Musk, Thiel, and Gates: the 3 tech billionaires shaping our world
Technologists’ visions
Yet when Americans founded online social networks, the tragic vision was forgotten. Founders were trusted to juggle their self-interest and the public interest when designing these networks and gaining vast data troves.
Users,companiesandcountrieswere trusted not to abuse their new social-networked power. Mobs werenot constrained. This led toabuseandmanipulation.
Belatedly, social networks have adoptedtragic visions. Facebooknow acknowledges regulationis needed to get the best fromsocial media.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk dabbles in both the tragic and utopian visions. He thinks “most people are actually pretty good”. But he supportsmarket, not government control, wants competition tokeep us honest, andsees evil in individuals.
Musk’s tragic visionpropels us to Marsin case short-sighted selfishness destroys Earth. Yet his utopian vision assumes people on Mars could be entrustedwith the direct democracythat America’sfounding fathers feared. His utopian vision also assumes giving us tools tothink betterwon’t simply enhance our Machiavellianism.
Bill Gates leans to the tragic and tries to create a better world within humanity’s constraints. Gatesrecognises our self-interestand supports market-based rewards to help us behave better. Yet he believes “creative capitalism” can tie self-interest to our inbuilt desire to help others, benefiting all.
A different tragic vision lies in the writings of Peter Thiel. This billionaire tech investorwas influenced byphilosophersLeo StraussandCarl Schmitt. Both believed evil, in the form of adrive for dominance, is part of our nature.
Thiel dismisses the “Enlightenment view of the natural goodness of humanity”. Instead, he approvingly cites the view that humans are “potentially evil or at least dangerous beings”.
The consequences of seeing evil
The German philosopherFriedrich Nietzsche warnedthat those who fight monsters must beware of becoming monsters themselves. He was right.
People who believe in evil are more likely todemonise, dehumanise, and punishwrongdoers. They are more likely to support violencebeforeandafteranother’s transgression. They feel thatredemptive violencecan eradicate evil and save the world. Americans who believe in evil aremore likely to supporttorture, killing terrorists and America’s possession of nuclear weapons.
Technologists who see evil risk creating coercive solutions. Those who believe in evil areless likely to think deeplyabout why people act as they do. They are alsoless likely to seehow situations influence people’s actions.
Two years after 9/11, Peter Thiel foundedPalantir. This company creates software to analyse big data sets, helping businesses fight fraud and the US government combat crime.
Thiel is a Republican-supporting libertarian. Yet, he appointed a Democrat-supportingneo-Marxist, Alex Karp, as Palantir’s CEO. Beneath their differences lies a shared belief in the inherent dangerousness of humans. Karp’s PhD thesis argued that we have a fundamental aggressive drive towardsdeath and destruction.
Just as believing in evil is associated with supporting pre-emptive aggression, Palantir doesn’t just wait for people to commit crimes. Ithas patenteda “crime risk forecasting system” to predict crimes and hastrialled predictive policing. This hasraised concerns.
Karp’s tragic vision acknowledges that Palantir needs constraints. He stresses the judiciary must put “checks and balances on the implementation” of Palantir’s technology. He says the use of Palantir’s software should be “decided by society in an open debate”, rather than by Silicon Valley engineers.
Yet, Thiel cites philosopher Leo Strauss’ suggestion that Americapartly owes her greatness“to her occasional deviation” from principles of freedom and justice. Straussrecommended hidingsuch deviations under a veil.
Thielintroduces the Straussian argument thatonly “the secret coordination of the world’s intelligence services” can support a US-led international peace. This recalls Colonel Jessop in the film,A Few Good Men, who felt he should deal with dangerous truths in darkness.
Seeing evil after 9/11 led technologists and governments to overreach in their surveillance. Thisincluded using the formerly secret XKEYSCORE computer systemused by the US National Security Agency to collect people’s internet data, which islinked to Palantir. The American people rejected this approach anddemocratic processesincreased oversight and limited surveillance.
Facing the abyss
Tragic visions pose risks. Freedom may be unnecessarily and coercively limited. External roots of violence, likescarcityandexclusion, may be overlooked. Yet iftechnology creates economic growthit will address many external causes of conflict.
Utopian visions ignore the dangers within. Technology that only changes the world is insufficient to save us from our selfishness and, as I argue in a forthcoming book,our spite.
Technology must change the world working within the constraints of human nature. Crucially,as Karp notes, democratic institutions, not technologists, must ultimately decide society’s shape. Technology’s outputs must be democracy’s inputs.
This may involve us acknowledging hard truths about our nature. But what if society does not wish to face these? Those who cannot handle truth make others fear to speak it.
Straussian technologists, who believe but dare not speak dangerous truths, may feel compelled to protect society in undemocratic darkness. They overstep, yet are encouraged to by those who see more harm in speech than its suppression.
The ancient Greeks had a name for someone withthe courage to tell truths that could put them in danger– the parrhesiast. But the parrhesiast needed a listener who promised to not to react with anger. Thisparrhesiastic contractallowed dangerous truth-telling.
We have shredded this contract. We must renew it. Armed with the truth, the Greeks felt they couldtake care of themselves and others. Armed with both truth and technology we can move closer to fulfilling this promise.
This article is republished fromThe ConversationbySimon McCarthy-Jones, Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology,Trinity College Dublinunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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