Future of Media, News and Misinformation | unDavos 2026

Only 2% of Americans say they trust the media "a great deal." Meanwhile, AI-generated misinformation is spreading faster than anyone can fact-check it, and the economic models that once sustained journalism are collapsing. Yet at unDavos 2026, a panel of media veterans and tech builders found unexpected reasons for optimism — from teens asking for newspaper subscriptions to the first real decline in social media adoption.

WHAT THIS PANEL COVERS

• Why social media adoption is showing its first meaningful decline, with younger users treating platforms as entertainment rather than information sources
• How AI makes it radically easier to create good stories and interactive content, while simultaneously enabling hyper-personalization that traps people in micro-bubbles
• Why decentralized platforms like Farcaster offer a model where content creators earn directly through micro-tipping rather than ad-driven attention harvesting
• How outdated algorithms in developing countries may paradoxically be an advantage — less hyper-personalization means less ideological lock-in
• Why real-world events like Davos are becoming more important than ever, with in-person gatherings actively reprogramming people's algorithmic filter bubbles

PANELISTS

• Alexia Leachman — Panel Moderator
• Mark Kollar — Partner, Prosek Partners
• Francesca Gargaglia — Co-Founder & CEO, Social+
• Jeff Wilser — Journalist, Author & Host of AI Curious
• Johnny Gabriele — Entrepreneur & Tech Investor

unDavos is a community-driven summit running during WEF week in Davos, democratizing the conversation around global challenges.

🌐 undavos.com

Tags: future of media, misinformation, AI and media, trust in news, social media decline, journalism, media economics, decentralized media, filter bubbles, Farcaster, Web3 media, personalized news, content creation, local news, digital media, media trust, echo chambers, unDavos, Davos 2026, WEF

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TRANSCRIPT

Good morning everyone. Thank you so much for getting up early and making it here on time. Please forgive us, we thought we'd wait a few more minutes for everyone else to arrive. Today we're going to be speaking on the future of media, news and entertainment. And we've got a really great selection of panellists who I'll introduce to you shortly. We'll then go into a discussion and we're going to open the floor for questions. So please feel free to raise your hand throughout the talk but also at the end if you want to have discussions directly with particular people or you have questions for the broader panel. Now in a world where information is everywhere, trust isn't and confidence is extremely low. So the future of news isn't just about formats and new platforms, it's about trust, attention that is technically engineered as well as human fuelled. Audiences are fragmenting, traditional news consumption is declining and we have this huge rise of personality led media which is reshaping how people encounter information and often it's outside the traditional institutions that we all grew up with. Combined with this we have misinformation that is now spreading at an exponential rate and we're able to produce it in a way that we never could before. It becomes more believable in many cases than it often is when you open up a newspaper. I think all of us today will be able to give some examples of how we've seen misinformation and even as experts in this field we will struggle to verify it and this is becoming an increasing problem. When I put together this panel one of the things I was really passionate about is that this wouldn't be so much a nostalgia panel or even a technology bashing panel but a discussion about how do we look forward, how do we build the economic models that sustain trust

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Good morning everyone. Thank you so much for getting up early and making it here on time. Please forgive us. We thought we'd wait a few more minutes for everyone else to arrive. Today we're going to be speaking on the future of media, news, and entertainment. And we've got a really great selection of panelists who I'll introduce to you shortly. We'll then go into a discussion and we're going to open the floor for questions. So please feel free to raise your hand throughout the talk, but also at the end, if you want to have discussions directly with particular people or you have questions for the broader panel. Now, in a world where information is everywhere, trust isn't, and confidence is extremely low. So the future of news isn't just about formats and new platforms, it's about trust, attention that is technically engineered as well as human-fueled. Audiences are fragmenting, traditional news consumption is declining, and we have this huge ride of personality-led media which is reshaping how people encounter information. And often it's outside the traditional institutions that we all grew up with. Combined with this, we have misinformation that is now spreading at an exponential rate, and we're able to produce it in a way that we never could before. It becomes more believable in many cases than it often is when you open up a newspaper. I think all of us today will be able to give some examples of how we've seen misinformation, and even as experts in this field, we will struggle to verify it. And this is becoming an increasing problem. When I put together this panel, one of the things I was really passionate about is that this wouldn't be so much a nostalgia panel or even a technology bashing panel, but a discussion about how do we look forward, how do we build the economic models that sustain trust and truth in the future. So I'm really happy to welcome some of our fabulous panelists today. First of all, to my right, we have Mark Collar, who I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of years ago at Davos and having a deep discussion on this. He is a partner at PROSEC, an integrated marketing and communications firm. He has spent more than 40 years as a journalist and media specialist developing stories for media and uh stories for business impact and the financial world. So Mark's going to be able to give us some context of what it was like when he first started in journalism and what it's like now interacting with it. Mark, could you tell us what it is specifically about the subject matter that excites you the most?

SPEAKER_05 2:47

Well, first of all, 40 years scared me when you said that, but it actually has been 40 years. No, thank you. I look forward to the discussion. We almost should be in a circle, I think. With this screen.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Yeah, this would be cool, actually.

SPEAKER_05 3:00

I've always been extremely curious. I think that's the number one reason I went into journalism, because I love to ask questions. And it was the one job that gave you the agency to keep asking people why, why, why and not get in trouble. So it was hard to, it was very difficult for me to move from journalism into public relations and reputation management because people will tell would ask me to do stories about them, and I would say there's no story here. But then I realized it was my job to really start probing and find out what that story is. So all the themes that Lexi just went through are the themes that really keep me up at night. As a former hardcore print journalist, I'm really worried about misinformation, the future of media. I was at a dinner with some old school journalists, the first female columnist for Time magazine and one of the founders of Political. And I asked them, I'm on this panel, what is the future of media? They came, they had the same answer, doomed. So we're gonna be a little more positive here and talk about some of the trends, but that kind of sets the stage a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Thank you so much, Mark. And I'm also really excited to welcome Francesca to the panel. So Francesca Gagaya, did I get that correct? Yeah. Yes, is the co-founder and CEO of Social Plus, a platform that helps companies transform their apps into engaging communities. Now we see that most of the statistics indicate that access to news is no longer direct to news website like it used to be in the past or um in print, but most of the access is coming through social. So, you know, um Francesca's opinions and experience here are going to be so valuable because she'll understand the mechanisms through which people can communicate out, not just through the news, but through the news into the social realm and back closing the loop, I presume.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

Yes, uh, that's correct. Thank you. Thank you for that. I'm very uh honored to be here. Yes, so what we do at SocialPlus is um essentially we help brands and companies to engage their communities on their own platforms. Um and this is starting to become a thing because uh obviously I bet all of you use social media to some extent. Um, and now you probably noticed that they become quite filled with spam, ads, misinformation. It's very hard to understand what's true and what's not. And many brands are starting to be increasingly concerned about that, about uh not being able to have a direct relationship with their audiences. Um, so what we support is kind of this uh trend of trying to go back to platforms that the brands own, where the experience can be a little bit more curated, a little bit safer, so you can really build something personal and long-lasting. So obviously, we do this from a technology point of view, but I think it encompasses uh many different angles. So I'm very excited about this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Thank you, Francesca. And I'm really excited to have Jeff Wilson here today. He's a journalist, an AI strategist. He's an author of eight books. We had a fabulous conversation about some of them. I will leave you to disclose which ones you want to talk about first. Some of them are on the more humorous side. He um is the host of AI Curious, which is a podcast, and he's the producer and host of the AI Summit at Consensus. So you are deeply entrenched in really the technology behind the future of news that's supporting it, and I'm sure we're gonna have some fantastic conversations around that. What I would really love to know is how do you feel about misinformation and bias and accuracy as a technology expert?

SPEAKER_04 6:49

Yeah, thanks so much, and it's great to be here. I, in a way, this is deeply personal for me, and it sits kind of in between my two worlds. I've been a longtime journalist for 20 years for places like New York Times, Wired, that kind of place, um, and on and on. And I'm used to that world in one sense, and now as deeply involved in AI as so many of us are in the technology AI space, it's like half my friends are journalists and editors who are terrified. And half my friends are kind of tech optimists. And there's this kind of two um almost two opposing forces right now of AI is making things easier to do, but at the same time, we all trust it less. So the question is which of these forces will win out? And my one-word answer to echo Mark is pain. I think that media is in deep trouble. But it's important to remember that was the case before AI, right? There are extremely um systemic macro issues of why media has been a shrinking pie for a long time, and AI is starting to accelerate those trends. So I'm optimistic about many, many, many things involving AI. Media is not at the top of my list of things that I'm optimistic about.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

It's really interesting to highlight that they were in a bad position before. Um, I was listening to a story last night about the history of coffee and how coffee had so much backlash, like government backlash. There were legal bans on it initially. It took a long time to roll out. You know, our initial reactions to new things, whether it be technology or even the first advertisement that was uh the first recorded one that I found was in the Boston Globe. And I read all the letters to the editors that came in over the weeks after. And people talking about this will never catch on, real backlash, feeling like their personal space is being invaded by this new thing. The human condition isn't primed to respond without fear to new things. And that does underpin our ability to survive. But I do think you're correct. A lot of these problems are being pinned on some technology, but actually it's the fear of new emerging things, the unknown. Which is why I do think it is prudent for us to look back now and again and remember where we were frightened before and how we coped. And with that in mind, I'd also like to introduce our final panelist for today, Mr. Johnny Gabriel. He is an entrepreneur and tech investor with a history in political consulting. So if there's ever an area where we are concerned about misinformation and the tactics that are being used, um Johnny has been behind all of that. Um, Johnny, I remember you mentioning a while ago about different social media campaigns that were being done a long time ago to target specific individuals with certain information. Um, could you say a word towards that just to give some context to everyone about misinformation and also targeted information?

SPEAKER_07 9:49

Yeah, so thank you for having me. The things we're all afraid of, to echo what Jeff was saying, uh, we've been doing them for 20, 25 years. I mean, we can even go as far back as yellow journalism, right? Uh misinformation was basically my job for seven years, not because we were trying to willfully mislead, but because it becomes a little bit of an arms race. Um, if so-and-so is going to say X and you don't respond with an equal measured uh like thought on the issue, you're losing the battle. And if you lose the battle, you'll never win the war. And so, yeah, we've been, you know, we've been forced to do misinformation for decades now, and it's only getting easier, faster, and more replicable with AI. But even before AI, we've had never trust a comment section. Like every comment section of every social media is filled with me mostly. Um, and if anyone agrees with you, it probably is me. Um and in addition to that, we were able to geo-target um people who work in governments. Uh, I can't say too much, but literally we were able to draw squares around uh the building, like New York City's state capitol, so that the only people that saw these advertisements were um the people who work in the state capitol, thinking it's a big ad campaign, but really we spent like 50 bucks just to plaster. We also uh plastered a CEO's house to make him think like Jo Joe is doing this thing. Um, it made it look like we were plastering his whole neighborhood and he was being shamed to all his neighbors. Um he should be shamed. Um, but the ads were only showing in his house. So we made him feel we made we made him feel like we were plastering the neighborhood with slander, um, but the ads were only going to his house.

SPEAKER_04 11:29

Or amongst friends. Who was it? There's no one listening here or off the record.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Rhymes with this is carrying though. And that's brings up a really important point that our digital worlds are essentially our own realities, right? We don't know if there's a, you know, if we're taking the blue or the red pill. And quite often a lot of people, when they're trapped within their own bubbles of information and algorithms, don't even know there is another pill. And this is where the influencer-led and personality brands are helpful because they break us out, they'll show us content that we may not have seen before. But inherently, those are almost just filter bubbles within filter bubbles. And you might have guessed, I'm kind of into bubbles of all different sorts. Um, just to give a little bit of context to myself, my name's Lexi Mills. I have been on the internet before I could write, so I could code before I could write. I remember the internet before search engines. And I spent ages on it. And when I was around seven years old and moved out to South Africa, and this was just as we moved from apartheid South Africa to the new South Africa. And in school, they rewrote history every six months, which as a child is extremely distressing because the bad guy is now the good guy, and if you put them down wrong on the test, they're like, no, no, that was last week. And so I started to collect all my history books, even my mathematics textbooks had different biases with them in them. And so from a very young age, I didn't believe that there was an absolute truth. I knew there were truths, and I knew how politics would influence those. And so as I grew up, I worked in music, which was a lot of fun because it was the beginning of social media and the very beginning of us being able to do more direct fan engagement, and then moved into news, and I now run an algorithm-based um comms firm. But this has been a passion of mine for so many years, and AI is really just exacerbating it from my perspective. And sometimes we need to make things worse before we make them better. And at this point, I think the spotlight is bigger, but I don't think, from my perspective, that the actual issue is massively different because it did exist before the technology.

SPEAKER_05 13:42

Can I add one thing to what you said when you mentioned the word media? I think I'd love to talk at some point today about how the definition of media has changed so much. I was at a dinner last night and the client called to say, You need to be with me. I'm going to be in a room, and I'm worried about what the media may how the media will interpret what I'm saying. And I'm like, there's no reporters there. What is he talking about? But what he was concerned about was people will be recording him.

SPEAKER_04 14:13

Everyone in this room is the media in a sense, right?

SPEAKER_05 14:16

And no matter what I said, if it was Chatham House rules, no one is gonna do that. He said, I need to go over all the talking points and stay on the message for this conversation. So that was a big um concern for me, and a light bulb, or however you want to describe it, was his definition for this old CEO at a big established firm. He was that at that moment having a bigger, wider definition of media than I am, and I'm in the business. So like it's um it's changing the way we have to approach everything.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

With that in mind, that sounds a lot like reputation. So we used to think about media as a means of getting information out, but now media uh seems to encompass reputation from beginning to end. And so what he's concerned about is rep his reputation and and potentially an indelible mark being made on that. Would that be correct?

SPEAKER_05 15:09

100%. The other thing I that makes me it's not uncomfortable, but I want to be aware of is I don't want my client to sound so prepared all the time, and he's taking the the training too far. I have to now help him be more natural and a little more relaxed, which is gonna be the next level of the media training. I do a lot, a lot of media training. And um it's probably the primary part of my job now. And when I start every training session, I ask the person, what do you read and how do you read it? Everyone says they read their media online, but that's not a surprise. And when I ask them what where are the stories coming from, they can't name the name, they can't name the title of the outlet. They said, I'm reading a summary, so they do not know if it's a legacy brand, a substack post, something from LinkedIn. And I think that's another big concern. Which has a profound impact, right?

SPEAKER_04 16:14

Right in the economics, I'm sure we'll get into the economics of the industry and how incentives have shifted and how revenue revenue models have shifted slash devolved slash melted down into oblivion. Uh, so that's a big problem that I think we're still trying to figure out what the answer is.

SPEAKER_07 16:31

Yeah, the thing with AI is that you know it feels like it came onto the scene like two or three years ago. It's like, no, we've had AI for 20 years. It's called the algorithm, right? Machine learning was first put like weaponized against us uh when Facebook and uh all those different social medias stopped becoming just a wall of your friends and started becoming a prediction mechanism to try and show you exactly what you wanted to see to stay on as long as possible. And unfortunately, what works is anger and fear. And so, like, you know, Mark, I could be your client one day. Give me another two years. And I I fear social media. On Twitter, I'm anonymous. Um, I don't use my real name because the mob, right? It's like it feels like the algorithm wants the algorithm rewards, the incentives reward like mob angry behavior. And and so then why would I throw myself into that meat grinder?

SPEAKER_01 17:22

So, with that in mind, this rings very deeply true of the fashion industry over the last 20, 30 years, where we designed an image that was almost unobtainable, and that became almost a norm when we had this uh uh second flow of eating disorders and body dysmorphia. Do you think that perhaps this fear of the indelible print, imprint, um, of the widening of media is actually altering what truth comes out in a way, never mind how misinformation is crafted. I'm thinking what I'm hearing here is that there is misinformation created by fear, because there is no ad lib if someone's sticking to a script. There is no accountability if we're hiding behind aliases or too scared to speak. Um, I'd love to hear all of your views on that.

SPEAKER_04 18:16

Well, I think Johnny is a very reasonable, smart person, as I'm sure Mark's client. I think that that might not be the majority of people. I think that there are, for better or worse, millions, if not billions, people who have no fear and are happy to throw themselves online, all the good, the bad, and the ugly, and say whatever they want, no matter how uh true or false that is. So I don't uh it's interesting. It almost reminds you of a center can that hold, right? If the things fall apart and we have people who are like maybe a little more measured and concerned deciding not to share, that's a big problem when you have the majority of people overly sharing nonsense that gets spread uh virally.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

If I can add something on that, um so I had a very wow moment a few months ago because I was attending a conference in Singapore and they had this panel session where they decided to put teens on stage and asking a lot of uh you know people in the audience to ask questions, and they were sharing uh so we specifically asked, okay, how do you feel? What's your relationship with social media considering that there are all these influencers living this apparently perfect life that create uh impossible-to-reach examples? So, how do you feel about sharing? How do you go about uh you know utilizing these platforms? And they responded something that really stuck with me. So they laughed and they said, Oh, but you know, what is in social media is just not true. Nobody believes that. So, what I realized is that younger generations um perceive social media purely as entertainment platforms, not as source of truth. So it's very different from the way we were perceiving social media as just a media platform rather than pure entertainment. So it's more similar to the relationship that growing up I had with TV. Um so I think that it's just a matter of perception. So we you know associated social media with the platform that you know we go to to consume news. Uh, and now I think this is slowly changing. Uh, to what, for example, uh, you know, Mark was saying before. I think we are going back to the brands and the relationship with the brands. So we know that now, you know, these gigantic platforms are filled with things that we can control. So for me, the real question is okay, then um how will we support the fact that people will be able to name the media outlet? How do we build that relationship that someone should pick, you know, their go-to platform uh that is somewhere uh you trust?

SPEAKER_07 20:50

Unfortunately, I don't think we're gonna go back to that world. Um, Mark, maybe you might have a different view from your experience, but like who's who was the um the publication of record? Is that the Boston Glow? I've I forget, but newspapers used to stake their and news outlets used to stake your their reputation on like what's being printed here is true. We've fact checked.

SPEAKER_04 21:11

The New York Times for a century has established itself as that identity. I think it's right or wrong. People don't have that view anymore, right? There is no clock fit to print. Thank you.

SPEAKER_07 21:22

Yeah, there we go. And but now all the social media accounts have are falling under that law that says that they're not responsible for anything that's posted on their uh on their walls, which makes sense because then they'd have to they'd go bankrupt. But um basically we've lost that and no one is really taking responsibility for who's going to be fact checking this thing.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

You know, I think it's changing. I think this is changing quite substantially. Like I gave you an example. So you obviously cannot do that on social media, uh, but you can do that on platforms that you own.

SPEAKER_06 21:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 21:52

So, for example, if you are I don't know, some some of the traditional legacy media companies are actually going in the direction of strengthening the engagement. Engagement on their own apps. And when you go, for example, on the Financial Times apps, you know that most of the comments are actually moderated, which means that if you go dramatically off topic or you're just talking uh you know bad about someone else, the policies of the platform will uh you know allow for someone to immediately take that down.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

So it's not about uh yeah, one of the things that I think we need to consider here is that how highly speed is valued. So about seven years ago, Bloomberg announced that it valued speed over accuracy. And speed and clickable headlines seem to determine far more what is published. And that seems very true across all platforms now. When it's a little bit more alarming with Bloomberg because they influence markets, but I know you have some views on this.

SPEAKER_05 22:46

I have so many comments here. But uh first of all, how speed is trumping accuracy, that's a big danger. When I was a reporter in the 80s, and Bloomberg was a new terminal, they were the first outlet to print the press release whole as soon as it came to them by fax. Okay. My job when I got that fax from Ford about their earnings was to call call Ford and confirm they sent it to me. By the time that happened, Bloomberg had the story up. Now, everyone knows when you write a press release, the good news is the lead. So that became the lead for everyone. And it made the job really hard to do the second day story within five minutes. So that started a long, long time ago, this speed. Um, but on legacy brands, I agree with you that the legacy brand model is broken for sure. But if there is a big story in the world, I still will go to CNN first to see how it's being covered and see the 24-hour news cycle of that story. Or I'll go to the New York Times, not in the morning, but when I come home, I get five print publications delivered to my apartment. I'll read those in the evening. I will still go there and feel it's more trusted.

SPEAKER_04 24:09

Mark, I do too, but I fear this we we are on our way out, right? I think your, I don't know. My guess is your average 14-year-old, 18-year-old, 22-year-old, they are not like 100% for New York Times and CNN. Like, which, which, you know, I think it's a tragedy as a longtime journalist, but I I think that's we're headed. My my my big thesis here is we're headed toward micro-targeting, micro-personalized news. With AI, we're all eventually going to have our little personalized Walter Cronkite that's giving you the news just the way you want it. Right.

SPEAKER_05 24:44

No, I agree with you 100%. And at the dinner two week nights ago, when I had the first female time reporter at the table, I had a guy from Harvard who is studying news in the media. I try to get him on our panel, and I said, Well, how do you answer that question? What's the future of media? He goes, Personalities. 100%. I have three podcasters, and that's what I go to every single day. I'll get you on his list for sure. But you're right.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

I think there's an interesting thing here around the economics as well, because economics makes something more appealing. And uh I don't know if anyone's been down to the Time magazine um house at the moment. We were discussing earlier that it kind of looks like a shack, and we were trying to work out is this deliberate? Is this like commentary? Because right next door is meta. And meta looks sexy, it looks beautiful, it looks inspiring. And I think this bait that's being used to draw different audiences in is also influencing things. And if that's coming down to economics, then the question is how do we get to a place where the economics of truth are viable? Because fact-checking is critical, but uh there are very few ways to absolutely do it unless you take time. Time seems to be a factor we can't use. There are fact-checking tools, but they are not instilled within the nature of our publications. So do we need, is this an economic or a systemic needing requiring legislation challenge to ensure that truth and accuracy has an opportunity to survive and therefore some of the elements of traditional journalism? Um Francesca, do you have some thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_03 26:28

I think we're putting a lot of different things together because uh when we talk about fake news, for example, like I don't think that they represent uh the majority of the problem. So the the great majority of news that are uh posted by you know reputable brands are actually fairly fact-checked. Uh, sometimes, of course, speed is uh very important, uh, but at the end of the day, um I I trust, I would like to say, uh big big media companies or reputable sources when they put publish news. The problem is that if we consume these news on uh TikTok or on uh Instagram, then we are part of this gigantic echo chamber where our feed will just keep showing us content that goes in the same direction and is very similar. So the algorithm and the way then these news are fit to us, uh, it's pretty much completely out of control. So I was witnessing this. Um, I was sitting next to a friend when um the war in Palestine started, and I made a comment. I don't want to go into anything uh you know political, but I made a comment saying, wow, it seems that everybody is talking about Israel and why they're doing this. And it was like, whoa, really? Everybody's talking about Palestine. And then we opened our phones and our feed were showing us a different world. And and this made me realize that it's not about what's published, it's about what we believe is true based on what we see.

SPEAKER_07 27:57

Francesca, I I love what you're doing, and I love that you're giving brands platforms that people can uh trusted media can be put in. But I fear that if you five of them are successful and they get all of their people to move away from Twitter and TikTok onto their platforms, the next logical step is to get more people to come and to put different content on. And if you fast forward 12 months, we're just gonna have another social media uh probably, but it's a different uh revenue model, right?

SPEAKER_03 28:24

Uh so social media make money out of engagement, so that they really don't care at all about the quality of what's posted because the only way that it's relevant for them to make money is to keep you attached to you to the screen. Uh so the quality of the content doesn't make any sense. But if you are on the platform of the Washington Post, uh they make money uh based on uh you know the number of readers they have. So quality as a way more important uh, you know, uh angle rather than just keeping people on the screen.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Could we take a moment to look at I know we've spoken about context and where people are receiving information, but I think we've got two people on this panel who are used to writing or producing long form content, books, podcasts. And I think a secondary challenge to this is attention span. So you'll realize maybe like 10 years ago, all the social share buttons moved from the bottom of articles to the top, and that's because most people don't read to the bottom. So shares went up significantly by moving them up. And I think one of the greater challenges, if we take deliberate misinformation out, accidental, because you're focusing on speed, and then you look at how do you tell a story accurately in a headline? How do you think we tackle this problem? Mark, do you have some thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_05 29:44

Well, that's a it's a big problem. It's gonna be tough to solve. I remember talking to a journalist from The Guardian who wrote what he thought was the best story about the upcoming French election. This was several years ago, and the newsroom was very excited about it. And he had a classic headline and it got no traction. He read what was being developed that later. What was the content that was taking over platforms, and New Direction had put out a new album? So he rewrote the headline to read French election seen taking new direction. It became the most linked-on story in the history of The Guardian that year. So there is an art to writing these headlines that I don't think is misinformation, but you're directing the reader in a certain way. If it bleeds, it leads. Yeah. There's 66 characters in a Bloomberg headline. So I'm very careful to make making sure I have all the news in that headline when I'm talking to the reporter.

SPEAKER_04 30:57

I think Johnny made a great point earlier mentioning how misinformation has been around not for decades, but for centuries. Um, I wrote a book years ago about Alexander Hamilton and studied the revolutionary era and learned a lot about the misinformation and smear campaigns between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in the first presidential election. And it was wild how they would make this ad hominem, like vicious attacks, you know, not the two of them uh themselves, but their kind of uh their minions and so on. So it's been around. What's different, I fear, is that, and to your question, Lexi, which is an excellent question, about um how we're creating, distributing, how we're framing things. And and Mark's totally right that we've done for a long time, we can slant headlines to make it kind of take this one part of the piece and blow that out of proportions, the whole thing feels different. I think though, to me, it goes back to the logical endpoint, and that's personalization. Um, for a while, we we we we went from the original, okay, here is the truth. That fractured do we have right media and left media? And then we kind of have like, okay, far right, medium right, far left, center left, but there's all kind of buckets. I think eventually that will be getting more and more granular as AI makes it so much easier to customize news. And we'll say, all right, I know this person, you like your news exactly on this spectrum. And then when that personalized Walter Cronkite also happens to be your health coach and your chief of staff saying, Oh, you have a meeting at three o'clock today, uh, that reminds, don't forget that you should mention to Sarah, who you're meeting with, that last night news broke about this product release, right? So once we all are consuming news in a way that we are kind of hyper uh wired to enjoy it and it aligns our confirmation bias, that gets us down this path where we're we're not at all looking at any kind of objective source of truth. And that to me is a systemic problem that I don't think we can solve through regulation. I don't think there's a clean, clear economic model for like the truth, just as there's not really a clean economic model for helping to prevent climate change damage, right? It's just a bigger problem than any one person can solve. And sorry for being such a doom and gloomer here, but it's a real concern.

SPEAKER_07 33:43

I'm happy you equated the two because I have the same philosophy for both. Like climate change will do a 180 when it becomes profitable to clean shit up. And misinformation will become will become less when it becomes profitable to correct the record. And I think we do have what I'm really passionate about are micropayments and um, you know, different types of blockchain technologies that can allow us to facilitate these things. But you know, it's really hard to sub to agree to pay$20 a month to three different organizations uh when you're already having a hard time making rent. But paying three cents per article uh for someone on a Patreon that I trust, and granted, confirmation bias is a hell of a drug. And so it has to get so bad, unfortunately, that I think people are going to crave well, where are we? Good news.

SPEAKER_03 34:34

I agree, I agree. I think uh also another interesting part of that is that um it's not really about it's not only about fixing misinformation, but it's also about making people more aware that they shouldn't believe about everything they read. So I was having an interesting discussion yesterday with a person from Amnesty International, and they were sharing that they're doing a lot of work in the direction of, okay, we can just ban social media for teens, for example, because it would be probably even counterproductive, because the more something is banned, the more it's sexy, and maybe you want to use it. But at least we could educate on how to approach these platforms, how to use them, right? And there is this because we used to think that media is just true. Uh, and many people still have this natural association. So sometimes you go on, you know, TikTok and you see a reel that is talking about something that is happening in the world. And it's just we are just so inclined to think that that's true, and and not everybody knows how algorithm works and and how you know this system is actually being fed. So for me, it's just about educating, talking more about it. It can be in schools, it can be, you know, adding uh pop-up with warnings, uh, can be anything. I'm not suggesting we should label apps in the same way we do it with cigarettes, but but maybe we should.

SPEAKER_05 35:53

No, I love this topic. I think about it a lot because uh it's not the platform's job to fix it. And content is not always the problem, but I worry that we're not raising critical thinkers or how to be a better consumer of media or information. I know that the um let me see, make make sure I get this center right. Um the MIT Media Center, Media Lab, approached this topic. They were very concerned about it. And they went back and looked how ancient civilizations were forming dialogues, like around the campfire. How is that different than how we form dialogues today? And what they came back was was they're asking themselves different questions when they have a conversation. They don't ask, they weren't asking questions as what is your opinion of this, or do you agree with me? It was all based, share your experience with me. So they took focus groups and had the same conversations when they were allowed to talk about their experience or give their opinion. Same topic, different questions, much different conversations. So now they're going to firms like you saying, how can we develop apps and platforms that have an engagement around experience versus yes or no answers or just your opinion?

unknown 37:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:24

And I think uh Johnny made a great point about people being willing to pay for things that they trust. And to be a smaller positive here, uh, we are seeing some positive developments of Substack, obviously, right? People saying, hey, I this reporter, they do good fact-checking, they do due diligence, I trust them, I will pay directly to them. That's a positive shift. Um, I interviewed recently the CEO of Medium, and they are seeing explosive growth. And uh the CEO, Tony Sellline, his thesis is as people are trusting less public spheres, they might write more privately into kind of their private networks that people will then pay for, right? And so I think there could potentially be an economic model where people are willing to pay for truth. Again, my my concern is that we'll be dwarfed by all the other non-truth things out there people are paying or not paying for. But I think there is there is hope that we could be nudged toward truth with these economic levers.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

I think that's really interesting. I've been considering that we pay a lot for publications, but it occurred to me I might want to put my value system into Google. Because I have, when I ask an AI a question, I say very specifically, give me all the viewpoints, right? Well, what if I could make that a default? And maybe this is something that's more viable with an anti-big.

SPEAKER_04 38:58

I love that idea.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

And I would pay to say, please give me an anti-bigot perspective. Please give me a bigot perspective, you know, and put them side by side. I've done a couple of side-by-side demonstrations of um their web browser overlays. It's not very good from a UX perspective. But I think we will get to a point where Google has to find new ways of making revenue because we're seeing the economic slide and the disruption there with them selling off a lot of their smaller firms. And I think we might find a place where hopefully kids could be in school and they'll do what are your value systems for life? And let's assess those value systems, and they go home with their little QR code that they can scan in front of their computer, and maybe it's something that gets updated every year. Because the education system as a whole has struggled to keep up with technology. But like some of my friends' kids who are five or six having bomb-ass internet safety education. This is a fold-in to something. And when we're trying to adapt a behavior, um, I is it called habit stacking, where you stack one habit on top of the other. If we already have internet education, our generation might be struggling a little. But the next one, I do feel quite hopeful, will be more considered. Do you have some thoughts on that, Mark, in terms of different generations being able to be more independent ahead of time with their choices?

SPEAKER_05 40:25

Well, I'm kind of stuck on habit stacking for a second there. My habit stack is ridiculous, right? My habit stack says habit stacks. Um I'm a new grandfather. Congratulations. Yeah, two months ago. So I'm very worried about like, or thinking about how will Suki grow up and get information. And her father, my son, has made a rule. No picture of this child will ever go on social media. And that's a whole different approach, right? I'll get to your question in a second, but it just reminded me that what is the world she's gonna grow up in? How is she going to get her news? How what are her habit stacks going to be? I work a lot with a company that has five generations within the co-organization. And when they are introducing AI to 500,000 employees at five different organizations, it's the same manifesto, but it's interesting to see how they upskill each generation in a different way. Some are they're using TikTok to give the information, some are town halls, but they're using the device that will speak to that generation. That's very time consuming. That's very expensive, and it takes a big commitment for a firm to do that. So I don't know if everyone has that drive or that motivation or those resources to address every generation and how they should adopt and upskill with AI, or even how they should read the media, or that I mean, that's a big issue. Maybe we can all start a foundation one day and address this.

SPEAKER_04 42:18

I think it's really interesting, uh, Mark and Lexia. I I love that that vision you had of kind of actively interrogating and asking, hey, what are the values of this news source and asking for different perspectives? I love that. And I'm gonna give now, because I'm a Libra and I do on the one hand, on the other hand, on a positive and negative note, on a positive sign, Mark, I think that with AI, it will get easier to create interactive contents and even whatever articles look like in a year from now, five years, 10 years, we'll be able to uh almost like Socratic dialogue. I think it's one of the most encouraging trends in education is what was once the province of the wealthy to have a tutor. In theory, every kid can have a tutor that speaks exactly the way they should be spoken to in their language, literally and figuratively. That's now doable with AI. So take that idea and bolt it onto news and media and to lexi your idea of saying, hey, I give me bigot mode and non-bigot mode, show me them perspectives. We can do that. So on the positive note, that is all on the table. It's all in play. My concern, though, is fundamentally people are lazy. And I think that the folks in this panel, the folks in this room who are here in Davos, taking the time to be in uh to engage in this conversation, yes, you will ask hard questions. You will say, please challenge me, show me my blind spots. I don't think the average person is going to do that. I think they will say, hey, What happened? Oh, that alliance is my worldview? Awesome. Give me more of that, please. Thank you. Well, that's my concern.

SPEAKER_07 44:06

Well, I have good news for you and a small story. So on the on the side of being lazy, I was telling you guys before this. Um, I was trying to read uh Gotolesher Bach, which is a really hard book, and I created a Hofstad bot that basically taught me the book one in one telegram message at a time. Um, and then I was inspired by that. I love David Graeber. And so I was like, I'd love a Graber bot. So I made myself a Graber bot. And I'm I'm an um emerging tech investor. So I was like, please write me five tweets praising crypto. Now, David Graeber hated crypto, and my AI bot refused. It would not do what I asked it to do. I am I am your master. And it was like, no, I hate crypto. Here are five tweets bashing crypto. And I was like, no, no, try again. And he's like, sure, here's a tweet. And it's like, it praises crypto. It didn't. Like he refused. Anyway, moral of the story. One thing we can do, those of us in Davos now, we are the ones who will be building the AIs. We are the ones who will be making the decisions on how the system prompts look in the back end, how what sort of things are going to be fungible and malleable and what sort of things are going to be hard coded. We can hard code bias, or we can hard code the the identification of bias, and we can hard code the if someone is going down the rabbit hole, bring them back. That's something that we all can do.

SPEAKER_01 45:27

I think that's really interesting because my first question to that is, but will we? Um but I am deeply passionate that we can make these choices. Something that can be used for bad can equally be used for good. Like you can spread um information that empowers people using the same tactics that you use for spreading propaganda. But the real question comes to will we? Now, the one thing we've seen historically in technology is you get this sort of explosion of options and ideas, and everyone, you know, whether it's different types of content, and then we funnel down. And then we get an explosion and a funnel down, and where we almost become overwhelmed with all the choice, all the optionality, and then we're like, nope, bring it back to simple.

SPEAKER_03 46:12

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

And I think it will be exciting to see that there's so much conversation around this being intentional, being deliberate when it comes to news, truth, technology, that I think the best hope comes from consumer demand. So we get to vote with our actions, with our attention spans. And if we can create more of a momentum around that, I feel more positive. Because I don't feel that economically our publications are in a position where they get to be the voters, right? It has to be that audience. So maybe this needs to be a wider campaign. I mean, how do you think we get people to vote and encourage this kind of focused behavior, demanding um a choice in the types of information they receive?

SPEAKER_04 47:02

No, no, no, but I I think for better or worse, and you can guess my bias on is that better or worse, people have voted. And they voted saying, I want to look at a nine-second vertical video. That is how I want to consume my news. And they want to do it quickly, and they want personalized um media for them. I I think in there, and I think they will continue to vote that way, however, that evolves, however, the format shifts. And uh we're uh I don't I think there will be, and unless you love your question, will they? Will they will they? We can we can do that. As as Johnny said, we can create um the right uh values hard-coded into our LLMs. That can be done, will we? And I I don't see what the financial upside is to be safe about that, to do it responsibly. There's a lot more upside to be engaging financially than there is to be responsible and safe.

SPEAKER_03 48:06

I have a different view. Please don't go wrong by the way.

SPEAKER_04 48:10

I want you to be right.

SPEAKER_03 48:11

So I think uh honestly, I see this is the first year uh in the last decades where we are starting to see a very strong uh drop in terms of social media adoption trend. So a lot of people are starting to actually drop off from social media, and it's something that I'm starting to experience even in my like personal network. Like uh I didn't know anyone who didn't use social media before. In the last six months, I know 10 people who are completely out of social media because they find them dopamine addictive, because they find them, you know, reinforcing uh these eco chambers. So this is actually becoming a thing. And I was very surprised because I was spending, you know, the holidays, the Christmas holidays with my family, and I was asking my little cousins what do you want for Christmas? And three of them out of a million, I'm Italian, so I have the biggest family possible. Um, they asked actually a subscription to uh you know media outlet. And I was so I was like, is this a thing? Like, do you want a subscription to the post? Like, I never why is why so? So uh there must be something going on that maybe we are underestimating. So I am a bit optimistic, and I don't think that this will at any point replace a social media. So I'm not suggesting that social media is gonna be is gonna die, right? But it's just gonna become like for for the youngest generations. Um, TikTok is just a place to spend time where they are bored. It's not the place where to take their information or to engage or to be part of communities. So I think there is this trend. Like we have been, you know, going huge, and now we are reverting and going you know, more curated and niche and local, and the quality of the experience is actually starting to become more and more of a thing. So if we have the ability, it's an opportunity for companies out there, for even in you know, innovative media platforms to create environments where the experience can be very engaging, yet a little bit more curated and sophisticated. And I think this could actually save news.

SPEAKER_05 50:17

Well, I uh go, go ahead, go ahead. I was gonna say, I think we're on there's parallel tracks here, right? If you look at Davos, this is the most well-attended Davos in history. What do people want to do? They want to convene, they want to tell stories, they they want to get together. At my firm, one of the fastest growing businesses is finding the right conference for our clients and making sure they have the best experience at that conference. That was not happening before COVID at all. So I think I have 35 clients here. It's the highest number of clients we've ever had in financial services. And this is not a financial services event, this is a geopolitical event. So there is this demand to gather and get together and see things live. So I always like to do this program called the Nine Lives of an Asset. Ten years ago, that asset used to be the newspaper story, and we would say, what else can we do around this story that we just placed to make it efficient for you that you took the time? Now that asset is the event. What can we do at this event to make it more efficient? And it includes social media, it includes earned media, includes owned, but a lot of it is networking. And I think that's what we're seeing, a little of everything here, right? The the menu is maybe expanding too much.

SPEAKER_04 51:48

Well, I uh I love that. And I love what Francesca said about that trend of social media. I deeply hope you are right, and that continues. And on another positive note, I think one thing that is uh interesting that can be done now. On my podcast, AI Curious, I interviewed a startup that is working to make it easier for companies to almost do the work that local newsrooms are no longer able to do. As we all know, for reasons that have nothing to do with AI, local newsrooms have been dying for decades, right? Local newspapers have shuddered. Um, this AI company is saying, hey, we can transcribe courthouse minutes. We can, like, there are things that are happening around communities that AI can make it easier to report on. And then you have to keep a human in the loop. Okay, now I'm gonna go through and look at the highlights and make sure I'm getting this right. So I think kind of back to your point, there potentially could be new um outlets and new ways to deliver stories that are not being created right now. And also, hopefully, potentially, these even will be accurate and true. So I think there is some optimism as well.

SPEAKER_01 53:00

I agree with you there. In COVID, we actually saw a huge uprising in um people demanding local news, which in Britain, because of a Google update, um the Panda update, most of our local publications went under. And so there are lots of different um AI tools and things that started to come out to serve that. I think what's quite interesting about what you've all said here is about the real world interactions. Now, I can speak to the tangible haptic notions of that, but from an algorithmic standpoint, we're all influencing each other's algorithms by virtue of being in this room. Being in this room means we're already within a filter bubble, but we're we're starting to poke at it. And I think real world events, as they become more and more important again, and that we're making more effort with them, that bouncing of phones off each other, the our digital algorithmic devices that we're carrying around with us, we're reprogramming them. And I think that's quite an exciting possibility. Are we going to change someone from one extremist to another with that? Probably not. But what we might be able to do is instead of having left and right, we start to increase the middle category where there's more movement and more ability to move within that section without having to turn yourself from a zero to a one. So that potentially, if we keep to see that, seeing that happen, and I think we will, it's slow, it's not going to be fast, but I think there's quite a lot of opportunity there. Johnny, you had something to say.

SPEAKER_07 54:29

Yeah, I was listening to what what everyone's saying. I'm inspired to say to Mark, actually, like advice for your son and advice eventually for your grandchild. I think what I'm hearing is join a community. Right now it we feel like we're part of a community or communities, but it's very parasocial. No offense, Jeff. But even podcasts are very, you know, I have parasocial relationships with all my podcasters. And I think what we really need to encourage ourselves and those younger than us is that a community is a group of people who will answer the phone when you call them, uh, know your name, right? A community isn't something that you see while you're scrolling. You're not a part of a community if you're just agreeing with like this large group of people. And I think, and I'm I'll the first to admit that I need to take my own advice, but I think we need to seek out and participate in as many communities as we can. Totally agree. Love that.

SPEAKER_01 55:20

Um, I thought it might be quite nice to open the floor to some questions or thoughts. Is there anybody you would like to pose a question or position a thought that you would like the panelists to comment on? Hi.

SPEAKER_02 55:40

Thank you. I find everything you're sharing extremely interesting, but I feel it's very much centered on Europe and North America, and everywhere else in the world, and I've seen it firsthand in India and Nepal, for example. Um, this is actually a very big mean of communicating, and like social media is actually one of the main resources you're going to. And uh, I was just wondering like um we are stepping back and analyzing this, but in a specific context, is it applicable to everywhere in the world? And uh when this is your only mean of getting information and you don't have, for example, enough money to pay for a subscription, how do you access the news? And then how do you make sure that the news you're accessing are actually uh trusted?

SPEAKER_03 56:33

Well, I live in Bangkok, so is that is the Thailand is uh the number one country in the world for hours average number of hours spent on mobile? So it's uh it's literally everywhere. So it's a very good question. And again, I think it's really about in in what I'm seeing around me, it's a lot about education. Um so I don't think that we can just prohibit social media, but we can definitely educate how people consume contents on social media and uh you know their perception of truth. Um, so something that the Thai schools, for example, and government do try to do very well is to encourage people, for example, to follow um influencers uh uh that have different opinions. So to always this is a very big thing. So every time that you're a strong believer of something, um, you would do, at least my friends, uh, they would also try to follow someone that is supporter of the opposite. And it's just because they try to you know educate themselves in being more open-minded. Uh, but I totally understand with you that the problem is about you know this community is being completely chaotic and unmoderated. Um, so so my approach to that is just to educate the consumer on how to uh you know just not believe on everything they see.

SPEAKER_04 57:54

So quickly echo, uh chime in on that. I taking a kind of wider lens view of an excellent question, I to me the North Star is that tech inevitably gets cheaper. It will get cheaper and cheaper to deploy these AI models at scale, and that won't be global. So I don't know exactly when or how we'll get there, but my thesis is that globally AI will inevitably personalize the news and make it more and more granular. I think whatever country you are, and however, whatever the format is, I don't know. Will it be more video? Will it be more interactive? Will it be a hologram? Will it be immersive in some metaverse? I don't know. But I think eventually things will get personalized. And there's a very exciting opportunity to have that be personalized in an effective way where we're asking Lexi smart questions. Oh, show me the other side. I want to know how this other country is viewing this issue. That's possible. It's also possible that we're all gonna get the news just how we like it and not see other sides. But I think wherever you are in the world, we have personalized news eventually.

SPEAKER_01 59:08

And to your point, Jeff, um so I've actually studied a lot of algorithms outside of the UK and the US, particularly South Africa, because I was passionate about it. Um when I grew up, um sanctions were abolished in 1991, but they new media didn't come in until 1994. So I've lived in a world of sanctions, and what I've realized is a lot of um non-US, non-European countries, even some of the European, are on very outdated versions of Google. Now, for many years, their algorithms, because the algorithm used to be manually coded, now it's self-learning, but they're self-learning from different points, right? So they're still a little outdated. The beautiful thing is the outdated algorithm is actually, I would consider, a preference right now, because it's not so hyper-personalized. So you're not getting this quite the same locked view. So in some ways, it will speed up over time and it will equalize. But I think there are countries that were disadvantaged by the lack of engineers focusing on algorithmic development, and now that is in fact an advantage. We also find in those territories that um radio engagement is a lot higher. And so when you've there was always a way to find news, and radio is better from not just um a cost-effective perspective, but power, but then also data. Because we think so much about the technology and the access to these platforms. But the access, the primary thing, first you have the device, the second is the data, and data costs are still incredibly high. But as we get more satellites up, I think we'll find a democratization democratization of access to data. And I think that becomes very exciting for those territories. But you're not wrong. They are seeing in all over the world in different countries, we are seeing slightly different news and we're seeing slightly different targets because the economics don't add up for the search engines. Right? They want to target and spend the most money for the customers that are going to spend the most on their platform. But I think we'll find different things present over time, and there will be an equalization. But for now, I actually think this is some positivity to um having an outdated algorithm.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:25

I'm glad you brought up radio because I saw a stat out here this week on CNBC that said African nations have the highest trust in media of anywhere in the world. It was 90%, and the US was down at the bottom. And I can see how radio would build trust because it's a voice, it's almost like someone's entering your home, reading you the newspaper. That may be one of the reasons why.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:48

And I think accessibility as well. You know, you can make a radio with a nail and a bit of wire, which is always quite exciting. Um you had a question.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:59

Just uh thinking about another panel conversation uh yesterday where we're talking about individuals having data sovereignty and being able to actually, you know, kind of um be paid for their time and attention. Um, any thoughts on that? Because I feel like that might be a bit of a paradigm shift um from the models that you're talking about about the the individual having to pay whether it be sense um, you know, for an article or whether it be a subscription. Is there another way?

SPEAKER_07 1:02:27

Yeah, I I think I mean I'm inspired every day by the Web3 space, even though it is going through a little bit of tumultuous time. Um there there are platforms out there like Farcaster, where it's a decentralized social media platform that has slowly been building its follower base, where um yeah, the the ad revenue doesn't necessarily have to immediately go straight to the platform. It can be split amongst the the various people who are actually populating the platform. And Farcaster is really cool. People are able to tip each other, and you're actually able to tip each other in currencies that aren't necessarily like the US dollar, right? And then those two currencies rise and fall with uh, you know, whatever. But it allows people to participate in a closed ecosystem uh without having to shell out money that they may not afford, and it allows this ecosystem to bootstrap itself and to grow. And so, yeah, I mean, show me the incentive, I'll show you the outcome. I've been waiting for social media to start implementing microtipping or any sort of um incentive structure that rewards people for good behavior as opposed to just trying to keep eyeballs on screen as long as possible.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:35

Um, yeah, I find that really interesting as well. I've covered the crypto, blockchain, web three space uh for some time. And one big problem we've all kind of touched upon a bit in different ways is the power these platforms have. And even people who are successful on a platform, if that platform goes away or loses relevance, suddenly your audience, your community can be just gone, vanish. And so if we're able in this decentralized way to be able to um tip people, to pay them directly for their contributions, and that could be a news article, it could be a fact check, it could be their time. Um, that is a that I think that that's promising. Um, we'll I view this as kind of like a Davids versus Goliath thing, but the good is, you know, there are a lot of Davids, a lot of slingshots, but Goliath's pretty damn big. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:26

It's interesting because what I'm hearing across these answers is a delineation between unconscious voting and the desire for systems that allow us to have conscious voting. And those conscious voting systems could easily be weighted more. And so if we're choosing to microtip versus accidentally watching an hour of cat videos, right? And we can have those as voting systems. I inherently want to be positive about the future. I don't believe that we get a positive outcome unless we are positive. It's a little bit of a catch-22 situation there. But I do understand there are great risks. From my perspective, I think we're probably going to have a lot of things get worse. And I think we're going to have a couple of unexpected winter blossoms come out of the snow of things like microtipping platforms. And I think we might get to see some really gorgeous, beautiful aspects of humanity. My job is largely studying human behavior online. So I see what everyone searches on porn sites, and there's some real interesting stuff. Just so you know, no one cares about blur jobs. Lowest search volume of everything in the world. Pirate porn gets more search volume. Isn't that beautiful? Awesome.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:36

Who had that on their bingo card this morning in Davos?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:40

But we humans can be remarkable. You know, just because bad news and negativity does tend to perform higher, there are remarkable things there. And I do feel that we will see some gorgeous things about humanity. And I think you know, we encourage children when they do something well. I think we'll encourage ourselves. But yes, my My overarching view is that there are going to be some real big bumps along the way. I think potentially for some closing thoughts, could I ask all of the panelists to put their perspectives on what they feel positive about? What inevitable truths we're going to have to suck up and swallow here? And what things should we be nervous about?

SPEAKER_05 1:06:19

Well, I'm going to pivot from pirate porn to longevity. It's my second favorite topic. And I go around pirate porn? No, I I like my mantra is I want to live to be a healthy hundred. Everyone in my circle knows that. And now people are saying, why would you stop at 100? And I agree with them. I think there's so much exciting things happening with AI and disruptive technology. I want to see where media goes. I want to take the ride with everyone on how I'm going to be consuming my information, how I'm going to be paying for it, how I'm going to be contributing to it. It's super, super exciting. But at the core of all of it is telling a good story. Right? We're all storytellers, and those stories need to have anecdotes and data points to have some type of impact. There's always going to be a water cooler. Right? And we're just figuring out a better way to have a water cooler with this technology. And that's pretty exciting.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:20

For me, um, I mean, I love what you shared before about communities because I think it all goes down to that. Um, I think human beings can be amazing, and when we actually come together in communities and work together towards a shared goals, the you know, power of that can be incredible. So what the reason why I really used to love social media when they initially came out is because they made me feel part of something, because they made me feel, you know, encounter other humans that I could share something with, maybe you know, living the other side of the world. So I think that the power of this, uh, it's beautiful. So now all these negative sides that we mentioned, they are kind of obscuring a little bit the incredible positive power of social media. I mean, I met my co-founder on social media, and that changed my life. I, you know, the the there are so many positive implications. So I think even about, you know, when I look at the future, I think that technology, if used well, uh in particular, can actually be a magnific source of positive change. So it's about having the right regulations and educations in place to enable for that rather than just focusing on the bad.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:34

What a time to be alive in the world of media. I would the way I look at it is there are almost like a game of two on two. Pick your sport, basketball, what have you. There are two forces that they're excited about and two that I'm not. And I don't know which side will win this game of basketball, what have you. The things that I'm excited about are AI and tech makes it so much easier to create and tell good stories, right? Even for like my my podcast, AI Curious. There are so many tedious parts of podcast production that would have taken like 15, 20 hours that can do like no one wants to like create, like, figure out what tags to put on a YouTube video. Ugh, that's what what drudgery. If I can quickly do that, right? That's a positive thing. Secondly, we can create interactive and back and forth engaging content and news that you can actually engage with. That's great. That's a positive. But on the other side of this battle, we have personalization, which I fear will put all of us in a micro bubble, and then also the corresponding lack of trust. And so there's some exciting developments with the ability to create more efficiently and also the ability to have back and forth engagements, but the lack of trust and the personalization and bubblization, I'm not hopeful about. And so it it we're we're at an inflection point that I don't there are many questions, I don't see a lot of crystal clear good answers just yet.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:07

That's very fair. And I appreciate your sentiment on weighing both sides up. I don't think it's gonna be linear, I don't think it's gonna be fast, but I think you're correct. There are gonna be interesting parts along the way. Uh Johnny, would you like to give some final comments?

SPEAKER_07 1:10:20

Yeah, here's some uh unasked for advice. Um build something. Don't consume. Uh, if at any point you're feeling down about the future, you're feeling down about AI, um, open up Claude, get a free subscription to Cursor, don't use Chat GPT, trust me, um, and build something. Just ask it to build you something. I don't care if it's something that puts hats on your cat or to reminds you to water your plants, see how easy it is to create today. Open up AI, uh Google's AI Studio, make an image, um, start a newspaper, start a website, see that what you can do in two hours and realize that like the power has never been stronger in the individual. And there's so many things we can do with that. And whenever I get down, I put hats on my cats.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:10

Thank you very much, everyone. Um, the speakers will be around afterwards, so we're very happy to take questions and have discussions. I really appreciate you taking time out of your schedules in a very busy WIF to very early morning. All of you and all of you. It's a really important subject, and it's very encouraging to see people getting up before 9 a.m. at WIF to uh listen and discuss and be part of this. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:33

Thank you.