The issue that we're dealing with here is that in the United States, or in North America, roughly 70% of all the artificial intelligence professionals are working at Google, Facebook, Microsoft or Amazon. To a first approximation, they're all working on behavioural manipulation. There are at least a million great applications of artificial intelligence. Behavioural manipulation is not on them. I would argue that it's like creating time-release anthrax or cloning human babies. It's just a completely inappropriate and morally repugnant idea, yet that is what these people are doing.
To Mr. Zimmermann's point, I would simply observe that it is the threat of shutting them down and the willingness to do it for brief periods of time that creates the leverage to do what I really want to do, which is to eliminate the business model of behavioural manipulation and data surveillance. I don't think this is about putting the toothpaste back in the tube. This is about formulating toothpaste that doesn't poison people.
I believe this is directly analogous to what happened with the chemical industry in the fifties. The chemical industry used to pour its waste products—mercury, chromium and things like that—directly into fresh water. They left mine tailings on the sides of hills. Petrol stations would pour spent oil into sewers, and there were no consequences so the chemical industry grew like crazy and had incredibly high margins. It was the Internet platform industry of its era. Then one day society woke up and realized that those companies should be responsible for the externalities that they were creating. That is what I'm talking about here.
This is not about stopping progress. This is my world. This is what I do. I just think we should stop hurting people. We should stop killing people in Myanmar, in the Philippines, and we should stop destroying democracy everywhere else. We can do way better than that. It's all about the business model.
I don't want to pretend I have all the solutions. What we know is that the people in this room are part of the solution, and our job is to help you get there. Don't view anything I say as a fixed point. View this as something that we're going to work on together.
The three of us are happy to take bullets for all of you, because we recognize it's not easy to be a public servant with these issues out there. But do not forget you're not going to be asking your constituents to give up the stuff they love. The stuff they love existed before this business model. It will exist again after this business model.