Machines Like Us

Access to credible information is key to combating a public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. Amid an outbreak, fact-checking websites are becoming increasingly important.

The in-depth conversations around technology’s impact on our economy, society and democracy continue as co-hosts David Skok and Taylor Owen return for a second season of Big Tech. In this season of the podcast we will explore the gaps between those creating technology and those trying to govern it. We will also be looking at how technology is being used to respond to the global outbreak of COVID-19.

The first episode will be available on Thursday, April 23, 2020 and new episodes will be released every other Thursday. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Companies, international organizations and government agencies are all working to identify and eliminate online hate speech and extremism. It’s a game of cat and mouse: as regulators develop effective tools and new policies, the extremists adapt their approaches to continue their efforts.

In this episode of Big Tech, Taylor Owen speaks with Sasha Havlicek, founding CEO of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, about her organization and how it is helping to eliminate online extremism and hate speech.

Several issues make Havlicek’s work difficult. The first challenge is context: regional, cultural and religious traditions play a factor in defining what is and what is not extremist content. Second, there isn’t a global norm about online extremism to reference. Third, jurisdictions present hurdles; who is responsible for deciding on norms and setting rules? And finally, keeping up with evolving technology and tactics is a never-ending battle. As online tools become more effective in identifying and removing online extremism and hate speech, extremist groups find ways to circumvent the systems.

These problems are amplified by engagement-driven algorithms. While the internet enables individuals to choose how and where they consume content, platforms exploit users’ preferences to keep them engaged. “The algorithms are designed to find ways to hold your attention, … that by feeding you slightly more titillating variants of whatever it is that you're looking for, you are going to be there longer. And so that drive towards more sensationalist content is I think a real one,” Havlicek says. These algorithms contribute to the creation of echo chambers, which are highly effective tools for converting users to extremists.

Earlier this month, Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg travelled to Europe ahead of the European Commission’s announcement of a new data strategy plan. The proposed regulations would seek to give Europe a competitive advantage by establishing data trusts to foster development in artificial intelligence technology. The tension between Silicon Valley and Brussels was on full display during Zuckerberg’s visit: while the tech executive was welcomed in state-visit fashion, his recommendation for European platform regulation was flatly rejected.

To understand Zuckerberg’s message for the European Union, David Skok and Taylor Owen speak with Mark Scott, chief technology correspondent at POLITICO, about the proposed data strategy and its potential implications for tech giants like Facebook.

The conversation breaks down a series of events that started on February 15, when Zuckerberg spoke at the Munich Security Conference about his company’s investment in building tools to address concerns around privacy, hate speech and democracy. He argued that private organizations shouldn’t be responsible for deciding what is acceptable online—rather, that should be left to governments.

Then, on February 17, Zuckerberg travelled to Brussels to meet with officials at the European Commission. His visit coincided with Facebook’s release of a new white paper titled “Charting a Way Forward: Online Content Regulation.”

Two days later, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced the “ European Data Strategy,” absent Zuckerberg’s recommendations. “This is about trying to make sure that Europe doesn't miss out on the next wave of tech, which is frankly mostly AI,” explains Scott.

In this episode of Big Tech Taylor Owen sits down with Ben Scott, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Luminate, to discuss how the internet has evolved throughout Scott’s time in Washington, DC. Scott has worked for Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the State Department and then on her election campaign. Discussing Scott’s evolving role in digital policy, Owen says: “wherever the internet has been, you have been.”

While working on cable regulations in Washington DC in 2003, Scott realized that the internet was the next major form of communication technology, sparking an interest in net neutrality regulations. “And then in a very short period of years before it [the internet] becomes monetized and concentrated power takes it over, it becomes controlled by a handful of commercial interests and then people give up trying to fight against that and that becomes status quo. And we had intervened at that moment, stopped cable and telecom industries from grabbing hold of the internet and kept it decentralized.” Scott joined Barack Obama’s presidential campaign to draft the first ever internet policy agenda for a presidential candidate.

While in the State Department, Scott saw the spread of the internet and its ability to promote democracy and enable societal change — the Arab Spring for example. During the same period, platform companies continued to grow their influence in Washington DC, and eventually, Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign illustrated just how easily the internet could be manipulated. As Scott puts it: “if everybody's using the same tools of online manipulation and distortion and organized amplification of messages that don't actually have that much support in the public, if you are willing to go totally over the top with the most outrageous, the most sensational, the most divisive, the most controversial, provocative — that, ultimately those messages spread farther, faster than anything else.”

There’s a false narrative surrounding artificial intelligence (AI): that it cannot be regulated. These idea stems, in part, from a belief that regulations will stifle innovation and can hamper economic potential, and that the natural evolution of AI is to grow beyond its original code.

In this episode of Big Tech co-hosts David Skok and Taylor Owen speak with Joanna J. Bryson, professor of ethics and technology at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin (beginning February 2020). Professor Bryson begins by explaining the difference between intelligence and AI, and how that foundational understanding can help us to see how regulations are possible in this space.

“We need to be able to go back then and say, ‘okay, did you file a good process?’ A car manufacturer, they're always recording what they did because they do a phenomenally dangerous and possibly hazard thing … and if one of them goes wrong and the brakes don't work, we can go back and say, ‘Why did the brakes not work?’ And figure out whose fault [it] is and we can say, ‘Okay, you've got to do this recall. You've got to pay this liability, whatever.’ It's the same thing with software,” Bryson explains. It is the responsibility of nations to protect those inside its borders, and that protection must extend to data rights. She discusses how the EU General Data Protection Regulation — a harmonized set of rules that covers a large area and crosses borders — is an example international cooperation that resulted in a harmonized set of standards and regulations for AI development.

There is a growing sense that governments are not able to effectively solve the problems of the world. The narrative that governments are slow, costly and not informed enough to make the right decisions. This stands in contrast to the private sector; business leaders are regarded as effective leaders because they generate incredible wealth.

The “savior complex” is particularly strong among the wealthiest tech executives. Their world view is rooted in the idea that we can use technology to solve all the world’s problems.

In this episode of Big Tech, co-hosts David Skok and Taylor Owen speak with Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.

Giridharadas speaks about this rise of powerful tech executives who are using their wealth and influence to reshape systems of governance — instead of supporting democratic institutions, they are creating their own philanthropic organizations. For Giridharadas these elites are the new plutocrats who have seized power through wealth, much like the railroad tycoons of old. “There is enormous moral difference between five guys deciding to do something and a city deciding to do something. This is something I think you wouldn't have had to explain to people 100 years or 200 years ago when we actually had more faith in the idea of democratic action,” Giridharadas says. He goes on to explain that where funds are coming from is more important than the amount of funding, citing military aid to Ukraine as an example. There is a difference between $400 million dollars provided by the American taxpayer and $400 million dollars provided by a wealthy executive who isn’t elected to represent the best interests of a population. Giridharadas argues that if tech billionaires really want to help make the world a better place, they should just pay their fair share in taxes, and leave governments to solve the world’s problems.

Google and IBM are in a race to achieve quantum supremacy — both sides claim that they are winning. But what does quantum supremacy really mean? Quantum technologies have the ability to solve complex solutions to build better materials, design more effective pharmaceutical treatments or optimize large distribution networks. Nations or corporations that can harness the power of quantum technologies will have an advantage over their competitors. The leap in technology could be so great that it could have devastating impacts on the economies that lack quantum technologies.

In this episode of Big Tech co-hosts David Skok and Taylor Owen speak with James Der Derian, Director of the Centre for International Security Studies at The University of Sydney and Principal Investigator at Project Q, about the impact of quantum technologies could have on peace, security, economics and society.

Dr. Shohini Ghose, Professor of Physics and Computer Science at Wilfrid Laurier University provides a foundational understanding of quantum computing at the beginning of this episode.

Truth and facts are not the same thing. To find truth, we must combine the best available information (what we know to be facts) with our own lens. This is especially challenging on social media: posts may be presented as if they are truthful, but truth comes with some subjectivity. This is where fact checking tools — like the encyclopedic knowledge of Wikipedia — are essential. That is, if they present neutral information, offer unbiased results, have a transparent process and are able to be edited.

In this episode of Big Tech, co-hosts David Skok and Taylor Owen speak with Katherine Maher, the Wikimedia Foundation’s chief executive officer and executive director. Maher joined Wikimedia in 2016 just prior to the election of President Trump. She is acutely aware of Wikipedia’s emerging role as a fact checking tool.

Transparent revision history is a cornerstone of Wikipedia. Anyone using the tool can access the edit log and provide their own edits to correct information. Some technologies subvert this process. For example, connected devices such as smart speakers pull Wikipedia’s information to provide answers to users without allowing feedback or sharing a record of edits. Other factors influence Wikipedia’s transparency and neutrality, as well. Maher’s team is looking to address biases that exist within Wikipedia’s database; she acknowledges that there is a gender imbalance, both with Wikipedia editors (80 percent of edits are made by men) and with the low percentage of articles about women and minorities. Maher explains: “we know, for example, that an article about a woman is four times more likely to mention her marital status than an article about a man. If you're doing [AI] training of semantic pairing and you start to associate someone's marital status with their gender, in so far as there's a sort of higher correlation of value to someone being married or divorced, being a woman that propagates that bias out into all of the products that are then going to go ahead and use that algorithm or that dataset in the future.” Wikipedia will need to work to solve these issues if it wishes to remain a trusted source for facts.

Online platforms like Facebook and Google Ads are positioned as superior tools for micro-targeting advertisements. The promise of greater returns on investment and granular control over who will engage with an ad has attracted advertisers.

In this episode of Big Tech, co-hosts David Skok and Taylor Owen speak with David Carroll, an associate professor of media design at Parsons School of Design at The New School. Carroll’s own understanding of the ways in which platforms were monetizing his online activity was featured in The Great Hack documentary. His research into how online advertising systems work reveals just how little thought was put into oversight and monitoring of the systems that advertisers built.

Carroll argues that financial incentives created the current data-hungry advertising environment. “The advertising complex was built to sort us into categories without knowing what our categories are. And then from there the recommendation engines were built to surface vast databases into a user interface. And those were biased towards engagement to move the chart up and then the user interface to reward people right on the surface for engagement, to move the chart up. And it was never about intelligence or goodness, it was just about greed and metrics.” For Carroll, digital advertising platforms are reminiscent of 1830s snake oil salesmen who used penny press newspapers to share misleading information. Eventually, people were protected from such ads when US Congress created the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Now, governments must step in to build the same kind of oversight bodies to regulate digital advertising.