, I'm
quite committed to making sure that we play our part in pushing back on that
and keeping the internet as one platform. One of the most important decisions
that I think I get to make as the person running this company, is where we’re
going to build our data centers and store data. And we've made the decision
that we're not going to put data centers in countries that we think have weak
rule of law, where people's data may be improperly accessed which could put
people in harm's way.

There have been a lot of questions around the world around censorship and I
think that those are really serious and important. A lot of the reason why we
build what we build is because I care about giving everyone a voice, giving
people as much voice as possible, so I don't want people to be censored. At
some level, these questions around data and how it's used and whether
authoritarian governments get access to it I think are even more sensitive
because, if you can't say something that you want, that is highly problematic,
that violates your human rights. I think in a lot of cases it stops progress.

But if a government can get access to your data, then it can identify who you
are and go lock you up and hurt you and your family and cause real physical
harm in ways that are just really deep. So I do think that people running
these companies have an obligation to try to push back on that and fight
establishing precedents which will be harmful. Even if a lot of the initial
countries that are talking about some of this have good intent, I think that
this can easily go off the rails. And when you talk about in the future AI and
data, which are two concepts that are just really tied together, I think the
values where they come from and whether they’re part of a more global system,
a more democratic process, a more open process — that's one of our best hopes
for having this work out well. If it comes from repressive or authoritarian
countries, then I just think that that's going to be highly problematic in a
lot of ways.

~~~
microwavecamera
I love how Mark posts a video of an hour and a half "discussion" while
highlighting two brief points of his own, out of context, supporting
Facebook's narrative. Bonus for trying to twist protection of our rights
through regulation into authoritarian government suppression we need to be
protected from by our billionaire Silicon Valley saviors.

