Toby Walsh

So that was your tech awakening. So would you mind sharing what was your political awakening? Was that the Sunflower Movement? Was that — or was it before that?

And so then let's wind forward to, I guess, when you did start to really make an impact politically. Tell us about the Sunflower Movement and your engagement in that.

But you see, social media created the opportunity for that to happen, created the polarization for that to happen. And then social media helped you solve the problem.

So it's a really difficult line to hold, because it's all around freedom of speech at the end of the day, right? It's all around whose voices get to be heard the loudest. Can you really make those choices? Or, you know, I sometimes think maybe we should just always have chronological algorithms. That's the only way of being fair.

Right. So what I take from this is that the design of the algorithms is just so important to get the outcomes you want. How do you design the algorithms well to make sure that you get these? Because there's always — you get these unexpected side effects. You get externalities that you never expected, that encouraging likes ends up encouraging people to be outrageous.

They were designed to make the most money.

Yes. I mean, of course we should still have deepfake adverts of politicians — we should be allowed to make fools of them still.

Right. Well, let's move a little bit forwards. I mean, you've touched on some of these things. Let's move forwards to when you became, I believe it was the youngest digital — the youngest minister. What did you think when they asked you?

There's a new digital minister who's probably older than you right now.

You're still the youngest, then.

A poem, you said.

Tell us — share the poem with us.

Lovely, thank you. I think we should make that constitutional — that every minister has to compose a poem that describes their job description. In terms of the plurality though, as I understand it, that's even how you ran your office, right? You didn't actually have a hierarchy. It was a very open democratic ministry that you were running.

So I want to take you back to the day that you were made minister. I can imagine the door shuts in your office. I would be sitting there thinking, what the fuck have I done? How am I going to be able to achieve anything? Because government is notorious, you know, not embracing technology, not wanting to change. What was your strategy? What was going through your mind?

So what would you consider to be the greatest legacy of your time as minister?

And can you see that in voter turnout these days?

I was going to — I really appreciate that you want democracy to be not just once every three years or four years, whenever you vote. But I would share one thing with you, one thought with you. Actually, I'd be interested to know what you think about this. I think I've grown to think it's a fantastic idea. I originally thought it was a terrible idea, which is that Australia has, as you may know, compulsory voting.

When I arrived in Australia 20 years ago, before I became an Australian citizen, I thought, what a terrible idea. You force people to vote. And then over time, I've discovered it's one of the things that actually makes the democracy work better, because you have to appeal to everyone. You can't appeal to the extremes. You have to actually capture people's votes, because everyone, almost everyone, is going to be turning up to vote. Would you agree?

Lovely, lovely. So anyway, we're sort of moving forwards in time. So I want to bring us into the present. It's hard to be in the present and not think democracy isn't doing too well at the moment. The democracy index, the number of functioning democracies in the world, is lower than it has been for a very long time. Many of the democracies we look at do not seem to work too well. I mean, the biggest one across the water, across the Pacific, seems to be struggling especially. But many other democracies — we feel the polarization that you talked about, we feel the tensions, we feel people really dissatisfied with politics as a whole. How do you read the current time?

You talked about, you know, one of the really important forces that we have in play today, the social media that we have. How do you see that? I mean, there's a growing tide in many respects against social media. There's a number of lawsuits that have been — some of them which are now being settled. How do you see the trajectory there? What do you see that we should be worried about still? And how do you see the positive there?

Audrey — that's right. But Audrey, that was the lie that we were sold for climate change, wasn't it? That it was a personal matter. It wasn't the big oil companies and so on that needed to make the change.

I mean, the uncomfortable truth here is that brains can easily be hacked, and we now have technologies that can do that at scale and with precision.

You're a very optimistic person, Audrey. That government information campaign to get teenagers to sleep — that government information campaign to get teenagers to sleep for an extra hour has obviously sat very well with you.

Ladies and gentlemen, there's a good takeaway at least from tonight, which is you should get eight hours sleep tonight. I want you all to follow that tonight. But you've got to be here at 8:45, right? So get to bed early, right? Otherwise you won't be here on time. So we can't leave social media and the present without talking about the interesting — I would say, I hope you would agree, wonderful — experiment that Australia's playing, which is to put an age gate on social media. How do you see that experiment unfolding? What's your take on what Australia has done and led the way with its world first?

Good. So I've got this Orwellian slogan now in the back of my mind, which is, you know, small screen bad, big screen good.

But of course, I mean, there's, as usual, a narrow line to be walked between, you know, how we implement it, the privacy implications of how we implement it. And then, you know, the arguments that people put forwards that young people have to at some point be exposed to it. And maybe we're emotionally crippling. Maybe this is disadvantaging them for the moment that they will have to deal with social media.

So Audrey, I'm going to promote you now. I'm actually going to make you CTO of Facebook. You probably don't want to have the job, but I'm going to insist that you have the job. How are you going to make it more pro-social?

Can I make one other suggestion for your redesign of Facebook? Get rid of the infinite scrolling.

So what — what are your favorite words — one of the favorite words I've heard in this conversation today is consensus. I mean, it's clearly very important, at the heart of much of what you've tried to do. But what happens when people are really divided? I mean, there are some topics which just divide people. And it's impossible to imagine that consensus will emerge. How do you deal with situations like that?

A half an hour.

So before we open the conversation up to all of you, which we're going to do in a few moments, let's go to — I promised to talk about the future as well. We talked about the past and the present. Let's go forward to the future, and to your dreams and aspirations. How do you see artificial intelligence in particular? Because that's the topic du jour, and is going to be a big part of our digital future. How do you see that especially contributing to our digital democracies in 10 years' time, 20 years' time? Paint us a picture of what that world could look like.

You're such a beautifully optimistic person. I'm struggling about asking you this question, because I don't want us to finish in too negative a way. But what do you fear, though? I mean, that was a positive vision of the future. What do you fear we could get wrong with artificial intelligence?

That's nice. Thank you. Audrey, I think that's a great point to enlarge the conversation and bring the rest of the audience into the conversation. So I'm going to invite the audience to ask questions. I believe there's a microphone so that Audrey could hear your question, so I didn't have to repeat it. So please put your hand up and someone with a microphone will come around and give you one. At the back there, I can see.

I love the suggestion, and not to panic. A little-known fact: artificial intelligence started on June 18, 1956. That was the first day of the Dartmouth summer school, the first meeting held in the art of intelligence. June the 18th every year is International Panic Day. I'm not making this up. We said it's a day for mental health, actually. You're encouraged to panic and get it out of your system. But it seems appropriate, I think, that the first day of artificial intelligence was International Panic Day.

If anyone is panicking, I believe we actually have some equine therapy on tap. So you can go and receive some support from the wonderful horses that will be outside. Okay, another question. There's a question in the middle there, and one at the front.

Audrey, I'll try and answer the question again in a way that I think you would like, love even, which is that our superpower was not our intelligence. Our superpower is our society.

That's a positive future. There was another question in the middle I saw.

Audrey, it's hard not to wonder if Taiwan's somewhat troubled history and the threats from outside Taiwan are not also contributory factors here.

We have time for at least one more question. We have one at the front, please. Introduce yourself. There's the lady at the front.

But I want to push, because I think Kate's question is a fantastic one, because there's something about being with people in person, like we are tonight. Sadly not with you. But we've got the next best thing. That means difficult things are easier to decide and reach. Sometimes I know the only way to get this resolved is to go and be with that person.

Great. Now we'll go back to that gentleman. Sorry to interrupt you.

And Audrey, you've been hinting at it, but I'm sure you're trying to sing the praises of open source.

Well, I'm afraid we've run out of time. It's been a fantastic conversation. It's been fantastically informative. I've learned a lot sitting here asking you questions. It's been fantastically optimistic. I'm so, so energized by your optimism. So thank you so very much, Audrey. I look forward to seeing you again in person.

Thank you. Bye bye.