From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Politicians, by and large, don't understand technology at all, and technologists don't understand politicians—and both tend to denigrate each other. The technologists in Silicon Valley see politicians as venal, short-term, and ignorant, while politicians view technologists as rapacious capitalists who will stop at nothing to beat their rivals and lack any ethical compass.
There is a strong possibility that the relationship between humans and their environment would be so fundamentally changed that hundreds of millions of people, perhaps billions, would have to move. History tells us that this carries serious risks of severe and extended conflict.
We can't only rely on consumers making individual choices. If you switched your energy to someone who told you they are selling you 100% renewable energy, that's great, but it doesn't shift the energy system to renewables. You need to have energy markets that are designed to encourage investment into renewable energy.
We can't only rely on consumers making individual choices. If you switched your energy to someone who told you they are selling you 100% renewable energy, that's great, but it doesn't shift the energy system to renewables. You need to have energy markets that are designed to encourage investment into renewable energy.
Fundamentally, the real way to tackle bubble-formation is through careful understanding and regulation of how financial products are created and traded, not necessarily regulating the capital structure of the markets themselves.
the overall picture that's emerging is that the controls which still work operate more along corporate boundaries than along national boundaries.
Behold, the lewd, pornographic embrace of two great American pathologies… Race and guns, both of which have conspired not only to take the life of a teenager, but to make that killing entirely permissible.
We're not just over-reliant—we're wholly reliant—on American technology across the entire stack. Our data sits in American cloud infrastructure; our hardware is American designed; our software and operating systems are overwhelmingly American; most of the AI systems people interact with are American, and so on.
We can win in the struggle to avoid climate chaos, we can win in terms of economic recovery and we can win when it comes to promoting development and justice. All we need is the political will.
We are at a crossroads where we can either win this battle against HIV or we can lose it. The science is there, the tools are there, but what we need now is the political will and the resources to finish the job.
Currently, public services are extraordinarily hostile to those in poverty; a doctrine we've seen clearly in how the Home Office has handled the Windrush generation. This ideology believes people will respond positively to being treated with hostility; but that only works for emotionally regulated people who didn't grow-up in adversity. Our public services are emotionally illiterate.
However much we would like to pursue a 'be kind' policy, we have to recognize that there are others in the world who are going to eat our lunch if we don't do our best.