Thread by @RohanIrvine

Closing keynote is Alan Cooper — The Oppenheimer moment.

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Alan start by letting us know UX Australia is exceptionally run, with great content and Melbourne has lived up to its hype as a wonderful city.

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Last year Cooper the consulting company Sue and Alan created was sold and they have been focussing on other things.

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Over the last few years Alan has been exploring how do we know what we know?

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7 years ago rhey moved from Silicon Valley to a Ranch

He grew up in suburbia and his time in the country he's been coming to grips with what complex systems actually are.

It's been a provocation about how we should behave as custodians of the tech world

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Stepping outside SV Alan has been able to see what a huge bubble the tech industry is, how much it's controlled by money and give you insight about something you were a part of for so long.

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Alan wants you to do a thought experiment.

Imagine you work at a giant social media company. You access huge data to show people the content they want. Then you wake up one day and realise the Russians have used all of your work to corrupt America's democracy

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Imagine you have become an IP lawyer because you want inventors to be inspired and supported then you realise the majority of patent suits are from latent trolls and you realise your life's work allows people to participate in legalised extortion.

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Why is this happening?

Is it inevitable that our coolest tech achievements become agents of evil?

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The tech we build helps peoe but more often than not the enable bad behaviour and bad outcomes.

Where does this evil come from?

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You are not evil, your boss is not evil, but the work we deploy becomes evil when it is opened to the larger world.

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There is a mechanism at work here that we don't understand, we need to call it out and deconstruct it to stop it happening again.

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Oppenheimer's job was to create an atomic bomb for the US army to win the was. When he saw the first explosion he realised he had brought death to the world on a previously unimaginable scale.

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The Oppenheimer moment is when you realise you aren't racist but you algorithms are.

The social checks and balances which stop abuse are no longer there and your creations are running amok.

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Who can we blame?

It's not the technology.

NASA have a design pledge, ycombinator are writing and ethics seminar.

Alan asserts there is no-one to blame.

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It's a systems problem. We keep searching for the iceberg that tore a whole in the ship but we can't and the water is still flooding in.

The eveil isn't coming from one hole, it's coming from many little holes that add up to a giant one.

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Systems are distributed problems.

We need to apply our effort to stop the millions of tiny leaks.

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Technology changes so fast that our good intentions are not enough.

We need to understand the problems in business models when they're small and malleable

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People tell us to be good, but they don't really us how.

We need a clear goal.

Tech companies primary goal is to make money
Secondary is don't be evil

It doesn't work

If your primary go is to make money all other goals are irrelevant

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We need a new ruberic for success. One that makes us good people first and making money second

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Alan wants to be a good ancestor. You have to thing about the legacy and the impact on the future.

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Conservative political rhetoric says you can't make money and behave well.

This is a lie.

People want quality.

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We can prevent our businesses from turning to the Darkside by asking

How do I be a good ancestor

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It feels a big deja vu for Alan.

30 years ago people didn't think you could make things user friendly.

They had to design principles, build frameworks, test, validate, skill up staff & take that on the road.

Now it's time to do the same thing for being a good ancestor

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Ancestry thinking:

Awareness
Taxonomy

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What assumptions are we making?
Identify
Inventory
And regularly interrogate them
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What externalities are we missing?
There are no externality in your complex systems.

When you say 'this is not my problem' you create an externality and another hole leaking evil.

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AI's being trusted with 100% of the decision we create externalities.

Externalities compromise our social integrity, further marginalise people.

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If you regard things as external your giving the problem to your ancestors.

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What is the time scale we're using?

If we only think of the present we create problems for the future. In 1976 Alan helped create the Y2K bug with 2 digit dates.

You need to consider the lifespan of you work.

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What are some tactical tools for an entry thinking?

Because it's a systems problems is rare that people are to blame.

It is easy to slip into polarisation

You don't have to feel guilty about what your company is doing

I expect you to work diligently to raise the bar
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System failure is an inbuilt function of systems.

You need to be vigilant and interrogate the system constantly.

This is how you reveal the secret language of the system.

Who is outside the system, the impact, who's affect ts what other systems are affected
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Who agrees
Who disagres
Who benefits
Who makes money
How can is be misused
Who would want to misuse it
What could you lose?

If you're not asking questions like this you're most likely building a leaking boat

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We usually work from a small framework to solve problems. It's almost always too small to actually address the larger problem.

Instead of exploring the problem from the familiar context, step back and explore the whole.

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We need to work backwards.

If we don't work backwards we don't solve the actual problem

It often breaks established boundaries and you start saying 'its not my responsibility'

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All of the governmental checks and balances are side stepped with business model disruptions.

Instead of legislating methods we need to legislate outcomes.

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Some of the artefacts we create have huge impact on realms outside design.

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If the things we create impact politics andoney we have to take responsibility for that.

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As we step back and see the size of the problems it's easy to become pessimistic, fall back on denial.

We need to understand that noone will fix this for us.

They might not be our fault but it's our responsibility to fix them

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We need to build the tools that help create the changes to the systems.

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@jack chooses the easiest option, of doing nothing.

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When he refuses to take action it becomes our responsibility to take action.

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We can make change before the tech becomes too big.

We would need to make a million small corrections to get Twitter back on track

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Jack waited too long to try and make change. He underestimated how much effort it takes to make bad people stop shouting down nice people a d that nice people won't shout down bad people.

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Power is the ability to change macro structure

Agency is the ability to change micro structures

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Agency in its embryonic stage is talking.

The more you talk the more you're heard

It grows into discussion, cooperation, teamwork and ultimately action.

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Agency is a mirror you can hold up and eventually become more human.

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In 2016 Alan spoke with @anildash and he posed a rhetorical question

'why aren't we teaching ethics in engineering school?'

Alan thought, there's nothing more boring than ethics.

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Alan thought on it more and last year taught the first class of ethics being the good ancestor.

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We're introducing students to the concept that technology can lose it's way.

They focus on how good tech is allowed to be bad.

We expect them to use their agency and take ancestry thinking to their communities and the world.

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I want you to imagine creating products that won't addict you, exclude people.

The future is in the hands of the hands on.

We have more affect on the world than business, politicians and finance.

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It is within our power to make change.

We need to stand up, stand together because of we don't we stand to lose everything.

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We need to work collectively and create things that you're proud of.

Change the vision of success in Tech to be a just and equitable world.

You can be a good ancestor.

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