Why Technology and Politics Don't Get Along | Nick Clegg | Google Zeitgeist

okay thank you well thank you Matt what

I will try and do in as matters

suggested bringing some of these threads

together is to start if I may with a

with an observation about us all of us

human beings so I think one of the most

sub agonizing features of the human

condition and it's a universal dilemma

is that we all crave stability

tranquility predictability and yet we

all live in a world which is overwhelmed

by constant and churning change and

that's what tension between our our wish

our longing for stuff to sort of stand

still but the fact that the world around

us moves at at a dizzying pace

he's not new it's not new societies have

had to cope with complete convulsions

technology-driven convulsions in the

past it's always created winners and

lucid losers hopes and anxieties and a

lot of eruptions along the way when we

had to prepare ourselves and our society

and our economy and our homes for the

age of oil the carbon fueled economy it

changed everything from the way we

heated our homes to the way we

transported ourselves from place to

place when we had to ready ourselves for

the age of electricity we erected pylons

we connected cables from a place to

place and now of course we're having to

do it all over again as we enter into

the age of data in which data will

become the lifeblood the elixir of so

much of what we do so change in

technology technological change is not

new but arguably the pace of it

certainly is Google Thank You GU for

hosting this wonderful event is what 20

years old

Facebook is only 14 years old they're

very very young companies and yet they

also have already have such you

versal impact and if you look right back

a history you'll find that every time

people are confronted with change or

indeed with new machines it elicits fear

Aristotle

warned about the danger that machines

would pose to the way of life that he

inhabited by the Elizabeth the first

we've held a patent for a knitting

machine I think it was because of the

fear that she hell had about the impact

that it would have on her on her poor

long-suffering subjects the Luddites of

course destroyed destroyed machinery

factory machinery because they were so

alarmed about the impact that would have

on their lives in 1964 a panel of

intellectuals produced a report for

President Lyndon Johnson I scribbled his

down earlier where they warned that what

they called the cyber nation revolution

would lead to millions and millions of

people losing their jobs so fear of

change fear of machinery fear of its

displacing effects on us all is not new

but I think the pace and sheer scale of

it arguably is and here's the bit where

I deliver some tough messages to those

who come from a world of politics and

those who come from a world of tech I

don't think we're navigating this new

chapter of technology driven change very

well at all

and I think the blame for that is

equally shared by what I call these

worlds of Technology and politics who

are increasingly acting like world sort

of talking past each other ships passing

in the night where there is a growing

spirit and atmosphere of mutual

suspicion fear even loathing between the

two and if we get this wrong and if we

let that escalate in other words if

people who are elected by millions of

folk across the Democratic world to try

and do the right thing by society as a

whole

continue or increasingly view what I

would regard as a sort of innately

optimistic liberal is the progressive

promise of technology as a existential

threat instead I think the consequences

could be negative disruptive and will

rob us all of the great advances that

technology can bring for us all

culturally economically clinically I can

socially and and so on

and let me just characterize and this is

I accept nothing more in the very brief

time I have with you a caricature but I

was in California last week I was giving

some talks at Stanford University and

many of you hail from there or come from

their careers might have been built

there you know probably much better than

I do and I was like everybody like every

occasional visitor to California buoyed

up certainly compared to the ghastly

backward-looking brexit addled debate in

this country buoyed up by the optimism

there's a future looking future facing

spirit of the place but I was also

reminded in various conversations by

that kind of lurking and persistent

mixture of naivety arrogance and sort of

libertarianism which I think stems

totally understandably from a generation

of people who say look I invented this

remarkable thing in my t-shirt in my

garage in Palo Alto leave me alone you

politicians you regulate a society at

large we'll fix it that's what engineers

do they fix stuff and they would be left

alone so they can fix it and so much now

I think the mood has changed I'll come

to it in a minute there's still that

slight sort of sense of we've done this

remarkable thing it's having this

transformative effect the last thing we

want is governments and politicians

getting their sort of dirty mitts and

messing it all up and then if you go to

the political side of the equation you

have ignorant profound ignorance about

what technology does or doesn't offer

and with ignorance of course because

people are always more fearful of things

they don't understand

a great deal of fear as well

turbocharged by some good old-fashioned

vested interests particularly in the old

fashioned newspaper industry you of

course want to destroy a lot of these

particular social media upstarts because

they're draining all their advertising

revenue away so they constantly stoke

the politicians up to beat up

particularly on the social media a giant

but on technology as a whole and I think

that is creating a dangerously curdled

negative atmosphere in which those two

worlds of Technology and politics who

should which should be working in

harness and collaboratively to deal with

some of the collective problems we're

facing are instead at best speaking past

each other or at worse simply taking

potshots at at each other so I guess the

question I really want to pose to you

and I will offer some of my own answers

or hot sort of venture some suggested

answers how do we go about avoiding

those two worlds getting locked in in a

position of sort of permanent or

semi-permanent animosity towards each

other and I have one message for the

tech world if I can put it like that

rather breezily and one world one

message for the political one message

for the political world and both of them

would make me equally unpopular in both

but I'm quite a specialist in delivering

unpopular messages so the first one is

to the tech world is this I think and

I'm not saying to you but since we're a

Googler I think it would be a good thing

just to dampen down a bit of the

utopianism about the future and focus a

bit more instead on problems which exist

today and let me perhaps explain to you

that by way of an anecdote I remember a

couple of years ago speaking to one of

the most brilliant minds in the field of

artificial intelligence and machine

learning one of those the most I'll

leave him nameless but one of the most

globally recognized

authorities on all this and it was just

after I think he and other sort of

leading luminaries of Silicon Valley had

gone to the World Economic Forum in

Davos which meets every year to say very

loudly that government should prepare

themselves to introduce a universal

basic income this idea that a

universally funded income should be

provided so that people are well

supported regardless of where they work

or not and in a sense can be at home

contented

even if were CLIs supported by this

universal basic income and I said to him

I said so is it true that artificial

intelligence and machine learning is

going to displace labor and render so

many millions of people were CLIs in the

way that was presented as the reason why

government's needed to now start

thinking about universal basic income no

not at all you know actually no idea

perfectly possible as has been the case

almost every time with previous

technological innovations that just as

much as technology can disrupt or even

diminish certain jobs it creates others

that's always that's been pretty well

the consistent pattern from the

Agricultural Revolution where close to a

hundred hundred percent of us used to

work on the field and now close to a

hundred percent of his work in the

cities to ATMs to all sorts of previous

no he said not at all we said nobody's

such a good idea isn't it

it's a good idea in and of itself I have

to betray or admit perhaps to an

old-fashioned rather unreconstructed

liberal view that I think work is

indispensable to people's sense of

self-worth and identity and self-respect

and I I think this idea that some

utopian future where we all sort of

float around and don't really work and

sort of feel happy and it's all paid for

by somebody else I don't buy it but

setting my setting my own prejudices

aside I said well I'd be a little bit

careful if I were you because if you say

to a bunch of politicians who are anyway

rather befuddled and confused by what on

earth you're up to by the way we've come

up with this really new whiz-bang

technology which you can't really

understand but it's gonna render

millions of people you represent

unemployed and then you have to find the

money to keep them happy at home

I said they'll close you down he said

really well of course they will

and it was conversation like that made

me pay me realize that that the gap

between those two worlds is one which is

potentially very corrosive and needs to

be replaced with a little less focus on

what might happen the doubt tomorrow the

Delft another day of tomorrow some

utopian future in which a bit like as a

latter-day version of Marxism the

internal contradictions of capitalism

and there are more slits march of

Technology will suddenly render us into

a sword different a different species in

which work and all the stresses and

strains of everyday nine-to-five life

will drop away I think we need to spend

a little less time on that and a little

more time on issues that we know are

confronting society now we know from

study after study after study that

whilst technology did not remotely

invent inequality in developed

capitalist economies it does frankly

seem to play a role in exacerbating it

we know that the hollowing out of middle

ranking jobs in other words neither

highly qualified jobs nor very low

qualified jobs was not invented in

Silicon Valley not invented by

technology it's been a growing part of

labor markets in developed capitalist

economies for some time but it does to

appear to be a trend that polarization

between well rewarded highly qualified

work and badly rewarded low qualified

work which is being dramatically

exacerbated by by technology we were

told that technology always brings about

a boost in productivity doesn't actually

so far necessarily appear to be the case

look at this country this country is one

of the more digitally conversant

economies in the developed world and yet

productivity is pretty well stagnated

year after year after year in recent

times and so sorry to give a rather sort

of blonde

it's pragmatic undry me prescription but

I think the kind of questions we should

be asking ourselves is how do we provide

our fellow citizens with the training

and the retraining and the lifelong

learning so they can develop new skills

as they as they move through life to

take up those better qualified jobs how

do we introduce what they call in parts

of Scandinavia flex security so that

even as you move from one job to the

next you at least still have security in

in doing so how do we crack the

conundrum of stagnant productivity those

are the nitty-gritty here today problems

would drive a lot of social economic

anxiety and a great deal of political

populism too it's not the fault of great

technology companies like Google not

remotely I'll come to that in a minute

but by golly it would help if we could

talk about those issues more rather than

some never-never future where everyone

sits at home happily paid for by

somebody else so my message to the tech

world is turn the volume a little bit

down on the dreamy stuff on the

utopianism about the future and help

address some of those really difficult

quite deep-seated problems today my

message to the world of politics by

contrast is stop blaming technology stop

blaming tech company it's not blaming

Silicon Valley for every single ill

under the under the science of course

there are big issues so much I'll return

to in a minute on tax data sovereignty

of privacy and and so on but this is

becoming in my view a a sort of semi

hysterical stampede at the moment if you

read many of our newspapers whether

they're broad street or tabloid tabloid

newspapers these days you'd think that

every every attack every crime every

accident every mishap all of that can be

traced to the feet

the founders of some of the big

technology companies in California if

you're a if you're a backbench MP in

this country and you're trying to make a

name for yourself what you need to do

these days bluntly is bash out a press

release saying oh I hurt my toe in the

bathroom today and it's Mark Zuckerberg

fault and you're pretty well guaranteed

you'll get full page coverage in the

Daily Mail and large parts of the

Murdoch press because they have an

insatiable diet appetite at the moment

- besmirched however randomly the name

and the purpose of of Technology in

their sort of fight for survival with

the social media companies and this I

think is very very dangerous because

that sort of feedback loop between

politicians constantly craving

approbation and attention and the very

powerful old-fashioned but nonetheless

still extraordinarily influential vested

interests in our written press is

creating I think a kind of spinning

washing machine of hysteria and

Prejudice maybe ask yourself does anyone

seriously think that Mark Zuckerberg is

a greater threat to the integrity of

American democracy than the National

Rifle Association that's spending all

its time stymie any reform of gun laws

is he more personally answerable for the

failings of democracy than I don't know

Big Oil or the way Rupert Murdoch goes

in and out of the White House to wheel

this unaccountable influence over dog

Trump all the way pulled a can a cast

yet as the Daily Mail goes into number

10 to do the same behind closed doors no

scrutiny no accountability or the hedge

fund managers who poured millions of

their own money there kind of play

Russian roulette

actually possibly almost exactly Russian

roulette with a future of British

democracy by funding the anti-european

cause in the brexit reference no course

not it's become hysterical now I think

the political debate about the role of

Technology in society and democracy at

large and so my final remark is really

this if only the two sides

could find a way of getting it as I say

a little less utopianism all on one hand

and it was blame on the other I could

actually start talking to each other to

deal collectively with some of the

issues which can only be dealt with

through collaboration I think we would

all benefit immensely from it look at

the issue of tax very fraught issue a 40

issue the the big the big tech companies

of course entirely right to say well

look we we abide by the law we don't set

the law it's the government's that set

the law we pay what we're what we're due

to pay under the law you government sort

it out what's their right to say that

but equally actually the politicians are

not wrong in saying well yes okay we get

that but in companies now which makes so

much money across so many jurisdictions

they have a this is what governments and

politicians say and indeed I suspect the

largest waves of public opinion say they

have a moral as well as a legal duty not

to play cat and mouse with the different

tax jurisdictions both are right or both

are equally right and equally wrong in

equal measure it can only be solved by

those two communities coming together to

come up with a multilateral and global

solution to how you tax so much

intangible economic activity taking

place on such an amount imaginable scale

across so many old-fashioned national

jurisdictions look at the issue of data

sovereignty probably the most important

if impenetrable question of our age who

owns and controls data do we do we what

point do we forfeit that and give

control of data to others how much right

do governments and security services and

others have to both scrutinize and

inspect and share our data there are

technological innovations not least

blockchain technology which which

provide enticing tantalizing prospects

of greater decentralization of the way

in which data is handled and much

greater transparency in providing a

trail by which data is is is handled in

the first

place like deepmind a Google owned

company has done some really innovative

stuff using blockchain technology to

make it very very transparent exactly

how in real time data is used in the

hospitals with which deep mind works

but all of those things and many other

issues besides are only possible if

these two increasingly distanced worlds

of Technology and politics learn to

speak to each other and so my final

observation really is that people talk

about leadership I think this session is

entitled leadership in an age of

technology and of course you can stake

out positions when you're seeking to

lead but actually real leadership only

ever comes about through a process of

collaboration conversation and

compromise and that is only possible if

we use wonderful facilities like this at

the Grove in future to make sure that

politicians and technologists properly

and tolerantly and with an open mind

understand each other thank you very

much

[Applause]