Being in the room

Casey Muratori of Molly Rocket has a great video discussing ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s poorly received graduation speech at Arizona State University. Muratori has noticed that when Eric Schmidt talks about the positive impact of the Internet, he speaks in the active voice. But when he talks about the negatives — the polarization, the surveillance — he speaks in the passive voice, implicitly rejecting responsibility.

I encourage you to go watch it; it’s about fifteen minutes.

Muratori argues his case well, and it doesn’t require any expansion from me. But watching the clips I was struck by something Muratori does not touch on — Schmidt’s exhortation to college graduates to be "in the room" and "use their voice" when decisions are being made about how AI will be used and developed for humanity.

You can hear the graduates booing. Initially he responds to the booing by patronizing them. "Use your voice, as you are doing now," he says. But as the booing intensifies, he asks them to be quiet so he can complete his point. Eric Schmidt’s voice is literally amplified. The graduates do not get a turn to speak. A graduation ceremony is "the last class." Students sit in rows. A speaker stands behind a podium, sending the students out into the "real world" with hard-earned wisdom. By booing, they are disrupting the proceeding — but that’s really the only tool they have at this moment. "Use your voice, but I don’t mean now."

Metaphorically speaking, "in the room" means present and participating in the discussion about the technology. But of course, there have always been contrary voices. Criticism of Google’s privacy stance is common enough to be a genre of tech writing. If Eric Schmidt wants to suggest that the issue was never raised, he’s being disingenuous. Faced with criticism about Google’s privacy policies in 2009, Schmidt told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." The issue was raised. It was raised directly with Eric Schmidt, and he dismissed it with the old "if you have nothing to hide" canard.

So yes, there is the room of what social media calls "the Discourse." Students are allowed to talk there, but Schmidt is not required to listen.

The only room that matters is the Board Room, and contrary voices are rarely invited. When they appear, they tend to get pushed out — as seen very recently in the failed attempt to remove Sam Altman from OpenAI. Only the handpicked few ever get the option of deciding to be part of a Board Room, and those few are not recent college graduates.

The "room" metaphor will be familiar to skeptical and anti-AI voices who are also told they need to be in the room. Like the graduation ceremony, though, the room has rules. At the very least, to be "in the room" you have to actively use AI and shelve any talk about the environmental and energy cost of AI. Speaking from personal observation, there’s certainly a sense in which there are "acceptable" and "unacceptable" flavors of AI skepticism.

Schmidt’s theory of how the Internet turned sour is bizarre, though, and it deserves immediate response. "Who could have known," he seems to say, "that this great technology could be so terribly twisted?"

Of course the answer is "many of us." Including Schmidt, who brushed away any criticism. And Google, which was the subject of lawsuits, regulation, and boycotts over privacy issues. And this is who is speaking to the graduates. A very rich man, largely responsible for the state of the Internet today, who professes the purest of motives while bemoaning the lack of involvement of people he ignored. He is telling the new young graduates of a state school — graduates anxious about getting jobs that may no longer be there for them — not to repeat the mistakes of the past. To use their voices to shape the future of AI.

But some other place. Some other day.