Amongst many HealthTech-related topics, on a broader scale, in this episode, we ponder the impacts of technology on our society. How does it shape our humanity? Are we on the path to a better life despite the fears often associated with AI and technology?
Guest: Dr. Bruce Y Lee, Executive Director of PHICOR (Public Health Informatics, Computational, and Operations Research) [@PHICORteam]
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-y-lee-68a6834/
On Twitter | https://twitter.com/bruce_y_lee
Website | https://www.bruceylee.com/
On Forbes | https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/
On Psychology Today | https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/bruce-y-lee-md-mba
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Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
Welcome to another thrilling episode of Redefining Society, a podcast that dives deep into the intersections of technology, cybersecurity, and society. This is your host, Marco Ciappelli, coming to you as always from ITSPmagazine. Our conversations explore the impact of tech innovations on every aspect of human life, and today's episode promises to be both eye-opening and informative.
Joining us today is Bruce Y. Lee, a professor at the City University of New York School of Public Health and executive director of FICO, a research group focused on the interplay of AI, technology, health, and public health. Bruce is also a journalist who covers health, healthcare, and science for Forbes and other publications.
In this episode, we focus on a topic that has drastically transformed every aspect of our lives: the pandemic. More than just discussing the end of the federal public health emergency, we broaden our perspective to explore the lasting impacts of this crisis. We delve into what we've learned so far, the anticipation of similar situations in the future, and how technology plays a pivotal role in healthcare policies and humanity at large.
Throughout our discussion, we strive to understand how technology can help us better prepare for, manage, and recover from health emergencies. From tracking the spread of diseases to supporting rapid response measures, Bruce shares insightful perspectives on how technology can be harnessed to protect and advance public health.
On a broader scale, we ponder the impacts of technology on our society. How does it shape our humanity? Are we on the path to a better life despite the fears often associated with AI and technology?
With Bruce's expertise in the intersection of AI, technology, health, and public health, this conversation offers invaluable insights into global health's current state and healthcare technology's future.
As always, we invite you to share your thoughts on these topics. Comment, share, and subscribe to stay connected with Redefining Society and continue the conversation with us. Let's dive into today's episode and learn more about how technology and data are transforming healthcare and shaping the future of our society.
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Resources
Forbes coverage: Covid-19 Emergency Declarations End May 11, What You Need To Know: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2023/05/04/covid-19-emergency-declarations-end-may-11-what-you-need-to-know/?sh=301dd868b541
The End of the Federal Public Health Emergency for COVID-19 - What Does it Mean? (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=funjHHYsii4
PHICOR: https://www.phicor.org/
AIMINGS: https://www.phicor.org/aimings
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To see and hear more Redefining Society stories on ITSPmagazine, visit:
https://www.itspmagazine.com/redefining-society-podcast
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Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording as errors may exist. At this time we provide it “as it is” and we hope it can be useful for our audience.
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voiceover00:15
Welcome to the intersection of technology, cybersecurity, and society. Welcome to ITSPmagazine. Let's face it, the future is now we're living in a connected cyber society, and we need to stop ignoring it or pretending that it's not affecting us. Join us as we explore how humanity arrived at this current state of digital reality, and what it means to live amongst so much technology and data. Knowledge is power. Now, more than ever.
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Marco Ciappelli01:51
Well, hello, everybody. This is Marco Ciappelli redefining society, podcast and ITSPmagazine, where we talk about the intersection of technology, cybersecurity, and society. Which means as I always say, everything, pretty much if I want to talk about anything, I can have the excuse to do so. But today actually, I'm very excited about this conversation for a couple of reasons. One is komentar at the mental project where I dedicate some of my time, and I had the opportunity to meet so many amazing people there. And and the other reason is the topic because Bruce widely, which is my guest. Hi, Bruce, how you doing?
Bruce Y Lee02:37
Hi, Marco, glad to be here. Yeah,
Marco Ciappelli02:40
I just want to people to hear the voice that for those that are listening to the audio cut them pretend that I'm not pretending to be by myself here with someone. For the people watching, of course, they see that you're actually there. So what I was saying the topic, it's interesting, because we talk, we could talk about a lot of things. And the idea to have this conversation was about the end of the federal public public health emergency, which doesn't mean the end of COVID, just of the the emergency in that case, and but we want to open it to a much larger conversation, which is, what have we learned? What if? And when? And what are we going to do when a situation similar to the pandemic happen, but also embrace the role of technology, in the health care in policies? And overall, what is it doing to our humanity? And how are we live in what I think a better life and despite the fact that the news are always pointing the finger to all the bad things that AI and technology do. So this is me talking for two minutes. And this is Bruce that I'm going to let him introduce himself because he will do a much, much better job than myself.
Bruce Y Lee04:05
Well, thanks, Marco, I can confirm that I am indeed real, and I will be here and not some type of astral projection or some AI visualization
Marco Ciappelli04:14
will be very cool. I will.
Bruce Y Lee04:18
Well, you never know someday in the future, you might not be able to tell you know, am I really actually a simulation or real person, but I think I'm a real person. So but you know, Thanks, Mark. I'm so glad to have an opportunity to be on your podcast. I'm big fan of yours a big fan of your podcast. And then just the fact that you really bring tech and society closer I think is fantastic. You know, it's basically what we need. You know, there's there's sometimes you talk about tech, and then you talk about society, but then you know, the actual applications interlacing isn't always obvious to everyone. So I think it's great to have an opportunity to be on your podcast. So I guess I should do a self intro. So I have to remember who I am. Let's see. So I'll think for a second, but yeah, I guess I wear multiple hats. I'm a professor at City University, New York School Public Health. And there, I run a center, which is called the Center for Advanced technology and communications and health, which spells out to be catch. So we do, we develop and implement different types of technologies for, for health, health care and public health. I also executive director of FICO, which is our research group that I moved over from Johns Hopkins, where I was previously. And then in addition, I also cover health, healthcare and science for Forbes. And also right, as a journalist and for other publications, and also have started companies sort of in the AI and computer modeling space. So a lot of what I do is really the intersection between AI technology, health and public health. So excited to talk about, you know, the applications to epidemics, outbreaks, pandemics, you know, infectious disease threats, because we have to remember that. And I think we were we were talking a little while ago. And as many people say, it's not if the next pandemic happens, it's win. But we also have to remember even a long way every single day or every single week, there are outbreaks of infectious disease occurring. So it's not something you know, this is not one of these things, you can just turn it off, and then turn it on. And next time you see a pandemic, it's not like a TV show. But you actually have to keep thinking about it. And I think the COVID 19 pandemic, I like to always say, really uncovered, a lot of the challenges or problems that we have in our society didn't necessarily create new challenges, they actually uncovered a lot of existing challenges. So we have to really learn from this pandemic, if we're really going to go full circle in terms of, you know, making use of history and really improving ourselves as a society.
Marco Ciappelli06:59
Absolutely. And I was thinking about one of those rules that we call in sociology, the proximity rule, that in the news, when something happened next to your house makes a big splash, like somebody just got hit by a car, and you just had a little scratch, scratch, versus the big airplane falling down. I don't know, in Thailand, which is really far. And it's less effective, even if, you know, 400 people got involved. So, you know, way, I think that when you mentioned things happen every day just don't happen, necessarily to us. And in this case, with a pandemic, everybody is touched by it. So I will think that, as a society, we should have learned a lot. But then I look back in the history of humanity, and I get a little bit more pessimistic. So my question for you is, with the convergence of technology that we have now, which is growing extremely fast, all the data that we have access to super computer to process everything, and the fact that even the vaccine were possible, because of all of this. How did we get here? And what have we learned, if anything?
Bruce Y Lee08:16
So if you look at technology, you know, it can really be divided into multiple different areas, or applications. And so I'll start with one area, which is the area of surveillance, infectious disease surveillance. And I remember, during the 2009, h1 and one pandemic, that was the flu pandemic, I and my team were embedded in the US Department of Health and Human Services, and we were using our computer models to, you know, test different policies and interventions. And one thing that was clear at the time is, you had information in terms of where the virus was spreading to some degree, like you have reported cases, you know, reported flu cases with record hospitalizations, but there was less of a line of sight into like, where, where was this virus actually spreading. And I remember, we were commenting out around that time, that it would be better to really stand up a stronger surveillance system, where you can really get data and have that readily available, and then you can you can have a better understanding what's going on. Because if you think about it, there's some things that we know, right off the bat, I mean, everyone's carrying around a phone. Everyone's like, you know, checking out websites, and all that information has been collected. So like, people know, like, oh, you know, these are your preferences. This is what you're doing. Oh, by the way, you had a bacon sandwich the other day. You know, like so many people know these things. Yet, when it comes to like the spread of infectious pathogens, we really don't know where it's actually going. And that's one of the pushes that we've made over the past decade, you know, and it's interesting, because I remember like 2016 were saying, hey, we need better surveillance, like you have a lot of tech that can be applied. Couple to that. But it might have fell on deaf ears because people didn't think about like a pandemic, it wasn't something that they thought would come along. But then if you saw at the very beginning of the pandemic 2020, there was almost no information in this country, in terms of like, what's actually happening. So that's why you had, if you recall, Johns Hopkins University set up that website to show the number of cases. And then everyone was tuning in on that. And then eventually, the New York Times did, but these should have already been in place, right? In theory, there should have been governmental sites that say, Okay, this is what's actually happening. It's something that had to be quickly stood up. And ultimately, you know, the Johns Hopkins website was was an idea of, I believe it was a graduate graduate student who said, hey, you know, let's start looking at these and the faculty member who's who was the head of the lab that the graduate student and say, oh, yeah, that sounds like a great idea, then that that's why they did it. And why are we relying on that, you know, we really need to be in situations to say, you know, let's start collecting this information and this data, and have a situation where we can really move towards more of a weather map, or something of that sort, where we can actually see these viruses and pathogen spreading before they become a problem. So that's certainly one area where technology can really help, it can really help in terms of doing the actual tracking, but it can also really help in terms of sharing this information. And then also do all kinds of things like visualizations and saying, okay, you know, so people just have a better idea. And one way that really can help is then we can be more specific and where we apply these interventions. So we don't have to like, say, oh, everyone do this, or, you know, maybe we close businesses. Instead, we can say maybe closed businesses here, because the activity is higher here versus here. So we don't have to have a kind of a blanket one size fits all. So that's one area where where technology can be really helpful in terms of actual surveillance. And
Marco Ciappelli12:03
not we've seen, there is a lot of metaphor that I can think of are other example in our society. So first of all, prevention, we're talking about preventing, so we need to monitor even when we don't need something, but in case we need, we are already there in place. So common sense, right. And we have technically now the power to do that, like we monitor the weather, we know where the hurricane is coming, we can tell people to move ahead of time, can do that for her quick, but you know, hopefully we'll get there. And then even to help more people understand the little listener, for example, it's kind of like you said, the the phone in our hands. And there's the GPS, and they tell you the traffic and they tell you, Well, this is the road to go from your just to where you're going to where you're coming from. And I can tell you in real time, the the better the better Ruth and even change it. But few people realize that is because they even they are part of that system. That is showing that where they are, there is a line, there's more traffic, and that is reproduced somewhere else. So all of this to say that potential of the constant monitoring. I think it's incredible. I mean, there is a reason why we do check every year now instead of waiting to have the bad news that you have something you catch it early. Yeah. So the question for you here is that you're you're embedded into the oh, you know, the government education system? I think I know, we have the technology. I think I know we have the will. Is that regulation policy, a need for a global, I don't know, an accord where everybody works together for the study's lackey naturally.
Bruce Y Lee13:57
Yeah, I think I think there's several things that are needed. You know, certainly everyone talks about, well, you want to do something, you need the money to do it, you need the resources to do it. So the question is, you know, you can we can talk about surveillance, we can talk about technology, but you know, are there resources, so it will be helpful to have initiatives to say, hey, let's get real serious about this. Let's put some serious resources into this. And then, you know, like you said, we have to technology, but and the technology needs to be adapted. You know, it can't We can't take technology where you're like measuring where donut stores are located, and then immediately apply it to infectious pathogens, there are differences. So there's going to be some development that's actually needed. But yeah, one is resources. And then when we talk about will, there's a difference between, you know, will and will you mean, like, let's really do this. And so I think there is the interest in doing it, but we, you know, for a little while, during a pandemic there was greater Well, because people were like, you know, they were glued to these charts and all these things and saying, oh, what's going on? What's going on? They would visit these things. But there isn't the same will when that's not occurring. where there isn't that immediate, like, Okay, this will tell me exactly what to do right now. Because we all know like, you know, when it comes to medicine, for instance, you know, if you're like bleeding, you're like, Okay, I need a band aid, give me a band aid right now. But if someone tells you, Oh, hey, you better eat better, or that type of stuff that may or may or may not work until someone actually has a crisis. And so that's, I think, the issue with the will, because many times what you'll see is people say, Yeah, but you know, there's these other priorities that we have to focus on. But the return for this will be so much greater look at what happened to the pandemic, I mean, influenced everyone affected everyone in terms of economically and socially. I don't think many people realize that would happen until I actually occurred.
Marco Ciappelli16:00
Yeah, and that's Sorry, I've been quick comment that that's what blows my mind. I mean, the market went down, the business stopped. Yeah, it's a global pandemic. So when I hear we know what to do in New York, we know what to do in LA, we know what to do in room and I'm like, Yeah, but pandemic doesn't care about borders. You know, it's like that don't work like that. And then in the end, what you said, you know, what's the return on investment? I think the return on investment is that it doesn't cost lives. Number one, but also, economically, there's been, I mean, shouldn't that be enough motivation for doing something? It should?
Bruce Y Lee16:41
And that's what that's what we're trying to correct to say, look at this, do you want this to happen again? Do you want this impact and and also, one thing to keep in mind is this the pandemic, but there are a lot of other infectious diseases that, you know, as a slow burn actually cost a ton of resources, you know, flu costs, a lot of resources. You know, there's different types of gastrointestinal viruses that cause us a lot of resources. You know, the list goes on antibiotic resistant bacteria, those things like that. But it's not always that obvious to everyone. And you know, and that's another role that surveillance slash communication can play. And that's where tech can play. You know, you see all these things, you know, you open up social media whenever, and you see all these things. And you get from that, oh, this is important, because I'm seeing all this is being presented to me. Or, you know, you'll get some interesting map stuff somewhere, something, you know, I saw, I saw a map the other day, which basically said, you know, here's the most popular curse words and needs location. Okay, we may, we may not need surveillance for that, but now I know that so. So similarly, you know, surveillance plays a role, tech wise is saying, you know, how can you present this information to people, so they understand the importance and value of it as well. So that's another workplace tech can play a role. Because it's not that easy. In simple format, like, you know, I can sit here and tell you something. But Tech has the opportunity to really kind of show things in different ways, and help people really understand something. So I think that's a very important role with tech as well. That information. So yeah, you talk about the impact, and we use, we know the impact, but then that quickly fades, we don't think about it. The next day, or two days or so.
Marco Ciappelli18:32
So human, such a human thing to do. Let's dig, let's dig a little deeper in the technology. So blow blow us our mind with the things that we can do now. So you know, like, I think that just people opening and starting to play with Chet GPT. It could blow people's mind. I know, I'm having a lot of fun with it. But you know, this is for writing, but you also writes code, he writes, it can help I was listening to somebody talk about the application in medicine to actually find components for creating new drugs because you create test and scenario that you don't actually need to develop, do it virtually. So tell us a little bit about the edge of technology that the wicked things that we can do now if we want to.
Bruce Y Lee19:31
So if we think about this as making an assessment, right, it's a lot easier for us as humans, to make a decision where there's like a single cause single effect. There's a chair, I want to move it to the other side, so I can read something that's simple. You just move the chair and then you step on it and you've got it. But when things start becoming more complex, second degree, third degree, fourth degree effects and a lot of indirect effects, that just gets more difficult and You know, it doesn't matter how much experience or how brilliant someone is, you get to a point where humans, it's a struggle to pull all these different things together. And that's really where a lot of AI, and computer modeling and all these different types of approaches can be very helpful. Because when it comes to, and we've seen it, during this pandemic, we've seen that one of the challenges is like each stage, there's been a heavy focus on one thing, when in actuality, you need to bring all these different things together, you can see, if you recall, you know, early 2020, it was like flattened curve, flatten the curve, flatten the curve, then a month later, it was like Testing, testing, testing, testing, testing, and then contact acing contact tracing, and then mass mass mass mass, and then vaccine vaccine vaccine vaccine, right. So it was just, you're focusing on one thing at once, but like, what you really need to do is like a combination of these things in different ways. And that's tough for people to you know, again, it's nothing about how intelligent someone is, or how much experience someone has, as humans, it's just tough for us to do. And this is a role that this is where computers and AI and all those things can really play a role. And that's one of the things that we do is to try to develop these different types of algorithms, which can help with decision making. It happens, it happens in the weather, right? And also happens with whenever you're sending a rocket into space. It's not just all humans making all these districts since you've got computers, trying to figure out the, you know, the optimal design of the rocket, you know, what, what should the path be in those things like that. So why can't we do it and health and public health?
Marco Ciappelli21:42
Yeah, and just to make an example, this is stuff that talks about space exploration. That's what stuff that NASA was using in the 60s, I mean, 1960s, Apollo eight, it was, it wasn't the human, you know, the pilot, deciding that how much trust to give, to enter into the lunar ground gravitational field versus how to get out of it. It's been going on, it's all like, AI and algorithm just all of a sudden appears, which may be a scary thing for people, but we need to understand that it's already doing so much job, and so much work behind the scene. And it's been doing it for 5060 years, at this point, right?
Bruce Y Lee22:31
Absolutely. I think the you know, we've been doing this AI and computer modeling work, you know, for past 20 years, in many areas, including like infectious disease and outbreaks and epidemics. And I think, you know, for awhile, it was tougher to get traction, because people sort of say, oh, you know, people were very old school about it. Like, if I don't see I don't believe it, right? It's sort of like, you know, I see something, right. If I Okay, therefore, I believe it. But if something is in silico? Hmm, I don't know if I believe it. And I remember when you know, we were starting off doing that work. No one like if people say said AI at the time, most people would say are you talking about Allen Iverson? You know, they don't didn't go they didn't know what it is, you know, now it's becoming more common parlance. So that's. So I think this is an opportunity, because we are not in the same place that we were 1520 years ago, when we were we had to try to explain to people what exactly we're doing with the computer. Now, I think people are just are becoming more familiar with, which is good. And then so then when we talk about our work, it's resonating a little more, but there's still a ways to go. And there's still a lot of lots of things that can be done.
Marco Ciappelli23:42
Can you give us to the audience a couple of example of an application that it's maybe in everydays life in in the way you run it, I don't know in a hospital or preventative care that it actually has its origin and the engine is data and artificial intelligence, computer modeling, you know, and all that you do. So that is not just something up in the air. But it's like, look, this is happening. This is where you can touch it. Yeah, really touch it. But
Bruce Y Lee24:17
yeah, I mean, one of the things that we've done, so you're I can give public health example and then a hospital examples and things like that. So, you know, public health example, as I mentioned, during the 2009, a 2001 pandemic, we were embedded in Health and Human Services. So we, we created a model of the entire United States as an agent based model. And it basically represent all the people within the US and what we would do is we would simulate the spread of flu we so we would take data of like where we thought cases were and simulate the spread of it. And then we could layer on different interventions because we could say, early on, there's the question arose in the government is should schools be closed? I think a lot of people don't realize that but back in 2009, some of these things were being considered are. And I remember at the time we ran our models, and we published this work. So you can see what the models look like and what they turned out, it showed that it wasn't worth it, closing schools at the time, the cost was just too high for the benefit in terms of, you know, preventing the spread of the virus. And we also looked at the impact of, you know, rolling out vaccines in different ways. So this is actually where it helped with policymaking. So the people could not see the result of these things, aside from trial and error, and you don't want to say, you don't want to try something and say hopes, right, so so and so we've done that with each of the different outbreaks, we did that during the Zika. outbreak, we provided numbers to Congress in terms of anticipated cases and anticipated costs, and those things like that. So this is something that's been increasing steadily within health and public health, the use of computer models and algorithms to figure these things out. And then, you know, sometimes when you have different possibilities, you also need computer algorithms, you know, you run the models and unique computer algorithms to figure out what's false possibilities the best, because this is a multi optimization situation, right? Yes, in some cases, you know, you gain here, you gain here, but you may lose here. So, so we've used these different types of algorithms to help come up with some of these decisions, or or at least at least, aid decisions. We always want humans into decision making. You don't want to turn a couple of the over this is not like what's the I can't remember the name of the the that that company in The Terminator movies, but it's Skynet. Skynet. There we go. Skynet Cyberdyne, maybe that's another movie. But But yeah, this is a Skynet, we're not proposing Skynet. But we're but but this is it can be great. This is an important tools. And you see it in hospitals, you know, more and more people are using computer to the system support tools to help read imaging or evaluate pathology slides or, or combine different data from, you know, from the patient to come up with treatment suggestions and those things like that. So it is actually happening now as we speak. And you know, and it's getting better and better.
Marco Ciappelli27:24
No, I was just having a conversation. I had him on the show a few time. Dr. Robert Pearl, he was the former CIO of Kaiser Permanente. And he has been writing books, and he's really encouraging on the role that AI can can have on the medical profession. I don't know if you may agree on something like that I believe you do. But you know, it's talking about how the knowledge in the medical field it's, it's, it's growing exponentially every day. And just to filter through that through like medical paper and research and results, just that alone. It's it's very, very beneficial on top of helping to diagnose things. And of course, like you said, we can't just let it do we need to supervise and AI is a tool as well as other technology. So as we start to wrap up here, and of course, we could go for a long time. But maybe what I'm thinking is this idea again, about a collaboration with the World Health Organization, every country doing his job, because even during the pandemic, some country were getting the vaccine, some didn't. rich country, poor country. But then we also noticed that when a new a new strand was detected, for example, in South Africa or somewhere else, I mean, we knew already we were ahead of the game. Now, if we played accordingly, that's another story because policy eventually politics went in. But we had the the technology again, to know that. How tough would it be to really have an eye? No, probably there is a network of knowledge share between the medical community, but I feel like it's kind of like cybersecurity. I'm gonna go there. Cybersecurity company, they do their modeling, they collaborate one with each other. There is crowdsource then you go to the legislator, they have no idea what they're talking about, and to make a rule and legal change takes years and we don't have years, and I feel like it's happening the same thing. We could have done so much. And we didn't do it. Future hat Bruce booted on. What do you see happening 10 years from now? Main from a regulation, politics initiative and sure, throw the technology in there as well.
Bruce Y Lee30:08
Well, I think that, you know, one of the hopes with the I should add, you know, Robert Pearl, is he writes for Forbes as well. So I know, Robert Yeah. And, yeah, he always has great insight. So it's always good to hear his take on things. And so, but I, you know, the hope from this, whenever we have something that, you know, in many ways, it was a tragic occurrence with so many deaths. And, you know, it's very unfortunate, but what you always want to do whenever you're dealt a tough lot in life is to decide, okay, how can we learn from that, you know, how can we make this productive, so we can help people and humans and, you know, reduce suffering, prevent suffering in the future. And I think one of the big take home messages from this is that there is a need to, to change how things we've been doing, and, and that technology can play a very big role. And so, whereas previously, you know, the hope that is, okay, you convince policymakers to really kind of make this initiative. Now, there are more people who, you know, unfortunately, have a better understanding of the suffering that occurred occurred not just from a physical standpoint, but also from economic and social emotional standpoint. So that when someone says that, hey, we want to do some type of initiative to do XY and Z is not left with kind of deadpan, like, Okay, I know why you're doing this. And so this can extend across all different sectors. So like, if you know, you you approach different, you know, different areas in this sector and say, Hey, this is worthwhile investing in, this is worth doing something in or an investor segment, then the hope is, it'll be a lot easier to make a case for bringing more technology to do these different types of things. So, you know, whenever things change dramatically, it's not just one person's done it, it's because you've sort of built up to this inflection point that there's kind of all these movements that really then push it over the edge and say, Hey, we should, we should really to happen with social media, you know, the Internet was around for a while before things really exploded. So the hope is with that, that, like, people realize that and you have more of these kind of separate initiatives kind of coalesce together. And then you really say, hey, let's let's flip the switch. And let's change how we've been doing things like epidemiology and all these different types of things. Let's really bring tech into it, because tech is completely applicable to this. So that's really the hope. And I think I do see signs, I do see positive signs and lists, and I wouldn't encourage anyone who's listening that this is a this is this a good area to be either involved in or encourage, you know, regardless of what your role is, in society, you can encourage this, you know, if you are an investor, consider investing someplace. So if you are a leader in a company, consider saying, hey, you know, maybe some of our efforts would be dedicated towards this. So lots of things you can do.
Marco Ciappelli33:13
Absolutely. And I like what you said about helping us to visualize the technology, like, you know, when it seems so far from us, it's seems like magic. I'm not going to quote sci fi. But you know, if it's complicated enough for you to understand that it could as well be magic. But But I think then now, especially with the visualization, or the dashboard, and the fact that it's proven over and over and over that is not just an AI prophecies, but it helps to foresee the future for real. Yeah, I mean, believe it or not, this is what it is. I think that's that's where the lesson is. And I think you're right, when you see it, when you touch it, when you burn yourself on the fire, maybe you're not going to do it again. Hopefully,
Bruce Y Lee34:01
absolutely. Like, can you imagine going back to the 1980s? And trying to explain Twitter and Facebook to people? If you're like, what if you're gonna write something like 64 characters? And like, what what are you talking about? So yeah, it does help for people to really, actually be able to touch or feel that technology, at least, you know, some aspect of it, but then then, you know, it makes things a lot easier after that.
Marco Ciappelli34:23
Yeah. And I have to say, as we as we finish here, and we say goodbye that you know, this what you write on, on Forbes, the style, and I want to invite the audience to read your articles because you talk about very serious thing, but you have a really fun way to put it out there. I know some people you know, give you an hour time about that, but I think that the style is perfect to make it more digestible. I love that. And I want to thank you again. for finding the time, I mean, clearly, you're really busy to spend some time here with me, you're always welcome to come back and have these conversations. And I hope that our audience find that interesting. And they think about this, because I'm not giving an answer and just making people think, or at least a try, and you definitely helped me doing that so much. So Bruce, thank you so so much.
Bruce Y Lee35:24
Well, thanks, Marco. Like, as I mentioned, I'm a big fan of yours. I'm a big fan of this podcast, I really feel that, you know, you're doing great things taking, helping everyone understand intersection of technology and society. I mean, two huge topics. And I could talk talk with you for hours about this stuff. So.
Marco Ciappelli35:43
So yeah, again, you're welcome to come back anytime. Okay. All right. Cool. Thank you, everybody. Stay tuned. And on the notes in the notes, there will be links to Bruce activities and links to the Forbes column and social media if you want to share with us and so you can get in touch with them. Again, thank you very much. This was redefining society podcast on ITSPmagazine.
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