YouSaid · the spoken record

Nicole Wong

lines on the record: 122
first: 2018-09-12
most recent: 2018-09-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No mean people Really? No, I don't need any main people on my Twitter feed. I don't know. I will know. That's true. You are a glutton for publishers”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. They're like stuff in the pipeline, right? And so their numbers look good there, but I'm still hearing like people are in rooms where they feel like they're alone and they have no voice. And whatever we got to do to change that, we have got to do it faster.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So, like, I think particularly for those products that are a very social to not have the perspective of women and marginalized people telling you what feels dangerous to me, or what would I really like to see, you are missing an opportunity. Like I completely buy all of the data that says the financial performance of more diverse companies is significantly better. I completely believe that because you Retain those people and get them to higher levels. Now they're just saying you miss.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then there was me too. I think that there's been a huge amount of progress by folks. And I know you talked, like Eileen Lee and all Ray's and Sekinder's board list and Megan because she's in everything continuing to promote diversity across the board in STEM. I have heard at the CEO and board level that the right questions are now being asked by our white male folks what am I going to do to change the diversity?”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, super interesting. I mean, like after I left the administration, the Obama administration, they kicked off an initiative, I think under Megan, right, which is diversity in tech, which makes a total sense. I think it was also coinciding with like the Ellen Powell case and that sort of thing. So there was a lot of movement at that point. Pinterest was talking about like everybody published their numbers, let's put more money into it. And then it kind of all went quiet”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“United States. There's a lot of cool stuff going on at John at the same time. I do think they're sort of going to clean our clock in many ways. But authoritarianism helps to be able to do that. So lastly, we just have a few more minutes. This diversity issue in tech is something you have this group of women, mostly women in AI now. Is that right? Or it just happens to be? Oh, no.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I actually think that that's a more interesting conversation than I'm hearing in a lot of United States, right? Yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's no I don't know. I totally don't know. I will say for China, and I don't know any background to it. So Kaifu Li, who actually used to work. Oh, you are. So he used to work for Google, and now he's there. And I think he's been saying some really interesting things about AI and the proper role for AI and the proper role for humans.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Get vision. There's no way they're going to do it. And so they're just going to have to admit what they're doing, which is interesting. What changed in that regard? Just we can't we need the data.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I think it matters a lot how? in China so that we would never be in a position of having to deliver a user to the Chinese government. I don't know whether that's the constraints, but I would hope that they are thinking through. Why do they want to go in now?”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It has worked. All kinds of things. So I don't know enough about their decision making around that. I haven't heard enough about criteria that we're going to help China be.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's my working period. So it's like I don't know that it's, I don't think it's wrong that they've changed their focus. I'm saddened that that's the place where the...”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, yeah, yeah. Oh, I know by the same people. For our stuff. For our stuff, right? And so I think what I think they're mad about is Facebook has pulled away a lot of political and news stuff and put in more cat videos again. And they don't like that. And they don't like that.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, when we were there. Now the questions are flipped, which is why aren't you censoring more. Oh, I know by the same people. Our stuff. For our stuff, right? And so I think it's a little bit.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But coming out, like over the course of the years that we were there, increasingly repressive, increasingly censoring, and then intrusions onto the Google systems by Chinese hackers, all of said this isn't worth it. There's no way we can protect our users and defend our mission. With this happening, and so we left. And I think that that was the right call too. And I thought what we did was we left in a noisy way. To make sure that people understood. What was at stake? I think it's really interesting, right? Like the questions that I got from Congress during that period were, some of them were around this issue of like, how can you undermine democratic values by acceding to that government's censorship?”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that's right. Right. So now that we're gone, is that still the way things work? I think that that was actually a really important thing. I also think candidly the way that Google property...”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. But we would show at the bottom a disclaimer that says some results have been withheld because of the government restrictions. But then at least Chinese users knew what they were missing, right? And before they had no idea, they thought they were seeing the whole world. So I think that that giving them that instinct to have a sense for what is missing was an important.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He seems to be a master. He's real good at it. Which was It was, and I think the company struggled with it going in and coming out. And candidly, I would stand by both decisions. I would to this day stand by the reasons we went into China, which I think explain them. To make the services more broadly available to a significant part of a population that was, I don't think that Google would have ever said this, but was information poor, right? They just didn't have access to as much as you could get. And so even when you censor, and I think that the way that we manage search results, when we knew that there was an area the government would not let us show, we along gone.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I think you need a voice for tech at the table. And this goes back to where we started the conversation was like technology is not someone who provides your email, right? Technology is actually a moving force that can deliver services well, but we're not just fixing websites. This is about reaching millions of people to make their lives better. That's where the possibility exists. And you want people who are in the CTO's role who can envision that.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How would we know? Which is interesting. There's a new book coming out, Woodward, which is frightening actually because they're basically taking paper off his desk so he doesn't see things. But was that a good thing to have a CTO, do you think, or is deputy CTO? Because why?”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“the way let me just i was I mean, totally separate. The internet policy issues, which I used to cover. Gone, right? Nobody's watching that. No. Cybersecurity gone. No one's there. But honestly, I'm thinking about like.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I didn't have my phone in and taped everything. But you could, by the way. I was such a good girl. I put in the box and nobody checked it. And I was like, wow, they used to check it. They used to, like, it was really kind of shocking.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And China's going to be the outlier. So a cyber doctrine. What can be used? Warner talked about this in my interview. He said there's a cyber doctrine over what we can do and what we can't do. And if people violate it, we will. Use our tools to stop it. Which means”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not sure. I mean, like, part of me says, well, what if it means that all of the countries who are doing this work need to get together and say, like, this is acceptable use. And China's going to be the outlier.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, it's terrifying, right? And so the question is, well, how are we weighing in on that? And can we weigh in if our technology can't meet theirs? Right.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't have an issue with that except for the fact that, like, China has the ability to deploy a technology that will simply be the dominant technology if they get there first, right? Or could be.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right to develop really strong AI, you need a lot of data. Well, if you have an authoritarian government that says, hey, we're now all doing facial recognition, you suddenly have a lot of data. Right. If you're in the United States or Europe or whatever, you have to get consent that consent can be withdrawn. all kinds of hurdles to collecting the data, which means we'll be slower.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't feel like that's the choice I need to have to make. But I do think through how do we Get ahead of the standard setting that China will do otherwise because they may not be hampered. I talk about that sweep.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. That's their argument now, right? Like when I had Mark in the podcast, he's like, well, if I get hindered, what about China? I'm like, what? Like, that's my choice is G or you don't feel like that's the choice I need to have to make.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very straightforward, fast iterative development that doesn't necessarily do a lot of stop and think about. The human aspects of it, nor could I imagine a world right now knowing how a lot of products get launched that you would say, hey, we shouldn't do that until we understand the ethical ramifications. Right? Like, I just don't see holding a launch for that one. So, right? So I think, you know, if we want our companies here to be super innovative and productive.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, really. I mean, they pretend to. They can tolerate them. I know. So I got tolerated at a lot of meetings. But I think no again. I think that they know they're missing something, right? All the smart ones know they're missing something. And so I think they are looking to figure out how to put that into the system, but it is a system that's built on”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think they are, but I don't think they know what that role looks like, right? Like, where do you put an FC? They never liked it.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The implications for humans when we use these technologies. That, I think, is super important. And that, I think, will help turn the cultures in some of these tech companies around if they're smart enough to grasp.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like it goes on and on and on. Yeah, it was funny. I was doing a talk for women in STEM recently and I was like, I had to do this like, okay, I have a little bit of imposter syndrome because I'm here as like a former deputy CTO. But in fact, I have like every liberal arts card stacked against me. I'm an American studies major with a minor in English and a poetry fellowship, right? I don't cover any of the spaces. But maybe that's actually what tech needs right now is like we need more sociologists and ethicists coming into the tech sector to talk about the broader implications of how tech gets used. And I think that we're starting to see that. So like a group that I'm on the advisory board for called AI Now, which is run by Kate Crawford and Meredith Whitaker out of New York. And they are all about what are the social implications of AI. And I think we need more of that conversation. Dana Boyd's data in society likewise having these really interesting, like hardcore research.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It may not be media, but it is some kind of media. It's still social media. It's just platform, right? If they were under the impression that they're just a dumb pipe, that's not it. So somehow we need to rejigger that. Yeah, absolutely.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's starting, like Sesta Fosta thing, right? Yeah, that was the recent thing around prostitution and sex trafficking. I think people are going to start chipping away at it, right? I think you were interviewing, was it Warner? Warner, yeah. Right, right, about like Wyden. Or Wyden. It was Ron Wyden, thinking about redoing Section 230 about this immunity. So I think that that's certainly a conversation that's happening and has been happening for years. I feel like the current designations we give to these companies don't fit.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I think they're struggling in the sense that I don't think that they want to abrogate all of their responsibility, but they don't actually want to take on all of the baggage that comes with being a media company.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Rohingyas or the child porn or whatever. And that is wrong. We should not do that. Fantastic point, Nicole. Do you think that they get this now? Because I think they don't want to be seen as media companies. They want to keep that immunity. That's a law. They're not held responsible.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My experience is that you need to see. Content, you need to make the moral call on the Rohingyas or the child porn or whatever. Because if you don't, you have delegated your morality to a machine and that is wrong. That is real. But we should not do that.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly the little girl running. Exactly. So that's one thought out of that. The second is on the AI piece, which is I do worry, and this might just be rhetorical, I worry about leaders who are saying we're going to have AI fix that. And they maybe just be like, as protection, this is my flack jacket. The machines will fix it.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you understand the complexity of this, I think that it is super hard to hold the tech companies fully responsible and insist that they make no mistakes, which I feel like some of the rhetoric is definitely like you never get to make a mistake about that piece of content. And that paralyzes a company that's trying to do their thing. They're still back on.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of people talking to each other in this fashion. It was over a small. Yeah, and I think getting that right is going to be so important. I think, so two thoughts on that. One is.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just go back. I had Jared and Lanier in, and he was like, There's never been a human experiment on this level of people talking to each other in this fashion. But when you think about the idea that cleaners is really interesting one because it's sort of that backroom, like you don't want to see how it's made. You know, my son just got a job and he's a chef and he's young, but he cooks and he's in a restaurant. And he's like, mom, you don't want to eat there. The sausage gets made. I was talking about it. It was over a small pickle incident, but it wasn't that bad. I was like, oh, I'd eat there. It's no problem. But it sort of was like when you see how things get made, it's really, and they are trying to rely on AI when they don't even know what that means. Yeah. And I think getting...”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They are trying really hard to follow the rules. They have seconds to make these decisions on thousands of pieces of content in an hour, right? And The interesting overlay to me was a very Catholic country. They bring a lot of their person and their identity to work with them about making decisions about. This content. So when you think about the complexity of these takedowns, it is actually really hard to create rules that when an American user posts something that's visible in Turkey and reviewed by a Filipino contract worker, what is that, right? Who's winning in that scenario? We should shut down Facebook, right?”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If we were here in the United States, we might not quite make the same call. This documentary, they actually go back and interview a bunch of the contractors about what they understand to be the rules, the decisions they've had to make on terrorist content, child pornography, self-harm content, all of this stuff. And it's fascinating to hear from the contractor's perspective what they think their obligations are.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So There's a new documentary by two directors from Germany who wanted to explore huskism. They wanted to explore what is this content moderation industry? And it was born of, I think, research done by a professor down at UCLA named Sarah Robertson. So she is one who uncovered like there are thousands of contract workers in the Philippines cleaning up all of these social media platforms, right? And making calls that like.”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I think so. Yeah, because it just got worse and worse. And then you can put someone else. So talk about this document called The Cleaners. Explain that. And then in the next section, we're going to talk about Tech Clash and Diversity. There's a new”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I probably would have done the research to figure it out and then made a call. But like. I also think I probably made inconsistent bad decisions. While I was there. So your thread is that you will make a big decision”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Being responsible for understanding stuff happening off my platform? Like, how do I incorporate that into a policy? Because, again, we're talking about a scale issue. I may have in the old days, I feel like I had to be like in a rocker with the cigars. But in the old days, yeah, maybe I had a day to think about that, but they don't. And so how do you do the diligence of understanding the...”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think they were struggling. And they were like, those damn apple people did it before us. I think part of it is this notion of like, how do I think about”
2018-09-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Nicole Wong, former deputy CTO of the United States · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT