Revolutionizing the Internet: The Movement of Web3 and the Fight for User Control.

Johannes Castner: 0:35

Hello and welcome. My name is Johannes and I'm the host of this show. Um, I am here today with Yasmin Al-Douri. Um, let me introduce her. She's the co-director and co-founder of the Responsible Technology Hub in Munich. She, um, is a business director, uh, with a focus on responsible AI at Microsoft. And, uh, she is a young global changer of 2022. You, you might wanna say something about

Yasmin Al-Douri: 1:03

that. Yes. I'm one of the, uh, young global changers named by the Global Solutions Initiative. So every year they're named there Young Global Changes for every year, and I'm one of the changes for 2022.

Johannes Castner: 1:16

Congratulations on that. And then you are also a Land Decker Democracy fellow, um, of 2022 and 2023, is that

Yasmin Al-Douri: 1:24

correct? Yes, that is correct.

Johannes Castner: 1:27

And you studied politics and technology at the technical University of Munich. So that's, um, these are, uh, great, uh, qualifications to, you know, to, for, for the audience to understand, why I'm talking to you, um, about today. Today's topic is the web three. So, um, let's, let's, uh, could you, could you explain to my audience and to myself as well, because I, you know, I'm, I'm not a specialist in this area. I'm mm-hmm., I, I focus mostly on ai, uh, and machine learning. So if you, if you could, um, uh, if you could explain to me and, and my audience, what is the web three, what are we talking about exactly?. Yasmin Al-Douri: So actually Web besides AI and machine learning. And I think we have a lot of common there when it comes to like AI and all that kind of stuff. But Web Three is actually seen as a decentralized version of a new web. So what we're using currently is seen as being very much centralized. Um, and when we talk about centralization, we talk about the fact that specific figures, specific companies, specific stakeholders, have a lot of power that they're holding over the internet. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're regulating the internet, but it just means that they're able to very much influence the dev further development of, uh, the internet. So Web three, and some people even call it Web 3.0, um, they're sometimes seen as a synonym and sometimes people say No, they're not the same. Um, basically what the goal for both of these ideas is, is that we have, uh, kind of. Web that is decentralized from these big powers. So that, for example, means, um, if, if we're using the web, we have more autonomy over our data, um, it means that if we're using the web, we have more freedoms, um, more privacy, um, and all these ideas behind it. So if, if we could just define it in one sentence, it's the idea of bringing a new web to life, but making it decentralized from these specific big powers that we have in tech. That's, uh, that's, um, that's a great, um, summary. Thank you very much. So, so I, I am aware of, of, of Tim Berners-Lee who, who, uh, was an early developer of, or, or maybe the, the inventor of the web. Um, he's often credited as such. And also, um, a criticism from Jaron Lanier, both of them have, have had objections to this term, web three and also to, to the approach that has been taken. Um, could, could you speak to that and also to, to the wider problems as to what, what could go wrong basically in this, in this area.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 4:11

So one of the things before I go into Sir Berners-Lee's, uh, aspects, One of the things that we're currently have to keep in mind is that we, Web3 or Web 3.0 doesn't exist right now. So right now it's way more of a movement rather than actually existing technology that we can use, um, a movement specifically because as I said earlier, we see that the internet is being more and more centralized. Uh, more and more, uh, big stakeholders, uh, big tech companies mainly are taking over, um, the web and they're very much able to influence the development of it. Um, and they're really able to shape it the way they want to shape it., it has to do a lot with how's your data used? Um, is your data even monetized in some kind of way, which most big players already do. Um, Shoshana Zuboff, one of, uh, my favorite scholars, uh, in the world. Um, she actually called this surveillance capitalism. So in new form of capitalism where capitalism has merged into the digital sphere and where data is, uh, not only monetized, but it's used to predict behavior, and those predictions are then further sold. So the idea behind this web three, um, Yeah, structure is basically to get away from that. Um, but as I said, we don't necessarily have the technology yet to necessarily build such a place. Um, therefore it's very much seen as a movement and it's very abstract and people don't necessarily understand, um, what they exactly mean when they say Web three, web 3.0. Um, and this is actually what Berners-Lee even criticizes to some ex ex, uh, extension. So, , he says that specific technologies that we use today, for example, blockchain or cryptocurrencies, which are based on blockchain, um mm-hmm., some people really say, okay, this is the base for the next web version that we're gonna use. So blockchain Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah. So I've heard people say that, yes, you know, people like say, oh, blockchain is the perfect technology for that because it offers privacy. Um, it gives us a place, um, where we can handle our data. Uh, but at the same time, we still know to some extent who's using what part of the web because you do have the privacy, but not in the sense of being completely private that you could basically use it for fraud. The problem is that, uh, Berners-Lee actually even says that blockchain is probably not the best technology to develop such a new form of web, even be simply because blockchain has been already used for fraud and blockchain in itself is not necessarily decentralized. So,. Johannes Castner: Oh, could What, what do you mean by it's not decentralized? So one of the things that, uh, we're currently seeing when it comes to blockchain development is, um, that a lot of VC firms, so venture capital is very much pushed into the blockchain sphere. So when we say, okay, we want to actually build a web that is su that is completely decentralized, and we don't have any major investors who have a stake in it and who are able to influence the way it's going to be developed, then we need a technology where VC firms are not involved in, and this is not the case with blockchain because most blockchain firms, most blockchain projects are heavily based on angel investors or on VC firms who are really very much pushing their money into that sphere. So we can't necessarily say, okay, based, based on blockchain, or if we build a web based on blockchain, that this. place is gonna be decentralized when we already know that the development of blockchain is heavily influenced by VC firms and investors. Mm-hmm.. Johannes Castner: So, but, but so So, so the internet as it started, I remember when I was, I was young, um, there, there, it was actually decentralized, right? So, so most people ran their own servers from their house. Uh, you know, I, I mean, not most people, but a lot of people did. And, and it was kind of a pain in the behind, if you will be. It's, it's, it's, you know, not so easy to keep it up. You have to always keep it going, right? And you have, you have a lot of, um, you know, it's easier to rely on Google and Amazon and. effectively to, to, to, uh, host your web services and your website and so on. Mm-hmm., um, why, uh, you know, why wouldn't that go wrong again in the, in the new version of it? Right. You know, why would we then feel incentivized or feel good about running our own service? Because I think that, that it requires that right. In order for it to be completely, uh, decentralized. I think so as well. So one of the things that I mostly discuss with people when we talk about this specific point, um, is the fact that when the web was first built or created even by Tim Burner Lee, um, the idea was to build a place where we can share information and connect. And this idea is still happening in the current web version that we're having. The only difference is that our data's being monetized. So the difference is that a new digital economy has. emerged out of the first aspects of the web. So now we're basically moving from a, we using this place for free information sharing and for connecting, and now turned into a whole economy, a whole digital economy where data's not even monetized, but it's the number one currency, if you can even call it that. So yes, there are discussions of how can we make a web three or how can we create it in a way that the former inventors actually had in mind? And there are different aspects. I mean, uh, timber and working on his own version of, uh, decentralized web as far as I know, and I think he actually got a lot of investors in there. uh, solid, I think it's called Solid. Yeah, solid. Exactly, exactly. So he's working on that project as well. Um, he hasn't necessarily disclosed what kind of technology he, he uses. The only thing that he did say, and that was this, that was at the web summer 2022 in the Saban.. So last year mm-hmm., Announcer: Please give a huge standing Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Tim Berners-Lee: 10:46

Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Web Summit. Thank you, Lisbon. It's great to. In Lisbon and awesome to be at the web summit. So I'm going to bring you, uh, next few minutes. I'm going to bring you to a certain extent, some celebration. It's been almost 30 years, uh, since I started this web thing. And I'm gonna bring you some concerns

Yasmin Al-Douri: 11:17

uh, he disclosed, uh, he's not using blockchain. Right? Right.

Johannes Castner: 11:22

That's, that's where he's doing something at m mit. As, as if I understand, I read earlier a little bit, uh, up on this before we met, um, on, on this project, um, solid, it seems to be based at m i t mm-hmm.. And it seems also to be based very much on, uh, just the, the standards, you know, the W three C standards and, and it seems to be sort of a linked data approach, which I've, I've been working with, with, with, you know, sort of semantic web technologies in the past. So I, I kind of am familiar with this. So I think that's, that Is he, he's, he's been involved with Seman Semantic with the Semantic Web, and I think that's what it is based on, in, in, in part, and I, I don't exactly know the details, but it's an m MIT project. If I understand

Yasmin Al-Douri: 12:06

correctly, he actually has not shared as much detail, and I think one of the reasons why he didn't do it is because they're still working on it. Mm-hmm., and they're not, I mean, they're experimenting and it doesn't make sense to experiment and to see, like, to falsify your hypothesis, and then c o k doesn't make sense, um, before you go on and, you know, publish it and publish what the technology is based on. Um, but one thing that, that we know from, from Bern Lee is that he's very adamant about, um, data privacy. Mm-hmm.. And he has been a huge critic, actually, um, about like the big tech firms where he, he's had said in so many instances where he said this, this new digital economy has actually pushed big tech to this race of data, like this big data race, um mm-hmm.. and basically the winner of this race is, uh, able to to control most of the behavior of the users of the internet. So yes, some people say, you know, I don't really care about my data privacy. What should they do? Like, yeah, I'm sharing my data, whatever, uh, or I'm, I'm gonna use Facebook anyways. Great. They know that I had my Big Mac last night. I don't care about it., you know, we should care about it because, uh, at the end of the day, they have this data. We don't know what kind of data they have. Most of the time we don't know where our data is sold to. Um, and most importantly, uh, we don't know what the profits are. So we might say we don't care, but if we knew what the profits would be, if we were able to share our data and if we would be included in the profits mm-hmm. I think that would be a whole other discussion that we are.

Johannes Castner: 13:43

So that's what you're talking about basically. So that's part of the web three then to, to share, um, to, to, to share in the profits that the data provi, uh, that the data creates. There's a book by, by Jaron Lanier about this topic as well called Who Owns the Future. I've, I've read through that and it's very, it's been a while since I read it, but, uh, it's, very much in that vein. So it, it, it, it talks about how, how we could have micropayments every time our data, data is used in a useful way. Yeah. And so I, I understand that, and, and that could of course create another host of, of unforeseen problems, actually. Right. And, you know, yeah. could, could you speak to that perhaps? Of

Yasmin Al-Douri: 14:28

course. So one of the things with Web three, I mean, as I said, it's a movement, but one of the goals is to give back autonomy to the users.. And when we talk about autonomy, we talk about controlling your own data and being able to make a profit out of it. Um, the idea behind it is to basically find a way to make data a right, not necessarily a human right, but to at least have a right to own your data. We kind of, kind of have a legislation in Europe with a GDPR that kind of hints towards us owning our data, but at the same time, it's not necessarily defined clearly, um mm-hmm But the general idea is to say, okay, uh, we want to have some kind of data dignity. I think that's what he calls it. Um, it's basically the idea of saying, okay, people have a right to own their data. People have the possibility and the freedom to share their data, but people also have the right to make a profit out of their data. So if we're saying, , you know, all these big tech firms are making huge profit, um, out of all the data that they're collecting from us, which we essentially are giving up for free for their services that are not even as much worth as our, um, as what we're sharing with them. Yeah, I

Johannes Castner: 15:51

don't even understand what is Facebook really for actually. I mean that's, you know, I, I've never understood are we the users or are we the product? I think we're the product. Thank you.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 16:00

I mean there, I can't remember where I read it or if I've heard it in a podcast. I'm not 100% sure anymore. But, um, there were two people who actually talked about what is Facebook and what does Google, and both of them are just marketing firms at the end of the day because right, we're just being sold ad ads the entire time and, uh, they're all individualized. So at the end of the day, you could ne nec really say it's, it's a marketing firm. They're, they're marketing us ads as personalized as possible. So,

Johannes Castner: 16:32

so they're also an entertainment firm, maybe, right? Because people perhaps are entertained by scrolling the strolling, the whatever it is, uh, they call it.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 16:41

I mean, yeah. But at the same time, if you look at speci, the case with Facebook, they're not necessarily searching for entertainment or searching for making people entertain. It's way more getting people hooked. So, uh, if,

Johannes Castner: 16:57

but what's the difference between that and tv? I mean, TV also wanted to, you know, the, the, the stories should be hook, hook. You should hook you, right? I mean, I guess ideally any, any form of entertainment is, is meant to hook you in some ways, right? But what is the difference in

Yasmin Al-Douri: 17:12

that? The difference is that, uh, behavioral predictions are used. So they're not only using your data for the behavioral predictions, but also to see how can they get you most hooked. With tv, it's a bit different because you're not individualized. The TV can't make individualized ads for, you can, uh, I mean, we have specific ethics for, for, uh, showing stuff on tv. You know, while with Facebook it's easy to show you racist propaganda, um, coming into, um, violence, all that kind of stuff. Like really negative, negative imagery that triggers you and that triggers negative emotions because what a lot of psychological researchers have actually found out is that we react way more to negative input than to positive input. So we get hooked. And Facebook actually understood that very, very easily. So all these Facebook fights that you see in the common sections, they're provoked willingly because they know they get people hooked. So that's, that's, that's a huge difference to, to the tv. Like at the end of the day, you know, at the tv also, when, when we, when they're using their ad, um, um, Pauses. I mean, when you, I don't know, watch a movie specifically in Germany, for example, if you use cable and you watch a movie in one of the channels that are offered, you always have like, at least pauses, like every 20 minutes, like add pauses. I remember as a child, we always used, we used those times, those five, 10 minutes to, to go to the bathroom to get something to eat, to get something to drink. So we necessarily weren't there watching ads all the time. But with the social media, it's a little bit different. And I think the fact, to bring it back to the topic, um, the fact that we're consuming so ma so many ads and that, um, the social media platforms are generally able to hook us so much really says a lot about how much money they're making and how much profit they're actually making. So, in my eyes. It's honestly very fair to say, okay, you know what? Actually give the people who are actually whose data they, it's, it's from, give them a part or at least like, have, have them involved in the profit making. And Jaron Lanier actually even called, I think he called it some kind of socialist version of, of capitalism. So you know, you are including them, you're including them in the capitalistic system. Um, but you're including them in the profit making. So, uh, this, this I, that, that's kind of the idea of data dignity, like the right to own every piece of data that is associated with, with your existence. But the problem is, and this is probably now answering your question, , one of the main issues is there are like two major critiques on this approach. Um, . If we say, okay, we want to include everyone in the profit making of ads, specifically when it's based on our data, we have to define who's owning data. So, right. One of, one of the first steps people are thinking of is, oh, you know what? Let's just make, let's just come up with a human right to own data. And it's, it's a human right approach, which to some extent I fully go onto because I feel like, you know, if, if this is the utmost personal information of yours, it should be yours and should be yours to deal with. Right? But the problem with

Johannes Castner: 21:00

having, but, but do you need, do you need a, a special human right? I mean, if, if, if I own my computer, I, you know, it's, it's a, it's, it's just property right? Right. I mean, could, could it, could you not just see that as just an another form of property, right. Uh, rather than, you know, the special type of Right. That we call human. Right. What, what's the difference there between owning your house and owning your data?

Yasmin Al-Douri: 21:26

I think the biggest issue is like the international sphere. So human rights are norms that have been decided upon, like most countries agree that there are specific human rights that we all adhere to. They're norms that everyone is okay with and agrees to.

Johannes Castner: 21:45

And, well, except for really important ones, right? Like Dubai and, and Saudi Arabia, they are positioning themselves to be extremely important.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 21:53

I mean, you have, you have authoritarian states who don't respect them 100%, but they, all these countries still sign the chart of human rights, you know?. Mm. All of them signed some kind of charter and all of them agreed when they joined the when at some point to at to some extent adhere to them. So we know there's a set of norms that everyone understands and everyone has at least, or has agreed upon it to some degree. We can discuss or we can have a whole discussion about whether authoritarian states are doing this or not, but from their point of view, they're doing it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. and, um, making it a human right would elevate it on an international sphere. So you wouldn't have, for example, Germany would define it as a property. Right. And then you go to France and they would not necessarily say it's a property. Right. It might be an another norm. So I see, I see., it's, that makes senses and the difference about the universa universal understanding of it. And some, like, one of the major critiques is the disadvantage it would have on small scale enterprises. So some ethicists would argue that human rights to owning data would be very impractical because it would disadvantage, um, smaller businesses and thereby actually giving more power to the big techs or even more. And one of the reasons behind it is that, uh, smaller enterprises wouldn't be able to afford the data anymore. So for big tech, uh, it would be easier to say, you know what, yeah, okay, let's do the human right. We pay for all the data and our customers or users get a little share of it. Great. Um, but at the end of the day, they're at a point now, the hierarchy within the big, the within the tech, um, industry has been. Made in such a way that there's basically no more reaching of Facebook, a small scale enterprise mm-hmm., the chances for them reaching Facebook or Google are very, very limited.

Johannes Castner: 24:09

Or the Oh, that level of very low precise, you mean? Yeah, yeah. Right. Exactly.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 24:13

So most of the startups that you see mostly don't even have enough funding to, to keep up, you know, um mm-hmm. So some

Johannes Castner: 24:23

actually say, well, I mean, often the goal is to sell, right? Often the goal of of such a startup is to sell to Facebook or Google actually in the end. Yeah. Often you hear people speak at that. That's often, you know, they're trying to sell their company. Yeah.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 24:36

But then again, you would actually stabilize their power position within the market, you know, so at the end of the day, you're not really helping small enterprises. You're not, uh, helping medium enterprise. You don't, you're not helping local, uh, businesses with it. And, um, most importantly, , you're, um, it's, it's really hard to say whether it's gonna hinder innovation or not. Um, but there are people who are criticizing this specific right to human, um, human rights to data by saying, you know what, if we're not able to push small enterprises, they're most probably gonna hinder innovation this way because these small, um, businesses are not able to fundraise so much money to get the data that they need for either experimenting with products or, um, with be marketing or advertisement.

Johannes Castner: 25:31

But why couldn't this be solved by, by means of, um, subsidies. So, so if governments equaled the, the playing field and, and, and gave subsidies to small or smaller companies to make up for this leg of funding, ultimately, and then you could still have a right to own your data and, and maybe this right to own your data is, is in a way. you know, it, it, it seems to be more important. I mean, that there are, there are, you know, there in the end, there is, is a hierarchy to these kind of, uh, priorities or to, to I import, you know, to, to, to, to such things, to, to ethics even. Right. You have trade offs in a way. Mm-hmm., it seems to me that owning your own data, I mean, the data that you produce as in the course of living your life, um, should, should be somewhat, uh, more, should, should be sort of a, at a higher, uh, level of importance than whether or not small companies can afford it. Because you can solve that in another way, right? You could solve that in a way by means of subsidies really? Could you not?

Yasmin Al-Douri: 26:38

You could 100%, but you have to also understand that most governments have an interest in keeping. a human right to owning data away from them because they're also, to some degree, are very much positively affected by this. Um, you mostly see, um, governments cooperating with big tech firms or with smaller tech firms, um, be it on security issues, be it on, uh, how can we market our next campaign? Um, all these kind of things, you know, and I think government, at least from my perspective, I think governments have a huge interest to keep this as low as possible. So subsidizing would most probably be only possible if you have a more liberal point of view in, within the government. And mm-hmm. a point of view that is pushing way more the, the aspect of. humanitarian norms, if you can say it like that. Um,

Johannes Castner: 27:40

yeah, makes sense. But then on the other hand, you know, how do you get them to cooperate with, or how do you get them to agree on the, on the human rights element in the first place. Right. So, so maybe, maybe there's some linkage there, you know, if you could, because I mean, the reason why they don't agree is because of the small companies. And, uh, you know, it seems a bit circular to then, you know, maybe, maybe it could be written in the same law that, uh, that that makes it a human right to own your data, to then also have a Right as a small company to access.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 28:12

That's, that's the thing you would need. Yeah. You would definitely, like, at least from the government perspective, you would need a government that is somehow liberal, but also leftist enough to care about human rights data and to be honest mm-hmm. to be very, very frank. I don't think that's, uh, realistic in any way, at least not speaking for Germany. I think finding coalition is already super hard in the Bundestag, um, so in the German parliament, and I don't think that the interests really much align for the stakeholders. Um, that's, that's the one thing. The other thing is also the question of whether we as a country align on a human right aspect, but also whether other countries align on it. Because we can define Yeah, of course data as a data ownership as a human right. But the question is whether other countries define it the same way.

Johannes Castner: 29:13

Well, right. That's the whole point of the human right aspect, right? As you said earlier and, and so, exactly. So, right. I mean, the whole reason why we have them. It's because countries agree. So we have to get a whole new agreement about around human rights specifically to data. Is that, is that right?

Yasmin Al-Douri: 29:31

Yeah. We need basically an international policy where everyone agrees that a specific norm is set for data ownership. And we're slowly having these discussion off on an international level. So you see this happening. I mean, the eu, as I said, with the GDPR started doing this, started pushing for this debate. You see it happening in Canada, where Canada has their own version of the GDPR now. Uh, same thing with California. Um, we see it happening also with the AI Act, where data is also heavily regulated.. So we see countries actually, you know, understanding the value of data and wanting to change something about it. The problem is it's heavily western oriented, meaning it's mostly European countries or North American countries that are very much focused on this. While the rest of the world, you know, most industrialized countries are like working on this, but other countries are left out of the entire dis uh, discussion. And that's an issue. Um,

Johannes Castner: 30:36

yeah, it is. And, and it's also centralization. So, so you're saying that basically a part of this, this, the fix for, for decentralization or of de decentralization is actually a very centralized one, right? Because what we're talking about is government policies, right? That's actually the, the, the epi, the, the, the Absolut. Definition of what is centralized, right?

Yasmin Al-Douri: 30:57

What we need. Uh, and I don't necessarily mean that government has to have ownership over the internet. What we need is a, some kind of third entity. Something that very like, um, I think, let me think about it. Jaron Lanier actually talked about this as well. So what we need is a third entity, or third be it an organization, be it an interstate organization, international organization, whatsoever that is regulating the internet and making sure that it's staying free. And that the data that is used there and that is harvested there and that is monetized, is, um, first of all kept private. So privacy's super, uh, super important., um, so that you can't necessarily like sell your data from A to B to C to D, and then it ends up with Z. Um, but that the users know exactly where their data is and who's, who's using it and who's profiting off of it. Um, and second of all, a place that is safe. So when we talk about web three, yeah, we talk about autonomy, but what is Les talked about is the safety of the internet.

Johannes Castner: 32:09

Um, what, what do you mean by safety? So, so viruses, computer viruses, or, um, are you, are you talking on that level, or what do you mean by safety?

Yasmin Al-Douri: 32:18

I mean, in, in, in this case, what I mean with safety is one, uh, a safe environment, meaning like where content is not shared, that is harmful, number one. uh, number two, uh, place where platforms are not allowed that, uh, harbor harmful things that can be sold. I'm, uh, mostly thinking of the dark web. Mm-hmm.. So dark web will always exist no matter what we do. There will be some kind of form where people will exchange in a, in a place where they're completely anonymous. That's, that's just a fact. Um, but if we do build a web three, we need to think about, uh, the possible consequences it could have, whether it could possibly even push the dark web even more.. So these things have to be kept in mind. And the third part is, uh, the, from a cybersecurity perspective, so making sure that, uh, viruses are not easily transmitted through the web. Um, and making sure that it's secure. So not only safe, but from a security perspective. Um, safe to use your computers without being infested with viruses, for example. Or not being necessarily able to, to use the web three to stage cyber attacks to companies, to, to states, to, um, critical infrastructure. So, so these are the kind of things that are not as much talked about. Um, and I hope that more people will talk about this, but it's probably the case because as I said, web three is not a place yet. Right now it's just a theoretical concept. And, um, when we, when we talk about, uh, Third entity or a body, an organizational body that um, kind of oversees these data transactions. Um, it needs to be a neutral one. It needs to be not a state or a UN organization or whatever. It needs to be a neutral body that oversees what exactly is happening on the web and how exactly the data is transmitted, who's making what profit. And most importantly, needs to be kind of linked to a platform where users can actually control the data as well. So we like to call this at the responsible technology, how we call this a data wallet., I think Lanier calls it something else. Um, but we like to call it a data wallet because it makes more sense, like just from an imaginary point of view. Like if you look at your wallet, you mostly know this is my credit card, there's my id, et cetera, et cetera. And we think of it that way because we need some kind of platform where we can have an overview of where's my data used, who's using it? Who's making what profit of it, who sold it to whom? And most importantly, when we're saying controlling our data, be able to take away the right from them using it. So this active approach of saying the user is actively able to decide who's gonna have your data and who's not gonna have it, and be actively able to decide when to take away that. Right. Again. So this will obviously change business models. So most of the business models we see in the digital economy right now are not gonna work this way. Um, also, I mean, there's the second critique that a lot of people also call when they talk about, um, a possible human right to owning data. Um, is the idea that such a right could potentially create, uh, dystopian society.

Johannes Castner: 36:03

Oh, could you explain that please? That's, uh, very interesting. In what, in what ways would that, right. Like, right. So that's very interesting, right. Creating a dystopia, uh, is is is a new one for me.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 36:15

Yeah. Un unfortunately it is. Um, I mean it's hypothetically speaking and it's theoretically speaking, so we don't know whether it's gonna happen or not. Um, and it's a risk doesn't mean that we don't have, we can't do it. It's just a risk that is there and that is Sure

Johannes Castner: 36:32

existing. But in what way? Like how does that work? What is the mechanism that is proposed such a

Yasmin Al-Douri: 36:37

causing that have ever watched the series funny on Netflix? Funny that we're talking about this right now, uh, called Maniac?

Johannes Castner: 36:45

No, I have to admit, I have not seen that.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 36:48

So it's, uh, series that is basically depicting society that runs on ads. Um, so people can basically sell their time for services such as, for example, getting food, um, at a restaurant. Or one of my favorite scenes is when one of the protagonist is buying, uh, was trying to buy a ticket for public transportation and he basically doesn't have money anymore. So he's forced to sell his time. And what exactly do they do? So in order to get these services, um, they have to listen through individual people just, um, reading out loud targeted ads for them. Wow. And they basically have to do it through the entire service act. So if he's taking, um, a bus with public transportation from. A to B, he's basically forced to listen to all of the targeted ads that an individual next to you is reading out loud for you. Yeah, it's, it's, it's very funny. It's called Maniac. Um, that's just a society that they're describing. Actually. It goes the, the, the actual plot is completely different. Mm-hmm.. Um, but that's basically the base of the society that they're living in. Um, and many people actually criticized that an approach to, to owning your human, to having a human right, to owning your data, um, could, or having even the possibility to sell the, your data could actually lead to some kind of dystopian version of that kind of, um, plot that I told you about. So they say that, uh, ultimately, This can basically delete to further additional equi, uh, inequ. Equities. Equities, equities. That's what I want to say. So some people might be forced to sell their data just to make ends meet because they're at the end of the month, they don't have enough money. So they're saying, you know what? Let's just sell the data to Facebook and make a little bit money by the end of the month so we can get through this month. Um, and some people don't have to do it. So privacy actually becomes a luxury. It's not a right anymore. So while you do bring in the, the right of owning data to have data ownership, what it also means when you're selling your data is that some people don't have to sell their data because they're the place of privilege and they have enough money to not do it. So they're able to afford privacy.. So instead of giving people the autonomy, this could actually possibly lead to people. Yeah. Even pushing themselves more to be marketing targets. And that's actually something we want to prevent. So we have this really big shadow lurking over, uh, making data, human rights, because we also know doing that, but also allowing people to sell their data could actually lead to this kind of dystopian version.

Johannes Castner: 40:00

I see. That's a very interesting take on it. But I mean, that's, this could be said about anything really. When, when, when you have a, a disparity, particularly a very large one between people who the haves and the haves nots, so to speak mm-hmm., I mean, anything falls into this category. You could say that, you know, prostitution actually is, is like that, right? I mean, In a way. And, uh, you, you could say that, um, uh, I mean, you know, even work is like that, right? Some people don't have to work and, and, and, and some people do. And, and you know, that's, uh, that, that

Yasmin Al-Douri: 40:38

in itself, I mean, inequality is something that is very natural in our society. It has been there forever, since we existed. So obviously it's gonna stay there, but what we're trying to prevent is making it even more unequal, right? And when we're at a point where we are discussing whether privacy is a right or privacy is a luxury, we're at a point where we are, you know, making inequalities even more apparent. And it can't,

Johannes Castner: 41:07

but, but couldn't this be solve, okay, so I I I don't fully agree that there's always been there, right? So we can see that in the last 30 years in America and in Europe, um, I think also in, in other places, uh, inequality has increased, um, in a way that is. pretty dramatic. And it's probably, you know, we're arriving at a, at a, at a, at a point where it's similar to where, what it was during the gilded ages, I suppose, but there were periods and there are places where, where inequality is lower, right? And I guess that could be the solution to it, right? So whatever they are doing, you know, for example, the Nordic countries, um, you know mm-hmm. basically having a, a new form of, i, I, I don't know, I don't want to call it socialism, because I don't think that's actually appropriate. I don't think it's actually that. No, it isn't that Americans often call it that. And, and even Bernie Sanders even calls himself a socialist. I think these, these terms are, uh, this term is misleading, uh, in, in, in many ways. But, uh, but, but, uh, you know, there are right now societies where inequality is very low, right? So if you were to, for example, roll out um, data ownership in Norway, I don't think you would have this problem that you described. Right? So, so maybe there is this bigger problem that just pervades, you know, every aspect of society including this one and if you, if you solve that one, right? So, so it's, it's in a way what I'm saying is we, we have multiple policy, policy instruments, right? We, we can't really solve the whole world problem with, with, you know, one in, in, you know, with one policy instrument, with, with say, calling, uh, the right to own your data, a human right. But, so if you did that, that, you know, based on other problems that are in existence now, that could potentially cause some other inequities, right? So that's what we're saying. Inequities. Yeah. But, but, so what I'm, what I'm thinking is, you know, that, that these problems would all go away if we really, if we did the things that we know could be done. that that has been done in some places that would actually change, you know, the inequity problem,, Yasmin Al-Douri: I mean, it's also, inequalities are you talking about. So, you know, there are some statistics that even say before Covid hit, uh, we were marching towards more equality in various Western countries that we were getting better and then covid hit and then all of a sudden, oh, we're not that equal. Yeah. And I don't necessarily think it's, uh, inequality increasing. I think it's just has become more apparent. Right. Okay. I think we're in, in a state now in our society where we're way more transparent about these topics. So when we're call talk about inequality, we are not only talking about, um, unequal treatment of genders.. We're not only talking about the poverty rate, we're also talking about ethnicities and, uh, problems within societies when it comes to racism and discrimination when it comes to discriminating the LGBTQ q I community, for example. So, you know, inequities are seen in various forms. So if you look at the Nordic countries, they might not have the same inequities that we have, and they might not face the same problems as we do. Migration is, for example, also an issue in the Nordic countries, but they, it's not as high of an issue as it is, for example, in Germany. Hmm. Why? Why is that? Oh, okay. Maybe we're wearing off too far. Um, I

Yasmin Al-Douri: 44:43

think maybe just to answer that is most people don't necessarily want to move to the Nordic countries because it's cold. Oh yeah. Okay. So , right? I, I would've said this is one of the major issues. So, , I wouldn't necessarily see Sweden as a country of, of migrants such as Germany. Mm-hmm. in Germany, you have, uh, one fourth, so 25% of the people who live here have a migration history. Mm-hmm., mm-hmm.. And with migration history, that also means like they're first generation Germans or even second generation Germans. So this country country's very much built through migrants. So the issues that,

Johannes Castner: 45:23

so there's no problem. Right. Then like, I mean, it, there is a problem that unfortunately these migrants have to leave wherever they're leaving from. And, and there's a problem there. But for, from the German perspective, why does it have to be a problem? Right? It's, it's also often this presumption that there's a problem, there's a lot of migration. We have to describe it, we have to say it's a problem. What, what do we really have to say that , I, I don't see

Yasmin Al-Douri: 45:45

it as.. I honestly don't think it's a problem at all. I mean, I'm a first generation German myself. Both my parents were not born in Germany. So I don't see it as a problem. I think it's an enriching thing to have in a country to, to have more perspectives and it actually enriches the culture and enriches the innovation that is going on. So I personally don't think that, but you still see that there are different opinions on this, and we just saw it recently in Germany. We had the New Year's evening, um, discussion. So basically some, some riots were happening throughout Germany and all of a sudden we started blaming migrants for it. Or, uh, the first generation Germans, which doesn't make sense, but it shows there are unequal discussions even made. Yes. So the way things are perceived are just different from country to country.

Johannes Castner: 46:38

Well, interestingly, I mean, I don't know if it's like this in Germany, but in in America.. Um, often the, the people who are afraid of migrants or who do not like them or who have an issue with it are often people who are not exposed to a actual migrants. And, and, and those places that are actually exposed to a lot of migrants, like New York City and Los Angeles, they don't have a problem with migration . And that's really the interesting thing, right? If you're in some small town where nobody wants to go to, you will have this perceived problem with, uh, with, with immigration, but you actually don't experience it. So those people who experience it don't have a problem with it. It's very, I mean, this seems to be a regularity. I, at least in the us I don't know if this is also true in Germany. I, I haven't lived in Germany for close to 30 years. I am actually from Germany, myself. Mm-hmm., , and, uh, and I am, uh, well, I don't know, zero generation American And now I live in England, so, so anyway, , that's,

Yasmin Al-Douri: 47:38

no, I totally get it. I embrace it. No, I definitely get that and I, I have lived abroad as well and I've moved for a while from Germany, and I'm probably gonna do it in the future as well again, so I completely get it. What I'm just trying to say with this is that depending on where you are, they're gonna be inequities based on the discussions that you have, based on who's more powerful in a, in a, just a hierarchy stance from what, when it comes to society. And oftentimes, specifically in Germany, we see that migrant families are mostly also the worker families. So, and that's mainly has to do with the history of Germany, with, uh, Germany being rebuilt and needing workers and bringing them from outside of Germany and.. When we look at the generations that came after those, those, uh, workers who came and who stayed, we often see that it's way harder for them, for example, to climb up the social ladder or climb up the education ladder. Yeah, it's slowly but surely happening more. But we see that there are inequalities already. So to come back to the, to the dystopian, uh, thought of uh, having such a society where society is run by ads, um, you will see that specific minorities in societies will most probably have to give away their privacy to be able to afford their living. And that's an issue because it's gonna be the minorities, it's gonna be the people who are already. all the way down in the hierarchical stance.

Johannes Castner: 49:27

Yeah. But at the same time, you give them another option to make some money and maybe in, in, at least in the, in the, in the space of, of money rather in the mo mm-hmm. you know, be a little bit more equal in the sense that they're selling their data. Okay. Other people are not selling their data because they don't have to. I understand privacy. Uh, I understand this problem where privacy becomes, um, a luxury, which really shouldn't. I, I, I, I completely agree with that, but at the same time, you're, you are, you're, you are giving now an, an option to, to be at least less, um, less unequal in, in the, in a, in the money domain. Right. By, by allowing that. So, so it's, it's, it's kind of, yeah, it's a, it's a tricky one. I don't know. I feel, I always feel that there should be some, you know, if, if you have the right mix of policy instruments, right? So aside from this, you know, human right. You know, if, if, if you embed this idea of, of making a human right. to own your own data. I, I, I see, I see this as a, i, I can see this as a, a, a huge, um, bene benefit to a lot of people. So, so then, you know, at the same time, you might also have to do a few other things in order to, to fix this problem that you're describing. And, you know, so, so I, I think, like you said, it's a risk, right? It's a risk. It's not, it's definitely not, definitely a risk. Yes. But at the same time, if, if you address this risk, right? So it's in anything else, if you're building something, you're, you have to address a number of risks.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 50:53

Um, I mean, this is where, you know, the critics of the critics come in and say, you know, yeah, yeah. Uh, we're, we might be creating inequalities, but actually we're giving people another income stream. So this way we're actually, when it comes to poverty, we're bringing the people back together. Yeah. And we know for a fact that poverty is the number one, uh, indicator. education, success of health, success, et cetera. Yeah, absolutely. We might even say we are actually gonna make society more equal. Mm-hmm., the question is just whether we are ready to say, okay, we're gonna have a society where people are paying, not paying, but like basically selling their privacy mm-hmm. and people who are not, and whether this has, is then kind of become a status symbol, you know? Yeah. But another approach, which I've just read recently, so I can't give you too much details, to be honest, is, uh, that some people are saying, you know what, uh, we could also just find a middle ground and instead of saying, um, everyone like has the right to sell their data or not, we're gonna make data a human right. But we're just gonna make a universal basic income out of it. Yeah. Okay. Whatever, whatever profit the big tech companies make with your data, they have to give., each and every one of the society, a specific margin of it. So that way a government can actually prepare or even offer universal basic income to each and every one of the users.

Johannes Castner: 52:26

But then, then you're keeping the, the, the, the, the current state status, right? So where, where, where Facebook does still own your data, they just have to share the profit from using it in a way, right? So, so they still remain the owners of your data. So then, so, so you're getting away with, you, you, you are getting rid of the whole idea of, of, of data ownership as a private, right?

Yasmin Al-Douri: 52:46

Yes and no, because right now they're owning your data nevertheless. So you never really had a chance to even say yes or no. I see.

Johannes Castner: 52:57

But, but yeah, you do in the beginning, right? When they say, oh, when you sign up, you know, you are acknowledging

Yasmin Al-Douri: 53:02

that. Yeah. But even then, even then, even if you, uh, reject all the cookies, for example, even then they're able to track you and even then they're able to take some of your data. So, , yes, we have specifically in Europe. Um, it's, it's harder for big tech to do that.

Johannes Castner: 53:19

Wait, but there's still, hold on. Also, if you don't sign up with Facebook, can they still get your data? So if you're just not there and you're not,

Yasmin Al-Douri: 53:25

they can't, they can actually, they can get it because they're, uh, obviously selling and, uh, buying data from other sources. So I see. We saw, for example, um, there was this, uh, financial app where you can file your taxes. They basically sold all their data to Facebook. So at this point, we're at a point where we really don't know which data they have from us. Right. And where our data is sold to. Uh, yeah.

Johannes Castner: 53:53

So that's also a problem that we don't know right. Where it is

Yasmin Al-Douri: 53:56

exactly. So one of the ideas is to either say, okay, uh, if we can't control it anyways, um, let's just make sure that we have this right to own data ship so we can then say, . Okay. The people actually have a right to get a profit off of it. And based on that idea, you could say, since we can't control them anyways, let's just make a basic income, universal basic income out of it. Mm-hmm. So we're tax sending heavy, we're making sure that they're actually paying what's due to the society. And this way we can make sure, like, make sure to some extent that, uh, people are getting their profit

Johannes Castner: 54:34

out of it. But the incentives of hooking you, all of those things are still there, right? Uh, they're, they're nevertheless right in that, in that solution that is not solved, right? All of this problem

Yasmin Al-Douri: 54:43

with it's not solved, it's still surveillance. Capitalism will still thrive, uh, would still be there. Um, and it'd probably be the next version of, of surveillance capitalism would probably be even more, uh, surveillance behind it, right?

Johannes Castner: 54:59

So, So owning your own data, right, would stop that. So if everyone had the right to own the data and control it, like you said in the other, in the other solution, the the data wallet solution that would solve all of these problems. And then it might add a little bit of this kind of dystopian inequality problem if we don't, if we don't do something about it, right? So, but we might also be able to do something about it. So, I don't know, I'm still veering toward the data wallet, wallet approach.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 55:25

Same, same, to be honest., same. I'm, I'm completely, I'm a fan girl of, uh, Jaron Lanier. Um, myself, I, I am not. I absolutely, I absolutely love this idea and I think it's, uh, long overdue that we have some kind of approach like this. Um, as I said, yes, there are risks, but you will always have risks with such policies. But most importantly, and I think this is the number one thing that we have to think of, it forces the big tech firms to reevaluate the business models. because right now their business models are completely, uh, focused on, uh, collecting as much data as possible, making sure that they're able to make behavior predictions and selling those behavior predictions. And as long as we're not able to kind of force them to change, and I'm gonna be very honest, I don't think a bottom up approach is gonna work. Um, because even if we all as users come together and say, we're not gonna use Facebook or Google. No, no.

Johannes Castner: 56:28

But if you produce something else, an alternative. So I guess I, I speak to a lot of people who say, well, we, we don't have to just, just be consumers, right? We can also be, I guess they call it prosumers, so producing consumers, right? So, so in in, in other words. And, and so that, that, that also brings me to a question actually I wanted to ask you, because I think it's not complete to talk about Web three without. getting a little bit into the rejection of why crypto isn't it? Right? Because a lot of people say, I mean, crypto, blockchain, this, this combination, um, because a lot of people who are in that space in the blockchain chain space say that they are web three, right? So, so there is also that we should at least address it. I, I, I know that, that the, the actual web three doesn't exist as you said. Um, but, but we should address it. Why is crypto not it and why isn't that solving and why isn't this sort of decentralized, um, you know, I guess the peer-to-peer economy and all of those, those, uh, elements I spoke with, uh, Somil Gupta about this, um, one of, one of my guests, um, uh, at length about the, the, the sharing economy, the peer-to-peer economy and all, all of all of those were part of that in the collabora collaborative economy. So, so, . Um, we, we can just build new things, right? We can build new things. We're doing it, we're building crypto solutions to all kinds of things, right? That would be the argument. So why isn't that web three? Why isn't that, you know, what the, the, you know, ultimate, and, and you know, I think, you know, we already addressed, you know, Berners-Lee's, um, critique a little bit. But, but we, we, we have to, I think, do a little bit, work a little bit harder to reject it. You know, why, why are they not, you know, why are they wrong saying that they are web, they're working in the web three area. I

Yasmin Al-Douri: 58:13

mean, there are some people who say that the Metaverse Web three. Yes, yes, I've heard that too. The problem with saying something is something without defining it from the get-go is the main issue. So if we're saying blockchain in itself, blockchain is a technology. Yeah. So we're using it for specific things. Um, , and it's not a place that we're defining as, as web three. It's not like the web where you can actually use it. Um, it's a technology and one of the, but you can

Johannes Castner: 58:47

build websites on it, right? You can, uh, exactly. You can, you can have data there. So, so it seems a bit web ish,. Yasmin Al-Douri: Yes, but So somebody is like, blockchain is not just an entity that is owned by everyone. Somebody is still behind it, running it. Um, but Ethereum is like, I mean, so that ecosystem,

Yasmin Al-Douri: 59:12

more or less, , but Ethereum is still built upon investors. And as I said earlier, one of the main issues is if you have too much VC capital in there, and if you have too much VC influence in there, you're gonna be pretty sure about the fact that they're gonna be able to influence the development of that blockchain project.

Johannes Castner: 59:35

So is your solution basically to throw them all out? Uh, to, to have no VCs and I, I mean, what would happen to all of those people and, and their money and, you know, they wanna work on projects. They wanna make the world a better place. They say,

Yasmin Al-Douri: 59:46

no, I wouldn't necessarily, that wouldn't be my solution. I just wouldn't call blockchain web3. Okay.

Johannes Castner: 59:51

So, so, but in this new system, like in this, in this not well defined system that doesn't exist. If, if, and, and we're saying that, that VCs wouldn't have much control there, what, what would they do? Right? What would they do with their money and why can't they be part of the solution? Right. And, and in other words, it's like, They, they have all of this capital sitting around which, with which they could pay people to build solutions to problems that we're facing. And and you're saying they shouldn't be part of it, or they shouldn't be part, they shouldn't be in control of it. What, what exactly are you saying about them?

Yasmin Al-Douri: 1:00:23

They shouldn't be giving too much power. I see. And I think that is a big difference because we will always have people who are gonna invest into projects. Uh, we're always gonna have some firms, be it VC cap, uh, VC firms, be it, uh, big tech companies, be it angel investors who are gonna see projects and they're gonna love them, and they're gonna think this is something that we can change the world with. Whether they're gonna profit off of it or not. That's a whole other question. But we will have these people who will put their own money into projects, and that's fine. We live in a capitalist world where this is ongoing and this is the freedom that they're able to do. The only thing that I'm critiquing is that we're not, we're not supposed to give these people too much power.

Johannes Castner: 1:01:06

but what if they then just say, we'll take our ball and take it home and we are not gonna participate if we don't get any power for this money that we're investing.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 1:01:14

Exactly. But the main issue right now is that blockchain projects are 99% made through VCs. So there's almost no possibility for the normal user to participate. There's mostly no opportunity for state governments, for regulators, for public sectors, for example, to invest in that as well. So right now it's very much privately developed, if you can say it like that. So this obviously raises concerns that this is giving way too much power to investors, um, while the public is completely shunt out of it. So that's the one thing. The other thing is, um, the question of, uh, maintaining a web three, if Okay, if we say web three is blockchain. Mm-hmm., obviously to some kind of way, this web entity needs to be maintained, right? Mm-hmm., so the question here comes, if we talk about this kind of weapon being completely decentralized, and this is what mostly blockchain people and mostly crypto people say, is that this kind of web would be made for the people by the people. Yes. Yes. That's exactly what I heard. That's mostly what people say, at least in that field. And the main problem with that is that they're completely, or ignoring, okay, if it's for the people and by the people who's maintaining it.. Yeah. And one pe some people say, you know what, uh, it's the people themselves maintaining it and they're getting a token from it. Yeah, yeah. Because they're maintaining that space. They're gonna be able to, um, earn a token, earn, uh, some kind of cryptocurrency, for example, also. Um, exactly. But there will be in some kind of way, um, giving a reimbursement for that work. Mm-hmm., the problem is we're not at a point where cryptocurrency has reached a level where everyone is, um, seeing it as a real currency. Mm-hmm., we saw it with ftx, with currently going completely down. Um, we see a lot of cryptocurrency projects completely failing because they're based on.. Yeah. I'm not saying that all the cryptocurrency projects are fraudulent. Definitely not 100% not. Um, but we see many of these projects just going down right now because people are losing trust. Right. And if we're at a point where we're saying, uh, don't necessarily want to invest or put my money into blockchain or into Ethereum because I'm seeing that FTX just went down and most people don't understand the, the technology to begin with. Yeah. Then we're at a point where people are not gonna accept it as a currency. And as long as this is not gonna happen, we will see a huge fluctuation within the cryptocurrency world. And I'm gonna be very honest with you. I don't know if that kind of reimbursement when you're trying to maintain such a place as Web three would really make a difference if people are not really. huh?

Johannes Castner: 1:04:34

You would see things like every time the thing crashes, people stop maintaining it. And I can, I can see that there would be waves of, of enthusiasm and as they are right now, actually, there are waves of these enthusiastic waves and, and yeah, definitely

Yasmin Al-Douri: 1:04:47

negative waves. Waves,

Johannes Castner: 1:04:48

yeah. But it's, it's in, in some ways it's a bit, it's just a bit more extreme than the regular markets. Right. In some ways you could say the same thing about Apple employees, right? So if Apple starts tanking for a moment, then you know, the, the morale itself.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 1:05:02

I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be very honest with you, I'm not an expert in crypto and I've, I read a lot about it. Mm-hmm. And most of the time I just sit there and I'm like, what exactly are you talking about? And I think many people, including a lot of tech people, and I'm one of those people, don't understand what is going

Johannes Castner: 1:05:20

on. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually part of what I'm doing here in the shows. I'm trying to make sense of these things.. Yasmin Al-Douri: Yeah. And that says a lot. I mean, I, it says a lot if people who are really working in these fields and they're. investing their time and not only working there, but studying it, doing research, and they don't even understand it. Mm-hmm., how is, uh, in Germany, we would say "Otto Normalverbraucher", how is the typical person supposed to understand what exactly is going on, how these technologies work? Well, you don't, but you also didn't know that about the dollar, right? So why is there inflation? Right. We don't know this and, and most people don't understand it. I mean, may maybe, you know, you can see, okay, in this case here right now, we can see it's a problem because of Russia and Ukraine and the food supplies and the oil supplies and the gas supplies. And so, okay, we get that. Most people get that, but it's explainable. Yeah. But then how, why do we solve it by raising the interest rates? Right? People will not get that necessarily right. So it is explainable. Yeah, it is explainable. You're right. But economics is explainable. Everybody can study economics similar. But, but, but, but in a way, those things are also explainable, right? You just have to specialize into this one area. So if you really wanna understand crypto, You, you can understand it. Uh, it just takes a lot of investment.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 1:06:36

I honestly think, and this is not a factual based, uh, assumption that I have, it's really just an assumption. Mm-hmm., uh, from my experience with people who I've worked in that field, from my experience with talking with them, meeting them, I even think that people who are work within crypto, I think there's only a very, very small percentage of people who are actually understand it. Mm-hmm.. And I think it's a huge hype. Same as ai, and I think you know this as well. Um, there are a lot of people who talk about ai, but actually very few who understand it.. Well,

Johannes Castner: 1:07:14

and well, AI is a whole collection of things, right? So if, if, if a new Starts algorithm comes out, you know, GT Chat, G P t I don't understand it at this moment. I haven't invested any time into it. Right. But, but I knew, for example, I, I learned about Transformers last year, right? And, and every year you have to keep up when you, when you specialize in an area, you have to keep up with all of these fast moving parts. Because one reason why we don't understand it is because it's super fast moving, right? Things change all the time in ai. And, and then the other thing about ai, I think that, you know, specifically in ai, I don't know, blockchain doesn't have sci-fi movies confusing people, but AI does, right? So AI has this idea that, you know, that there would be something like a Terminator that has its own intelligence and, and not only its own intelligence, but its own goals, right? That that's, and, and, and I, I see people getting confused about this element, even when they have studied ai, when they are, uh, CEOs of major companies, even the, the., um, the CEO of of OpenAI, um, uh, Sam Altman was, was talking about AI as if it was its own entity with its own goals. Right? That, that is how crazy that is. But, but you can easily dispel this myth and say, no, this are, these are mathematical, uh, models that are meant to optimize some kind of objective function that was put there by a human being, right? That we, we designed, we designed it to do something, and it's doing that, right? We, we can dispel the myth of its own, you know, owning its own goals, right? I mean, why would it, it doesn't have children to raise, it doesn't have, uh, it doesn't need food. It doesn't need to pay rent. It, it has absolutely no reason. To do anything of its own right. It, it doesn't feel pain or anguish or any of those things. And so in that sense, I don't understand why so many people are confused about this one point, uh, actually, but, but if you tell people that it's a mathematical model, that it's wiggling around some weights, uh, in, in some model of, of, you know, neural network model, for example, where, where it's mimicked, you know, it's, it's, it's mimicked on some kind of biological, um, yeah. Model of the brain. But, but nevertheless, it's just a mathematical model, right. And it's optimizing some weights, and you can explain that within two minutes, five minutes, you, you can, you can dispel these kind of myths. I'm not sure if that's true about the blockchain or even how many myths there are about the blockchain.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 1:09:30

I think there are actually a lot of myths, specifically because we're talking about, okay, we have, uh, sci-fi that is mystifying AI so much. Mm-hmm., we have social media that is mystifying crypto. Oh yeah. That is, uh, Mystifying Blockchain and Web three. The whole reason why we are having this discussion right now is because we don't necessarily know what it is, right? So, you know, we do have, we ha we do have these outlets that are mystifying these, these things. And one of the reasons is because if you mystify it, and if you're able to sell it that way, and if you're able to say, oh, this is the new big thing, people will rush to it and jump on it. And we saw it with, with AI happening, all of a sudden now we have different centers on ai. We, you go to talks and you ask them, can you even, can you define ai? And then they, the first thing you should actually hear from somebody who's really versed in that field would be, it's hard to define AI because there's so many different ways to basically Yeah. Uh, program ai, right? And there are different researchers who would use different diff uh, definitions. So, , this is the main issues. I think there is a lot of buzz within blockchain. Uh, a lot of bus within crypto specifically, which is based on blockchain. Mm-hmm. that is coming from people that are not necessarily versed in it. Right. And I think those people who see themselves as experts and who are putting themselves out there as experts, I think only very, very few of them actually understand it.

Johannes Castner: 1:11:05

They have the opposite of the imposter syndrome, . Right. They are actual imposters.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 1:11:11

I mean, sometimes I wish I had this kind of self-esteem, you know? Yes, yes. Sometimes I wish. But that, that's, that's one of the main issues that we're facing right now. And I've seen it with friends who invested into blockchain because they listened to some expert who said that this was going to be the next big thing. And, uh, They invested into a specific cryptocurrency because this person said this and this. So we never know what the agenda is behind people who are actually pushing this agenda. Because there might be investors of the cryptocurrency, there might be investors of a specific blockchain project. And that's why I'm saying have to be very careful when we, when we have these discussions on who has real expertise in it and who doesn't, who's doing research in it and who doesn't, who's making, um, promotions for it and who isn't. Um, and as I said, yes, with ai, it's, it's a bit easier to to have these conversations because it's based on factual knowing and based on research. With blockchain, it's a bit harder. And we actually see this coming with this next topic, which is quantum. Oh yeah. With quantum computing. I honestly don't get it. Uh, a friend of mine tried to explain it to me. I was like, yep, next seminar I'm gonna probably sit down and try and, uh, understand it. But we see this wave coming now too. Yeah. And this,

Johannes Castner: 1:12:37

no, I, I've, I've spoken to some people and, uh, um, who know a bit about it. Um, at the Santa Fe Institute when I was visiting there, and they, um, they say that we're still quite far from having an. A quantum computer that, you know, of course if we did have one, it, it would be, um, it would be quite powerful. Uh, they also say that, oh yeah. And of course crypto would be completely useless. Actually., Yasmin Al-Douri: that's, I So one of the major projects that IBM is working on is actually a quantum computer. Mm-hmm. And, uh, quantum computers also like if, if we're able to achieve it at that point, we're able to, uh, very much work on other privacy issues and other privacy issues will actually erase from it. Um, which is a whole other topic, but it just goes to show that, just to wrap this up, it just goes to show that, uh, yeah, we are mystifying web three as much as we are mystifying other technologies. Um, we're probably doing it through different outlets, most importantly through social media and people who want to make a profit out of it. Um, but we have to keep in mind that Web three doesn't exist.. It's, at the end of the day, it's just a movement. It's not a real place that is out there that we can already use. Mm-hmm.. Um, it's just a movement. And the actual idea behind the movement is, in my opinion, a good one. Great. Um, giving more autonomy to people, making sure that data is safe, that it's, uh, that people are able to, to enjoy their privacy, and that people are able to actually make use of their data. Fantastic. And that idea should be pushed more. Honestly. This, this idea should be pushed more, not only within the sphere of the web, but also in regulation, in culture, in pop culture and whatnot. Absolutely. I agree. I, I, I, I'm also a big fan of Jaron Lanier. And., uh, you know, I've read his, his book, like I said, some 10 years ago or something. it came out. Um, I had a really, really amazing conversation with you and, uh, you know, actually, you know, maybe I, I, I should give a real quick shout out to anyone who actually really knows something about Quantum. I would really love to speak to you on this show.

Yasmin Al-Douri: 1:14:55

Oh, please, please. I'm gonna listen.. Johannes Castner: Great. Great. And, um, well, you know, uh, thank you very much for, for coming on my show, and it was really fantastic to speaking with you, uh, uh, speaking with you and, and, um, I guess, you know, I, I'm out of questions, so, um, uh, you know, anyone out there though, any, any, anyone listening to this podcast, if you do have some questions, please post them in the comments section and, uh, let us know and let's the, let's keep the conversation going and let's expand it. Well, thank you very much, Yasmin. It was fantastic speaking with you. Thank you, hons, for having me. It was really great. Thank you.

Johannes Castner: 1:15:30

This show is published every week at 5:00 AM in New York City and

in Washington dc 2: 1:15:34

00 AM in Los Angeles, 10:00 AM in London, in the United Kingdom. And it is published in video format on YouTube and in audio only format on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, and many, many more. Next week I will be joining forces with Raj Shroff, and together we will attempt to dive deeply into deepfakes.

. Rajendra Shroff: 1:16:00

So what are deep fakes? An accessible kind of, uh, explanation for that is deep fake is just a combination of two words using deep learning to create some kind of fakery. To take this into the next level of detail, it's basically using machine learning techniques to alter, to digitally alter or even, uh, fabricate images, videos, and audio. Now, if we let that definition sink in, we think about, oh man, what was this gonna be used for? And I'm sure we'll get into this.