Future Imperfect
The swashbuckling tech titans of Silicon Valley seem to be losing their iconic status. Once idolised as the hub of innovation and start-up culture that would disrupt the world's biggest profiteers and make life better for all, Big Tech is now accused of radicalising and exploiting the masses. Experts say the outsized power and control it commands will be a major issue in the next U.S. election cycle. Even now, regulation looms, but many feel that politicians are hopelessly underprepared to tackle the tech industry's ascendancy and its impact on economy, society and democratic hegemony. Moreover, wealth matters. Silicon Valley's tech conglomerates have propelled California's GDP to $2.46 trillion, a shade lower than India's 2017 GDP of $2.6 trillion.
The growing clout of Big Tech may cause even more damage. As new-age start-ups are keen to emulate the success of these poster boys - at any cost - massive start-up frauds and unsavoury founders are no longer rare in the Valley, or elsewhere. From Theranos to Autonomy to Asenqua Ventures, there are many cautionary tales.
As the big picture starts looking somewhat murky, two recent books - Silicon States (by Lucie Greene) and The Big Nine (by Amy Webb) - have analysed the problems of Big Tech even though right fixes are difficult to come by. Both writers boast a 'futurist' tag (Greene describes futurism as part social science, part journalism and part scenario planning) and display a noon-clear understanding of what has broken down and what the future holds.
The Silicon States dives deep to chronicle how the league of Big Tech (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Uber, Tesla, Snapchat and others) are trying to shape our future. Of course, not all of them hail from the Valley, but Greene categorises these and many others as Silicon Valley companies as all of them thrive on new-age innovations and a culture of excellence which distinguishes the Valley firms. They have power and influence, and the outcome of their widely varied operations has a chilling similarity.
When fast-food workers, airline ticketing staff and thousands of others are made redundant by automation, the devastating lifestyle change for the significant swathe of population is usually rationalised as 'progress' or 'logical efficiencies' by Valley billionaires. But it is not about jobs alone. "They are vying for our healthcare, infrastructure, energy, space travel, education and postal systems. And they are applying the tools that won them success - platforms, artificial intelligence, big data and consumer-centric on-demand models - to disrupt them," points out Greene.
The first chapter of the book traces the evolution of the Valley - the transformation from a small hub housing a handful of chipmakers in the 1970s to a global concept that goes beyond any specific sector or industry. It is a state of mind, an innovation culture, which embodies a new power map. The author then goes on to make a convincing case that Big Tech has started to influence political discourse, governments and governance. She details the impact of fake news, social media avatars and bots, and their ability to shape and distort the digital sphere, underlining how the Valley is grabbing power and governments are getting weaker. The book also devotes an entire chapter on how the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google have become more powerful than the traditional media. Calling them the Fifth Estate, Greene explains how these companies have evolved into mediators, curators, primary channels and increasingly, generators of news.
For those who remember Facebook's attempt to offer free but limited-access Internet services in India but cannot understand why it was opposed by many, the chapter titled Connecting the World provides an answer. Apparently, behind the Big Tech's plan to gift an Internet infrastructure lies a bigger objective to access a fresh market. But such motives appear minuscule compared to its aspiration to transform human life and the universe as we know it. As its expertise expands - from material science, engineering and medicine to robotics, machine learning, genetics and beyond - a fearsome evolution could take place .
"They are all intersecting in new ways to create new, daring products. Often these are in such uncharted territory, or moving so quickly, that the potential ethical quandaries are an afterthought or not yet understood from a regulatory point of view," the author cautions. She also looks into Big Tech's ubiquitous diversity problems, tax issues and figures out why its massive philanthropic initiatives have a disproportionate impact on government policies.
Written in three parts, Amy Webb's The Big Nine is not so broad in scope but sharply focusses on one technical tool used by most tech conglomerates nowadays - the artificial intelligence (AI). As the title suggests, Webb has written about nine tech giants - Google, Amazon, Apple, IBM, Microsoft and Facebook in the US and Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent in China - all of whom are on the forefront of AI usage.
In the beginning, the book talks about AI and the role of the nine tech giants in its development. The middle section provides detailed, plausible futures over the next 50 years as the technology advances, ranging from optimistic to pragmatic to catastrophic. It reveals both opportunities and risks as we advance from artificial narrow intelligence to artificial general intelligence to artificial superintelligence. The concluding part features tactical and strategic solutions to all problems identified in each scenario, along with a concrete plant to reboot the present.
Interestingly, you will find recom-mendations for governments, Big Nine leaders and even readers as Webb believes the future of AI is currently moving along two developmental tracks which are often at odds with what is best for humanity. "China's AI push is part of a co-ordinated attempt to create a new world order led by President Xi, while market forces and consumerism are the primary drivers in America. This dichotomy is a serious blind spot for us all."
The big question remains, though - how to curb the controlling power of tech monopolies without hurting their power of innovation. The world seems ready to pull the emergency brake in the form of ham-handed government interventions, but that may snuff out the very spirit of Silicon Valley and the values it originally stood for.
