UK should re-find 'sense of sovereignty' as it grapples with AI and big tech, Hay Festival hears
The UK government should re-find its sense of “sovereignty” as it looks to grapple with issues around artificial intelligence and the dominance of tech companies, Columbia professor of law, science and technology, Tim Wu told Hay Festival over the weekend. Wu, who is also the author of The Age of Extraction (Bodley Head) spoke at a panel discussion, arguing that the big tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple now have the “power and the size and the might of nation states”.
The panel featured a discussion between Wu and Carol Cadwalladr, the investigative journalist who exposed Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. The third panellist Sarah Wynn-Williams was unable to speak as a result of a legal injunction imposed on her by Facebook’s parent company Meta following publication of her book Careless People (Pan Macmillan) and instead she sat mute during the discussion.
The silence imposed on Wynn-Williams at the panel, entitled The Power of Tech, was described as “Putinesque” and “Trumpian” by Cadwalladr. Her appearance was described by the journalist as a “Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation”. Wu called it censorship and an example of the worst kind of behaviour of tech companies. He added that “some of the worst abuses in our time are not confined to kings, emperors, governments… but to a class of companies who challenge democracy”.
Wu contrasted the liberal idealism of the early tech boom to the toxic, undemocratic culture of Silicon Valley now. He said his book “mourns the potential of what the internet was supposed to be”.
Wu said: “I was a drinker of the Kool-Aid. I believed in the dream of the ’90s.” This dream entailed a “hippie-like ethos”; it was one “opposed to oppressive government, big institutions”. The current cultural and political climate was portrayed by Wu as “the opposite” with “democracy on the run” and “creatives starved”.
Continues...
Read More
Asked by Cadwalladr: “When did you vomit up the Kool-Aid?”, Wu said it was when Google began to “focus on maximising profits rather than the social good”, in contrast to Wikipedia, which stayed closer to its roots by exercising “self-restraint”.
Discussing the content of his book, Wu alleged that tech companies had grown to hold excessive power and now used this to undermine democracy.
In a moment of optimism, Wu suggested we have faced “challenges like this before, and we have beaten them”. He added: “You have to act early […] to establish the norms early and structure things [the] way we want them to be.” He argued that AI could be “an augmenter of humanity, something that makes us more productive, as opposed to a replacement”.
He suggested that regulation around artificial intelligence could still be shaped, but he was critical of the UK’s current approach. “Don’t you realise this is like being invited to a party only to realise you’re there to serve the drinks?” In a final statement, Wu urged the UK and Europe to “re-understand what sovereignty is”.
In the closing moments of the talk, the crowd erupted into a standing ovation supporting Wynn-Williams. Cadwalladr closed the talk speaking about Wynn-Williams, stating “she had a microphone, she couldn’t speak but her presence here is really important”. Hay Festival programme director Helen Bagnall, who introduced the session, called the moment an “important act of solidarity for the silenced”.
Wynn-Williams was prevented from talking after receiving legal advice that taking part in the on-stage discussion could place her in breach of an injunction imposed on her by Meta. The festival had earlier withdrawn her book, Careless People, from sale in order to facilitate her appearance. According to her lawyers, Meta specifically targeted her appearance at Hay in a legal letter; two weeks ago she spoke at the Bath Literature Festival on AI.
Meta told the BBC that the assertion it was restricting Wynn-Williams’ freedom of speech or trying to silence her “is not what’s happening here”. “There is a binding interim arbitration award against Ms Wynn-Williams which she agreed to during her time at Meta and which explicitly prohibits her from promoting her book,” it said. “We are entitled to ask that the terms of that order be observed.”
