AI's "alarming-but-quiet capture"
Plus Portugal's new remote work rules, Amazon's press patterns, and the rocky return of White House Skype briefings
Welcome to Slow Build, a newsletter on tech’s biggest questions, by me, Nancy Scola.
Let’s talk about a fascinating new paper just out in the Association for Computing Machinery’s Interactions Magazine, called “The Steep Cost of Capture.”
In it, the author, a research professor at NYU, argues the boom in artificial intelligence work we’ve seen in recent years — the so-called AI summer — has much less to do with, say, breakthroughs in our understandings and implementations of algorithms than the fact that vast sums of data and computing resources have been thrown at the field’s trickiest problems. The challenge, though, argues the author, is that the players in American life, at least, with all that data and computing resources is the tech industry, which is resulting in the “the alarming-but-quiet capture of academic AI research by big tech.”
“Modern AI is fundamentally dependent on corporate resources and business practices, and our increasing reliance on such AI cedes inordinate power over our lives and institutions to a handful of tech firms.”
It’s a “a perilous moment,” the author writes. “Modern AI is fundamentally dependent on corporate resources and business practices, and our increasing reliance on such AI cedes inordinate power over our lives and institutions to a handful of tech firms.”
What does that inordinate power look like? According to her, it’s corporate funding for university labs. It’s dual appointments in both academia and industry — she cites “a professor of machine learning who works for Samsung and is dual-appointed at Imperial College London” — paid at industry rates. It’s the defining of the questions being asked in the field. It’s not corruption but simple corporate capture.
But there are more subtle supposed examples, too. She points to how the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence that was chaired by one-time Google CEO Eric Schmidt argued for a “national AI research infrastructure” aimed at democratizing the practice. The recommendation made its way to Congress, and the Biden administration’s running with it.
Democratizing AI sounds good, says the author. But given that the tech industry has some dominance over the field at the moment, the push to formalize a national apparatus around it “amount to calls to subsidize tech giants further by licensing familiar infrastructure from these firms in ways that allow them to continue defining the terms and conditions of AI and AI research.”
Oh, about that author: she’s Meredith Whittaker who is, yes, a research professor at NYU as well as the faculty director of the school’s AI Now Institute. But as of this month she’s also senior advisor on AI at the Federal Trade Commission.
And so the paper also amounts to a bit of insight into how this new FTC is thinking about not just AI, but tech in general. It’s part of a meta-narrative we’re seeing emerge from this corner of the federal government. It’s not just about new rules for tech, cracking down on bad actors, so on and so forth. A big part of the ambition is separating American technology from the corporate actors that have in just the last handful of years, really, become one-and-the-same as “tech” in the public imagination.
To that end, Whittaker offers one form of resistance: an “organized struggle” that brings together tech workers and academic researchers to, at the very least, surface these dynamics.
A future where the U.S. Congress richly supports truly democratic and independent critical work does not appear near on the horizon. But organizing within academia and tech workplaces can also help us protect ourselves and the public interest in the short term by preparing us to stand up for one another in the face of institutional pressure, and developing muscles of care and mutual accountability that let us name dynamics of coercion and capture more safely.
Of course, not everyone sees things Whittaker’s way. Some are pushing back, wondering if industry’s stepping in because government hasn’t.
There are signs, at least, that the Biden administration is leaning into the debate. This very morning the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, a.k.a., OSTP, is co-hosting a session on “Advancing Equal Protections & Civil Justice in an Automated Society.” The opening speaker is Rashida Richardson, OSTP senior policy advisor for Data and Democracy.
Before Zephyr Teachout was a high-profile law professor and figure in the antitrust movement, she was the “Internet director” for the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign. And the New York Times’ Ginia Bellafante considers whether it’s her time in office, as New York’s AG:
As the country has fallen deeper into the throes of polarization, both Democrats and Republicans have directed more hope and faith at state prosecutors to address grievances the federal government now seems impotent to resolve, creating increasingly ambitious agendas. On a recent morning, after her son was dropped off at day care and before her property law class was set to begin at Fordham, where she has taught for 12 years, Ms. Teachout conveyed her plans. She explained, for example, how she would expand the attorney general’s focus on worker safety, wage theft and issues of climate and environmental justice, making fossil-fuel companies liable for the damage they cause.
Portugal is wrestling with the remote-work boom, and its new rules include limits on after-hours email and the like, the AP reports:
The new rules are a response to the trend of more staff working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, Portugal’s Socialist government said. It said it sees benefits in working from home but wanted to adapt labor legislation to it.
The regulations bring new penalties for companies that disturb the privacy of staff or their families, and obligate employers to compensate staff for work-related expenses incurred at home.
Amazon’s press operation is fairly notorious among reporters for a habit of first refusing to engage and then fighting back against what gets published. At least some of that is no accident, writes The Information’s Paris Martineau:
For the first two decades or so of the company’s existence, Bezos had little interest in PR unless it helped serve Amazon customers in some way. But an explosion of negative press coverage—which chronicled everything from its treatment of warehouse workers to its conduct toward merchant partners to its unforgiving white-collar corporate culture—prompted Amazon to go on the offensive.
The Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder — yes, yes, the one with Prince Harry — is out with its final report. And the big takeaway is that nothing here’s inevitable:
The biggest lie of all, which this crisis thrives on, and which the beneficiaries of mis- and disinformation feed on, is that the crisis itself is uncontainable. One of the corollaries of that mythology is that, in order to fight bad information, all we need is more (and better distributed) good information. In reality, merely elevating truthful content is not nearly enough to change our current course.
There’s funding for Internet connectivity in the infrastructure bill President Biden signed on Monday. Now comes making it mean something. Marketwatch's Jon Swartz:
For decades, lawmakers, public-policy strategists and consumers have decried a “digital divide” that left swaths of the country with spotty internet service.
The $65 billion allocated to broadband expansion as part of the Biden administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill could change all that with improved internet services for rural areas, low-income families and tribal communities. It gives advocates what they have long wanted: Money to build out internet infrastructure to areas lacking access, and subsidies to Americans who cannot afford high-speed internet service.
The devil, of course, is in the details.
Dave Eggers’ new book, the tech-world satire “The Every,” won’t be on Amazon in the U.S. — a protest move that’s possible largely because Eggers’ also has a publishing imprint, he tells the Guardian’s Sam Leith:
[H]e’s realistic about the unlikelihood of his sparking an Amazon spring. “I’ve heard from two authors just yesterday who said they’re going to try to do the same thing, so that’s good. But listen: not everyone can do this. Amazon’s tendrils are everywhere. It’s mainly because McSweeney’s is a small independent company that we could cut Amazon out of the loop.” It’s a different story with UK publication. “Most companies, and distributors, are locked into contractual obligations with Amazon that preclude them from having a choice. Which is part of the problem.”
Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance is making ‘anti-Big-Tech’ part of his brand, a little ironic given that he’s gotten strong backing from Facebook board member (among other things) Peter Thiel. Here’s Bloomberg News’ Mark Niquette:
Vance says that tech firms wield too much influence on politics and the economy and that the industry unfairly censors conservative viewpoints. While it’s a familiar talking point for Republicans seeking public office, it presents an acute challenge for Vance, who built a career as a venture capitalist and is supported by tech titans.
The White House is trying again with the Skype briefings, notes Politico’s West Wing Playbook:
White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s return to the briefing room today (after having a Covid-19 breakthrough infection) also coincided with the reappearance of the so-called Friday Skype seats for the first time in months... The aim is to allow reporters based outside the Beltway to participate in the briefing from afar — something that could aid White House efforts to garner local press coverage of the infrastructure bill, which the president plans to sign on Monday.
But Milwaukee Journal Sentinel business reporter Rick Barrett was stymied by a familiar hangup: the people in the briefing room couldn’t hear the audio, despite it being crystal clear to those monitoring the livestream.
And just for fun, we bring you Canada’s Supreme Court (via D. Hunter Schwarz):
