Panel, Conference Presentation
Big Tech Under the Spotlight: Privacy, Transparency, and Regulation
Milken InstituteJulia Boorstin, Michael Beckerman, Fadi Tahati, Tristan Harris, Luke Nozick, Kathleen Sullivan, Eric Schmidt
- Leading technology companies may cease to be U.S.-based within five to ten years if regulatory trends continue to hinder innovation.
- Deepfakes are predicted to significantly influence the next election similar to the impact of Cambridge Analytica, with potential use by Asian leaders to create scenarios causing significant loss of life in regions like Kashmir.
- Current 20th-century governance systems are considered failed regarding the velocity of modern technology, necessitating a new global governance regime established before the situation becomes irreversible.
- Antitrust laws could be weaponized by other nations as protectionist tools without international cooperation, potentially devaluing intellectual property and reducing innovation risks.
- Software algorithms are expected to continue dominating elections, eroding fair campaign ad rules and tilting users toward extreme content, including conspiracy theories, to maximize watch time across all 22 languages of India.
- Unregulated "digital Frankenstein" systems are anticipated to continue displaying harmful content such as teen suicide and anorexia videos unless specific interventions occur.
- Companies with data-extractive advertising models will struggle to align incentives with customer privacy, requiring a transition to a "regenerative" model driven by shareholder activism, policy, and a new social contract.
- Short-term venture capital and "lean startup" approaches are expected to persist, causing founders to frequently pivot and abandon long-term missions, though capital is intended to be directed toward 20-year company-building goals.
- A mass public awakening, advertiser pressure, congressional hearings, and employee activism are deemed necessary to trigger corporate behavioral changes beyond research or awareness alone.
- U.S. technology companies face challenges addressing content moderation in emerging markets due to a lack of engineers fluent in local languages, alongside incentives to avoid acknowledging problems like child pornography to evade legal obligations.
- Algorithms and data signaling may enable competitors to collude on pricing and market division without explicit agreements, creating future antitrust enforcement challenges.
- The absence of a U.S. national privacy law is expected to create a confusing state law patchwork disadvantaging startups compared to incumbents, with hopes that Congress acts within the current year to establish a strong national standard.
- China's state-backed investment model, combining unlimited private equity with protected access to 1.4 billion users, is predicted to dominate specific technology sectors if the U.S. does not adapt.
- The "extractive attention economy" is forecast to continue depressing critical thinking, attention spans, education, and children's mental health, reducing U.S. global competitiveness.
- Technology is expected to remove natural feedback loops, tilting human nature toward negative outcomes and amplifying outrage and political echo chambers in the real world.
- Section 230 liability immunity may continue to be modified to address specific harms like human trafficking while retaining core protections for content moderation; without it, platforms might curate only known entities or refuse takedowns, creating a degraded internet.
- A new global authority similar to "Pugwash" is needed to design digital norms by decoupling rule enforcement from rule design to address technology velocity, as neither pure self-regulation nor full government regulation is expected to prevail alone.
- Corporate behavior changes are anticipated to require a balance between self-regulation and government regulation emerging later this year, while the lack of transnational norms could lead to unregulated digital spaces and concentrated power in regions with different political sensibilities.