Introduction

So not sure if you guys have seen, but over the last weekend, scores of restaurants and stores all over France were boarded up. in anticipation for a wave of violence that was expected to come starting Sunday night and Monday.

The Trigger: France's Snap Election

If you haven't been paying attention, it's because there was a snap election in France.

Understanding the French Political Landscape

President Macron had decided, he's in the centrist party, he decided that after a massive upturn of the European Parliament that had happened just a few weeks ago, there was an election for the European Parliament a few weeks ago, where his centrist party lost an enormous number of seats. And the party that won all of those seats was the party of the extreme far right. A party that, at least according to him, he considers to be an extremist, fascist, xenophobic party.

And he wanted his country to clarify their position. Do you guys actually want a far right party? Or perhaps you want the far left party that has also been ascending, a party that is a coalition of communists and socialists. So he decided to call a snap election.

Election Results and Public Sentiment

And the people basically told him, yes, they wanted both. A couple of weeks ago, this was Sunday of last week, the first night of the polls, they came out and the far right had won a tremendous number of seats. Everybody thought it was just going to be a complete victory for the far right. And then a couple of days ago, on Sunday, I think it was Monday morning here, it was revealed that actually it was the far left that had won. So the country's incredibly divided. The biggest loser here had been the moderates and the centrists.

Global Polarization

This is not just unique to France, obviously not just unique to the United States. We've seen this here in our country too. Everywhere you look all over the world, every single society is becoming more and more polarized.

Actually, there's a handful of countries where that isn't the case. But that's how you know the data is correct. By and large, everybody's polarizing.

What does that feel like to be so polarizing? Everybody knows. In this country, it's very clear. It's almost like you're watching a different movie. Now sometimes you're literally watching a different movie.

Media's Role in Polarization

On October 7th, Hamas invaded Israel and recorded every second from that day. And what did they do with all this footage? That depends on the audience.

So for some of the audience, the audience let's say in the West, they got videos mostly of like military battles and that sort of thing. The audience in the West Bank and in Gaza, the Palestinians, saw mostly heroic efforts, nothing particularly cruel. Israeli audiences were made to watch a completely different movie in a totally different genre.

And if you're not able to understand what the different movies are that people are watching, the world will continue to be completely unintelligible to you. Now, is this a bad thing that everybody's watching different movies? Sure. I think it's probably pretty easy to say that it's bad.

The Impact of Polarization on Democracies

Political scientists since the 50s have been talking about polarization and its consequences, especially its negative consequences to democracies. Why is it that it's so bad for democracies? 1You might have some intuition, but I'll just give you a couple of touch points.

Since roughly the 70s, democracies no longer die because there's some dictator who's taken over with his military vision. There's no coup de tas, really, in that sense. You're not seeing a Cuban Revolution happening anymore or a Spanish Civil War.

Really what's happening is very powerful executives end up becoming increasingly and incredibly powerful. And how exactly does that happen? What is the mechanism?

Mechanisms of Power Shifts

Well, there's a couple of different mechanisms here. First is the Congress, because it's so divided, the legislatures are becoming totally gridlocked. They can't pass anything. So nothing actually gets done.

And so the balance of power, the shift, the focus of political power ends up moving to the courts, which are then becoming increasingly politicized. We're seeing this in practically every country. Both of those are unable to place sufficient checks on the executive.

Authoritarian Leverage and Social Cleavages

This is one of the things. And the other thing is that authoritarians are actually able to leverage the social cleavages that exist in society in order to pass anti-democratic measures.

It isn't the case, when you go and ask all these people from those countries that are becoming less democratic, why do you become less democratic? Do you no longer value democracy? They value democracy. It's clear they still value democracy. It's just that they hate the other side even more. That's what happens.

And the authoritarians are opportunistic enough. They understand this. And so they further divide us. They capitalize on it. This is called affective polarization. Political scientists call this. And this is also increasing.

And that's just ideological polarization. It's clear. Ideological, we're actually believing different things. Now we just hate one another. So that's also increasing.

Causes of Increasing Polarization

Why is it increasing? A bunch of answers. Nothing particularly new or unique here. You've all heard all of this.

The Filter Bible, this is Facebook. We know all of the stories. I actually think that the reason there isn't a particular story here is because doing this science, when you dig into the detail, doing the science is just really difficult to do.

But it actually doesn't have to be all that fancy. You could just run very simple simulations, start with 10,000 agents, give them just a little bit of confirmation bias, and then just let it keep going for a little bit. Confirmation bias is in. I like the stuff that makes me feel like I'm right. That's it. That's all you need after 90 days. You just get extreme polarization in society.

And this is even when people are seeing 50%. They're seeing both sides. It's not like one is watching Fox News and another is CNN. Everybody's consuming a healthy, balanced information diet.

Still, you're going to get this type of polarization. Now, what happens when you add echo chambers? Echo chambers is when I only talk to other people that sort of agree with me. Again, even more. stark polarization.

And what happens when you add filter bubbles? Filter bubbles is when the algorithm says, you know what? I'm just going to keep sending you the kinds of stuff that I think you're going to like. Again, even more polarization. So really, the story doesn't have to be all that complicated. We could just reduce it down to these three elements. We've got these existing cognitive biases. We've got these echo chambers. And we have filter bubbles.

The Influence of General AI on Polarization

The question that sort of occurred to me is, how is each one of these components going to be affected by Gen AI? And when posed this way, I actually think it's a pretty important question. I can't actually think of a more important question because our ability to answer every other question, to actually solve, tackle, challenge every other challenge that's going to come our way is going to be contingent on us being able to figure this out.

So I want to ask this. And I have some theories and some ideas about what's actually going to happen with Gen AI. And I'm sure you guys have a bunch of other ideas too. We can discuss them in the question and answer afterwards.

What's actually very likely to happen? Cognitive biases are probably going to flourish. Why? It's in everybody's interest. Just reduce the lowest common denominator, create the most market. Just sell us more stuff.

What about echo chambers? I think in the short run, for sure, they're just going to be fully sealed. 1The pro-Trump people don't talk to the anti-Trump people. The pro-Israel people don't talk to the anti-Israel. Completely sealed.

Filter bubbles. What's going to happen with filter bubbles? Well, I don't think we're going to have filter bubbles. I think we're going to have what I call generative bubbles. Because it isn't the case that the algorithm has to say, OK, from all of this content, which one should I give this person? No, I start with this person, and I generate the stuff that will work for this person directly. So we're going to generate this bubble. What are we going to generate? Probably stuff that caters to our cognitive biases. It's not going to be a good picture. I think it's pretty clear to you that in the likely case, this is not a good picture.

Ideal versus Likely Outcomes with Gen AI

It's probably going to be much worse. What about the ideal case? In the ideal, we could still design that future. So in the ideal case, I think that we can cleverly pitch one cognitive bias against the other cognitive bias. This is still not happening in the worst case, which is the likely case. We shouldn't be expecting that our cognitive biases will be exploited. They can be leveraged. If an AI or an agent or something is detecting that I'm about to be driven by confirmation bias, well, I have other biases, like I'm attracted to cute things. So just show me a cat or show me a kid with the big ears or something.

What about echo chambers? I think echo chambers are likely to go away because I don't think content is really going to be mediated by peers anymore. You already see this with TikTok. Back in the day, Facebook needed a full social graph. Why? Because that's how we know what kinds of stuff we're likely to like based on what our friends. TikTok is like, we don't need this anymore. Our recommender systems are so good. You just interact with the app a little bit. We know what you like. I feel like we're just going to continue moving in that direction. Maybe not so much gen AI, but this is just pure machine learning.

Filter bubbles too. These are going to be generative bubbles. But the question is, what kinds of content should it generate? And what I'm saying is it should be generating content that leverage our cognitive biases actually for good. This is sort of the key for this presentation. Generative bubbles should leverage our cognitive biases and produce stories that question simplification and polarization while promoting plurality. I think this is sort of the key. This looks incredibly difficult to do. Who's going to start with this? We actually understand the person, where they're coming from, and how they believe the stuff they believe, and then sell them a different stuff. People want hard. Sorry, people want easy. People want easy.

Conflict Resolution and the Power of Narrative

That's right. But conflict resolution experts have actually been working on the same thing for a very long time. And they have totally serviceable formulas and frameworks for how to bring this about. What they look at is the power of stories. They say stories are actually the moral foundation that help us make sense of the world. They are the ones that otherwise the world would be totally incoherent. They make the world coherent. They sort of generate for us ideas for how to act. Systems of stories, they call narratives. There's a whole literature around narratives. The literature is vast. The problem is that narratives can mitigate conflict, can help us manage conflict, but it can also help to deepen it.

They see stories, they see narratives in this sort of like large tree. In the bottom, there is these roots. This is sort of like the foundation where you're drawing all of your inspiration from. These can be myths or stories or historical trauma or generational trauma. And it branches out into various sort of actions and consequences on the basis of all of this. So what? Well, so I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. It makes sense of the actions. And the central framing here is just the actual, the trunk here is just the central framing, what the narrative is.

So let's start at the bottom. For those in the back, you can't see this. Roots are facts, stories, and parables about a common collective past which underlie our political views and anchor our identity in history. So for example, anti-colonialism struggle, that might be one root. ethnic conflict, longstanding mistreatment by state authorities. These are some of the things that are animating, ultimately, these branches. These branches are policy preferences, actions, and outcomes. Ultimately, they're attached to the trunk. So for example, on the basis of these roots, therefore, we're going to mistrust reform. We're not going to support decentralization, or we are going to support decentralization. We're ambivalent if we see corruption in our society. The trunk is that hardy central framing or the understanding that grows from the roots. Only we can protect our interests. National authorities can't be trusted. That is the narrative.

The key here is that polarized societies don't have many trees. They have very simple and very few trees. And I want to demonstrate this to you. Oh, the other interesting thing about this is that these trees tend to reinforce themselves. And they tend to make you feel like you're always the victim, and they're always the victimizers. And everything you do is right and well-intentioned. Everything they do is evil and malice.

Examining Polarized Narratives

OK, let's be a little controversial. So a couple of narratives. Let's actually focus on the Israeli-Palestinian case. You don't have to read all of this. I'll give you the summary. This is obviously deliberately cartoonish. So someone's going to raise their hand. It's more complicated. I know it's more complicated. This is a narrative I call the crusader narrative. What are some of the roots? Throughout history, Palestinians, they see themselves as an occupied people. Always waves of armies, crusader armies, are coming and oppressing them and occupying them. In 1948, they experienced land dispossession. And since 67, there have been settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. That's what they're seeing. And so therefore, what is the trunk? What is the main understanding? Middle Eastern Jews are the latest manifestation of Western colonialism. They're just another crusade. You read their newspapers, they call Zionist crusaders. I'm not making this up.

What are the branches? So therefore what? Therefore what on the basis of this narrative? we ought to wage an anti-colonialist struggle. And if we do it long enough, the Jews will go back to their country. The same way that the French went back to their country from Algeria, and the British went back from Indonesia, and the Dutch went back from many places. Indonesia. Including New York. Yeah. New Amsterdam. Although we bought it, I think. What is the Israeli narrative? It is the ethnic persecution narrative. Throughout history, Jews have faced persecution wherever they go. In the Christian world, in the Muslim world, that is part of the core understanding. This is the root. What is the trunk? Palestinian violence, when they see it, it's just another manifestation of anti-Jewish hatred. That's really all it is. Therefore what? We have to defend ourselves against the anti-Semites. We've outlived the Egyptians. We've outlived the Nazis. We've outlived the Persians. We're going to outlive this, too.

Americans, we also have a narrative. I call this the Christopher Columbus narrative, especially for white people in America. What are the roots? White European settlers arrived to the American continent, enslaved, killed, ethnically displaced the indigenous population. What is the trunk? Therefore, what is the central framing? White Americans are the privileged beneficiaries of systems of oppression. Therefore, what? What is the branch? Therefore, let's identify similar systems of oppression and stand up and resist when we see them. We can look around maybe in the Middle East. Maybe that's a similar type of thing that's going on there. What happened to us?

OK. I'm not trying to persuade you of any one of these narratives, obviously. The only thing I'm trying to tell you is that we don't have that many, and there are very few, and I can't work with them. What do you do with it? Now you're trying to make change. These are too self-reinforcing. You actually need something else. Now, what all of these experts do is they say, we're not actually trying to converge onto a single tree. That's not the goal. Maybe the colonialist picture or the Israelis as they see it is a national liberation picture. Maybe both of those narratives will continue to live for a long time. That's OK. The problem is they make no room for the other narratives. And we need to have a pluralistic out view here. We have to be able to create a big forest with lots of different trees that support each other. How do you do it? Maybe you cut out unhelpful roots. Maybe you introduce new roots. Maybe you create more trees. That's what they do.

Productizing Conflict Resolution

The goal of my company is to try to productize this and to do this at scale.

How are we doing on time? We're running out of time. OK.

New Platform for Political Discussion

Basically, we're creating a new platform for live video-based political discussion about any topic, but the go-to market is Israel-Palestine.

And people are coming in 8 PM. Doors open up. Hordes of people coming in.

Whatever they do is fine.

AI Agents Guiding Conversations

Really, the kicker here is that behind the scenes, under the hood, there is a set of AI agents. that are tuned into the platform. They're listening in on the conversations.

And through various tactics, by looking at the roots, by looking at the branches, by having a better understanding of what narratives people actually are animated by, it is trying to sway the conversation towards healthier and more productive places.

So for example, this question right here, are Israel's actions in Palestine a betrayal of Jewish historical suffering or a necessary defense? I didn't come up with this question. AI was listening in and was generating this question.

What else can the AI agents do? There's a bunch of different things. We're continuing to work on many more of them.

How does it work? I think this is the non-technical part. So if people have questions afterwards, let me know.

Sign up for the wait list. We should be launching next week.