The Real Authoritarianism
Today’s power is about who decides what technology gets pushed into your life.
Think authoritarianism only comes from governments? Look at your phone. Open your laptop. Start your car. There's a new kind of authority in your life.
These days, power isn't just about who runs your country: It's about who decides what technology gets pushed into your life, ready or not.
Take Elon Musk. Clearly amazing. I was in awe when I watched a rocketship come down and be caught by chopsticks. At the same time, his "Autopilot" isn't really autopilot, but you'll only get that message after you've trusted your life to it. He decides whether people in war zones get internet through Starlink. Not governments, not the UN, just one guy. And just for fun, he tosses $100M into elections like you'd toss a penny into a fountain. (All of which is to probably better set up his companies and ventures financially, without regulatory oversight).
It's not just him. Every day, AI companies are pushing their tech into your world. ChatGPT was one of the fastest-deployed products the world has ever seen. Will it replace your job? Nobody really knows, but still they decided to simply put it out there. Will it spread misinformation and potentially destabilize democracies? They'll decide to take that risk regardless of what we all think. Did anyone ask what you thought (or what you wanted)? Of course not.
Remember when tech was supposed to make our lives better? When products were built to delight us? Now it feels more like "You’ll take what we give you" — like we're all just subjects in someone else's kingdom.
As I’ve said many times before, I come from the tech world (and will maybe, hopefully, go back to it one of these days), but we need the tech world to do better. A common joke that floats around is “we would get so much work done if we didn’t have to worry about our customers.” I think about that a lot when it comes to the products we are seeing today. We’ve lost the thread of making products that make us all better, rather than making products that make us better at the expense of others.
Here's the thing: The person with the most control over your daily life might not be your president or your boss — or maybe even you: It might be a tech CEO you've never met.
We need to demand better. Technology should be built with us. We should control who gets not only our money and our data, but our attention.
For those of you feeling powerless this week, you have a way to reclaim some of it, right in the palm of your hand.
Worth the Read
Two looks at the candidates’ differing views on AI policy. (Snippet: “Biden’s Executive Order on AI has come under fire by the Trump campaign. At a rally in Iowa, Trump explained that he would cancel the order ‘on day one.’” And one on where they converge: Beat China.
As always, Axios breaks it down in clear, terrifying terms: “American voters have just decided — among many other things — that artificial intelligence will grow up in a permissive, anything-goes household, rather than under the guidance of stricter parents.”
TechCrunch weighs in on how Elon Musk’s life — and ours — is about to change.