It sounded a lot like a sales pitch, mostly because it was. Lex wasn't exaggerating when he said he had gained a deeper understanding of the system and how it works. Entertainment value aside, each system had a certain range, as far as he could tell, that the system monitors for news and interesting events so that the system can give quests.
Many times, the quests themselves, or perhaps their rewards, would end up being exactly what the user needs to survive an upcoming disaster that is unknown to the user. This is because through various means, the system detected what was happening within its surveillance region, and reacted to it.
