Scrutiny Doesn't Yet Amount to Techlash -- but May in Future, TPI Told

The IBM antitrust case took about 10 years, Microsoft's about seven, Google Chief Economist Hal Varian told us in Q&A: "Don’t hold your breath, it's going to take a long time." Meanwhile, "there will be many, many good things that will come out of the next" years from tech, like education advances and ease of scheduling appointments, he added: "The more the assistant knows about you, the more" it can do for users. Such data also could let a tech "assailant" cause more harm, Varian suggested.

Antitrust as a "tool is too slow to" resolve current concerns, said University of Chicago law professor Randal Picker. "If you’re actually going to do something on a time scale that matters to the industry, that’s going to require legislation." Tech critic and FutureCast Executive Producer Andrew Keen earlier said "it all comes down to antitrust" on concerns about tech. "These are very important and credible conversations to have."

Techlash's "an important word which I think in the future will occur," Keen responded to our question. "We’re still in the early moments of kind of tech skepticism." The view has gone from "radical optimism to something more balanced or realistic," he said. Techlash could come in a few decades, Keen suggested: "It's going to become increasingly self-evident" that tech "is compounding huge inequalities" in society. "So-called digital natives are the ones who are going to" rebel, he predicted, likening it to a 1960s-type "reaction, and when we have a genuine techlash, then the regulatory world changes dramatically." Now, "people in Washington don’t really care" but in 20-30 years, "it will become the central issue in politics," he forecast.

Keen targeted Facebook and wants to expand duties of web platforms to be similar to traditional media. Others at last year's TPI also discussed Communications Decency Act Section 230, with some seeking expansion (see 1808200059). "The real meat is to make these platforms accountable for what’s published on them. They’re media platforms. Facebook is a classic example of a media company," Keen said: Google's "YouTube is another example." These companies "make their money from the content," he said. "They should be as accountable as traditional media companies." It's "almost as if Google invented Facebook" so the first company "can fly under the radar" with the focus on the second, Keen said: Facebook "destroyed its credibility and its trust" and its two senior leaders aren't acting in an accountable way. The company didn't comment.

Picker noted the First Amendment bars regulation of content in some traditional media like newspapers. The professor thinks "there are a lot of people unhappy with the 2016 election results, and they blame Facebook for that." There's "pushback especially at the political level, maybe across the planet" against companies represented in the audience, he said. "There has been this shift." Moderator and TPI Senior Fellow Thomas Lenard noted that a few years ago, tech providers could do no wrong. Such a utopian vision for some has become dystopian, he said: Yet the platforms are "an integral part of people’s lives, and there’s no evidence that’s changing."

TPI Notebook

Since technology and especially AI may make more job types obsolete, it's worth thinking about policy in such a scenario, a Technology Policy Institute lunch audience was told Monday in Aspen. Startup founder, virtual reality pioneer and current Microsoft Office of the Chief Technology Officer Prime Unifying Scientist Jaron Lanier said "we very much have a name for the thing that would replace people, and we call it artificial intelligence." He noted he wasn't speaking on the tech company's behalf and executives there could be "horrified" about his remarks. Though some want to tell those whose professions have been made outdated they're themselves becoming obsolete and need to be retrained, he said "that it’s a lie. In fact, we need them, we just don’t want to admit it." He discussed a future with "data as labor" and much collective bargaining, like with unions, but perhaps labor units of a different name. "Any future in which people are contributing to an AI algorithm" could mean "data comes from all of us, all of us collectively become laborers," Lanier said. The VR expert worries about a government-provided universal basic income, which some propose to address AI effects on employment. He said that would instead concentrate power in the state. Companies need worker buy-in for tech improvements, University of Southern California business/tech associate professor Pai-Ling Yin told an earlier panel (see page 2). Without this, innovation happens more slowly, she said. "Technology works with not only people but organizations and firms. So if it's not making sense to that firm" that seeks higher profit or its employees, she said of tech adoption, "it just won’t happen."

For the first year in recent times, neither the FCC nor the FTC had speakers at TPI. The FTC was scheduled to have sent a member from each political party. Flight problems derailed that, attendees said and an FTC spokesperson confirmed. As a result, Commissioners Noah Phillips and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter canceled their appearances for Monday, the agency's spokesperson said. The FCC declined to comment.