Web Summit 2018: Tech is waking up to its ethical issues (sort of)
I was in beautiful languid Lisbon this week for Web Summit. It‘s a huge tech event of 70,000 people, featuring high-profile speakers from Tim Berners-Lee and Ev Williams, to Tony Blair and Antonio Guterres. For me, tech’s ethical issues were the topic of the week. Regulation, privacy and freedom of expression came up in talk after talk. I was surprised that such a glossy event focused on the grubby parts of the industry, even if the discussion was frustratingly theoretical at times.
Tim Berners-Lee set the tone on opening night by announcing the Contract For The Web. The Contract is a set of simple principles for governments, businesses and individuals, intended to keep the web free, open and a good place to be. Over time, the idea is that they will develop into something more comprehensive through consultation and discussion.
A lot of big names have already signed up, including Facebook, Google and the French government. I’ve signed the Contract too, and I’m interested to see how it might work with Solid, Tim Berners-Lee’s platform for a decentralised web where we control our own data. The Contract feels like a significant moment, but I wonder what change it will actually bring about, and how fast.
Two other sessions stood out for me on this issue. The first: Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s thorough grilling of Google’s Matt Brittin on privacy, the walkout, producing AI for the Pentagon, fines and more. Brittin said the right things, but it was all surface and no depth. The impression it gave me was that Google relies on its employees, regulators and public outrage to understand its ethical boundaries, rather than having principles and living by them. The interview was excellent and shows just how much we need great journalism to hold companies to account. It’s worth a watch.
The second: Palmer Luckey talking about AI, AR, VR and his new ‘defence’ company. He discussed developing what boils down to better ways of killing people, saying:
“The United States has a pretty good history of doing the right thing when it’s able to. Obviously we’ve made mistakes, we’re not perfect, but I do believe that we’re much, much better than a lot of these other countries”.
Therefore, he thinks the role of tech companies is to build what the government wants, not dictate policy. I found it an unsettling end to the week, because of his failure to confront the ethical issues at stake.
The week left me reflecting on how important it is to always ask ‘And then what happens?’ about the things we put out into the world. Some consequences are unforeseeable, but often we can work out the negative potential outcomes and mitigate them if we could just stop ‘moving fast and breaking things’ for an hour or two.
(I read a great article about this at some point this year, which I can’t find anywhere and it’s annoying me more than you can imagine. If you know the one I’m talking about from that useless and vague description, please give me the link!)
