Unruly technologies race ahead of debate

Governments are embracing connected technology with barely any discussion about the implications for our security.

The chilling self-image now familiar around the world of alleged New Zealand mass murderer Brenton Tarrant in Christchurch last Friday.

It was the viral massacre: trumpeted on 8chan, streamed live on Facebook, re-posted on YouTube. Images of the carnage spread out from New Zealand at super speeds, just as the killer of worshippers at mosques had planned.

Predictably, he had spent a lot of time in the dark corners of the internet, communing with other inadequates of the pointy white hood persuasion.

The shootings coincided, neatly enough, with the 30th anniversary of the worldwide web. Last week its creator, Tim Berners-Lee, said the web had “given a voice to those who spread hatred and made all kinds of crime easier to commit”. Sounding a note of hope, he suggests that if we all pull together to develop some global rules, the web can be cleaned up and be changed for the better over the next 30 years.

Alas, it seems too late for that. Berners-Lee’s intervention brought to mind the scene from Aladdin when “immediately an enormous and frightful genie rose out of the Earth”. This particular genie escaped decades ago.

We can’t stuff all the ghastliness that accompanies the web back inside the lamp. Governments can huff and regulators can puff but the genie is enormous, often frightful and out of control.

Look at the disdainful way global tech companies and their Zuckerbergian emperors treat mere legislators. Think of how the most benign of social platforms have been corrupted for evil or undemocratic purposes. Remember all those daily instances of cruelty and abuse on platforms that are impossible to police. Sure, we can try to whack incidents of wrongdoing here and there, but while the web remains open to all, it will continue to amplify the worst aspects of human nature.

I’m not blaming Berners-Lee for failing to foresee the damage the web would do but his remarks contain a lesson: perhaps we need to exercise caution before the technological genie leaps out of the bottle, not after.

Many clever people have been bitten when their creations changed the world not for the better but for the worse. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite for use in construction work; it became widely used as a bloody weapon of war, leading Nobel to establish the peace prize by way of atonement. Botanist Arthur Galston helped to develop a herbicide for benign purposes, which was later used as Agent Orange, a horrible, disfiguring weapon of war in Vietnam. Decades later he said: “Nothing that you do in science is guaranteed to result in benefits for mankind. Any discovery … can be turned either to constructive ends or destructive ends.”

Some would argue it is not the job of scientists or techies to predict the destructive ends their discoveries may lead to; it is up to governments to curb new innovations if necessary.

The trouble is that politicians are almost always starry-eyed about technology and science. They want to be seen to embrace the future, not reject it. Enthusiasm is sexier than caution.

And so, today, more worrying genies are inching up the spout of the lamp with very little debate about how they may change our lives.

One genie already wriggling its way out is “smart” technology.

While hackers are getting more cunning at cracking their way into anything connected to the internet, we are blithely allowing the deeper penetration of connected technology into our physical environment.

Smart devices in our homes, commercial drones in our skies and driverless cars on our roads make us increasingly vulnerable to cyberattack, and yet government is embracing this connected technology with barely any discussion about the implications for our security.

Another fast-emerging genie is the threat that artificial intelligence and automation pose to employment. The robots are not coming, they’re already here, replacing factory workers, shop assistants and admin clerks, creeping into the domain of white collar work.

The potential for massive, permanent job losses is huge. The laissez faire response goes that new jobs will arise to replace the old, but quite how those displaced from low-skilled, low-wage jobs will be ready for new, hi-tech jobs is never explained. Who, at a senior level in government, is wrestling with the implications of all this?

Another genie poking its head from the lamp is biotechnology, particularly gene editing. Sean Parker, the first Facebook president, recently said “the debate about gene editing is the one we are not having” — and should be.

The re-engineering of the human species is the stuff of dystopian fiction, yet in December, rogue Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced he had fiddled with the genetic code of two human babies.

The CRISPR gene-editing tool allows scientists to quickly and cheaply alter DNA. Its potential is both exciting (avoiding disease) and terrifying (creating designer babies).

That is why last week a group of respected scientists, including the co-creator of CRISPR, called for an international moratorium on editing sperm, egg or embryo DNA to create genetically modified children; a pause of about five years in which there can be discussions on the “technical, scientific, medical, societal, ethical and moral issues” of gene editing.

The scientists’ caution seems wise; yet where is the leadership to help shape the debate about what the boundaries around biotechnology should be?

There is a sense that no one is paying attention. These genies may escape from the lamp whether we like it or not, but we should at least be having more of a debate about how we can ensure that new technologies serve our society, rather than make us more insecure, more unhappy or more unequal.

The Times