Tech conferences for grown-ups

Presented by Connected Commerce Council: How the next wave of technology is upending the global economy and its power structures

Jun 22, 2022 View in browser   By Ryan Heath Presented by Connected Commerce Council With help from Derek Robertson Ryan Heath A dispatch from Ryan Heath, POLITICO's eyes and ears on the global conference circuit:  TORONTO — Tech conferences used to be giant fan clubs for technology itself, with customers pawing the latest cool gadgets and fawning like groupies over Tech God Founders (always men). And, OK, some of them still are. But with the industry now very much in the political crosswinds — and with regulators and citizens well aware that the industry's habit of writing its own rules can cause pretty big problems downstream — you can now find tech get-togethers willing to address these bigger issues head-on. The most interesting conferences now address a broader range of people, from startups searching for their first capital to regulators and NGOs focused on keeping those tech gods accountable. This week in Toronto, 35,000 geeks are gathered for Collision Conference, the North American offspring of the even bigger Web Summit that takes place in Lisbon each November. It's part of a new generation of tech conferences that stretch from mass-activist events like RightsCon to the invite-only Code, by Kara Swisher. So what's different: There are real arguments at these events, from new CEOs attacking the previous generation (Bill Gates came under fire here for his recent crypto-skepticism) to detailed debates about what sort of regulation or organizing is needed to keep Big Tech accountable. There are also a lot more women. According to Collision's organizers, 39 percent of panelists here are women and 350 of the 1557 start-ups represented were founded by women. The gathered geeks are also keen to think about more than coding: speakers include author Margaret Attwood on abortion rights andAlicia Garza, a co-creator of the Black Lives Matter Global Network. What's not different: Gimmicks. Would you like to join tonight's ax-throwing happy hour (what could go wrong)? Have you tried the "nanoseptic tech" in the elevator (enjoy the self-cleaning elevator buttons at your own risk)? If it's all too much: take in a robot drag queen for Pride.  What's the crowd like? Decidedly mixed — and hardly a hoodie in sight. The audience is more global, on account of some newer tech niches, such as climate tech, having roots far beyond Silicon Valley. Wandering the halls you'll bump into anyone from female founders from Canada's provinces to British regulators and West Coast academics, alongside investors and government affairs teams and marketing officers from big tech firms. I ran into Danijel Viševic, a European investor and former political adviser, who says he would never have imagined being at a tech conference 10 years ago. He knew plenty about social platforms as a key member of the team that shaped former German Chancellor Angela Merkel's global image — but after deciding in 2018 that his true life mission would be tackling the climate crisis, he says his aim at Collision (and beyond) is to help "restructure venture capital to save humankind." He's a co-founder of World Fund , which aims to fund new climate-saving technologies. In this world it's no longer enough to know how to scale a company quickly. A wider range of talent is needed, Viševic said: "If you invest in climate tech, and in solutions that solve real problems, you need physicists, mathematicians, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, biologists." He also spots something approaching equality: "There are way more female founders in this sector, where you solve real problems and it's not only about the money." What does the tech industry need to know? While Congress has been at a tech regulation stalemate, and the EU executive keeps having its major tech enforcement decision overturned in court, that's no reason for corner office complacency. It's clear that a whole generation of geeks is learning that there are ways to run the world that don't fit Silicon Valley's traditional boxes. A message from Connected Commerce Council: Small businesses face big consequences from overregulating tech. By breaking up integrated services, it gets harder and more expensive for smaller shops to reach customers. That's why 87% of small businesses are concerned that antitrust legislation is going to make digital tools more expensive and less useful. Say yes to supporting small business success. Vote NO on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S.2992).   cheat code Yesterday the code repository GitHub announced that Copilot, an AI tool for writing code, is now open for use by developers after a year-long development period. There's been a wave of speculation and publicity in recent months around tools like the text generator GPT-3, or the image generator DALL-E, that use AI to draw on massive amounts of existing data and produce something like "new" content. What are the implications of training such models on code that underlies our basic digital infrastructure? I called Sanmay Das, a professor of computer science at George Mason University, and asked him about the potential benefits and risks of such a tool, which he called "fairly smart" in using GitHub's massive stores of code to train its model. He also warned of the potential security risks in making code so easily reproducible."It's an issue of scale," Das said. "Suppose you have an AI that's been trained in a particular way, and 10,000 people need a particular snippet of code but that code has a security flaw in it. Suddenly you have 10,000 different deployed pieces of software that have that flaw in it." Some critics have also worried about the implications of one company — Microsoft, which purchased GitHub in 2018 — having access to and control over such a tool, which it developed with OpenAI."In some ways it strikes me as similar to Facebook constantly learning about your preferences and using them to extrapolate with other people's preferences and decide what ads to show you," Das said. "There are questions about privacy, there are questions about who owns the data; there are legitimate concerns on that front."  — Derek Robertson afternoon snack When Will Wright was developing the original "SimCity," potential publishers were skeptical that anyone would want to play a game without a clear "win" condition. That skepticism was obviously misplaced, as "SimCity" itself became a massively lucrative franchise and spawned scores of imitators and successors — including "Townscaper," which puts a new twist on the genre with the power of AI. How the game works, in short: Players build a town out of very simple, non-customizable blocks. As they add and remove said blocks, the game's procedural generation engine then weaves them together in a manner that's surprisingly organic-looking and aesthetically pleasing. It's sort of like SimCity, but you're not fully in control as the game builds out your vision with a "mind" of its own. The game's designer Oskar Stalberg spoke at length with the website Game Developer recently, describing the game's genesis and the technology behind it — which was inspired by his desire to create massive virtual landscapes that aren't simply the same patterns and textures repeated ad infinitum, like in previous generations of video games."Townscaper," which Stalberg refers to on Twitter as more of a "toy" than a game, is just one of the many projects that have use AI to create memorable virtual worlds. — Derek Robertson   A message from Connected Commerce Council:   The Future In 5 Links Coin Center's lawsuit against the government could have huge implications for money laundering. An AI ethicist knocks down the argument that the technology can achieve sentience. Self-driving big rigs are getting ever closer to an on-the-road reality. Microsoft is removing facial analysis from its AI tools. Could EV charging stations actually be exacerbating income inequality? Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger (bschreckinger@politico.com); Derek Robertson (drobertson@politico.com); Konstantin Kakaes (kkakaes@politico.com);  and Heidi Vogt (hvogt@politico.com). Follow us on Twitter @DigitalFuture. If you've had this newsletter forwarded to you, you can sign up here. And read our mission statement here. A message from Connected Commerce Council: Small businesses run on tech. Integrated digital tools help Frank DiCarlantonio at Scaffidi's Restaurant reach customers, scale up, and compete. In fact, 75% of small business leaders say digital tools are important to their operations. But Congress is aiming to break up the digital tools and services that small businesses rely on—making them more expensive and harder to access. It could be the difference between success and closing their doors for good. Don't forget about small businesses. Vote NO on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S.2992).     Follow us on Twitter Ben Schreckinger @SchreckReports Derek Robertson @afternoondelete Konstantin Kakaes @kkakaes Heidi Vogt @HeidiVogt   Follow us

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