Restoring Trust In Emerging Tech

- 

In the early days of the internet, the web was largely open and decentralised. But in the roughly 25 years since, the consumer internet has changed: today, the web is more consolidated and centralised in its structures than ever before. Network effects tend to favour a winner takes-all dynamic and so we have, by and large, one really big search engine, one really big social network and one really big ecommerce site.

But consolidation isn’t the only thing that has changed. Over time, security and privacy safeguards have been added, like end-to-end encryption for web traffic (although less so for email). These safeguards have been tacked onto existing structures and amended to standards. They hadn’t been part of the internet’s original design; they simply weren’t necessary in the web’s original, academically focused ecosystem.

EMERGING TECH IS ALL AROUND US

For emerging tech today, especially the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), it’s very different. We are now creating a data layer that extends to, and shapes, our physical environments.

In this context, openness and safeguards for security and privacy are essential. We now casually embed internet-connected microphones and cameras in living rooms and bedrooms. This different context requires different thinking. We need to be able to trust the technology we live with.

To think this through, consider three different contexts: the smart home, the smart city and algorithmic decision-making (AKA artificial intelligence or AI).

Let’s first look at IoT in the smart home. Voice assistants have microphones that by definition are always listening (to a degree) or at the very least could be. In political science, the potential or threat of abuse is considered just about as bad as the real thing because it can lead to chilling effects (