Microsoft’s Brad Smith: We don’t yet have all the questions.
On a recent trip to New Zealand and Australia, Microsoft’s Brad Smith flew into the centre of a storm.
Smith had come to talk dispassionately about technology and ethics, but the Christchurch massacre had darkened the mood. Suddenly regulators globally were looking to regulate tech firms and digital platforms, and quickly.
As Microsoft’s president and chief legal counsel, Smith conceded there is a problem.
“There are too many days when online discourse has become far too toxic,” Smith told an audience at Sydney University on March 28. “Governments have a new role to play as well … even a regulatory role.”
Smith had come to Sydney University at the invitation of the United States Studies Centre to discuss the ethics and laws surrounding facial recognition technology. But first he wanted to address the murder of 50 people at al Noor and Linwood Mosques, a massacre made worse because it was livestreamed. Smith agreed that now is a perfect time to ask searching questions. He also agreed that regulation of the internet is sorely needed.
“This is the time to act, this is the time to regulate,” Smith said. This is also true, he said, for facial recognition technology. “The only way to avoid a race to the bottom is to create a regulatory floor.”
All of a sudden, regulation has become the mantra among tech companies who previously wanted legislators to stay well away.
“I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators,” wrote Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in a Washington Post oped on March 30. In February, Google’s policy chief, Karan Bhatia, called for “common rules of the road” for the global regulation of technology. And Apple’s Tim Cook is on the same page.
For facial recognition, Smith argues that three areas deserve special consideration: privacy; bias; and democratic freedoms. And he added that legislators needn’t wait until they had perfected prospective legislation. Rather, they ought to emulate tech developers, who follow the principle of a “minimum viable software product”. That is, they release software in the knowledge that it will be refined and improved. Similarly, legislators ought to think about passing “minimum viable legislation”, which can then be amended and ameliorated, in part to keep up with technological innovations.
It is in the law, Smith said, that the public’s voice can be heard. Unfortunately, there has been a paucity of law.
“After four days in this part of the world thinking about Christchurch and being frustrated by the reaction of some in the tech sector, don’t lose the frustration,” he told the Sydney University audience in his closing remarks. “Let’s make this the inflection point it needs to be.”
See a video of Smith’s talk here.
Byline: Sacha Molitorisz
