The two faces of tech: a force to fight global challenges with a dangerous underbelly threats
Today tech leaders and government ministers from around the world will attend the Science Museum to discuss one of the greatest issues of our time: the future of tech.
Technology is fundamental to almost every aspect of our lives. GPS can let our families know when we’re nearly home; artificial intelligence can instruct our smart speakers to add milk to our shopping lists before we run out. With streaming services, we don’t even need a TV guide anymore to find the next series to get stuck into.
This digital age has opened up a world of opportunities. Tech is a force for good. Just as we need new rules for this era, we also have very big questions to answer as we write them. How can we harness tech’s vast potential to tackle our biggest challenges? What is the role for government to play, and how do we best use tech to make greener, healthier and safer choices for our future?
Over the next two days, international policy makers, leading scientists and industry experts will join the first ever Future Tech Forum to discuss these important questions.
Metres away from the computer that Tim Berners-Lee used to design the World Wide Web, digital leaders such as Google and Fujitsu will interrogate how we can use the latest tech to reach Net Zero. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner will join household names like LEGO, and charities like Glitch, to discuss how we can make new toys and products safer by design. And Microsoft and the World Health Organisation share their experience of partnering together to tackle global health challenges like malaria and Covid-19 with a new approach to data.
The UK is the perfect place to be having these conversations. We’ve become a hub for some of the most trailblazing tech companies – start-ups founded with the very purpose of driving positive global change. They include businesses like Octopus Energy, which uses data to create eco-friendly tariffs, and health-tech firms like Oxford Nanopore, which uses complex algorithms to decode DNA in real time, on a device smaller than the average smartphone.
And there is more good news: new figures show a boom in the number of UK “impact startups” – tech firms dedicated to finding solutions to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. We’ve got more than 900 of these firms in the UK, employing more than 35,000 people. Funding into impact startups has more than doubled since 2018, reaching £2bn as investors back some of Britain’s most exciting businesses.
These companies are on the frontline of our fight for a better future. Two weeks on from the Cop26 summit, and the work to meet the ambitious targets agreed in Glasgow has already begun in earnest. I’ll be taking the opportunity over the next two days to build on that, and to discuss the digital infrastructure we’ll need to meet those goals.
But there’s another side to tech, of course. The more we live our lives online, the more exposed we are to certain risks. Algorithms can promote dangerous misinformation and hateful abuse around the globe in a matter of seconds. Authoritarian governments can use tech to silence, intimidate, and repress. Tech giants can use their dominance to crowd out competition. These are global problems – ones that will feed into our discussions at the Future Tech Forum. But the UK is leading the way in solving many of them.
Our Online Safety Bill is truly groundbreaking. We’re going further than any other country to regulate social media platforms, to stamp out abuse and harm. The world is watching as we do so. We’ve broken yet more ground with our pro-competition Digital Markets Unit, which will level the playing field between big tech and rising star British breakthroughs, while batting for consumers online.
We’re looking ahead to what tech holds for us in 2030 and beyond. The Future Tech Forum will help us make sure the tech revolution continues to be a democratic one. I’m confident it will be.