Skip to content

The hands-off tech era is over

    It is more clear than ever that governments will no longer leave technology alone.

    Europe mandated standard phone chargers for portable electronics, while Texas passed a controversial law restricting online speech surveillance by social media companies. Tech companies can expect more changes, such as when government sitters delve into how they do business and how we use their products.

    That most likely means that new technologies such as driverless cars and facial recognition systems will take longer to spread around the world than they would have. For many technical proponents, more consultation and oversight will delay invention. For others, that’s exactly the point.

    I wanted to discuss this in today’s newsletter, because it’s easy to get overwhelmed (or reject) all attempts at government regulation. In recent weeks, journalists have written about pending congressional laws related to data privacy and technical antitrust; the job classification of drivers for companies like Uber; multiple countries setting standards on how data can and cannot be moved around the world; The Netherlands forces Apple to review payment options for dating apps; and two state laws governing social media speech.

    All of those are the result of a still-evolving rethinking of what has been a relatively laissez-faire approach to technology since the 1990s. With few exceptions, the prevailing attitude was that new internet technologies, including digital advertising, e-commerce, social media and ‘gig’ employment via apps, were too new, marginal and useful for governments to restrict them with many rules.

    As television and radio did when those media were new, many tech companies encouraged light regulation by saying they brought change for the better, elected officials were too toiling and ignorant to oversee them effectively, and government intervention would confuse progress.

    Just one example: A decade ago, Facebook said U.S. rules requiring TV and radio to disclose who pays for election-related ads don’t apply to that company. The US election agency “shouldn’t stand in the way of innovation,” a Facebook attorney said at the time.

    Those ad disclosures aren’t always effective, but after Russian-backed propagandists distributed social media ads and free posts in 2016 to fuel American political divisions, Facebook voluntarily began to provide greater transparency about political ads.

    Better laws or ad disclosure probably wouldn’t have stopped hostile foreign actors from misusing Facebook to wage information wars in the US or other countries. But the hands-off conventional wisdom has most likely contributed to the feeling that those responsible for technology should be left alone to do what they wanted.

    “We realized that we have let go of these powerful forces and have failed to create appropriate safeguards,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. “We could have just said at the beginning that any technology needs to be regulated in a healthy way.”

    Now regulators feel empowered. Lawmakers have stepped in to create rules for law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology. There will be more laws like the one in Texas to take power away from the handful of tech executives who create free speech rules for billions of people. More countries will force Apple and Google to recreate the app economy. More regulation is already changing the way children use technology.

    Again, not all of this will be good government intervention. But there are more signs that people who create technologies also want more government oversight – or at least pay lip service to it. Any discussion of emerging technology, including the artificial intelligence illustration software Dall-E and cryptocurrency, includes regular consultations about the potential damage and how regulation can minimize it.

    That doesn’t mean people agree on what government oversight should look like. But the answer is almost never no government intervention at all. And that’s different.

    If you have not yet received this newsletter in your inbox, then sign up here†

    • In 10 months, there were nearly 400 car accidents in the US involving advanced driver assistance technologies, according to federal data reported by my colleagues Neal Boudette and Cade Metz. As I wrote above, federal regulators are trying to better understand the real safety of technologies like Tesla’s Autopilot as they become more commonplace.

    • What was lost in the AI ​​and human intelligence debate: A Google employee’s fear that a piece of artificial intelligence software had gained consciousness — it didn’t — distracted from pressing concerns about AI, including biases built into the technology and all the people necessary for supposedly automated systems, wrote Bloomberg News. (A subscription may be required.)

    • The sports streaming scramble: Apple paid $2.5 billion for the right to broadcast Major League Soccer matches on its TV app for Apple devices, the Athletic reported. In India, two companies will pay $3 billion to stream cricket matches. These deals are another sign that companies are betting on sports to get people to pay for video streaming services.

    I’ll watch any video of a kitty playing poker like this one.