Transcript
In the late 1970s, there was a new technology called Betamax, a videotape recording format developed by Sony. With Betamax people all of a sudden had the ability to record television shows in their own homes. As a result, content creators such as Universal Studios and Disney were fighting against this technology, saying the only valid use of this technology was the violation of copyright.
Conversely, those who created Betamax said that there were lots of different uses that you can have for this technology. Just because there’s one possible bad use doesn’t mean the entire use is illegal. In fact, they made the distinction that it’s the person and the way they use that technology that determines whether or not it is ethical and /or legal.
So now fast forward to YouTube. YouTube has been sued many times about the content that’s on there. The question is, is it YouTube’s fault that people are violating copyright laws or is it the people that are putting the content on YouTube that are violating these laws? Is it the technology or the user? These kinds of battles have been waged on in Europe, in the U.S., and in China. The different legal systems have analysed this question differently and they’ve come up with conclusions based on their own cultural and legal background.
Now with that in mind, let’s think about all these new technologies. We’ve talked about driverless vehicles, facial recognition software, etc. Assuming technology in and of itself can’t be inherently bad, that it’s neutral and amoral, whose responsibility is it to ensure that these technologies are being used in proper ways? Is it the creator and owner of that technology, like the creator of the Betamax? Or is it the people who are actually using that technology, as we have discussed in the case of the Silk Road and others?
The reason why this is such an important question now is the technologies we are discussing now are different from Betamax, which only allows you to record in a single location, say your living room. Sentient AI, Blockchain, or any other technologies we have discussed so far are like the shiny new sports car in your garage. Once they are out on the road, they have the ability to scale theoretically exponentially, and you can’t pull that back, at least not easily.
Ultimately our short answer to that question is, stakeholders. If you think about what such technology encompasses, that includes the users, the creators, the companies that commercialise it and the government and regulators.
As we have highlighted many times, the pace of change is going to be so rapid that we can’t rely on law and regulation alone. And because of that, a lot of the structures that we might want to put in place would just be placeholders, as technologies will continue through iterations of new versions of themselves and they will build on each other in advancement.
While laws and regulatory structures need to change in order to catch up with such technological advancement, we think that other stakeholders have to be involved in the process. They have greater responsibility in the context of creating different incentive structures and cultural norms that encourage people to start thinking about these questions. There are a lot of fairly well-known technology companies including Google that have various mantras relating to helping human society. But in the end, if they don’t think about those core cultural questions at the beginning of developing new projects, they will potentially mutate into something that they did not originally intend to see.
Going back to the very beginning of this book, where we discussed the concept of cultural lag. Different types of culture change at different speeds, and technology in particular is changing incredibly quickly other aspects of society such as law and religion are not going to be changing nearly as quickly. What that means is, again, we’re not going to be able to rely solely on legislation and government in order to regulate and police these innovations. That’s why it’s so much more important for us to think about the moral implications of these technologies and for us to rely on other stakeholders including the consumers, you and I, and the innovators that are actually bringing these changes to the marketplace.
So for the remainder of this module, we’re going to focus primarily on these innovators, people who are choosing right at the outset to build business models that not only generate profit and sustainability but will also do some type of social benefit within the context of their service and product.
