Keen On America

So was November 5 a moral catastrophe signaling the death knell of American liberalism or just another election in the turbulent history of American democracy. According to the Brookings scholar Jonathan Rauch, the Trump-Harris election was both. On the one hand, Rauch argues, wearing his unashamedly liberal cap, November 5 was a moral catastrophe for the future of American democracy. But, on the other, slapping on his Brookings analyst’s cap, Rauch celebrates November 5 as an ordinary election. I suspect the double capped Rauch is onto a singular thing here. There is a feeling of catastrophic ordinariness about America right now. It’s that moment before a crash when everything slows down and you know something dramatic is about to happen. Enjoy the (horror) show, Rauch seems to be saying. America is about to become very unordinary. Transcript:“When I say a moral catastrophe, it means that people like me, we don't know what to do.” -Jonathan RauchAK: Hello, everybody. I'm just back from a little bit of an East Coast jaunt. I drove around rural Virginia a couple of days ago, and I saw this sign, for people who are just listening, there's a "Trump/Vance 2024" flag, and then underneath someone has put "winner." And that is clear. There's no doubt the Trump and Vance in 2024 are the clear winners in every sense. From the point of view of liberals, it's very concerning. Francis Fukuyama, who might be described as the pope of American liberalism, believes that the Trump win marks a decisive rejection of liberalism. So it's a historic change. And my guest today on the show, an old friend of of show, Jonathan Rauch, I think agrees. He's described the November election as "Tuesday's moral catastrophe." In spite of that moral catastrophe, John Rauch is still around. Just back from the south of France. It's a hard place to go, John. What do you mean by a moral catastrophe? I mean, those are strong words.JONATHAN RAUCH: I mean in a specific sense. We don't write our own headlines, of course. And that one is a little blunt. What I meant by that is that for the last eight years, people like me, including me, have done everything in our power to persuade the American electorate that Donald Trump was an unacceptable candidate from the point of view of morality and character and basic decency and observation of the fundamental norms on which our country and constitution rely. And this election, 2024, was a complete, I think, repudiation of that view. It was an ordinary election. The good news is that it was an ordinary election. We did—AK: And you wrote a piece for Brookings. You're a fellow of Brookings—JONATHAN RAUCH: Yeah, that's right.AK: —On this ordinary election. So on the one hand, it was ordinary. On the other hand, it was extraordinary. It was a moral catastrophe.JONATHAN RAUCH: Well, it was. Yeah, that's right. The good news is that it was an ordinary election. It was a rerun of 2016. It was an anti-incumbent election. It was close. It was undisputed. We've seen all that before. The bad news, for someone like me who's been saying for eight years is this this guy is not someone who should be anywhere near the White House, is that it was an ordinary election. The voters looked at everything that he's done and everything that people like me said. And they shrugged and they said, well, you know what? You're either wrong or we're not interested. They treated him as you would another candidate. And so from that point of view, this is a, I think, a decisive rejection of what folks like me have been saying. And we have to change.AK: John, I know you don't have any kids. I've got kids. And I think rule number one of parenting—and I'm certainly not the person to lecture anyone on good or bad, or certainly good parenting—rule number one of parenting always seemed to me, was if you tell a kid enough times that they can't do something, in the end, they will. And I don't mean to trivialize your argument, but what you just said to me sounded like—and correct me if I'm wrong, that the John Rauchs of the world, fellows at Brookings, authors of bestselling books like Constitution of Knowledge, for eight years, you warn the American people that the guy on the ballot, Donald Trump, was a bad deal, that he was a bad man, that he was unethical, all the rest of it. For eight years, you told them, you made it clear, and they have disobeyed you. And this is a crisis. In terms of that narrative, were you, you collectively I mean, you can't speak on behalf of your Brookings class, but weren’t you are asking for trouble by making it so clear that you disapproved of this particular candidate?JONATHAN RAUCH: Well, it certainly appears that way today, doesn't it? On the other hand, one cannot deny what you said. Clearly, all the things that people like me have have said, and many, many other people, the editorial boards of many newspapers, and Frank Fukuyama, a brilliant man and wonderful scholar. They've been rejected, and so they've just clearly failed. So you're undoubtedly right. The question is, should we have just shut up this whole time? Should we not have pointed out, for example, that this is someone who led an effort to overthrow the United States government, that this is someone who lied by actual account, average of 20 times a day while he was in office? You can't really not point these things out in a liberal democracy, can you? So when I say a moral catastrophe, it means that people like me, we don't know what to do.AK: Are you saying then in a sense that it's a moral catastrophe not for America, but to quote you, for people like John Rauch, that your ideas, that you grew up with it you clearly believe in, you're one of the upholders ethically, philosophically of liberal ideals. Is this a catastrophe for yourself?JONATHAN RAUCH: That is exactly what I'm saying. You just said it better.AK: Well, you said it well, John, a moral catastrophe for yourself. And does that suggest that, really, you're beginning to question your own ideas, that more than half of America, maybe 51, 52 percent of the people who voted suggested that you were wrong?JONATHAN RAUCH: Well, I'm not a populist, and in fact, as an atheistic homosexual Jew, I'm very used to being part of an unpopular minority and thinking that I was right regardless. And I don't think I can or want to change fundamentally in my view. For example, the founders, the U.S. Constitution, the benefits of small liberalism. I don't mean left wing progressivism. I'm center right myself, but I mean the ideals of the American founding and the Enlightenment. I still think that there's actually—Fukuyama was right in what he said in the early 90s. There's no real alternative to those things if what you want is peace, prosperity, freedom, and knowledge. But where I think I have to go back to square one is trying to figure out how to make that case. People like me, you know, I assumed that we were the majority, that we spoke for mainstream America, and that that Trump was a fringe candidate who had somehow managed to commandeer the commanding heights of politics. And I think someone like you is quicker to understand, no, that it's actually the other way around. A large number of the people, and now clearly ...

“There is one winner regarding the most significant story this week,” Keith Teare writes in his That Was The Week technology newsletter. But, as he explains, there are, in fact, two winners: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech entrepreneurs trusted by Trump to reform and shrink the federal government. So how seriously might we take Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)? Should we welcome this attempt to reform (ie: cut) the Federal government. And is Musk’s SpaceX really a positive model for streamlining the state bureaucracy. Keith, as always, is hopeful; Andrew, as always, is skeptical. But, like it or not, DOGE is going to be one of the more intriguing and impactful experiments of the incoming administration.Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In association with our friends at Digital-Life-Design (DLD), Europe’s iconic annual tech conference which next January celebrates its twentieth anniversary, we are starting a series of conversations with DLD speakers looking back over the last twenty years. First up is Silicon Valley entrepreneur, speaker and author John Hagel, who talked, quite openly, about his lifelong fear of fear and how he’s cured himself of this affliction over the last two decades.John Hagel III has more than 40 years’ experience as a management consultant, author, speaker and entrepreneur. After recently retiring as a partner from Deloitte, McGraw Hill published in May 2021 his latest book, The Journey Beyond Fear, that addresses the psychology of change and he is developing a series of programs to help people navigate through change at many levels. John has founded a new company, Beyond Our Edge, LLC, that works with companies and people who are seeking to anticipate the future and achieve much greater impact. While at Deloitte, John was the founder and chairman of the Silicon Valley-based Deloitte Center for the Edge, focusing on identifying emerging business opportunities that are not yet on the CEO’s agenda. Before joining Deloitte, John was an independent consultant and writer and prior to that was a principal at McKinsey & Company and a leader of their Strategy Practice as well as the founder of their E-Commerce Practice. John has served as senior vice president of strategy at Atari, Inc., and is the founder of two Silicon Valley startups. John is also a faculty member at Singularity University where he gives frequent talks on the mounting performance pressure created by digital technology and promising approaches to help traditional companies make the transition from a linear to an exponential world. He is also on the Board of Trustees at the Santa Fe Institute, an organization that conducts leading edge research on complex adaptive systems. He has also led a number of initiatives regarding business transformation with the World Economic Forum. John is the author of The Power of Pull, published by Basic Books in April 2010. He is also the author of a series of best-selling business books, Net Gain, Net Worth, Out of the Box, and The Only Sustainable Edge. He is widely published and quoted in major business publications including The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal, as well as general media like the New York Times, NBC and BBC. He has won two awards from Harvard Business Review for best articles in that publication and has been recognized as an industry thought leader by a variety of publications and institutions, including the World Economic Forum and Business Week. John has his own website at www.johnhagel.com, and for many years wrote personal blogs at www.edgeperspectives.typepad.com as well as contributing postings on the Harvard Business Review, Fortune and Techonomy websites. He is active in social media and can be followed on Twitter at @jhagel and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhagel/ John holds a BA from Wesleyan University, a B.Phil. from Oxford University, and a JD and MBA from Harvard University. John Hagel has spent over 40 years in Silicon Valley and has experience as a management consultant, entrepreneur, speaker and author. He is driven by a desire to help individuals and institutions around the world to increase their impact in a rapidly changing world. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. TRANSCRIPTKEEN: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. We're going to do things a little differently today. We're starting a new series on KEEN ON in association with my dear friends at the DLD conference. It's an annual conference held each year in Munich. My view? Certainly the best tech conference in Europe, if not in the world. And in January 2025, they're celebrating their 20th anniversary. And in association with DLD, we're talking to some of their most notable speakers about their experiences over the last 20 years. We're beginning with an old friend of mine, John Hagel, a very distinguished author, futurist. His last book was called The Journey Beyond Fear, and John spoke at DLD '16 about narratives and business. And I began our DLD KEEN ON conversation with John Hagel by asking him to cast his mind back to January 2005.HAGEL: In January 2005, I was working as an independent consultant in Silicon Valley. I'd been there for 25 years already. I was fascinated with the degree to which digital technology was exponentially improving, and I was being aggressively recruited, at the time, by a large consulting firm, Deloitte, that wanted me to join. I was a bit resistant. I turned them down four times because I didn't want to go work for another large consulting firm. I'd been a partner with McKinsey before that, but ultimately they prevailed. They persuaded me that they would help me create a new research center that would be autonomous, even though it was part of Deloitte and it was really focused on trying to understand the long-term trends that are reshaping the global economy and what the implications are for people. And that was my passion, and I'm very grateful that I was able to pursue that.KEEN: What was the global economy, John, like in 2005?HAGEL: It was definitely becoming more and more connected. It was going through fundamental change even at that stage. I've come to call it "the big shift," but basically, some long-term trends that were playing out were creating mounting performance pressure on all of us. One form of pressure was intensifying competition on a global scale. Companies were competing with companies from around the world. Workers were competing with workers from around the world. So there was a lot of intensifying competition. The pace of change was accelerating. Things you thought you could count on were no longer there. And then, as if that weren't enough, all the connectivity we were creating...a small event in a faraway place in the world quickly cascades into an extreme, disruptive event. So it creates a lot of performance pressure on all people. And we were just in the early stages of that. I think we're actually still in the early stages of "the big shift." A lot more to come.KEEN: What was it, John, about "the big shift?" It was your term, is still, I think, one of the best terms to describe the first quarter of the 21st century. What both most worried and excited you about "the big shift" in 2005? Back then, not today.HAGEL: Well, at the time, I was starting to realize that fundamental change was going to be required in all companies, all organizations, governments, universities. And I was worried that that would be a challenge, that not many people really embrace that kind ...

The endless culture wars rage on. In his new book, The War Against the Past, the sociologist Frank Furedi believes that unless what he calls “the West” fights for its history, the “grievance entrepreneurs” will take over and undermine all our hard won intellectual freedoms. It’s the convention conservative argument, of course, but what’s interesting about Furedi is that he used to be a revolutionary communist. So I wonder if Furedi’s rightward shift is the standard intellectual fate of old leftists. Alternatively, perhaps, the woke crowd has become so corrosive that even former communists like Furedi are now manning the barricades in defense of western civilization.Frank Furedi is a sociologist and social commentator. He is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Since the late 1990s, Frank has been widely cited about his views on why Western societies find it so difficult to engage with risk and uncertainty. He has published widely about controversies relating to issues such as health, parenting children, food and new technology. His book Invitation To Terror; Expanding the Empire of the Unknown (2007) explores the way in which the threat of terrorism has become amplified through the ascendancy of precautionary thinking. It develops the arguments contained in two previous books, Culture of Fear (2002) and Paranoid Parenting (2001). Both of these works investigate the interaction between risk consciousness and perceptions of fear, trust relations and social capital in contemporary society.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

As the author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, the Cambridge University historian Gary Gerstle was one of first people to recognize the collapse of neoliberalism. But today, the real question is not about the death of neoliberalism, but what comes after it. And, of course, when I sat down with Gerstle, I began by asking him what the Trump victory tells us about what comes after neoliberalism.Gary Gerstle is Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge. Gerstle received his BA from Brown University and his MA and PhD from Harvard University. He is the author, editor, and coeditor of more than ten books.  He is currently the Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, where he is working on a new book, Politics in Our Time: Authoritarian Peril and Democratic Hope in the Twenty-First Century.  He resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Named as one of the "100 most pivoted men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's most pivotal broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the pivotal author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two cats, both called Pivot.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. TRANSCRIPT“It's important to recognize that the neoliberal triumph carried within it not just the triumph of capitalism, but the triumph of freedom. And I think the that image of the wall coming down captures both. It's people wanting to claim their freedom, but it also paves the way for an unregulated form of capitalism to spread to every corner of the world.” -Gary GerstleAK: Hello everybody. As we try to make sense of the aftermath of the US election this week, there was an interesting headline today in the Financial Times. Donald Trump apparently has asked, and I'm quoting the F.T. here, the arch-protectionist Robert Lighthizer, to run U.S. trade policy. You never know with Trump, he may change his mind tomorrow. But nonetheless, it suggests, and it's not a great surprise, that protectionism will define the Trump, presidency or certainly the second Trump presidency. And it speaks of the structural shift in the nature of politics and economics in the United States, particularly given this Trump victory. One man who got this, I think before anyone else, is the Cambridge historian Gary Gerstle. He's been on the show a couple of times before. He's the author of a wonderful book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era. It's a profound book. It's had an enormous impact on everybody. And I'm thrilled and honored that Gary is back on the show. This is the third time he's been on the show. Gary, is that important news? Have we formally come to the end now of the neoliberal order? GARY GERSTLE: I think we have, although there's an element of neoliberalism which may revive in the Trump administration. But if we think of a political order as ordering political life so that all participants in that order have to accept its ideological principles, we have moved out of that order. I think we've been out of it for some time. The critical election in this case was 2016, and the critical move that both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders made in 2016, the two most dynamic presidential candidates in that year, was to break with the orthodoxy of free markets, the orthodoxy of globalization, the orthodoxy of a world without borders where everything was free to move and the market was supreme. And the only role of government in the state was to ensure as full access to markets as was possible in the belief that if governments got out of the way of a private capitalist economy, this would spur the greatest growth for the greatest number of people everywhere in the world. This was governing orthodoxy, really from the time of Reagan until 2016. Trump broke it. Sanders broke it. Very significant in this regard that when Biden came into office, he moderated some of the Trump tariffs but kept the tariffs on China substantially in place. So there's been continuity for some time, and now we're going to see an intensification of the protectionist regime. Protectionism used to be a dirty word in American politics. If you uttered that word, you were excluded from serious political discourse. There will be other terms that are used, fair trade, not just because protectionism has a negative connotation to it, but we are living in an era where governments assert the right to shape markets as they wish to in the interests of their nation. So, yes, we are living in a different era, although it must be said, and we may get into a discussion of this at some point, there are sectors of the Trump coalition that want to intensify deregulation in the domestic market, that want to rollback government. And so I expect in the new Trump administration, there is going to be tussles between the protectionists on the one hand and those who want to, at least domestically, restore free trade. And by that I mean the free operation of private capital without government regulation. That's an issue that bears watching.AK: Is that a contradiction though, Gary? Can one, in this post-neoliberal order, can governments be hostile to regulation, a la Elon Musk and his association with Trump, and also be in favor of tariffs? I mean, do the two—can the to go together, and is that the outline of this foggy new order coming into place in the second quarter of the 21st century?GARY GERSTLE: They can go together in the sense that they have historically in the past gone together in the United States. In the late 19th century, the US had very high tariffs against foreign goods. And domestically, it was trying to create as free a domestic market as possible. What was known as the period of laissez-faire domestically went along with a commitment to high tariffs and protection of American laissez-faire against what we might call global laissez-faire. So it has been tried. It did work at that time. But I think the Republican party and the constituencies behind Donald Trump are divided on this question. As you noted, Elon Musk represents one pole of this. He certainly wants protection against Chinese imports of electric cars and is probably going to get that because of all the assistance he gave Trump in this election. But domestically, he wants no government interfering with his right to conduct his capitalist enterprises as he sees fit. So that's going to be one wing. But there's another wing of the Republican Party under Trump that is much more serious about industrial policy that says we cannot leave the market to its own devices. It produces too many human casualties. It produces too many regions of America left behind, and that we must use the government to help those people left behind. We must structure free enterprise industry in a way that helps the ordinary working-class man. And I use the word “man” deliberately in this context. Interestingly, JD Vance, the vice ...

Gary Shapiro is my Pivot Guy. As the longtime CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, the organization that puts on Las Vegas’ annual CES, Gary knows a thing or two about pivoting. And now he’s put his pivoting wisdom into a pivotal new book, Pivot or Die: How Leaders Thrive When Everything Changes, a guide about how to pivot successfully. As Gary explained to me, he breaks pivoting down into four kinds of pivots: the startup pivot, the forced pivot, the failure pivot and the success pivot. A pivotal conversation about a pivotally important subject.Gary Shapiro is CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)® which represents over 1300 consumer technology companies and owns and produces CES® — the Global Stage for Innovation. As head of CTA for more than three decades, he has ushered the consumer technology industry through major periods of technological upheaval and transformation. Shapiro is also the New York Times bestselling author of Ninja Future: Secrets to Success in the New World of Innovation (HarperCollins, 2019), Ninja Innovation: The Ten Killer Strategies of the World’s Most Successful Businesses (HarperCollins, 2013), and The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream (Beaufort, 2011). Through these books and through television appearances, and as a columnist whose more than 1200 opinion pieces have appeared in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post, Shapiro has helped direct policymakers and business leaders on the importance of innovation in the U.S. economy.Named as one of the "100 most pivoted men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's most pivotal broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the pivotal author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two cats, both called Pivot. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

It’s the race that will change the world. In Supremacy, one of the FT’s six short-listed best business book of the year, Bloomberg columnist Parmy Olson tells the story of what she sees as the key battle of our digital age between Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Demis Hassabis’ DeepMind. Altman and Hassabis, Olson argues, are fighting to dominate our new AI world and this war, she suggests, is as much one of personal style as of corporate power. It’s a refreshingly original take on an AI story which tends to be reported with either annoyingly utopian glee or equally childish dystopian fear. And Olson’s narrative on our brave new AI world is a particularly interesting take on the future of Alphabet, DeepMind’s parent corporation, which, she suggests, might, in the not too distant future, have Demis Hassabis as its CEO. “There's a very human story behind the development of AI.” -Parmy OlsonTRANSCRIPT:AK: Hello, everybody. A few weeks ago, about three weeks ago, the Nobel Prizes were awarded. And it was the year for AI and physics. John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, Geoffrey Hinton being known as the godfather of AI. Hinton had worked for Google for a while, and then in chemistry, the prize went to three scientists, including Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind. Hassabis is a remarkable fellow on many different levels. One person who, I think, follows Hassabis with a great deal of care and interest is my guest today, Parmy Olson. She's a London-based Bloomberg opinion columnist and the author of a very intriguing new book, Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World. Parmy is joining us from the Bloomberg office in London. Parmy, would it be fair to call this new book, which has actually been shortlisted for the F.T. Business Book of the Year Award, one of the six books on the shortlist, is it fair to call this book a kind of parallel narrative of Demis Hassabis at DeepMind and of course, Sam Altman at OpenAI? Is that the narrative of your book?PARMY OLSON: That's a big part of it. I wanted to tell the story of the AI boom and some of the possible risks that could come from AI, particularly around the control of AI, by talking about the humans behind it. So, I think there's a very human story behind the development of AI. And so, that's why I structured the first half of the book as a tale about the careers and lives and accomplishments, and failures as well, of Demis Hassabis and Sam Altman, including their rivalry.AK: Yeah, it's interesting and kind of ironic given that AI's about smart machines. Some people fear that it might turn us humans into footnotes, some people have suggested that AI is our last invention. And Hassabis has always been presented as the good face, the nice guy, obviously a genius, but at the same time quite reasonable. Whereas, of course, Altman is a much more controversial figure. It's not quite Elon Musk, but he's certainly closer to being like Musk than Hassabis. Is that a fair generalization, or do you reveal that Hassabis is actually a rather more complicated figure than his public persona suggests?PARMY OLSON: Yes, we could say that. I mean, first of all, I would say that publicly, in terms of how both men position themselves and come across, I think Hassabis comes across as a nice guy and someone who is very scientifically minded and very focused on pushing ahead scientific frontiers and discovery, whereas Sam is much more of a business person. You could see him more as a capitalist, someone who really wants to grow his power and influence. Demis is a little bit more driven by prestige. He has wanted, for years, to win a Nobel Prize. That was very much a—AK: Who doesn't, Parmy? We all want Nobel prizes, except most of us, we're not going to be considered, I think, by the committee.PARMY OLSON: Sure, but which CEOs actually sit down with their engineers and say "this is how we're going to measure success, is going to be winning 2 or 3 Nobel Prizes over the next ten years"? It was an actual concrete metric for success within his company. So, prestige was very important to him. I think in both cases, though, both men—and this was a thing I really wanted to get across with the book—is that both men had these very big humanitarian ideals around building powerful AI. Demis would talk about using it to—when they eventually build AGI, which is artificial general intelligence, or AI that surpasses our brains, and it can solve all sorts of problems that we can't solve, for example, curing cancer or solving climate change. He would often talk about that in interviews, and Sam wanted to do the same thing, but for a slightly different reason. He wanted to bring abundance to humanity and elevate the wealth of everyone and just improve everyone's well-being and lives. But what ended up happening over the years, of course, is on their journeys to trying to build AGI, the economics of that endeavor were such that they had to align themselves with larger tech companies. And those those objectives, as humanitarian goals, ultimately faded into the background. And they both, whether you see one is more Machiavellian than the other, I don't think really either of them had that kind of intent, but both ended up helping to enrich and extend the power and wealth of the world's largest tech companies, the world's largest de facto companies.AK: And those, of course, are Google and OpenAI.PARMY OLSON: And Microsoft.AK: It's interesting that you focus, initially, on the ethics in terms of comparing Hassabis and Altman. The reviews of the book, Parmy, of course, have been very good. As I suggested, you are on the shortlist for the F.T. Book of the Year. But a couple of reviewers, The LA Times, suggested that you didn't address—you yourself as the author—didn't address the ethical questions associated with a AI, and The Wall Street Journal reviewer concurred. Is that, I won't say a fair criticism, but do you think that that was part of your job, or given that you were focusing on two remarkable individuals, Hassabis and Altman, with very clear ethical goals, for better or worse (some people might suggest that some of those ethics aren't for real), that it wasn't your job as an author to get involved in making judgments on yourself? PARMY OLSON: Oh, but I completely disagree with that analysis, because—and I mean, I would say that as the author, of course, pushed back against those reviews—but in the middle of the book—AK: The reviews were good. It was just that one—PARMY OLSON: Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay. But the there's a whole section in the middle of the book which talks about the ethics of AI, and AI research, and why academic research into AI is not looking into the ethics of and measuring the success of AI in terms of well-being for humans, fairness, justice, those sorts of things being measured by capability and power and growth, because the academic field that researches artificial intelligence is completely funded by big tech. And that has been increasingly the case over the last ten years. And a few years ago, there were some researchers at Google who warned about the ethical problems that were inherent in the design of these large language...

Might November 5 mark a new dawn for both Silicon Valley and America? Palo Alto based serial entrepreneur Keith Teare is ambivalent. In his That Was The Week tech newsletter for this week, Keith confesses that while he voted for Harris, he recognizes that the Trump victory probably benefits him economically. It’s almost as if Keith is embarrassed to admit this - which may be true more broadly about the rest of us in Silicon Valley. As Keith and I discuss this week, November 5 brings much of what has been simmering over the last decade to a boil - particularly the role of AI in reshaping both the Valley and American society. It’s certainly going to an interesting four years. This episode also comes with some afterthoughts from Rob Hodgkinson, Keith’s co-founder at SignalRank, who wrote a provocatively celebratory piece this week about American exceptionalism. Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.Rob Hodgkinson is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of SignalRank. He previously worked at Pixel United as an Advisor. Rob Hodgkinson attended the University of Cambridge.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The election is over and, is spite of Trump’s clear victory, America remains as divided as ever. So how to put the country together again? Juliana Tafur, the director of the Bridging Differences Program at UC Berkeley, has been giving this existential question much thought. What all Americans need, Tafur tells me, is the compassion, empathy and humility to understand the other side. But, as I asked her, isn’t that just shorthand for a progressive bridge building project in which the left defines the language of a reunited America?Juliana Tafur, the director of the Bridging Differences Program at UC Berkeley Her work focuses on strengthening social connections across lines of race, religion, culture, politics, and more, to foster a culture of understanding and belonging in the United States and beyond. Through partnerships, multimedia content, speaking engagements, and workshops, Juliana is committed to ensuring that bridge-building skills and resources reach people and inspire meaningful change. With experience as a social entrepreneur, workshop creator, Emmy-nominated senior producer, and award-winning documentary filmmaker, she has been working to foster human connection across complex societal divides for more than a decade. A TEDx speaker, she has led and facilitated speaking engagements and training sessions on bridging differences at more than 30 higher education institutions and organizations. Juliana is also a 2021–2022 Obama Foundation Scholar at Columbia University—a mid-career fellowship that recognized and deepened her work in the bridge-building field, expanding her research on intergroup relations, political polarization, and conflict transformation. She is an honors graduate of Northwestern University, where she earned dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Journalism and History.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.TRANSCRIPTKEEN: Hello, everybody. The easy bit's over! The election's finished, now the real challenge is bringing America back together. We always hear these terms from politicians and activists, but in practice, of course, it's a very challenging thing to do. My guest today on the show, Juliana Tafur, though, is somebody who's given a great deal of thought to bringing America back together, bridging differences. She is the inaugural director of the Bridging Differences Program at UC Berkeley. She's also very much involved in the Denver Foundation. She's based in Boulder, Colorado, and she's joining us today. Juliana, is that fair? Was the election the easy bit? Now, the challenge is putting Humpty Dumpty back together again?TAFUR: 100%. I love the Humpty Dumpty. Yes, we are broken. How do we come back together and mend those pieces while still acknowledging the brokenness, right? Yeah. With that analogy, there's a beautiful Japanese technique that aims to cover the fractures, but to cover the fractures with a strand of gold so that we're not pretending like the fractures aren't there, but we are making something better as a result of the recognition of those fractures.KEEN: Juliana, we've done a lot of shows about this sort of thing. In fact, I've worked with the Braver Angels group. I'm sure you're familiar with them. I have been to a couple of their conferences. There are more and more of these groups trying to bring Americans back together. Might one suggest that there is now a broader movement in America to bring Americans of different--particularly different political persuasions back together? You're doing it, braver angels are doing it. Many of the thousands of activists and hundreds of groups.TAFUR: Yeah. There is so many of us across the country that work tirelessly day in and day out, around elections and before and after elections to make sure we come together. And yes, Braver Angels is just one of them. I could certainly give you a list that you could attach to the show notes, because a lot of us are doing this work and it's good for people to know that we're out there and that this is possible. But sometimes it takes seeing it in action and understanding how to do it to really trust that you can do it, too.KEEN: Yeah, we've had lots of people on the show. I know you're familiar with the work of Eboo Patel. You've worked with him his book couple of years ago. We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy is another example of this kind of work. Tell me what you do at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. What are you doing that's different or unusual or unique in terms of bringing Americans back together?TAFUR: Yeah, well, at the Greater Good Science Center, we study the psychology, sociology and neuroscience of well-being, or what we'd like to call the science of a meaningful life. And we break the science to the practice. So we take the science of how to have a meaningful life or how to bridge differences, and we translate it in a way that is accessible to people to apply in their own lives or to practitioners to help others apply the science. And in the bridging differences programs specifically, we do this through a series of videos, multimedia pieces that we publish in our magazine, Greater Good. We have a famous podcast called The Science of Happiness. We began in earnest in 2018, I would say, gathering what the science said about how to bring people together across differences. And when we talk about the science, we talk about skills, science-based skills, from compassionate listening to finding shared identities, etc., that have been tested in labs, and we translate them in a way that people understand how some of these skills applied, how they worked in labs, and how they can then work also in kind of real-life scenarios and situations. So we have a bridging differences playbook that has 14 science-based skills for bridging differences. We have an edX course that's free and available for everyone to take that also disseminates some of the science-based skills.KEEN: Tell me a little bit more about yourself. You've been involved in this space for a while. You're also a filmmaker, so you're very much committed on lots of fronts to this. How did you find yourself? Is this a reflection of your own upbringing, your own experience in the United States?TAFUR: Absolutely, yes. What you had up first was the page from the Obama Scholars Program. So a few years ago, 21, 22, I was an Obama scholar at Columbia University--KEEN: And you were the founder, at least at that point, of something called Story Powerhouse. I'm guessing you...

If there’s a disease that captures the toxic spirit of our times, it’s what the therapist, Vanessa Resier, in her new book, calls Narcissistic Abuse. Even the language of this disease - Gaslighting. Love bombing. Hoovering. Triangulating - has become part of the dictionary of life in the 2020’s. Narcissism and narcissists seem to be everywhere these days. In fact, as Resier told me (see full transcript below), all domestic abuse - from outright violence to subtle manipulation - is a form of narcissistic abuse. But if that’s true, I asked her, then what, exactly, isn’t narcissism?Vanessa M. Reiser is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), licensed in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Florida. She is a psychotherapist and the founder of Tell a Therapist, LLC as well as the founder of the nonprofit, Tell a Therapist, INC. Vanessa holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from SUNY Empire State college and a Master of Social Work (MSM) from the University of Southern California. Vanessa specializes in narcissistic personality disorder, and her practice focuses on treating victims and survivors of cults, narcissists, domestic violence, and narcissistic abuse. Her insights are both personal and professional, giving her a unique lens into this insidious form of domestic abuse. Vanessa is a long-distance runner and two-time Ironman who is best known for running the state of New York (285 miles in 11 days) in a wedding dress to raise awareness for narcissistic abuse.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. Long-time viewers and listeners to the show know that I have a particular interest in words. Certain words acquire fashion, and I'm always curious why. One word that seems to be particularly popular these days, gets thrown around a lot, both clinically and out of the psychotherapist's office, is the word “narcissist.” There's a new book out this week. It's called Narcissistic Abuse. It's by my guest, Vanessa M. Reiser. She is a clinical social worker, a psychotherapist based in central New Jersey. And she's joining us. Vanessa, congratulations on the new book. This word narcissist. You're all too familiar with it, of course, everyone throws it around. Do you think it's particularly fashionable these days, or is that my imagination?Vanessa Reiser: I think it is definitely a word that is misunderstood. So, to your point, I think people use it in a way or in a regard that is not totally accurate. So, somebody who has narcissistic personality disorder. Has a list of characteristics that are very specific, very hazardous. It's not just somebody who is into taking selfies, or that we might think the word is in reference to. So, there are pretty serious characteristics that they possess. If somebody has a pathological disorder.Keen: Or let me rephrase the question: do you think there are more narcissists around now in the 2020s than there were historically, or are always the same amount? Of course, the word was invented by the Greeks. Its etymology comes out of Greek mythology: the God of Narcissus. So are we particularly prone, our culture or our individuality. To two to the problems of narcissism?Reiser: I think that it's always been around. I think there are more people, but I do think that we are now developing the vernacular for the characteristics. And I do think that because we have social media, people are more inclined to discuss it. So, in some ways it's a good thing, because we are now talking about it more, and some of the toxic behaviors. But I think is also an uptick because people are more individualistic, they are potentially more vain, more narcissistic. In their approach to their marketing themselves, everybody is out there flitting about, trying to make themselves an entity of sorts. And so, we're seeing a lot of people that are seemingly narcissistic, but that is not the same as somebody who has a pervasive pathological disorder, somebody who is lacking empathy, somebody who potentially has overlaps with sociopathy and looks to hurt people. We see this in certain pop culture scenarios, like we're seeing it with the P Diddy stuff here. There's a lot of talk now about cults, which my book is about also. So, these are people that are dangerous in some regard. These are people who are interested in meeting their own needs at the expense of others. And so it is somewhat misused, the word.Keen: Aren't we all want a bit like that? Aren't we all a bit self-interested? The subtitle of your book is A Therapist's Guide to Identifying, Escaping and Healing from Toxic and Manipulative People. Aren't all people, Vanessa, aren't they all manipulative? Aren't we all seeking what we want? This word toxic...it's another one of these words that's become fashionable, it seems to be used in all sorts of generic ways. Aren't we all, in our own way, toxic too?Reiser: I think there is a level of ego that we all possess, so we are feeding our egos, we are trying to manage that up against others in society, etc. Very Freudian. But this idea that somebody would be particularly manipulative, somebody who's lying, controlling, uses isolation. And again, the book is aimed to fuse the concepts of narcissistic abuse and cult abuse. So, cult leaders are all narcissists, sociopaths or psychopaths, and the way that they operate is in line with what we see in domestic violence scenarios in a one-on-one interpersonal relationship. And those are the tactics. They are very much about mind control. So this is positive reinforcers, negative reinforcers, silent treatment. So the level of manipulation is different than, let's say, if you're having a bad day and you need a Snickers bar and you might just act like a jerk. That is not a pervasive behavior. This is more maniacal, to sort of oversimplify it.Keen: I can't resist our promise not to bring up Trump too much in this conversation, Vanessa. But this is the week, of course, that he got elected, or reelected, to office. And often people use the word narcissist in association with him. You talked about its influence on popular culture. Does it also play a role in politics? You talked about cult leaders, aren't all political leaders in their own way, cult leaders?Reiser: No, because, again, you have to have a pathological disorder. It's not to say that there aren't an abundance of--there are. There are a ton of CEOs and c-suites of, you know, poets, priests and politicians are generally able to kiss babies and potentially stab you in the back. They can be really dangerous. I wouldn't say they all are. I would say it is more prevalent in certain career paths for sure. We see this in the military. We see this in police officers. We see this in surgery rooms. So, there are certain jobs--see, I think 1 in 4 CEOs is a psychopath directly, which is very interesting.Keen: