Kill or Be Killed: Techno-Optimism’s Political Action Plan

In our last post, Preach (Tech) Brother, the concern was expressed that those behind the Techno-Optimist ‘Manifesto’ (or TOM) might use their significant political, economic and social/cultural clout  to push this dubious belief system onto others. Well now there’s a postscript: a subsequent edict confirms that is precisely what is happening.

In a piece entitled ‘Politics and the Future’ (PATF), the author outlines the plan for operationalising techno-optimism as a guiding doctrine within existing formal political processes:

We believe that advancing technology is critical for humanity’s future, so we will, for the first time, get involved with politics by supporting candidates who align with our vision and values specifically for technology…¹

…We are non-partisan, one issue voters: If a candidate supports an optimistic technology-enabled future, we are for them. If they want to choke off important technologies, we are against them…²

…Every penny we donate will go to support like-minded candidates and oppose candidates who aim to kill America’s advanced technological future.³

PATF was posted in December 2023 – two months after TOM – on the same venture capital firm website. Its author is one of the two co-founders of that firm. The other firm co-founder is the author of TOM. At only 420 words, PATF is less than one-tenth the length of TOM, but is no less alarming for it. If anything, PATF’s overt acknowledgement of techno-optimism’s (read techno-evangelism’s) political ambitions and action plan is perhaps even more startling than TOM, as the quotes above demonstrate.

Despite the different authorships, the substance and style of the two pieces are mutually reinforcing. They also suffer from the same flaws. As these were written up at length in Preach (Tech) Brother, they shall not be repeated here, save for the following observations:

(1) The ‘We’ Problem

Like TOM, PATF never defines who ‘we’ is. The lawyers have made very clear who ‘we’ isn’t: each piece ends with a very long disclaimer section indicating the views expressed are those of the author, not those of the venture capital firm or its affiliates. PATF also seeks to distinguish itself from Big Tech:

While “Big Tech” is well represented in Washington D.C., their interests are often at odds with a positive technological future as they are more interested in regulatory capture and preserving their monopolies. As a result, technology startups need a voice.⁴

So ‘we’ refers to both the techno-optimists, and the voice of tech startups? PATF goes on:

America’s best days are ahead if we retain our global technology leadership. The primary thing that can undermine that is misguided regulatory policy.⁵

To whom does ‘global technology leadership’ belong here – America? The techno-optimists? Tech startups? And how does this leadership result in ‘America’s best days’? What would ‘America’s best days’ even look like – and according to whom? All of this is left unspecified.

Furthermore, the claim that ‘we are non-partisan’ needs serious clarification. ‘Non-partisan’ in the sense of not being aligned with any particular US political party – perhaps. But certainly not ‘non-partisan’ in the sense of without affiliation to a particular political group or cause – techno-optimism is politics by and for the tech bros, after all, as demonstrated in Preach (Tech) Brother.

(2) Lack of Nuance – and Who Decides?

The most concerning aspect of PATF, as with TOM, is the oversimplified and unnuanced worldview at its heart. This is a binary world of Us versus Them; political candidates that either share ‘our’ perspective, or ‘aim to kill America’s…future’; regulation that is either ‘high quality’ and ‘clear’, or ‘misguided’ and ‘politicised’. Between the two extremes presented in each case, there is – apparently – no room for anything else.

The problem here is that, in reality, there are people who are cautiously optimistic about technology, without being evangelical about it; there are politicians who support technological development in theory, while remaining aware of the social/economic/political/moral/legal risks involved; and there are regulations which achieve a mixed impact. Into which of the camps set up by the techno-optimists would these real-world examples fall – and on what grounds? Who decides?

And here we arrive at the most insidious aspect of TOM and PATF: the simple-sounding question: who decides? In written text, specifying one’s key terms as far as possible serves several purposes. For instance, it helps to ensure a clear message is delivered successfully, and where decisions on questions of interpretation are required (as they inevitably will be), the scope of these is reduced as far as possible. Here, where every other sentence includes generalisations (eg ‘bad actors exploiting the technology’,⁶‘advancing technology is critical for humanity’s future⁷), basic terms left undefined (eg ‘our vision and values’,⁸‘our society’,⁹‘nefarious purposes’¹⁰) and sweeping statements (eg ‘software has eaten the world’,¹¹‘uplift all of humanity’,¹²‘a model of crude industrial revolution era technologies’¹³), it is almost impossible to pin down what all this means precisely in practice. In this case, everything will be down to how these terms are interpreted and applied – and by whom. And in that regard, we have every reason to believe that these are privileges the people of TOM and PATF wish to keep entirely to themselves.

While PATF gives lip service to ‘high quality regulation’ such as ‘Internet regulation in the 1990s’,¹⁴a more careful reading reveals PATF’s actual preference: a form of regulation that stays out of technology’s way. That is, no proper regulation at all. This can be gleaned from the following excerpts:

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to uplift all of humanity to an unprecedented quality of living and must not be choked off in its infancy. We can do this by requiring that AI behaves within the law and rules of our society without regulating math, FLOPs, methods of R&D, and other misguided ideas.

Decentralized technologies from the blockchain/crypto/web3 ecosystem will create a fairer, more inclusive economy than the centralized, monopoly-enabling technologies of web 2 and the industrial-era financial system. Still, we need clear regulation to eliminate bad actors exploiting the technology for nefarious purposes.

We are entering the golden era of biological research. AI is maturing at a time when life sciences and healthcare are also transforming into data-driven disciplines, with both industries increasingly driven by AI and engineering, with its power and opportunity to fundamentally change how we diagnose, treat, and manage disease and deliver health. However our regulatory regime and processes are built based on a model of crude industrial revolution era technologies. As a result, we risk harming far more people than we save with our “safety” measures.¹⁵

In the first two, emphasis is placed on the technology itself abiding by, or achieving, a hodgepodge of social, economic and/or legal values/standards. In other words, baking such milestones into the process of conceiving, designing, implementing and operating technology, without the external scrutiny, direction or limits that might be provided by additional regulatory requirements. The only role for regulation acknowledged here concerns ‘bad actors’.¹⁶ Outside this, the expectation is that technological development will be left to its own devices (both figuratively and literally). In the third excerpt, an unsubstantiated critique of current regulation is provided, with no suggestions for improvement or change. All of this suggests that techno-optimists want maximum freedom to do and decide as they please, with minimum external interference. Even when that ‘interference’ means accountability to, and scrutiny by, key authorities tasked with considering, inter alia, the wider impacts of technology in a democratic setting.