It feels like another turbulent time in tech, another paradigm shift, like what happened with the move to mobile. In this case, it is a move away from the internet as we know it (Web2) — a soft-touch regulatory environment — to what’s being called Web3, where actual guardrails might be erected.
And tech seems to finally be making its slow rebirth from the pandemic. Big Tech was the big winner of the pandemic, as I predicted at its outset in March 2020. The largest companies were best positioned to take advantage of the needs of the locked-down population and then prey on weakened rivals.
“There will be a culling of most competitors of these giants that will only strengthen the power and reach of the behemoths, eliminating pesky roadblocks to their further domination,” I wrote. “This is obviously not a good thing in the long run.”
Indeed, but that’s precisely what happened, as valuations of the largest firms rose to unprecedented levels and their owners and executives, already among the richest in the world, padded their portfolios to become among the wealthiest in recorded history.
So where do we go from here? Among other things, I believe we’re entering a new period in which these powerful forces will be under greater pressure than ever to fend off those who would rein them in (I am looking at you, regulators).
Here are the three key trends that I think we need to pay attention to going forward:
Winners and losers emerge: While it may be easy to lump all the tech companies into one, the recent quarterly results give us a window into which are pulling ahead. And it’s a familiar set of names: Apple, Alphabet and Amazon. They all turned in spectacular results, propelled by the wind at their backs as the world begins to emerge from the pandemic.
Meta, while still no slouch, was not so lucky. Its stock has tumbled by history-making amounts. Investors turned on the social media behemoth after it was hit by a troika of challenges, including an inability to reckon with mobile privacy changes pushed by Apple that dented its Facebook’s advertising business; its first-ever decline in user growth; and, of course, costly investments in the years-long shift to the metaverse, championed by C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg. Meta still dominates the advertising industry alongside Google, but will the cracks emerging in Meta’s cash cow allow other players, like Amazon, to gain more ground?
Bigger is still better: In the near absence of U.S. government tech oversight and the inability of lawmakers to agree to more funding for regulatory bodies like the Federal Trade Commission (listen to my Sway interview with F.T.C. head Lina Khan), expect to see a flood of mergers across the industry. Sure, the threat of regulatory action is always present, but most big companies have made the calculation that it is a far, far better thing to agree to stipulations later than to miss out while the getting’s good. Perhaps only Meta is hindered here due to scrutiny, but you will most likely see the other companies in the industry continue to shop for the best deal. Microsoft’s shrewd proposed buyout of Activision is a great example — it will help move the company into the metaverse, through which gaming is likely to be the first important gateway. And Activision wins by gaining access to complex technology it would never have been able to afford on its own. That won’t be the last takeover — Zoom, Twitter, Pinterest, you’re all in the cross hairs.
New disruptions: Whether it is Mark Cuban’s attempt to blow up big pharma or the growing number of crypto companies moving closer to mainstream acceptance (ignore the roller coaster price of Bitcoin, which is still more of an asset than a usable currency) or the host of startups figuring out how to assist remote work, I am heartened again by the level of innovation I am seeing. And it’s not just commerce, communications, search and social media. The pandemic has allowed for a hard reset on just about everything and allowed us to discard what doesn’t make sense. Expect to see a range of new companies that will someday supplant the giants of today. That’s the hope, anyway.
That brings me to my favorite quote from the title character of “Mary Poppins,” herself a secret agent of disruption and innovation: “I shall stay until the wind changes.” Spoiler alert: It’s changing.
4 Questions
I connected with Timnit Gebru. a research scientist and computer engineer, who works on a range of issues, including algorithmic bias. She left Google, where she co-headed the search giant’s Ethical AI group, in December of 2020 following a dispute with the company over a paper she co-wrote about large language models, a technology that helps power search engines. (Google said it accepted her resignation while Gebru said she was fired). I’ve edited her answers.
It’s more than a year since you said Google fired you in an apparent dispute over a paper you co-wrote about large language models. What impact has your high-profile disagreement had?
I think the tech worker organizing has been growing stronger. For instance, the Alphabet Workers Union went public. At the same time, the public is also seeing how ruthlessly big tech companies are willing to retaliate. The #AppleToo movement brought us stories of inequity and abuse from many Apple workers, and the company swiftly pushed out the two public faces of the movement, Cher Scarlett and Janneke Parrish. Apple can’t stop the movement, however, and there are many others inspired by #AppleToo such as #GeToo, with refers to General Electric. The Silenced No More act was passed in California thanks to the tireless work of Ifeoma Ozoma and her collaborators, and whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimonies showed a detailed account of how much Facebook prioritizes growth over all else. In the research world there are also growing calls for academic conferences and journals to institute processes that deter corporations from using their power to mislead the academic world.
There are also growing calls for regulating Big Tech, so I think the public is waking up to the hypocrisy of these companies, the immense amount of power they hold and the harm they are causing. This is very different from 10 or so years ago when they were all seen as heroes. Unfortunately, I still see this hero worship with, for instance, people like Elon Musk. And Tesla is run like a plantation — one only has to see the recent horrifying accounts from people like Owen Diaz and Kaylen Barker.
Explain what your new organization, Distributed AI Research, is doing and why you organized it the way you did. What is your goal?
DAIR’s theory is that in order to work on AI-related systems that are not harmful, and that could perhaps be helpful to society, we must start with a structure that doesn’t incentivize a “move fast and break things” attitude — and a funding model that doesn’t rely on the military or Big Tech. Those funding models are always concerned with warfare or maximizing profit for a select few. Even if one wants to redirect things to be “good,” it first starts from those two incentives. It’s like first creating a tank and then trying to determine how that tank could be used for something other than warfare. To me, that’s how the foundation of AI related technology is built. If you look at self-driving car research, DARPA organized these robot car races. But when they advertise them that’s not what happens: they talk about how it will be great for blind people. Well, if that’s the goal then why isn’t that technology built with that goal in mind from Day 1?
So, our theory is that if we want to arrive at a different type of technology, we have to start with the structure and the incentives. To us, that means being selective with funding, working slowly on research, working with an interdisciplinary team of researchers around the world who also bring the expertise of their lived experiences, and having a research process and incentive structure that doesn’t drive us to publish every few months.
What is your greatest fear over how AI is being developed and what is a positive development you foresee? Related: Who are key players now in the space and how do you assess their efforts?
The biggest issue with AI is that it is being developed by a very homogeneous, privileged group of people, and being driven by either of those two goals I mentioned earlier: warfare or Big Tech.
On the warfare side, there are some truly terrifying developments. For instance, borders surveilled by drones. Warfare and tech companies are intersecting with companies like Palantir which works with ICE. And people like Peter Thiel, an Open AI funder, and Sam Altman, the current OpenAI C.E.O., are investing in companies like Brinc whose earlier demos literally had a drone that talks to a man named Jose, that then automatically tases him. While it’s easier to imagine how things like this are scary, my former colleague El Mahdi wrote that social media companies have more blood on their hands than any rogue drone. The recent Tek Fog investigation from The Wire shows just how much disinformation, harassment and hate speech can be disseminated, and its impacts. Our paper on large language models discusses how it can be used for this purpose — this is cyberwarfare.
The positive developments I see are grassroots movements that are the antithesis to this. For instance, organizations like Masakhane NLP, EthioNLP and Ghana NLP working on natural language processing tools for African languages. Te Hiku Media working on language technology for the Maori language and rejecting an offer to be bought by an American company. And independent institutions like AI Now, Data & Society and the Algorithmic Justice League, as well as movements like Data for Black Lives, Radical AI, Black in AI, Queer in AI, Indigenous in AI, LatinX in AI. These are organizations resisting the move toward centralization and homogeneity in AI.
You told me recently you never spoke directly to Alphabet C.E.O. Sundar Pichai about what happened? What would you want to say to him now?
If it were years ago, I would schedule so many meetings with him, I would try to reason with him, I would write documents explaining the issues, send him articles, send him citations, have other people meet with him so that he understands their experiences and can empathize. That’s what I did with my leaders such as Jeff Dean, who reports to Sundar Pichai, over and over and over again. And look where I am now? I’ve learned that it’s a better use of my time to try to figure out how to galvanize those without power rather than appeal to the good will of those in power. So, what I would say to Sundar Pichai now is that you will not escape regulation and you will not stop the tech worker movement.
Lovely & Loathsome
Lovely: LinkedIn is testing a “no-politics” setting on the business social network, which would remove content that we can all agree has become hopelessly mired in toxicity. The feature has been rolling out in the United States to some users, and its C.E.O. Ryan Roslansky told the The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern that “If they find it effective, if it’s helping them better accomplish what they’re trying to accomplish on LinkedIn, then we’ll roll it out to more.” Interestingly, the Microsoft-owned unit has seen strong growth of late, including a revenue increase of 37 percent in the last quarter as well as strong uptake from younger users, who presumably just want to get a job and not getting all tweaked about a pol who confused the Nazi-era police force with a delicious Spanish chilled soup.
Loathsome: The worst statement from a tech C.E.O. I have seen in while came from Spotify leader Daniel Ek, in a memo to employees, addressing the ongoing controversies around star podcaster Joe Rogan. “I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer,” he wrote. “We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but canceling voices is a slippery slope.” Using loaded words like “silencing,” “canceling” and “slippery slope” — while noting he does not always agree with Rogan — is really just a pathetic attempt to paint himself and the company as a hero of this sordid story. Spotify is no hero. What it looks like is an effort to evade responsibility as a media company for splashy deals they touted on the way up, when the getting was good, and a head-in-the-sand approach when things got inevitably dicey.
My take: Spotify didn’t do their due diligence by fully listening to Rogan, which is an insult to him and also to Spotify’s users. And then Spotify was caught flat-footed when its investment caught flack. They’re a business and certainly can stick with the guy that is helping them grow, but enough with the word-washing.
