Tyranny of optimism

Politicians, when in power, share a unique trait with tech entrepreneurs. It’s the trait of optimism on the basis of which they paint rosy imaginations of future, criticising which is considered tantamount to naysaying by negativity mongers who have nothing better to do except spreading ill-informed biased analysis.

Over the next two decades, the relationship of technology and politics is only going to strengthen, culminating in a marriage. Perhaps in recognition of these risks, voices of reason have begun to surface raising eye-opening critique on technology – critique that is missing from summits and conferences on technology such as the recently held Global Entrepreneurship Summit at The Hague.

In her must-read book Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’ Niel shows how algorithms aren’t exactly neutral. She warns that aided and abetted by artificial intelligence, algorithms may end up as worst tyrants of human history. Unlike a terrible monarch, or a dictator, or shoddy board, an algorithm as a regulator and a governor is faceless. How does one fight something that doesn’t have a face?

Global value chain has been fad for many years, and tech companies are no exception to that concept. But only now its implications in terms of human cost are being brought to attention, courtesy the likes of Mary Gary and Siddharth Suri who recently published their book called Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass.

In this cobweb of global supply chains and inter-corporate relationships, legitimate questions of ownership and responsibility are lost. If child labour was the concern of yesterday, ghost and ill-paid workers technology workers who have no insurance, no secure contracts is the concern today. But unlike child labour these ill-paid ghost workers who populate content for tech companies and artificial intelligence networks are faceless and spread in far and wide corners, due to which their problems are not even recognised.

Such is the complicated web of supply chains and inter-corporate relationships that even in the case of big tech corporations that want to avoid human rights and environmental concerns, it takes years to solve. In a recent study, a New York University professor, Kate Crawford, found out that it took Intel four long years to figure out its supply chain before it could ensure that tantalum – a rare earth metal – from the Congo was not used in its microprocessor products.

Concerns of privacy, moral and ethical choices, monopoly, and regulatory oversight of technology and tech companies are of no less importance. Yet, discussions on these topics are ill-funded, elbowed-out as “nagging by luddites” or otherwise drowned in the torrent of optimism. And non-tech entrepreneurs are no exception to this.

In one of the interviews with an impact fund CEO who was looking for potential investments in tourism industry, BR Research flagged how unchecked tourism and ill-thought development, unplanned urbanization and modernization of Pakistan’s mountain areas on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan is killing the very basis of their revenue potential. He made a caricature argument and said: you want them to live in stone ages. “Don’t be so pessimistic. There are very exciting projects in tourism industry; let’s develop first. We can figure out these small and trivial sustainability issues later on,” he added.

Such thinking is not uncommon. If anyone raises concerns about the CPEC, they are termed anti-progress. If one raises concerns about technology, then tech pundits say “you want us to live in the stone ages”. If one questions the assumptions of growth plans of companies then instead of answering with logic, corporate leaders replace their assumptions with optimism as the basis of growth.

The tyrants of optimism don’t understand that critics are in fact partners in progress. The roots of many of today’s champions of tech-based change - green technology for instance - go as far back as the criticism against fossil fuel in the 70s. It’s another thing that back then they were too blind to appreciate the criticism. Do not muffle the voice of dissent!