Max Tegmark on AI and Physics (Lex Fridman)

improvethenews.org is a free news aggregator that lets you make up your own mind by reading a range of perspectives i'm max tegmark an mit professor working on machine learning and physics i had the idea for improvednews.org because i agree with einstein's quote that everything should be made as simple as possible but no simpler and i feel we should apply this to our news instead media sometimes oversimplify and report things like a fairy tale where one side is 100 good and the other side is 100 bad then machine learning comes along and gets us impulse clicking on these over simplified stories trapping us in hyperpartisan and hyper nationalistic filter bubbles creating an increasingly polarized world at a time when we instead need nuanced understanding that enables working together on great challenges and we can see this polarization from many of the hundreds of topics tracked by improvednews.org for example let's scroll down to social issues click on its header to see its subtopics and scroll to immigration although there is much talk about fake news an even bigger problem is oversimplifying by omitting key facts and the best way to catch those omissions is to read both sides which improve the news makes very easy by simply sliding a slider let's take a shortcut back to politics to see what the political left has to say and let's check out the view from the right [Music] you'll see that there isn't just a left right slider but also a slider for comparing articles that support and criticize the establishment the establishment view is what all big parties and powers agree on for example the old establishment view that women should not be allowed to vote got successfully challenged why is this important well we all know we can't always trust politicians i did not have sexual relations with that woman there is no doubt that saddam hussein now has weapons of mass destruction and we can't always trust government officials does the nsa collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of americans no sir and we can't always trust [Music] companies that's why i agree with einstein's quote blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth that's why democracy needs free press that challenges authority and lets voters know the truth establishment bias is easier to miss than left right bias because almost all mainstream media have it media on the left or great the challenging authorities on the right and media on the right the greater challenging authorities on the left but almost no mainstream media are great at challenging things that all big parties agree with that's why we need the establishment slider by moving it to the pro-establishment side you can find mainstream media that only rarely accuse the government or powerful companies of lying even if they're happy to criticize individual politicians or parties by moving this slider you can find articles that challenge the establishment often by covering topics that don't get much attention in mainstream media for example how many articles have you seen about the yemen tragedy recently this kind of topic bias is important because even if media don't affect what you think they affect what you think about both sliders help us follow einstein's advice to not oversimplify just as the left-right slider helps you debunk media fairy tales about all democrat arguments being 100 pointless or all republican arguments being 100 pointless the establishment slider helps you debunk media fairy tales about all countries our government criticizes being 100 bad or about all powerful corporations being 100 benevolent so why is this useful for you improvethenews.org lets you choose your news diet the way you aim to choose your food deliberately not impulsively this way you'll read the news that are most important to you most other news sites that focus on showing you whatever their algorithm thinks you'll impulse click on to maximize your ad revenue that's because they view your attention as their product to sell to their customers their advertisers improve the news.org is free with no ads because it's developed by academic researchers and powered by machine learning that draws no salary so this artificial intelligence works for you not against you the ai order classifies the articles to help you find what you're interested in instead of auto classifying you for advertisers i developed these ai tools with an awesome team of mit students for a summer research project and we've published them as open source improve the news network is work in progress so if you like it please help us improve it by using its feedback form to send us bug reports feature requests and ideas for making it even better thanks in advance