Of course Facebook and Google want to ‘solve’ social problems. They’re hungry for our data
We hear it said all the time, most recently in a national campaign for BT: “Technology will save us.” The slogan was plastered on billboards across the country as part of BT’s new advertising campaign, linked to a “UK-wide digital skills movement” developed partly with Google. The sentiment is so ubiquitous that it even led to a dispute with a startup of a similar name. But in an era dominated by the “big four” (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) the idea that tech will save us rings hollow, an example of utopian messaging being used to conceal the simple pursuit of profit.
Having proposed solutions to everything from food shortages to suicide prevention to climate breakdown, companies such as Google and Facebook – two of the leading western companies in the artificial intelligence arms race – claim there’s almost nothing that cannot be tackled through tech. But there are reasons to be sceptical. These companies’ business models depend on the development of ever more complex algorithms, sustained by enormous quantities of data. This data is used to improve the algorithms – but access to it is also sold to advertisers and thirdparty businesses.
Conquering new sources of data has therefore become their primary mission. And that’s why they’re eyeing our public commons: telecommunications, energy and even urban space, which continuously generate enormous quantities of real-time data. In 2017, it was reported that Google’s AI outfit DeepMind was in talks with the National Grid. DeepMind’s founder, Demis Hassabis, expressed an interest in expanding technology similar to that used to minimise energy wastage at Google data centres – where electricity usage had been cut by 15% – across the energy grid. This is an improvement, of course, but as one of the main examples of how AI systems might be used to “tackle climate change” it is hardly inspiring.
It also neglects to mention that unprecedented access to our critical infrastructure and publicly generated data would be given to a US tech giant. The collaboration between DeepMind and the (privatised, shareholderpaying) National Grid has for now been abandoned for reasons that are unclear. A recent article in Forbes speculates that the two companies couldn’t reach an agreement on costs and intellectual property rights, in per
haps the most telling example of big tech’s ambitions to boost revenues through the commandeering of national infrastructure. Could Google’s recent engagement with BT be built on a similar ambition?
Giving tech giants the power to “solve” social problems would mean granting them an immense stake in almost everything that our society requires in order to function. Google is currently signing contracts with the NHS to process patient records, despite there being legal question marks over a similar arrangement with a
London hospital a few years ago. What’s more, the climate crisis is a political, not a technological problem. Whatever improvements Google or Facebook could make to our infrastructure would still fall far short of solving it. And when environmental collapse stands to affect poorest communities the hardest, the question remains as to how an industry that drives extreme wealth inequality can really be said to help build a greener, more humane, world.
These companies are able to make it seem as though their sole ambition is to optimise and improve their systems for the greater good. But this rhetoric distracts us from the fact that they are ushering in a new kind of “surveillance capitalism”, whereby a small number of entities extract enormous amounts of wealth through their access to data that is generated by us, the public.
To ensure that we retain the control to manage these systems, and to avoid an unprecedented level of power and wealth being concentrated in the hands of a very small elite, our infrastructure urgently needs to be brought under state control. This is why the Green New Deal, backed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the US and taken up in the UK by the Labour party, is so important. Not only will the UK version pursue efforts to keep global average temperature rises below 1.5C, but by encompassing public ownership of energy companies it provides a democratic line of defence against the predations of Silicon Valley. Labour’s proposal to part-nationalise BT opens up a new front in this battle – especially since the party is planning to help pay for it with a tax on big tech.
In the years to come, this will give the state a far stronger negotiating position on resources, both digital and physical, as well as on the practical applications of this potentially worldaltering technology. It is absolutely essential that publicly powered technology is answerable to public power.
Labour’s plans to part-nationalise BT opens up a new front in this battle – especially with the proposed tax on big tech