Senior Fellow in Technology & Innovation at the R Street Institute in Washington, DC. Formerly a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, President of the Progress & Freedom Foundation, Director of Telecommunications Studies at the Cato Institute, and a Fellow in Economic Policy at the Heritage Foundation.
Two weeks ago, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was getting grilled by Congress during a two-day media circus set of hearings, I wrote a counterintuitive essay about how it could end up being Facebook’s greatest moment. How could that be? As I argued in the piece, with an avalanche of new rules looming, “Facebook is potentially poised to score its greatest victory ever as it begins the transition to regulated monopoly status, solidifying its market power, and limiting threats from new rivals.”
With the exception of probably only Google, no firm other than Facebook likely has enough lawyers, lobbyists, and money to deal with layers of red tape and corresponding regulatory compliance headaches that lie ahead. That’s true both here and especially abroad in Europe, which continues to pile on new privacy and “data protection” regulations. While such rules come wrapped in the very best of intentions, there’s just no getting around the fact that regulation has costs. In this case, the unintended consequence of well-intentioned data privacy rules is that the emerging regulatory regime will likely discourage (or potentially even destroy) the chances of getting the new types of innovation and competition that we so desperately need right now.
“In Europe and the United States, the conventional wisdom is that regulation is needed to force Silicon Valley’s digital giants to respect people’s online privacy. But new rules may instead serve to strengthen Facebook’s and Google’s hegemony and extend their lead on the internet,” note Wakabayashi and Satariano in the NYT essay. They continue on to note how “past attempts at privacy regulation have done little to mitigate the power of tech firms.” This includes regulations like Europe’s “right to be forgotten” requirement, which has essentially put Google in a privileged position as the “chief arbiter of what information is kept online in Europe.” Continue reading →
On Monday, April 16th, the Technology Policy Institute hosted an event on “Facebook & Cambridge Analytica: Regulatory & Policy Implications.” I was invited to deliver some remarks on a panel that included Howard Beales of George Washington University, Stuart Ingis of Venable LLP, Josephine Wolff of the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Thomas Lenard of TPI, who moderated. I offered some thoughts about the potential trade-offs associated with treating Facebook like a regulated public utility. I wrote an essay here last week on that topic. My remarks at the event begin at the 13:45 mark of the video.
With Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in town this week for a political flogging, you might think that this is darkest hour for the social networking giant. Facebook stands at a regulatory crossroads, to be sure. But allow me to offer a cynical take, and one based on history: Facebook is potentially poised to score its greatest victory ever as it begins the transition to regulated monopoly status, solidifying its market power, and limiting threats from new rivals.
By slowly capitulating to critics (both here and abroad) who are thirsty for massive regulation of the data-driven economy, Facebook is setting itself up as a servant of the state. In the name of satisfying some amorphous political “public interest” standard and fulfilling a variety of corporate responsibility objectives, Facebook will gradually allow itself to be converted into a sort of digital public utility or electronic essential facility.
That sounds like trouble for the firm until you realize that Facebook is one of the few companies who will be able to sacrifice a pound of flesh like that and remain alive. As layers of new regulatory obligations are applied, barriers to new innovations will become formidable obstacles to the very competitors that the public so desperately needs right now to offer us better alternatives. Gradually, Facebook will recognize this and go along with the regulatory schemes. And then eventually they will become the biggest defender of all of it.
Welcome to Facebook’s broadcast industry moment. The firm is essentially in the same position the broadcast sector was about a century ago when it started cozying up to federal lawmakers. Over time, broadcasters would warmly embrace an expansive licensing regime that would allow all parties—regulatory advocates, academics, lawmakers, bureaucrats, and even the broadcasters themselves—to play out the fairy tale that broadcasters would be good “public stewards” of the “public airwaves” to serve the “public interest.”
Alas, the actual listening and viewing public got royally shafted in this deal. Continue reading →
There was horrible news from Tempe, Arizona this week as a pedestrian was struck and killed by a driverless car owned by Uber. This is the first fatality of its type and is drawing widespread media attention as a result. According to both police statements and Uber itself, the investigation into the accident is ongoing and Uber is assisting in the investigation. While this certainly is a tragic event, we cannot let it cost us the life-saving potential of autonomous vehicles.
While any fatal traffic accident involving a driverless car is certainly sad, we can’t ignore the fact that each and every day in the United States letting human beings drive on public roads is proving far more dangerous. This single event has led some critics to wonder why we were allowing driverless cars to be tested on public roads at all before they have been proven to be 100% safe. Driverless cars can help reverse a public health disaster decades in the making, but only if policymakers allow real-world experimentation to continue.
Let’s be more concrete about this: Each day, Americans take 1.1 billion trips driving 11 billion miles in vehicles that weigh on average between 1.5 and 2 tons. Sadly, about 100 people die and over 6,000 are injured each day in car accidents. 94% of these accidents have been shown to be attributable to human error and this deadly trend has been increasing as we become more distracted while driving. Moreover, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, almost 6000 pedestrians were killed in traffic accidents in 2016, which means there was roughly one crash-related pedestrian death every 1.6 hours. In Arizona, the issue is even more pronounced with the state ranked 6th worst for pedestrians and the Phoenix area ranked the 16th worst metro for such accidents nationally. Continue reading →
We hear a lot these days about “technological moonshots.” It’s an interesting phrase because the meaning of both words in it are often left undefined. I won’t belabor the point about how people define–or, rather, fail to define–“technology” when they use it. I’ve already spent a lot of time writing about that problem. See, for example, this constantly updated essay here about “Defining ‘Technology.'” It’s a compendium I began curating years ago that collects what dozens of others have had to say on the matter. I’m always struck by how many different definitions are out there that I keep unearthing.
The term “moonshots” has a similar problem. The first meaning is the literal one that hearkens back to President Kennedy’s famous 1962 “we choose to go to the moon” speech. That use of the terms implies large government programs and agencies, centralized control, and top-down planning with a very specific political objective in mind. Increasingly, however, the term “moonshot” is used more generally, as I note in this new Mercatus essay about “Making the World Safe for More Moonshots.” My Mercatus Center colleague Donald Boudreaux has referred to moonshots as, “radical but feasible solutions to important problems,” and Mike Cushing of Enterprise Innovation defines a moonshot as an “innovation that achieves the previously unthinkable.” I like that more generic use of the term and think it could be used appropriately when discussing the big innovations many of us hope to see in fields as diverse as quantum computing, genetic editing, AI and autonomous systems, supersonic transport, and much more. I still have some reservations about the term, but I think it’s definitely a better term than “disruptive innovation,” which is also used differently by various scholars and pundits.
Reason magazine recently published my review of Franklin Foer’s new book, World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech. My review begins as follows:
If you want to sell a book about tech policy these days, there’s an easy formula to follow.
First you need a villain. Google and Facebook should suffice, but if you can throw in Apple, Amazon, or Twitter, that’s even better. Paint their CEOs as either James Bond baddies bent on world domination or naive do-gooders obsessed with the quixotic promise of innovation.
Finally, come up with a juicy Chicken Little title. Maybe something like World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech. Wait—that one’s taken. It’s the title of Franklin Foer’s latest book, which follows this familiar techno-panic template almost perfectly.
The book doesn’t break a lot of new ground; it serves up the same old technopanicky tales of gloom-and-doom that many others have said will befall us unless something is done to save us. But Foer’s unique contribution is to unify many diverse strands of modern tech criticism in one tome, and then amp up the volume of panic about it all. Hence, the “existential” threat in the book’s title. I bet you didn’t know the End Times were so near!
Read the rest of my review over at Reason. And, if you care to read some of my other essays on technopanics through the ages, here’s a compendium of them.
Over at Plain Text, I have posted a new essay entitled, “Converting Permissionless Innovation into Public Policy: 3 Reforms.” It’s a preliminary sketch of some reform ideas that I have been working on as part of my next book project. The goal is to find some creative ways to move the ball forward on the innovation policy front, regardless of what level of government we are talking about.
To maximize the potential for ongoing, positive change and create a policy environment conducive to permissionless innovation, I argue that policymakers should pursue policy reforms based on these three ideas:
The Innovator’s Presumption: Any person or party (including a regulatory authority) who opposes a new technology or service shall have the burden to demonstrate that such proposal is inconsistent with the public interest.
The Sunsetting Imperative: Any existing or newly imposed technology regulation should include a provision sunsetting the law or regulation within two years.
The Parity Provision: Any operator offering a similarly situated product or service should be regulated no more stringently than its least regulated competitor.
These provisions are crafted in a somewhat generic fashion in the hope that these reform proposals could be modified and adopted by various legislative or regulatory bodies. If you are interested in reading more details about each proposal, jump over to Plain Text to read the entire essay.
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just released a new paper on,”Permissionless Innovation and Immersive Technology: Public Policy for Virtual and Augmented Reality,” which I co-authored with Jonathan Camp. This 53-page paper can be downloaded via the Mercatus website, SSRN or Research Gate.
Here is the abstract for the paper:
Immersive technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality are finally taking off. As these technologies become more widespread, concerns will likely develop about their disruptive social and economic effects. This paper addresses such policy concerns and contrasts two different visions for governing immersive tech going forward. The paper makes the case for permissionless innovation, or the general freedom to innovate without prior constraint, as the optimal policy default to maximize the benefits associated with immersive technologies.
The alternative vision — the so-called precautionary principle — would be an inappropriate policy default because it would greatly limit the potential for beneficial applications and uses of these new technologies to emerge rapidly. Public policy for immersive technology should not be based on hypothetical worst-case scenarios. Rather, policymakers should wait to see which concerns or harms emerge and then devise ex post solutions as needed.
To better explain why precautionary controls on these emerging technologies would be such a mistake, Camp and I provide an inventory of the many VR, AR, and mixed reality applications that are already on the market–or soon could be–and which could provide society with profound benefits. A few examples include: Continue reading →
Are you interested in emerging technologies and the public policy issues surrounding them? Then come to work with me at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University!
The Mercatus Center is currently looking to hire a new Senior Research Fellow in our Technology Policy Program. Our tech policy team covers a large and growing array of cutting-edge issues, including: robotics, AI, and autonomous vehicles; commercial drones; the Internet of Things; virtual reality; cryptocurrencies; the Sharing Economy; 3D printing; and advanced medical and health technologies, just to name a few current priorities.
But the most exciting—but challenging—thing about covering tech policy is that the landscape of issues and concerns is always morphing and growing. Our new Senior Research Fellow will help our team determine our tech policy priorities going forward and then be responsible for engaging in scholarly work and public speaking on those topics.
All the finer details about this new position are listed on the Mercatus website. If you’re interested and qualified, please apply! Or, if you know of others who might be interested in this position, please forward this notice along to them.
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just released a new paper on, “Artificial Intelligence and Public Policy,” which I co-authored with Andrea Castillo O’Sullivan and Raymond Russell. This 54-page paper can be downloaded via the Mercatus website, SSRN, or ResearchGate. Here is the abstract:
There is growing interest in the market potential of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and applications as well as in the potential risks that these technologies might pose. As a result, questions are being raised about the legal and regulatory governance of AI, machine learning, “autonomous” systems, and related robotic and data technologies. Fearing concerns about labor market effects, social inequality, and even physical harm, some have called for precautionary regulations that could have the effect of limiting AI development and deployment. In this paper, we recommend a different policy framework for AI technologies. At this nascent stage of AI technology development, we think a better case can be made for prudence, patience, and a continuing embrace of “permissionless innovation” as it pertains to modern digital technologies. Unless a compelling case can be made that a new invention will bring serious harm to society, innovation should be allowed to continue unabated, and problems, if they develop at all, can be addressed later.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.