\n<\/p>\n
Meredith Whittaker has had it with the \u201cfrat house\u201d contingent of the tech industry. I sat down with the President of Signal at VivaTech in Paris to go over the wide range of serious, grown-up issues society is facing, from disinformation, to who controls AI, to the encroaching surveillance state. In the course of our conversation, we delved into Signal\u2019s recent war of words with Elon Musk, Telegram\u2019s Pavel Durov, and \u2014 given its controversial clash with Scarlett Johanson \u2014 Whittaker\u2019s candid thoughts about the leadership at OpenAI, which she likened to \u201cdorm room high-jinks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among other things, Whittaker is concerned about the concentration of power in the five main social media platforms, especially in a year when the world faces a large number of general elections<\/a>, not least in the U.S., and Europe\u2019s reliance on U.S.-based, external, tech giants. She argued that loosening EU regulations won\u2019t actually help Europe compete with U.S. tech giants, or be good for society. She criticized the media\u2019s obsession with AI-driven deepfakes, while often ignoring how social media platforms prioritize hyperbolic engagement over facts.<\/p>\n We also discussed surveillance advertising, the implications of the U.K.\u2019s Online Safety Bill, the EU-CSAM proposals (\u201cabsolutely dangerous\u201d), and whether Telegram\u2019s Pavel Durov should spend more time making his platform secure than being followed by a photographer for his Instagram account (\u201che\u2019s full of s\u2014\u201d).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And toward the end, she revealed why she\u2019s spending the next six months in Europe. <\/p>\n You\u2019ve lately been talking about the concentration of power in AI, and that this was important in the European context. Would you like to expand on that?<\/strong><\/p>\n The very short answer is that that\u2019s important in the European context, because that power is not concentrated in Europe. Yes, that power is concentrated in the hands of a handful of companies that reside in the US, and then some more in China. But when we\u2019re talking about this context, we\u2019re talking about the US. The reliance of Europe, European startups, European governments, European institutions, on AI is ultimately a reliance on infrastructures and systems that are created, controlled, and redound back to the profits and growth of these handful of companies. <\/p>\n Now, the context we\u2019re speaking in is May 2024. Now, I don\u2019t know how many months we have till the election and I\u2019m refusing to remember that right now. But we\u2019re looking at the very real possibility of a Trump regime and of a more authoritarian style US government and that part of the [Republican] party has had its eye on controlling tech and particularly social media for a very long time. So those are considerations that should all be taken together in an analysis of what is AI? Whom does AI serve? And why again, should Europe be concerned about concentrated power in the AI industry.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a debate in Europe around accelerationism and accelerating technologies. Some European entrepreneurs are frustrated by European regulation. Do you think that their concerns about possible European regulation, perhaps of the EU slowing down the pace of technological progress, is justified?<\/strong><\/p>\n Pardon me, I come from The Academy. So I\u2019m a stickler for definitions. I want to unpack that a little. Is the premise here, that without such shackles, Europe would be free to build competitors equal to the US tech giants? If that\u2019s the presumption, that\u2019s not true. They know this is not true. Anyone who understands the history, the business models, the deep entrenchment of these companies also knows that\u2019s not true. <\/p>\n There may be frustration with regulation \u2018slowing down your series B\u2019. But I think we need to look at a definition of \u2018progress\u2019 that relies on casting off all guardrails that would govern the use and abuse of technologies that are currently being tasked with making incredibly sensitive determinations; currently being linked with mass surveillance infrastructures that are accelerating new forms of social control; that are being used to degrade and diminish labor. Is that what we want? Is that progress? Because if we don\u2019t define our terms, I think we can get caught in these fairy tales. <\/p>\n Sure, some guys are going to be solidly middle-class after they cash out, and that is good for them. But let\u2019s not conflate that with progress toward a livable future. Progress toward a socially beneficial governance structure, progress toward technology that actually serves human needs, that is actually accountable to citizens.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve raised the example of disinformation about AI-generated content about Zelensky and his wife. Such as deep-faked video and AI-generated websites<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The focus on deepfakes in a vacuum is actually missing the forest for the trees, with the \u2018forest\u2019 being the fact that we now rely on five massive social media platforms as the arbiters. [TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter\/X and YouTube]<\/p>\n These massive homogenous social media platforms are incentivized to calibrate their algorithms for engagement because they want more clicks, more ad views, that are incentivized to elevate s\u2014 content, bombastic content, hyperbolic content, completely false content, right? And that\u2019s where we\u2019re seeing, in my view, AI used for disinformation in a much more powerful way. That\u2019s where you would find a deepfake. No one goes to a website anymore. You go to Twitter, YouTube, you search around, you see what\u2019s on there. <\/p>\n You see a headline and click on it, you click on someone posting from that website. I don\u2019t think we can have a conversation about disinformation without having a conversation about the role of massive homogenous platforms that have cannibalized our media ecosystem and our information ecosystem in service of profit and growth for a handful of companies.<\/p>\n In the U.K., we have the Advertising Standards Authority. In Germany, you can\u2019t advertise Nazi memorabilia, for instance on eBay. Would there be ways of policing the advertising industry and therefore, downstream, creating better rules and better outcomes from the platforms which rely on advertising as a business model?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think banning surveillance advertising would be a very good first step. We would be really cutting at the root of the pathologies that we are dealing with from the tech industry, which is this mass surveillance in the name of influence, influence to sell something, influence to convince someone to vote for something, influence to misinform someone. Ultimately, that\u2019s the game.<\/p>\n The training data for that mass surveillance, as you put it, was thrown into sharp relief with the story around OpenAI\u2019s use of the \u201cSky\u201d AI voice that sounded quite similar to Scarlett Johansson. She later revealed she had been contacted by Sam Altman about using her voice. Do you have a view who won that incident?<\/strong><\/p>\n I posted this on Twitter, but it\u2019s just like \u2026 \u2018Edge Lord\u2019 bulls\u2014. It\u2019s so disrespectful. It\u2019s so unnecessary. And it really tears the veil on this mythology that you\u2019re all serious people at the apex of science building the next Godhead, when it\u2019s very clear that the culture is dorm room high-jinks egged-on by a bunch of \u2018Yes men\u2019 who think every joke you say is funny, because they\u2019re paid to do that, and no one around there is taking this leadership by the shoulders and saying \u2018What the f\u2014 are you doing!?\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n Last year at TechCrunch Disrupt there was a discussion with you about the UK\u2019s Online Safety Bill (now Act) which suggested it may ask tech companies to build backdoors into their end-to-end encryption. What\u2019s your position now that bill has passed?<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019d never do it. We\u2019re never gonna do it. What we said was that if they moved to enforce that part of the bill, that could be used by Ofcom to tell Signal \u2018they have to build a backdoor, they have to implement client-side scanning\u2019 \u2014 which is a backdoor \u2014 we would leave [the UK]. Because we\u2019re not going to do that. We\u2019re never going to sell out the people who rely on Signal, particularly given that so many of them rely on it, in contexts where digital security is a life or death matter.<\/p>\n What appears clear is Ofcom got handed a giant bag of wild nonsense, some of which is interesting, some of which isn\u2019t, that built up like a Christmas tree, where everyone had tacked on their favorite ornament. It got passed due to political inertia, not [through] any real support. Every MP I had talked to in the lead-up to the bill was like \u2018Yeah, we know that s\u2014, but no one\u2019s gonna do anything about it\u2019. And now Ofcom has to deal with enforcing it. And so\u2026 every couple of months another 1,700 pages drops that you need to pay someone to read.<\/p>\n So you haven\u2019t had any pressure from Ofcom yet?<\/strong><\/p>\n No, and my experience with the Ofcom leadership has been that they\u2019re fairly reasonable. They understand these issues. But again, they got handed this bill and are now trying to grapple with what to do there.<\/p>\n There was a recent development, where they\u2019re consulting on AI for online safety. Do you have any comment on that?<\/strong><\/p>\n I am very concerned about age-gating. And this idea that we need a database, [for instance] run by Yoti, a U.S.-based company who\u2019s lobbying hard for these infrastructures, that would do biometric identification or some machine learning, inaccurate magic, or have a database of IDs, or what have you, that means you effectively have to log in with your real identity and your age and any other information they want, in order to visit a website. <\/p>\n You\u2019re talking about an incredible mass surveillance regime. In the U.S. for a long time librarians held the line on not disclosing what people checked out because that information was so sensitive. You can look at the Robert Bork case<\/a> and his video rentals and purchases and how sensitive that information was. What you see here with these provisions is just an ushering-in of something that completely ignores an understanding of simply how sensitive that data is and creates a [situation] where you have to check in with the authorities before you can use a website.<\/p>\n The European Commission has proposed a new Directive to recast the criminal law rules around Child Sexual Abuse Material (EU-CSAM). What\u2019s your view on this proposal?<\/strong><\/p>\n Honestly, it doesn\u2019t look like there\u2019s the political will [for it]. But it is notable that there seems to be this rabid contingent, who in spite of damning investigative reporting, shows just what a heavy hand lobbyists from the scanning and biometrics industry played in drafting this legislation. This, in spite of the entire expert community \u2014\u00a0 anyone of note who does research on security or cryptography and understands these systems and their limits \u2014 coming out and saying this is absolutely unworkable. What you\u2019re talking about is a backdoor in the core infrastructures we rely on for government, for commerce, for communication.<\/p>\n It\u2019s absolutely dangerous, and oh, wait, there\u2019s no data that shows this is actually going to help children. There\u2019s a massive shortfall in funding for social service, education. There are real problems to help children. Those are not being focused on. Instead, there is this fixation on a backdoor on encryption, on breaking the only technology we have that can ensure confidentiality, authenticity and privacy. So the arguments are in. It\u2019s very clear that they\u2019re wrong. It\u2019s very clear that this process has been corrupt, to say the least. And yet there seems to be this faction that just cannot let that bone go.<\/p>\n You\u2019re clearly concerned about the power of centralized AI platforms. What do you make of the so-called \u201cdecentralized AI\u201d being talked about by Emad Mostaque, for instance?<\/strong><\/p>\n I hear a slogan. Give me an argument. Give me an architecture. Tell me what that actually means. What specifically is being decentralized? What are the affordances that attend your special version of decentralization?\u00a0<\/p>\n