Notes from #Web Summit: The future of technology: Will everybody benefit?

A debate for or against an optimistic view on the future of technology

Details
Date: November 8, 2017
Time: 14:25
Conference stream: Centre Stage

Speakers
Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMWare, Twitter: @PGelsinger
Ross Mason, Founder, MuleSoft, Twitter: @rossmason
Jeremy Wilks, Presenter, Euronews, Twitter: @WilksJeremy

Web Summit Summary
Deeply embedded in the ethos of the tech industry is the belief that technology should be available and accessible to all, yet many argue that the benefits of tech innovation have been confined to a relatively small segment of the global population. Ultimately, the audience will decide who wins this debate.

Main Theme

For or against, whether the technology of the future will benefit all 7.5 billion humans living on Earth .

The topic of debate is whether the future of technology will indeed benefit everyone on the planet. Has technology benefitted all historically and what is the potential for this in the future? Ultimately, the debaters deviated from this core line of debate revolving all humans to unpack the implications for future technologies to democratize their value and who should be accountable for that democratization.

The Key Quotes

“We don’t want to optimistic we want to be deterministic.”
- Ross Mason

“Technologist need to be participating in this discussion — every great framework has two sides to a discussion.”
- Pat Gelsinger

Key Points

Pro Arguments from Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMWare:

• Technology touches every human on a planet, of 7.5 billion on Earth and half are connected and expected 80% by 2027.
• Technology is how we fix our problems today, four primary areas of technology: Mobile (accessibility), Cloud (scale), AI (intelligence), IoT (digital/physical)
• Technology aids in four core areas of human improvement: Health Care (improving diagnoses, 3D printing & robotics for bionic limbs, eradicating long term diseases, increasing life expectancy); the Environment (still in early stages of improvement but innovation in transportation, IoT, smart cities, & ability to track health of the planet shows progress); Extremism of Politics & Religion (technology is improving jobs and hence opportunity so people do not have to resort to extreme views); & Poverty (2 billion people across the planet used to live in poverty and that number has reduced to 700 million people)
• Gelsinger encourages technologists to focus on opportunities to deliver for every human on the planet for a better future

Against Arguments from Ross Mason, Founder of MuleSoft:

• The foundation of Mason’s argument revolved around the specific phrasing of the debate topic: will everyone (7.5 billion people on Earth) benefit from the technology. They will not and they do not now.
• We haven’t scaled our technological advances properly to reach everyone on the planet, e.g. 1 in 10 people don’t have access to drinking water or basic healthcare.
• Mason’s skepticism doesn’t lie in the creation of great technology but making it actually accessible across the world
• Mason covered recent issues with mass misinformation as a potential for technology to not benefit everyone in a specific way, e.g. Russian influence in the last US presidential election. Specifically, the negligence on the part of Facebook, as the technologist, not thinking about the implications of the platform they had built.
• Mason referenced the opening remarks to Web Summit from Stephen Hawking (read our summary here) about the concerns about building out robotics and artificial intelligence.
• If advances in robotics reduces job opportunities, how we will foresee handling this issue during good economic times and recessions? This is unanswered.
• Need to take pre-caution so we are not so optimistic about the potential of technology we ignore its implications.
• Can’t rely on the policymakers to make rules — they don’t have the expertise in the space. It’s up to us in this room (the technologists/attendees of Web Summit).
• When look to past/present/future of technology, err on the side of caution. We will not be able to course-correct in the future, we need to be cognizant of the risks now.

Rebuttals:

• Pro: There has been alarmist statements made about a lot of new technology, e.g. air flight, telephone, etc. Technology is disruptive, but it is fundamentally neutral. Humans have the power to use technology for good or evil. Based on the data, people are living less in poverty than in the past and that is an improvement. Science fiction always frightens people. Digital divide is being reduced again and again based on the data.
• Against: Looking at Robotics/AI advances that will become a reality in the next 10 years and we need to take a step back and take a look at what we’re doing.
• Pro: Digital divide is being reduced again and again based on the data. The role of technologists need to increase to being involved in the regulation of technology as never before as the pace is picking up. This is our opportunity, to ensure people aren’t having sensationalist reactions to scientific advances.
• Against: Technology is neutral, it can be used for good or evil but the key word in Gelsinger’s argument is the basis of pure optimism. We don’t fully understand these new technologies and we need to enlist the creators to hit the brakes and understand the implications of releasing their technology into the world.

Final Words:

• Pro: It is our job to shape inherently neutral technologies to benefit the world.
• Against: It is our job to shape the future, but we need to do this in a sustainable way to think carefully about the consequences of what we work on and what we invest in.

The audience sided with Mason that technology of the future will not benefit everyone.

Reflections

This was an excellent debate and a highlight of Day Two at Web Summit 2017. Ultimately, Gelsinger and Mason came to the same conclusion that technologists are responsible for ensuring technologies created are used for good. However, they both saw that conclusion from different angles. As builders of new technologies, we need not only be at the table of regulation discussions but we need to be the people starting the discussion about what kind of regulation is needed.

The balance between optimism for the potential of technology to be equitably distributed is top of mind for me as a product manager. I hold myself to the standards of thoughtful and ethical product building.

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