The Regulator
The techno-political blindspot revealed at this year’s SXSW
I’ve always come to SXSW to glimpse into the future. To hear what the smartest people in the world are doing and the directions their thinking and future projects are taking. It helps provide something of a map for the following 12 months, for both my clients and myself.
In previous years, SXSW used to blow my mind. I would come home with an overarching theme, a narrative arc that allowed me to weave through all the incredible things I’d seen and heard.
SXSW 2018 didn’t disappoint, but gone is the heady techno-utopianism.
This year, even the smartest people in the room are either tangled up in the current unintended consequences of their creations, or are wrestling with the possible ones of the future. And I return home with a worrying realisation:
Our current economic and legislative systems are unable to deal with the complexities, speed and consequences of what is being innovated.
Not just in the future, but right now.
The Big Blue
Every panel I went to that featured someone from Facebook was a dud. Their senior management was AWOL. I appreciate these panels are set well in advance and maybe senior management are hunkered down in a war room trying to right the ship. But the overall impression was that they have they lost control of their Frankenstein. That they seem trapped in the belly of their own machine.
The Big Theme
London Mayor Sadiq Khan read out a handful of the hate Tweets he’s received. And followed that up with a call for social media platforms to take responsibility for this. He also called for politicians to step-up and help guide and regulate the space, and not rely on their current head-in-the-sand strategy.
Internet inventor, Tim Berners-Lee (not attending the event) suggested that very same day his invention needs tighter regulation for the very same reason.
In Amy Webb’s must-see Emerging trends report, she calls out that AI has been “polluted with widespread, misplaced optimism and fear”. But I also noted that tech-utopianism had dropped off the lexicon. Apparently, there is now only tech optimism, pragmatism, pessimism and… catastrophism.
And of course Elon Musk made worldwide headlines with his:
“AI is far more dangerous than nukes, by far, so why do we have no regulatory oversight, this is insane.”
My big mindblower of the year was the ‘Extreme Bionics’ session. The panel included two double-amputees. They didn’t see themselves as disabled, but as technologically augmented humans. And they told (and showed) us how bionic limbs will soon outperform their flesh-and-bone counterparts.
These bionics will interface the human nervous system with electromechanics. E.G. Not only does the brain send messages to a bionic foot, but the bionic foot sends messages back to the brain.
When you close the loop and there is feedback to the brain, the bionic limb becomes part of the body. Which is incredible. The potential, limitless. But MIT professor and double-amputee Hugh Herr, did mention a problematic scenario:
It is one thing for humans to control robots, but what about robots controlling humans? If you have that feedback loop into the nervous system and combine that with conscious AI, then we need laws and regulations to prevent that.
I’m sure you’re seeing a theme emerge here.
Author of ‘The Cult Of The Amateur’, Andrew Keen had a session plugging his new book on ‘How To Fix the Future’. He had ‘Regulation’ at №1 of his five key tools to address these kinds of issues:
- Regulation
- Innovation
- Consumer power
- Citizen engagement
- Education
The Splinternet
In that same session, he expressed concerns about China. They have a unique take on what a connected future looks like. A totalitarian approach to the connected state. Where there is wide-spread face scanning and radical transparency demanded of citizens with zero privacy. Control is entirely in the hands of the state. It is a hermetically sealed internet within a “Splinternet” (a divided and splintered collection of different internets).
So if we are going to regulate against bad actors in tech and AI, the question has to be asked is how effective that will be in a Splinternet?
There is no way to ensure China and North Korea or any rogue state will be good actors with powerful AI. Especially when we have the precedent where Russia has weaponised social media to become a global Super Troll.
But China and Splinternets aren’t my primary concern for the efficacy of regulation.
The Blindspot
Lets put AI aside for a moment. Governments are terrible with tech. Period.
We’ve seen time and time again that they can’t do digital transformation. They can’t even deliver high-speed broadband internet. So how are we going to legislate in a manner that is agile and smart enough for tech that is accelerating and evolving exponentially? All while ensuring this legislation is consistent across various borders and markets?
The simple answer is, of course, that we can’t.
Meanwhile, the last 12 months have shown us that we can’t leave it to the big tech platforms to take responsibility. And the GFC put paid to that whole ‘wisdom of the market” ruse.
In the midst of all this, the screens of CNN in America were filled with Trump paying porn star Stormy Daniels hush money. That was the sum total of what Washington and the media were talking about while all this was being discussed. To be fair, Bernie Sanders gave CNN (via a contrite Jake Tapper) a hard time for that very thing up onstage at Day 1.
The Car Is On Fire
The people walking the corridors of power in our parliaments around the world don’t even recognise this as a problem. They simply don’t have the knowledge, the skills, the curiosity, the tools or the systems required to deal with the world we’re currently living in.
As far as Australia is concerned, the only politician I can think of who has beat this drum was Scott Ludlum. But he was a single senator from a minority party who had to resign when he found out he was a Kiwi.
The opening line of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s ‘Dead Flag Blues’ comes to mind:
The car is on fire, and there’s no driver at the wheel.
No matter what side of the political spectrum you come from or look at, our current crop of leaders are not up to the task. Whether it’s Turnbull or Shorten, Trump or Hillary, May or Corbyn (and at least 95% of their cabinets).
Never mind Skynet being self-aware, the nightmare is that our Governments aren’t.
Matt Kendall is Founder and Director of Fromm, a strategic consultancy based in Sydney and Byron Bay. Matt is obsessed with the future of work, a future that is decentralised, distributed, collaborative and, therefore, a whole lot more human.
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