the digital world, it scales differently. So you don't need to call one latchkey service at a time with AI, with being online, you can replicate things very, very quickly and it can be a one man shop or operation. So there's a huge difference in scale when we're looking at this online. If you believe we can change the narrative. If you believe, we can change our communities. If you believe we can change the outcomes, then we can change the world. I'm Rob Richardson.
Welcome to disruption. Now. Welcome to Disruption Now. I'm your host and moderator, Rob Richardson. Have you ever thought about how your data is used? Or better yet, have you thought about how data of your kids is being used? Do you have any idea about how much is happening behind the scenes, how that can be manipulated, how it's being manipulated? You know, I don't think we thought much about it. We entered. I'm going to tell my age here.
We enter the social media era and just everything was free. We were able to connect. It was all free. It was all great. But it's not. Free. Nothing's free in this world. That data is not free. You are the product. You and your kids are the product. The question is, are you comfortable with that? Does that matter to you?
Well, we're here to actually to talk about why data privacy matters is just not, you know, it's just not people that are just liberals out here saying we need to protect our data. It's actually affecting all of us because whether you like it or not, you are a part of the digital economy. And that's just going to amplify now with artificial intelligence.
So with me to talk about how we can have a future that's actually, more about transparency and freedom and understanding how you can protect yourself is John Kavanagh. He is the founder of the Plug Foundation. And, he's gonna tell you, a story in his journey because it's a very interesting one. But I want you to understand that you have the ability to protect yourself, to protect your kids, but you have to know where to start.
And we hope that by the end of this episode, you'll actually have that. But before we start, make sure you like make make sure you subscribe. That's how we're going to keep the disruption growing. We appreciate you listening. And now I have the pleasure of introducing John Kavanagh. John, how you doing, brother? Good. Rob. Thank you so much for the introduction. Appreciate it. Hey, thank you so much. So you had an interesting journey to get to data to get to data privacy.
I like to start like this is such a we met not not not so long ago. And to me, it was clear that you had a clear mission and focus. And I have to say, I consider myself pretty informed. But after I left our conversation, I became even more concerned about data privacy. I was like, oh, this is worse than I thought. And, I'm just curious, how did you get into the world of data privacy? Like, how did this become your kind of central? Why?
Yeah. So everybody in privacy, if you ask, they all have a wild story. Very few people just started out passionate about this. And like you mentioned, the introduction. We all thought the products we were using online were free and great. And yeah, there were some advertising behind it. No problem. Where you see that with television and stuff, but there's a dark side to it and people learn that at their own pace.
So a few people on my board, one was, a lawyer, and he was just doing contract law, and he saw a drone go over his house, and he was with his kids and family. And it started that question like, you know, who's drone is that? Right? Why are they do they have now video of me and my family? Right. So we all have those interesting ways. for me, it started back in undergrad where I made a website.
It was called Slate Up, and it was just a place as a pre-med student where I wanted to meet other students that were taking the mCAT already in med school, because it's a huge decision. It's like a half $1 million in debt to figure out if you like being a doctor or not. Yeah. So it was a lot of cost to figure that out. So I built a website to connect people similar to like the old school version of Facebook. Yeah. And that was are missing connect the world.
Yeah. So I wanted to meet and connect with people, especially professionally and within school. And it grew very fast. within the first three months, we had one fourth of you see, on it. Yeah. And it grew in the Midwest, Ohio State, Middle Tennessee, Clayton State University, lots of schools in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana. And as we were growing, we got, research grants to keep it running, but eventually we needed a series A funding.
Sure. And we weren't we weren't keeping any data of our users. We were like, oh, let's just, make sure that we're taking care of them and that everything's protected. But we just want to make sure that the people that are using our products, feel good about you know, the environment that they're in. Right? And our privacy policy is, hey, we're not selling anything. We're not pushing any ads. And we developed, a way to make money by selling to universities.
So we figured that would be our pipeline and our revenue to make money, which everybody agreed upon. But when we were looking at that series A funding every single investor 50 plus that we talked to, every single one was saying, hey, what are you doing to sell the data? Because that's another revenue stream, right? And you can't ignore it to be competitive in this day and age with tech. And I started learning about what that really meant.
So when looking through the details of what data mining was, how it's used, who it's sold to, you enter this huge dark side of the internet that people are vaguely familiar with. But when you really dive deep down about it, you understand how they're using various parameters about your life to nudge you to a decision. It can be a political decision, right? It can be in buying products at a certain time. It can be understanding your mental health state. Are you depressed? Are you sad?
Well, you tend to buy more in this direction. and we were primarily focused on college students who have, by default, pretty bad literacy. financial literacy skills. Yes. So that was one thing was like, hey, a lot of these students are getting a lump sum that is debt, essentially, and spending it on beer and pizza right on the weekends.
But if we have an opportunity to slip our products in there as well, where they're paying 12% interest on whatever T-shirt company they are, then that's good for business. But in the long run, it's not sustainable for our society. And I found a lot of objections. So, me and the core group, we decided to close down the organization and build a nonprofit. So you you mentioned me as the founder, but there are. And I want to say that back, back, back, back up for a minute, okay?
People just have to I want to make sure they absorb what you just said. A series funding is a big funding round. Yes, right. There is seed pre-seed series A, you're talking minimum 5 million, probably dollars. I don't know what it was then, but I'm guessing it's around that like so very clear. Like millions of dollars was offered. Yes. And because you weren't comfortable with the direction of where the investors wanted you to go with the data. You turned it down and you started a nonprofit.
Just make sure people understand that. So like it's one thing to say that you have these principles. It's another thing to actually have done it. What's that massive respect for. Right. Thank you. Could have been easy by the way, but, like, it's, So I want to talk about I want you to go down the nonprofit. but I like to just deep dive into, like, what? Really kind of, sparked you to say no to that? Because it sounds like you weren't against the idea of ads in general.
It sounds like there was something there. Was there other things that that deeply disturbed you to make you go from? It's one extreme to say, no, no, I do this to starting a nonprofit. Like like what were like the top things that really just, like, stuck out. There has to be some things that like that. The investors, the people wanted to do that. You just didn't sit right with you. Like, what? What were those things? Yeah. So our primary focus was understanding how students could feel at home
at a university. Yes. And we were helping with, reducing melt rate where people said, hey, I want to go to University of Cincinnati, for example. But then they wouldn't at the end of the like beginning of the school year, they wouldn't come because they went to Ohio State or something as an example. a lot of that is because they just didn't feel a sense of community.
So we were helping facilitate that sense where the resident advisors, the people that live on the dorms, and the orientation leaders would connect in a better facilitated way. Right. so people felt more at home. and then, you know, to be honest, I was against ads because the business model from. Yeah, the business model that we had. Right. Didn't need it. Right. So everything else was like, hey, these are slightly it was a steep, like a curve of more and more invasive maneuvers.
Right. Which was against the philosophy. It's like, hey, we have a good revenue stream. universities are willing to pay for this. We had letters of intent and to buy and everything, so we were good to go. And, they wanted you to be. I feel where you go. Is that, yes. You didn't like the ads, but I also think it was the level of what you would have had to compromise feels like for becoming for for selling. That would have meant that you would have gone away from your mission.
It feels like. Exactly. And here's another thing is, I'm convinced in the tech world, if you are a for profit tech company, unless you're a billionaire and you can find everything itself, at one point you're going to be cash strapped. So if it's not the series A that we compromise on, it's going to be a series B, 100, 100 million or something like that. And what's going to happen is companies they want or investment firms they want somebody on the board that makes decisions.
And unless you are a super galactic unicorn like Zuckerberg, who has all of the voting rights. But even but, but but he had to still do that. And I don't think he has any problem with it, actually. You know, like, I don't even say he he doesn't share your your moral dilemma. It's not I just think we got to be honest. Right. But but he's like he did share that. But you're right if it but that but also he's following the model that they want.
Yeah. Any you know he does it to like builders have a tough job but I don't. But I do think that they don't do enough for policy to protect people. And what you're saying is you if you would have done that, you'd have had no ability to protect the people that you're fighting for. Yes. And it can only get worse. Yeah. And, I. Totally respect that. Like to been able to do that. Amazing. For this is why this is amazing. This is why I was moved to have you on.
So sorry to interrupt you, but go ahead. Good to go. Thank you, I appreciate it, but to, if I died tomorrow, let's say I'm running it, and I have decision, like, even best case scenario, I have full decision. I die tomorrow. Whoever's taking my place, there's nothing, there's no law protecting the original mission that we have. Somebody can come in and say, this is our business strategy. where a nonprofit has an articles of incorporation that the government enforces. Right.
So if our founding team, by the way, our founding team is amazing. There's four of us. If our founding team all dies tomorrow, whoever upholds it is legally bound to uphold our Constitution. And to change that is extremely difficult. and the people that have to change it have to look at our, our mission and see if that follows our mission. So, that's why I made the shift to if we're doing something in the tech space, it needs to be a nonprofit. Okay. That's amazing.
So, you started the Clock Foundation. Now, tell us that you moved from, you know, working to help the community of college students. What is the foundation doing now? What is its mission? Yeah. So, the mission is to wake up as many people in the same way that I was woken up when, when I did this deep dive, it was like pulling the matrix out and like, oh, this is really what's going on? and it's to do it in a way to create awareness.
So the four main principles that we're doing is creating awareness. We want to build education off of that. we want to create technology that solves for it. So it's great to say, hey, guess what? You're screwed. Rob, I don't have any solutions for you. Right? Okay. That doesn't help anybody. Yeah. If we have tools and technology. So technology and tools. So the second piece second half. So awareness education technology and tools okay.
To give people the steps that they need to protect their privacy okay. The second part of that is that we are also not only focused on privacy, but we're focused on digital safety, okay. And that's more encompassing. So similar to when we were kids, our parents would say, don't talk to strangers or look both ways before you cross the street. What does that mean in an ever changing online landscape? What does it mean when it comes to virtual reality?
When it comes to AI, when it comes to just using our phones or our laptops? And how do we inform our children, how to inform families and, keep that as a thread that we are on the pulse for whatever advancing technologies come. Yeah. Give some examples. Like so people think digital safety. and you gave me some really great examples. But like people don't people don't appreciate what that means. Tell me, why should people care about digital safety?
Yeah, I think people have some idea of privacy and that feels easier because it's like, all right, you can, you can. You get to choose what level you want to do. Do you want to have your information there? Do you not. And that needs to be in an informed consent way where we actually understand what you're telling us. Yeah. Not a 10,000 page terms condition. This where you can sell your information, it can be sold to anybody. Are you comfortable with that or not? Yeah.
And then people need to really have that versus whatever we have now. It's like not informed consent I believe that's pretty dumb. I think overall people understand what privacy means and why that's important. What do you mean by digital safety. Yeah. So digital safety has a lot of, general threads. So it can be a mix of cybersecurity, such as when you are creating a password, are you creating a long password a short password.
do you have authentication, multi-factor authentication so that if somebody finds your password, you get sent something on your phone saying, did you approve of this password being sent? There are little things, like very basic things. Are you updating your devices regularly? there are things such as what are the next scams that are happening on TikTok or Facebook? we now know with AI there have been phone calls that are replicating somebody's voice because all you need is a six second sample.
So those types of things that I need to understand, that if I'm a mom and my kid calls me from a phone and it sounds like them, but it's not registered, I don't know, it's their actual phone number. And they're saying, hey, mom, I need money, right? For you to have some street smarts. Yeah, some digital street smarts. Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. Yeah, exactly. That's a good that's a really good. That's a really good example.
Like, I remember growing up, my parents and I had a, had I had a password between the family that only 3 or 4 people knew. If that was so, you would know, actually, if somebody said that they were trying to pick you up because this is going to age me again. But we were latchkey kids, right? So, like, sometimes we were, which is never happens now. Like, you get picked up by people and, and uncles, and we would only know that if people would know a password.
Hardly anybody ever picked me up, by the way. But it's usually I just went home myself. But they they would tell us that because kids were getting kidnaped, right? When people were, saying, oh, you're your father. I'm a friend with your father. Right? And he told me to take you home. Yeah. And like, so kids sometimes wouldn't know the difference. You know the father's name. They say. You know this, I know this about your family.
So you assume that kids are more trusting that haven't been through the level of, exposure and experience that adults have. So we had we had, like, passwords that we all have to know. And it's funny, like, I feel like that needs to come back now. Like people. People didn't. People don't think about that as much now, but it's it's because people don't get strangers. Don't pick up the kids. Most, we have helicopter people now.
Our moms and dads, like, everything is like, encapsulated, but it's not really what did with the digital world, is it? It's not. And the digital world, it scales differently. So you don't need to call one latchkey service at a time with AI, with being online, you can replicate things very, very quickly and it can be a one man shop or operation. So there's a huge difference in scale when we're looking at this online. Yeah. I also remember an example that we, that we talked when we first met.
Yeah, about how digital safety affects the most vulnerable populations. Like I love for you to to to talk through that example. We talked about like women that are for example, like women that are recovering from, violent acts and domestic abuse. Yeah. Like that go to organizations like Women Helping Women.
You know, you really talked about how digital safety can affect, people like that, that I never thought about, talk about, like, why even even the most vulnerable populations could actually be, more at risk as well. Yeah. So what we're seeing a lot now in the landscape through our research is that there's various areas, there's human trafficking, there's intimate partner violence and domestic abuse, that we're seeing a lot of these things happening.
And then there's school bullying and sextortion. So, let's go to to the first example is that, in women's shelters, there's research that's been done in Europe that found that 79% of women who went to a shelter for domestic abuse were tracked in some way or form online. Wow. There. But the national Network to End Domestic Violence, which is here in, in the US, you know, they found that it was 100% of people, and now they surveyed, probably like a couple thousand less.
but either way, the survey was over 3000 people. So it is a significant amount of people who are saying that online, I'm being tracked. And this could be if my Snapchat location is on for those that you Snapchat, it could be my car. is being tracked. It could be my phone. It could be more, like the Apple AirTags, which are very common to slip into a car. I just talked to a young woman who had that happened to her. She has no idea who is from. So there are various ways of tracking and stalking.
That's that's done. So how does Snapchat tracking chat? You can turn your location on. They have an they have a piece that's called Snapchat maps. Right. And you can turn your location on. You can see where people are at at all times. Yeah. And it's pretty common for her. Used to have that on some are very selective about which friends have it, but some partners may demand that you have these types of things on, and if you don't, you will get in trouble. As an example.
And what type of tools do they have in place, like you said, like this is like Snapchat should probably do a lot more to warn to warn kids, or maybe turn that on and off to say, do you? I know, like, Apple at least started doing that. Like, do you want to stay or do you want to stay on? But I think with kids they probably needs to be another level of, protection and safety. Absolutely.
And kids are using it all the time to figure out, like who's at what party or where they're going with things to. That's that's tough. Like, so how do you balance this when you think about like, how do we balance the obviously the innovation and having the right balance between what, what I guess policy or regulation needs to look like? obviously you and I are both believers in policy and regulation somewhere here that and say like you create regulation, it's going to kill innovation.
Yeah, right. That's the line. What's your response to that. Yeah, that's a that's a good question. I the way that I think about it is that most organizations that are, that are doing this, have good intentions, they're trying to make good products, and I don't blame them at all. The areas that I'm really looking toward, is when it comes to bad actors. So when it comes to corporate policy and privacy, there is this culture of surveillance capitalism. Yes.
The The Punk Foundation doesn't focus on that, although where where that happens, we're more focused on how we can help with bad actors, but, help fight against bad actors. Sorry. and but when we look at the, the corporate area, the way that I see it and this is a, the more personal take, but the way that I see it is that they have been using a technology before regulation. So everything before regulation is sort of a gravy train for them. But there are.
But then the consequences that they have will not allow for what they're doing to be sustainable in the long run. Right? If they're if they're taking everything and bastardize it and sucking it in and turning it out is I you're going to have a lot of problems of quality data that exists.
You're going to have a lot of problems of, taking and, and, just having massive amounts of siloed data that when cyber attacks happen, now you have data you shouldn't have collected to begin with or you should have purged. And now it's affecting as a national security risk. So, the Biden administration actually released, about around October, a bill for cyber security where they're funding, for people to get jobs in cybersecurity.
And this does tie into privacy and digital safety, but they want to because all of the top businesses are not equipped, for example, what China has when it comes to their, ability to hack. As an example, when it comes to missile launching, when it comes to, let's say, if P&G shuts down, you know, because of cyber, cyber attacks or something along those lines, or a coordinated effort that shuts down multitudes of hospitals.
So we're looking at this from a national security and defense, type of thing. And businesses in the United States have a lot of freedom compared to a lot of other countries to navigate, but we need some type of unity of how are we protecting our citizens, which in turns protects the country. So it is a national security risk, by the Biden administration. that's very, very interesting. It's a national security risk.
And so you kind of answer one of my questions like, how do you see navigating this? If you were, I guess, president and ruler for a day where you had the control of Congress and your president and Senate, what laws would you pass to, to, to to help us with both privacy and digital safety? Yeah. So I think mimicking the GDPR is probably the best place to start in America. Tell me what the GDPR is. Yeah. So that's the the European Union's, privacy law. And it's, basically it's global.
So it's like imagine be a federal law here. And, it controls, what amount of data a company can collect the limits. And, it's very complicated and very thorough. but the main thing is that your privacy is a fundamental right. And to have access as a company or as an organization to the privacy, the person needs very clear consent saying, yes. Exactly. And they can revoke that at any time. And they say, hey, never mind. I don't want you to have my data.
The only exceptions, there's a few exceptions and I'm not an expert on GDPR, but there are a few exceptions that when it comes to like a court case as an example. Yeah. So fairly reasonable exceptions. Right. and but the most important philosophical thing in the difference is that in the United States, privacy is an asset that you trade for services. That's good. Yeah. And you're that's bad but it's a good line. so yeah it's a bar. Yeah. It's a bar. It's a bar. But like is that is bad. Yes.
Say that again one more time because I think that's important is to drop the bar again okay. So in the United States privacy is an asset that you trade for services. Convenience, whatever that is. in Europe it's a fundamental human right. And the United Nations that actually they have a, bill of fundamental human rights. Article 12 is about privacy is of being a fundamental human right. And to be frank, in the developing world, the US is very behind on this. Yes. and we have patchwork laws.
So like California has CcpA, which is the California Privacy Act and it's emulated from European Union's GDPR. Right. So they're they're using that. But that's only in California. Right. And Colorado has a few things Virginia has a few things. Kentucky is passing a bill. And it's it's like a slap on the wrist for organizations that violate it. But it's a start. Right? So there are various we call it a patchwork framework. Right. but there's nothing federal that's, that's happening.
And that's something that would be ideally the best place to start. Oh, no, that's that's, very well said. So. All right. They we don't have policy now. It's obviously in the US is the wild, wild West. Privacy is an asset. It's not a right in in the US unfortunately. what are some steps people can take. Like what are some practical steps you talked about for you you talked about having multiple, forms of authentication.
what are some things that you think were some basic things people can do or places they can go to learn about steps they can take to protect themselves? Yeah. So I think that when it comes to individuals, just being aware is half the battle. Yeah. Because when you're aware of what's actually happening, there are few resources. The Plug Foundation's website, it's Plunk Foundation. Org plunk. Yes. By the way, it's an acronym for peaceful, loving, uplifting, nurturing and kind.
So that's why plunk. There you go. so plunk foundation.org has resources on this. There are other things such as the center for Humane Technology, the Mozilla Foundation, DuckDuckGo has a blog. It's like a Google search engine that's that's privacy centric. there are there's the International Association for Privacy Professionals, AIA. Those are all really good resources.
The EFF has a really, really good write ups on such things, such as like police surveillance and how that's being used and, things you can do about. And they also have a ton of lawyers on their team that actually go to battle in court and try to win cases when it comes to privacy, those are all really good things in terms of practical, actionable steps. we are building a curriculum at plunk to do this. and to put it online and make it available, but extremely basic.
I'll give it a few, like right off the bat. Yeah. extremely basic. one is make sure your devices are updated. if you even if you have good privacy in place, if the device isn't updated, it's easy to get into. So make sure you update your device hands down.
That's that's the best thing to is that you want to make sure that you have at least a junk email address where you can if you if you go to a store and they ask for your email address for 20% off, 30% off, whatever that is, typically I would say don't do it. But if you want to make it easy, just have a junk email address, with information that's not relevant to you. it doesn't have your address, stuff like that. That's a good way to go about it.
And here's a really interesting one that, if you go to the doctor and they or if you go pretty much anywhere and they want to scan your ID, they don't need to scan your ID, they can verify that it's you and you can say, hey, I would like for you, you can verify this is me, but you don't need to scan it. Right?
Because a lot of companies take that, they scan it, and now they have a ton of information about you that they don't need, and they store it, or they resell it or share it with other third party members. And you don't need to do that. So if you have a kid or anything along those lines too, don't need to do any of that scanning. you don't need to give your social for a lot of places. So it's always good when somebody says, May I have your social?
You can ask, is that required for us to continue this transaction? Right. even at a doctor's office? It's not. It's an often not so they don't need any of that information. So doctors, we sell your stuff too. So yeah. I know this isn't going to be a clickbait moment, but there's, there's a law called or there's an act called HIPAA, which is the health information privacy. Yes. So they can do that. So what happens is there's a barrier that you have to meet.
You have to be, some type of person, that or entity that crosses this, this barrier of health information. Once you do, which means you meet a lot of the federal regulations, you have to meet all these federal regulations. Once you do, you have the ability to transact with people who who have reached that barrier. Right? Yeah. So so you can share or they can share information. And some of that is like the part of me that is conflicted on that.
What does not conflict is I understand even when things are used for good purposes, people find ways to use them for nefarious purposes, I get it. The other part of that, though, is of course, the sharing of information helps to prevent, diseases, helps you learn about causes. So, I mean, figuring out that balance of what that is, because I do think that's important and I don't have the answers is important.
I mean, I so I do think it has to be like, because the sharing of that data, the problem is people don't trust that you'll do something like what shouldn't be shared is if somebody has a, a condition that shouldn't be shared with the insurance company to figure out ways, right. so they can maybe not, or they're not supposed to be able to not give you an assurance. But we all know they can find ways to make it difficult for things not to be covered. Still. yes, that's the worry I have.
But I'm like, I also know share the sharing of the information for things like understanding health patterns. You introduce things like doppelgangers that have people have similar profiles to you. Like what do you think is the balance there times of figuring out how we share data? But it's not. It's probably regulation to find out the answer to my question on that. But. Well, it's it's actually a pretty simple solution. Okay. And and Facebook can do this with advertising.
Lots of organizations can do this. It's just that don't attach personally identifiable information. Oh yeah. To it. Anonymize the data. Right. Like, hey, we you know, maybe there's 7000 cases in Cincinnati of this thing. We don't need to be able to trace it back to who those people are. It's anonymized data. And, I know for the nerds out there, they're going to say, well, I has the ability to anonymize data right through that. There are techniques that brilliant people even in the university.
Yes. Yes. And, well, they add noise, so you can't identify exactly who has what condition. And so there are brilliant people coming up with these solutions. And to go to your question about, how do we have, innovation, you know, and privacy. There's so much innovation happening in this realm that protects us, too, and there's so much innovation that's going on. I think, to answer my own question out loud, I think we do have policy.
And we started synthesizing investment the same way we started doing, sustainability. Right, right. So now you're seeing all of this happen and all this happened all across Ohio, but really all across the country, that there's just solar power farms being built everywhere. Of course, there are people that are trying to be against it because they want to keep the money train the same way it's always been. I'm sure there will be people that want to keep data the way.
It's the way it's always been, because that's how they've always made their money. Yeah, but to the point is, there's lots of there's lots of jobs being created that way, lots of opportunities being created that way. Yeah. If we start having a renaissance towards okay, we can protect people's privacy and still innovate. And we want to incentivize that type of activity. That to me is one of the main purposes of policy.
Yeah. Policy is actually it is a guiding principle to say this is the type of society we want to be, and we never get it perfect. We can't overdo it. But I like the concept of how do we incentivize people to innovate. It protects privacy. We have the you talked about what you do in terms of, the solution to scrub out the noise using AI. I mean, there's also blockchains involved in the zero proof knowledge. You're able to, hold data like collect data. That's, that's that's totally private.
But then you can still know about the data without knowing the data. Like, I know it sounds weird, but it's the same type of thing you're talking about. Like it's a way of proving things without knowing the details of a person, which I think though we have the technology to do. This is just what problem are we trying to solve a society?
And right now we've just said nothing more important than just how fast we can just, make profits without any type of, thought about, should we do all of these things and how should we do them? Yeah, totally. And one thing, you know, that this is an issue that is sort of bipartisan, you know, because you will talk to, a ton of different people from both sides of the aisle.
And, you know, it's something that needs regulation when people on the right are saying, hey, I don't even believe in regulation. But this I know what I'm into deep. I know that there's. Something that they know their kids are vulnerable. Yes. And another thing too, is that a lot of things that we're seeing is that you could be an affluent family, but this could still happen to your kid all in all, it takes is just one moment where, hey, mom. Hey, dad, I hate you.
You don't understand me. And then they put this online. I used to talk crap about my parents under a tree house, right? Right. But the digital. Tree house exists. Yeah, where you're. Spewing that, and it just takes somebody who can identify through sentiment analysis, through using AI, and pinpointing exact locations of who may be having fits with their parents at this moment. to understand. Okay. These are vulnerable children. Yeah. And it just takes one connection.
You can buy their data for five bucks to understand what their interests are. You can say, okay, it just takes this one connection with this child who's having a bad moment with their parents online. And that's all it takes to start something like that. So people are understanding like both sides of the aisle, all sides of the income economic ladder are people that are affected from this. What happens if we don't get this right? Well, I think it's going to get sort of like climate change.
It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. and but I do see hope. so it's hard to predict, how I, will make this worse. It's hard to predict, how bad actors, because they're very smart. I'm asking you to predict. What do you think that looks like? If we don't get it right. I think it's going to be a lot more like Brave New World. Have you seen Brave New World? Yes. Or. I mean, read the book.
It's essentially where people kind of understand that this is happening, but they don't care that much. And there will be large corporations or large governments that are using that to understand everything about you and nudging how you think and what you think. Over time, there will be bad actors who are exploiting this to get their way with whatever they want. and this could be not even just from a kids and, you know, vulnerable population perspective, but from policy. Absolutely.
so it looks very bleak, to be honest with you. So, yeah, that it's a world where the algorithms know us better than we know ourselves, and we don't even know that that's happening. Like you said, and I. And to take it further, like we can get to the point where it it sounds really freaky, right, that algorithms own most of people and corporations and nations. Now, that sounds weird until you realize that most holders of land aren't. People are organizations.
So imagine if we if we're okay with algorithms, because this is very possible that algorithms can eventually determine, who owns land, how policy is written, all those things that we don't even know. Like, I know it sounds like science fiction, but it's not science fiction when you understand that if there's not, we don't have a guiding map for what we want in society, how we're using artificial intelligence to augment us, right? Augmented intelligence, not an artificial intelligence.
And AI, everybody is not new. This is this is this is algorithms and machine learning. All that has been going on for a long time now. We have another level of generative AI. And so like I'm with you, I think there's a lot of hope and potential. But there's there's huge reasons to be concerned. Yeah. It's it's hard to understate how important it is, but it always sounds like tinfoil hat in a way. So it's and it's impossible to predict because this is the thing I struggle with.
We are generating so many billions of data points, just like per second with AI, and how that transforms without much regulation could go any direction. And it's hard to predict just how bad that could be. Yeah. and, you know, if we don't look out for this at all, we don't know how fast it can affect us. It'll go faster than we can imagine. Yeah, it's going to be exponential. It's already is. It already is. Right. Like we're growing. That's horror.
People understand? Yeah. As you know, exponential growth is not something the human brain can actually, understand. So people say, well, you look like what does that mean? It literally means it's growing so fast you don't understand. Yeah. Right. From the human like we understand as nerds what exponential growth looks like. We can see it on a chart. Yeah, but we really can't visualize exponential growth.
So it's moving so fast that like, we need to this is why, you know, you're going to be a midwest con. And this is why like we're really focused on what does policy innovation look like. Like because we think I think you agree to that. We don't policy. Does it mean that we don't have innovation. It means that we are building trust so we can, build better innovation, have a flexible enough policy, but a policy that sets clear rules so we understand how we're operating with one another.
Like I just think it's very important. Agreed. Like we need even we need to get to deep fakes and all those things that are really like, like that are really concerning people. So like before we leave, I got a couple of lightning round questions before I do this. Like if you had to say something that will surprise people the most about the lack of privacy or digital safety, can you think of a story or an example that exemplifies that? What surprised you the most?
Yes. on average you have 3192 data points about you. And this is much better than people that are close to your friends may know about you. So this is being sold and, traded every single day and being aggregated for every time you accept the term and condition, right, that invade your privacy. And I remember the one thing that you told me about, when you set out a picture, metadata, please tell people that the. White part. When you send out a picture and the metadata behind it, what that
what you can just by saying, oh, yeah, one picture could. Do. Yeah. True. If you're uploading to Instagram or Facebook or, various sites, you can right click on a computer and inspect the element and it shows what time of day this was taken. What camera was taken from, GPS coordinates. All of that stuff is not obfuscated, for a lot of websites. So you're able to track people based on where they took a picture. Yeah. So very scary stuff. So just think about this. All right?
So I want to get to a couple of lightning round, lightning round questions about you. All right. So you have a committee of three, living or dead, to advise you on business life, digital privacy, safety, whatever you want. Tell me who these three people are and why. Marly Marlinspike would be the first one who created the end to end encryption that's used on WhatsApp and signal. So that would, be one my grandpa, who was a judge here in Cincinnati. Fantastic. and really levelheaded person.
What's his name? Marley. Marlinspike. No, no. You're my grandpa. Norman Murdock. Okay. Yeah, he is county commissioner. Judge for a while. Wow. Yeah. And then, you know, the third one, I would probably. And so many good people, I would probably look toward, somebody named Steve Shahan, who is a very interesting musician. Yeah, but he went to pretty much every single country and learned about cultures, and it would be just so good to get that perspective.
because he's still alive now and has seen how cultures have evolved. And he's extremely intellectual in that way. And I think you're going to need that perspective. But I think those are the three that I would go for. All right. what's an important truth you have that very few people agree with you? I like a hot take. Yeah. I don't like the order. that is in every meeting. And I'm gonna write something about this. But you're guilty. You. That's what I. But.
Yeah, but, I get emails about it all the time. Every media guy show up to. And then there are people that don't show up to the meeting that have it, and then I'm not in charge of the meeting. And now I see, like, all these things over. I've always order I not going to be a plug for validation meetings. No, no, I, I was, talking to John Salisbury about, yeah. Even just like when we have a meeting or a presentation. making people turn off their phones, like, if it's in person. Yeah, like.
Demanding people turn off their phones and just, like, creating attention. I also think order, on one hand, excuses people from really paying attention because they think they can go back to something where it's like, I want to like, if we're having a meeting, I want full focus, I want good participation, and I don't. And, you know, this is a fleeting moment, so you got to pay attention. So I like that a lot. No, I think that's really important. And I'm guilty of what you said.
Right. And but, but I respect it and I know it's true. Right. Because, in the last interview I had right before you, we were talking about the need to make sure people don't think that artificial intelligence is not going to replace intelligence. You need to still be intelligent. You need to understand how to do this and have focus. Right? Because those who who are able to, communicate their authentic intelligence, they will be the winners.
And in the age of artificial Intel. Totally. Right. Yeah. That that takes though focus, that takes presence. Yeah. That takes still grinding it out and learning those hard parts. and no amount of artificial intelligence will replace the need for authenticity. Totally. Like so I completely agree with you on that. All right. So, a time you failed in your life and how that made you better. I fail literally every single day. Every single day. Welcome to the club. Yeah. it's always made me better.
I think, there was one point where, back when I was first starting the slate up, you know, related stuff, where I wanted to quit. And I talked to my team about it, and they gave me a a week, and, then I saw how much work my team was doing, and I wasn't there to lead them. And I felt really bad about, you know, wavering. Yeah. At that moment, and I realized that leaders need extreme control in their emotions, and they need to step up and not be that person that waver.
So it was either that I should not be a leader or I need to step up in that context. And that was a good path for me to like, really understand that. That's a great point. I'll say is that from one leader to another, because I've felt it too. You also need a safe, a safe place to be vulnerable and tell it because you're going to have doubts. You're going to have, difficult times. Now, that mentor may not be your team. Maybe, maybe, at some point, maybe it can be.
But having people that have been through it, because it's always hard like it always is always hard. Like even even when you get to where you where you think you want to be, the new problems come about. Yeah. Right. And there's it's very hard for people to relate. It is what you're doing like your family can't. They can't. That's why you need to talk to other leaders as well. So I tell you totally, you need to get support and advice from people important and have them pour into you.
You'll help them too, because you're going to be you need to be vulnerable because if you feel like you always have to take it on, yeah, you might break too, which also hurt your team. True. But I agree with you in terms of regulating your emotion. You know, I I've had to learn that too. And I'm still learning that it's a constant process of when regulating their emotions. But you have to be in a place where you can also be vulnerable. and sometimes you have to show your team vulnerability, too.
I think all of this stuff is balance, and I think your team showed you that they had your back, and that sounds like that inspired you. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. All right. Final, final final lightning round question. What's your slogan? Your your it'll be on your that'll be on your grave. What is it? probably some like we're all going to die. Enjoy it. That's true. You know, don't take it too seriously. All right, brother, good to see you. Good to see you, too. Pleasure having you on.