HyperNormalisation Page #8

in the future, and then, find

ways to avoid those risks.

Although Beck came from the political left,

the world he saw coming was deeply conservative.

The picture he gave

was of a political class reduced

to trying to steer society

into a dark and frightening future.

Constantly peering forward

and trying to see the risks coming towards them.

Their only aim, to avoid those risks

and keep society stable.

It only lasted for a few seconds

so you were basically shocked,

you really didn't know what

was going on at the time.

Where were you in the building

and where was the explosion?

EXPLOSION:

Oh, my God!

But a system that could anticipate the future

and keep society stable was already being built,

pieced together from all kinds of different,

and sometimes surprising, sources.

All of them outside politics.

One part of it was taking shape in a tiny town

in the far north-west of the United

States called East Wenatchee.

It was a giant computer

whose job was to make the future predictable.

The man building it was a

banker called Larry Fink.

Back in 1986,

Mr. Fink's career had collapsed.

Shoot!

He lost 100 million in a deal and had been sacked.

He became determined it wouldn't happen again.

Fink started a company called BlackRock and built

a computer he called Aladdin.

It is housed in a series of large sheds

in the apple orchards outside Wenatchee.

Fink's aim was to use the computer

to predict, with certainty,

what the risk of any deal or

investment was going to be.

The computer constantly monitors the world

and it take things that it sees happening,

and then, compares them to events in the past.

It can do this because it has,

in its memory, a vast history

of the past 50 years. Not just

financial, but all kinds of events.

Out of the millions and millions of correlations,

the computer then spots possible disasters,

possible dangers lying in the future

and moves the investments

to avoid any radical change

and keep the system stable.

Today, I'm going to deliver 1.8 million reports.

Execute 25,000 trades.

And avert 3,000 disasters.

I'm going to monitor interest rates in Europe.

- Silver prices in Asia.

- Droughts in the Midwest.

I'm going to witness 4 billion

shares change hands on the

New York Stock Exchange.

And record the effects on 14 trillion in assets

across 20,000 portfolios.

- I am Aladdin.

- I am Aladdin.

And, today, I'll find the

numbers behind the numbers.

I will see the trends the models don't.

- The connections.

- The risks.

- I am Aladdin.

- I am Aladdin, and I will get the data right.

I am 25 million lines of code.

Written by hundreds of people.

Across two decades.

I'm smarter than any algorithm.

More powerful than any processor.

Because I am Aladdin.

Because I am Aladdin.

I am Aladdin.

I am Aladdin...

Aladdin has proved to be incredibly successful.

The assets it guides and controls

now amount to 15 trillion,

which is 7% of the world's total wealth.

But Wenatchee was also a dramatic example

of another kind of craving

for stability and reassurance.

More of its citizens took Prozac

than practically any other town in America.

When a person's central nervous

system is changed by an SSRI,

with that medicine they will

view things differently

and they will be strangers.

They look at things differently.

I have a chemical up here that changes me.

I think differently.

For me it was like walking around

like this for my whole life

and really not knowing that I was

near-sighted. I mean, really.

I mean, no-one had ever offered me glasses.

And then, all of a sudden,

here comes somebody that says,

"OK, now try these on. Try this Prozac on."

And I tried it on and for the

first time in my life I went,

"Whoa! Is this the way reality really is?"

Your perception can be

changed and it's frightening

and it's scary to people.

It speaks of science fiction almost.

Well, the medicine just kind of lets

you listen to what needs to go on.

And then your doctor, every

time you come back, says,

"You're looking so much better."

And then every time I go in he goes,

"You're so beautiful." You know?

He isn't even sucking up.

He's being nice, you know?

"You're beautiful, you're nice, you're friendly.

"You've got so much going for

you." I think, "Yeah, I do."

So, I go out and tell my friends,

"I feel so much better about myself."

Mom goes out, "Oh, I feel so

much better about myself."

So, your friends start saying,

"I've seen such an improvement.

"I've seen such improvement."

And everybody improves all the way around.

They see improvement.

It's like everybody's brainwashing

each other into being happy.

But there was a more effective

way of reassuring people

that was being developed that

did not involve medication.

It, too, came from computer systems

but this time, artificial intelligence.

But the way to do it had

been discovered by accident.

Back in the 1960s, there

had been optimistic dreams

that it would be possible to develop computers

that could think like human beings.

Scientists then spent years

trying to programme the rules

that governed human thought...

...but they never worked.

One computer scientist, at MIT,

became so disillusioned that he

decided to build a computer programme

that would parody these hopeless attempts.

He was called Joseph Weizenbaum

and he built what he claimed was

a computer psychotherapist.

Just like a therapist, people could

come and talk to the machine

by typing in their problems.

Weizenbaum called the programme "Eliza".

He modelled it on a real

psychotherapist called Carl Rogers

who was famous for simply

repeating back to the patient

what they had just said.

And that is what Eliza did.

The patient sat in front

of the screen and typed in

what they were feeling

and the programme repeated it back to them,

often in the form of a question.

He says I'm depressed much of the time.

Well, I need some help.

That much seems certain.

One of the first people to use

Eliza was Weizenbaum's secretary

and her reaction was something

that he had not predicted at all.

I asked her to my office and

sat her down at the keyboard

and then she began to type and, of course,

I looked over her shoulder to make sure everything

was operating properly. After

two or three interchanges

with the machine she turned to me and she said,

"Would you mind leaving the room, please?"

And yet she knew, as Weizenbaum

did, that Eliza didn't understand

a single word that was being typed into it.

You're like my father in some ways.

- You don't argue with me.

- Why do you think I don't argue with you?

- You're afraid of me.

- Does it please you to think I'm afraid of you?

My father's afraid of everybody.

My father's afraid of everybody...

Weizenbaum was astonished.

He discovered that everyone who

tried Eliza became engrossed.

They would sit for hours telling the machine

about their inner feelings

and incredibly intimate details of their lives.

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