Navigating Tech Dependency with Susie Alegre
Business Leaders face uncertainty and volatility nonhumans are entering the workplace memes control the stock market and geopolitics is a business concern disruption isn't a future concept it's here I am Justin Brady and using 7,000 predictions and 12 major workplace Trends from Sherm you and I will sit down with psychologists CEOs scientists entrepreneurs and analysts to make sense of it all this show isn't about the future it's about actions to take tomorrow this is tomorrow I'm Justin Brady and as an executive one of the things maybe you're worried about is are those technocrats taking over are they going to control everything do they already have too much control that's what we're talking about today and to do that Dr Susie algra joins us International lawyer specializing in Tech policy rights and ethics and Senior fellow at the center for international governance Innovation thank you so much for joining us on tomorrow is Susie my absolute pleasure thanks for having me should also say you're the author of a few books just a few to call out here freedom to think and the new one human rights robot wrongs should technocratic control be a concern for executives and why and obviously we impact that quite a bit but should this be a concern for executives it absolutely should be a concern for executives and there are many reasons which I'm sure we're going to going to cover I mean one of those is a huge power IM balance that if you are relying on technology to do your daily work then you a have to count on that technology working and you B have to count on the fact that you're going to be afford able to afford to use the technology going forward so control over your ability to do business is something that you really need to be concerned about and then one of the areas of focus in the book as well is really looking at things like um your environmental social and governance uh concerns so looking at what it means for you and the ethics of your company if you're working using these kind of of tools and one of the things that we'll see as well is how Tech monopolies and Tech control can pass liability on to you for the problems that you may encounter as a result of using those products now I mean ever since I have been a kid and in most of human history we have relied at least to some degree on technocrats and uh people in Authority people building the railroads uh organizations like that so is it is it different now I think it's different because it's not just about doing business it's it's also going into every single aspect of our lives so you know whether you as a as an individual or as a business what to do banking whether you want to see your doctor whether you want to meet new friends find a partner all of these kind of things are now being mediated through technology in ways that we often don't really understand you we talk about algorithms well what is the algorithm actually based on how is it working how is it affecting our lives and our businesses and so it's not just about you know you talk about the railways it's not just about getting from A to B it's about how we think how we behave um and how we operate so that is one of the really big differences it's just the extent of our Reliance and we saw it you know earlier this year RIT large with the crowd strike outage that just kind of started with a glitch and an update somewhere in Australia and then spread across time zones across the world you know grounding flights certainly here in the UK a lot of um general practitioner doed surgeries were affected that suddenly can't access patients notes you're having to resort to a pencil and paper to try and make do and and so we've seen how embroiled all aspects of our lives are with technology and I think that's something that we need to reflect on really carefully as we start thinking about incorporating new elements of technology in particular AI uh into our lives and into our work yeah I mean I should say back when the railroads were being built we were very much reliant on them we didn't have other means of transportation we had you know some so uh there is kind of an element to us being reliant on current technology being used to build civilization and so I imagine this conversation is more about balance and not just straight up ai's bad because history has plenty of examples of influential people fighting back against technology like human flight was considered super dangerous and toxic and even there's there's examples of um bicycles being extreme when those were invented those were highly dangerous and we shouldn't have them video games and I believe in the in one previous interview you've given you even talked about how Socrates himself warned against the written word so how do we where where is the balance how do we know if Susie Dr Susie algra is just um cautioning against things just like we've always seen in history or if this time we should take it take it seriously well firstly one of the things to bear in mind when you're thinking about Ai and what AI can do for you and your business and humanity is that AI isn't really a thing it's tons of different things tons of different Technologies with tons of different use cases and so there is no a I is bad or good the really important thing when you're thinking about incorporating AI both into your life or into your work is well what actually is this will it actually benefit this scenario you know will it make my life better in this specific use case forget whether or not it's going to cure cancer that is a whole you know a whole other question and again if you're thinking about it as an option to cure cancer it's probably not going to be a chatbot but going to cure cancer it's going to be something else so really important to consider when you are talking and thinking about AI actually be really specific and precise what exactly is this how exactly is it going to help why is it better what are the risks what are the downsides and what are the real benefits not just the benefits that the salesperson is telling you about and that's one of the things I found when my latest B uh came out you know I saw some of the online comments where you know it's not a balanced perspective because you haven't talked about all the benefits of AI and I mean my answer to that is I'm not selling AI so I don't really need to and there are plenty of people who will sell you Ai and point to whatever benefits there are and so I think whoever you're listening to it's also very important to think why are they saying what they're saying what's their perspective and what does it mean uh for me so thinking really carefully about the specifics because you see an awful lot of you know snake oil salesman awful lot of claims and again this kind of push back that AI is going to revolutionize the world and therefore any criticism of AI is against progress but as I say AI is not one thing it is a mass of different things and knowing what it's good for and what it's not good for is what's really important is there a future where because you know your your focus is human rights to to a large degree is there a likely scenario or is there a scenario at all where AI becomes a tool to enhance human rights I you know we think of I think in the book you talk about some of the negatives you I like the criticism earlier you know so why don't you talk about the positives perhaps is AI maybe a tool that um helps the helps everyone disrupt the bigger guys that maybe pushes forward human rights again you know AI r large is not going to save the world but AI in specific circumstances may be really useful so there are for example NOS who are exploring the use of AI for example to identify uh patterns to reveal for example war crimes or crimes against humanity in order to be able to bring people to justice so using technology um as a way of documenting human rights abuses in order to support accountability so there are of course positive use cases it's never a blanket answer it's always a really complicated and I'm sorry for being too much of a lawyer and saying it depends nearly every question I I get asked um around these issues I always have to say it depends it depends on the detail so there isn't uh you know it's all terrible or it's all fantastic but what I think is really worrying is the level of sight that we are being sold to insert it into every aspect of Our Lives almost unthinkingly the fact that we are being told if you don't take this on then you know you're going to be left behind that's not necessarily true you know first mover Advantage May well be a real disadvantage when the whole system fails and the people who are waiting to see how it went are able to do something else instead and learn from those mistakes so it always depends and taking the sales pitch unquestionably is always going to be a huge risk um in business so I mean that is interesting because and and I believe I believe this I'll be honest with you I believe this but we're often told AI like Executives get on board with AI because your your competition is and if you don't you will be left in the dust I it does it sound like you're pushing back on that idea absolutely and one of the examples I gave in the book was you know the example of automated checkouts and actually um you know I don't know if you like using an automated checkout at the supermarket you know the idea is it's much faster you need less staff it's you know it's much better it's automation it's the future um but then last year a kind of upscale supermarket in the UK in the north of England uh called boo flip that narrative they started getting rid of their automated checkouts and bringing people back because they found that actually you know people enjoy talking to people it's part of the positive quality experience of going to a shop where you're going to be dealing with a real person instead of having to call a real person to come over and help you with the unidentified object in the in the bagging area which is holding up your day extremely annoyingly so I think there is starting to be that shift back and I think it's important as well to think about experience and your customers experience and I've started hearing you know radio shows where people are giving uh life hacks as to how to divert from the chatbot in order to get to speak to a human when you're trying to actually sort something out um and apparently there are ways but that again it's of human Ingenuity to bypass the nightmare of having to navigate customer service through a chatbot that doesn't work so again it's really in the detail it depends it depends what you're trying to do and again from a kind of workers perspective what you find is in some cases automation does not reduce the need for the number of workers it just gives them more boring soulless tasks to do it reduces their you know their their enjoyment of their job so again go back to the supermarket example you know actually my first Saturday job as a teenager was working in a supermarket as a checkout girl as well as doing the pick a mix and you know I very much enjoyed chatting to people it's the one thing that made the day bearable but the idea that as a somebody working in a supermarket what your job is going to be is dealing with angry customers when the machine is failing that actually puts you in a stressful line of fire without the positive interaction that you and customers might actually enjoy yeah I I mean I think I think and you can push back on this or or we can move on but I think there's an argument to be said with because AI is new shiny new and shiny people may not be using it correctly right like if you're using it to supplement Humanity you're probably not doing it right but if you're you're using it to enhance Humanity enhance human connection then you're using it right if just real quickly is that a fair uh is that a fair Choice well in principle but I haven't seen any practice I I don't I mean I haven't seen a use case where it enhances connection myself I mean you know we've seen it um in the dating sphere the online dating sphere where a couple of months ago you know Bumble announced that it was going to do give you an AI wingman in order to you know chat up your prospective dates better than you could yourself I mean the real problem and the reason why people appear to be giving up on online dating is because it's soulless and impersonal and people are not finding the connection that it promised you know putting an AI interface so that your AI Avatar is talking to someone else's AI Avatar to me that is a signal that online dating is on its way out not that AI is going to in some way improve human connection I may be proved wrong but that is my my sense of it and I haven't really seen that use case you know I I don't know if you remember as well it's probably earlier this year that you were starting to see AI being sold as that sort of way where you can wear glasses and you can go and chat someone up in real life and the glasses will be telling you what to say to them I mean I you know I don't know what it feels like to be on the other side of it but it doesn't it doesn't look great to me I I would argue just the the use cases in healthc care and law for example I know you're a lawyer yourself so maybe we can get into that a little bit later but um you know there there is currently a backlog uh at least in global Healthcare where it's hard to see a physician on time so if we can I mean AI has a ways to go as you know it's hallucinating it's making poor judgment calls we all know this but we all naturally assume that will change in the future and so what if Ai and again we don't have the answers to this I hope hopefully we will one day but what if AI increases access to good health care for everyone and what if AI increases access to Legal um you know AI can go through mountains of legal precedent um in seconds in the future right that's what we're being told and wouldn't that bring more legal representation to underserved communities so that those would be the use cases at least I see but what do Executives do like executives are in this position where there's two choices in my view and maybe there's a third choice or maybe these choices are false choices so push back please but we have examples again you bring this up Pharma oil tobacco have captured governments in the past and so in your in your mind do we fear technocrats who are directly influencing all our business operations or do we fear bureaucrats that could maybe regulate or use regulatory capture to control technology and do with it what they will that probably depends where you live again I'm sorry for the it depends so but it but it really does I mean and that that is why you know one of the things that I talk about a lot in the book is that how this pans out depends on the protection of Human Rights it depends on access to Justice it depends on accountability and governance in the places that we live and that Ai and Technology does not you know it's not above the law so just because you're using technology does not mean the law does not apply and so if you're living in a country where that the rule of law still exists where human rights are respected then you're much more likely to be living in a society in the future where technology enhances our humanity and supports our ability to thrive than you are in a country where there is no rule of law or where you cannot get access to Justice and where there is a huge amount of corruption so they're not too sep seate things and the question of whether you should fear technocrats or bureaucrats it depends and the really important thing for protecting us from the excesses whether it is of technocrats or of eurr of bureaucrats is that rule of law respect of Human Rights and democracy so it sounds like well again it's it's probably more of a balance um I want to ask one more question but briefly before I ask that are are there good examples of let's just use the United States or the UK as as as examples because there are probably too many cases to to cite are there good examples where current law U I do believe you talk about the udhr quite a bit um Universal Declaration on human rights are there current examples where current law or the udhr are not sufficient in regulating or controlling or protecting us from maybe AI or technocratic overreach there will be very case specific areas where the law is not sufficient so for example in the UK at the moment there is a a move and a campaign for law reform for criminal and civil offenses related to deep fake image-based abuse so what's colloquially called Deep fake pornography but which essentially is image-based abuse not pornography and there are gaps in the law for the way that this is dealt with certainly in the UK and I think in many countries around the world and countries are starting to legislate and look at ways to legislate to be very clear that this is unacceptable through both criminal and civil law so there will be these kind of specific areas where there will be a need for additional balls where something like human rights law becomes useful is in looking at um both government obligations to legislate to protect us from um Tech corporations all from each other are now a use of Technology like with the image-based um abuse issue and also to protect us from the ways governments might use technology right um to threaten our human rights and so in the UK we have the Human Rights Act which is derived from the European convention on human rights which itself is derived from the universal Declaration on right the reason I talk a lot about the udhr is because it's Universal and so it you know it has relevance everywhere but in you know F law in the UK the Human Rights Act says that all public authorities have to act in a way that respects our human rights as listed in the human rights act so that is a a very clear legal tool that you can then use to hold public authorities to account for ways they might use Tech which could infringe specific human rights not only privacy um but other human rights as well last question before I let you go here the I like that in the book you talk about something that's really really interesting you talk about the use of GPS and you've talked about this in interviews too and how technology can kind of for lack of a better term deactivate certain areas of our brain um the and so obviously this is a concern for executives on if they become over reliant on technology over reliant on chatbots and large language models do employees start to use their brains less how do leaders make sure that their employees don't deactivate those highly critical parts of the brain necessary for critical thinking it's a really interesting question and as you say there's been increasing research that shows that heavy use of GPS actually reduces your natural sense of Direction so even if you started off with a great sense of direction if you heavily use GPS it's likely that your brain will literally change its form in ways that means that you can't orientate yourself without GPS going forward and there's been some very recent research that seems to show similar effects of generative AI on students although obviously it's very very new and so it remains to be seen how it will develop over time but I've certainly seen an initial study that seemed to show that using generative AI boosted students ability um in tests but that when the generative AI was then taken away their ability dropped below the Baseline so that Reliance was actually reducing bar inability that also goes again to a kind of question of studying and capacity building that we all have and it's a really interesting question um that I was asked in one conference was what about the problem of students relying on generative AI or potentially getting qualifications using generative AI without actually doing the work or understanding what their topic is and so people Landing up with professional qualifications who actually do not have the Professional Knowledge or ability to do the job and that I think is going to be really the next level of challenges that we're going to be facing so it really is a big question this issue of desing yeah no it's it's a big question and unfortunately we'll have to leave it there maybe we can have you back in the future Dr Susie Allegra um author of what's out today human rights and robot wrongs can you give us the website so people can reach out and find you at www.s.com Susie thank you so much for coming on tomorrow my pleasure thank Before We Say Goodbye I encourage you to subscribe to tomorrow wherever you get your podcasts you can find all our episodes at sh. tomorro and while you're there sign up for our Weekly Newsletter thanks for listening and remember the workplace is changing rapidly you 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2024-11-22 13:44
