5 questions for Dario Gil

How the next wave of technology is upending the global economy and its power structures

Nov 04, 2022 View in browser   By Mohar Chatterjee With help from Derek Robertson Dario Gil. | Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch We interrupt your Twitter-layoffs programming for the Future in Five Questions — this week tapping the brain of Dario Gil, who helms one of the nation's most influential tech R&D teams as director of research at IBM. This month IBM announced a $20 billion investment in research on  semiconductors, AI and quantum computing, bolstered by the CHIPS and Science Act . Read on to hear his thoughts about the power of theory, the importance of modesty, and a technological Cold War. Responses have been edited for length and clarity. What's one underrated big idea? We need to appreciate the power of theory. Well before we had quantum computing, starting in the 1970s, theorists conceptualized a new way to understand the very nature of information. They created a field called Quantum Information Science. It took many decades to turn that theoretical idea into one of the most important technologies in the decades ahead. We tend to focus on the latter part of it — what happens when everything is applied. But we tend to underrate the power of theory to bring new possibilities. What's a technology you think is overhyped?  The metaverse. In the context of gaming or remote education, you can see how much virtue and value the metaverse would bring. But I'm very skeptical of the metaverse's larger, stated ambition that it is the future of human interaction, and will power the way everybody works in the future… that we will increasingly spend more and more hours of our lives entirely in that world. It's a version of digital overreach. What book most shaped your conception of the future? Isaiah Berlin's body of work. He was a great Oxford philosopher and historian of ideas who has deeply influenced me since I was 18 years old. A characteristic of Berlin is that he did not have any grand unifying idea of history or the human experience. Rather, he cautioned that not everything in the human experience can or should be related to a single ideal — there's no perfect cocktail of justice, liberty and freedom. Ultimately, the pursuit of final answers for a perfect society is a form of oppression and totalitarian thinking. So we learn to practice modesty when thinking about the future of technology. There is no grand solution to the quest of expanding human ability through science and technology. The answers are necessarily contextual. Neurotech for the service of restoring mobility cannot come a moment too soon. But the convenience of using neurotech for faster typing or better gaming might lead us astray with a lot of second-order effects. Similarly, AI-powered computer vision used to discover new celestial objects or improve medical diagnosis is wonderful. The same cannot be said about the ubiquitous and unregulated use of facial recognition software in our societies. There are no easy answers and shortcuts on this. That is going to be the quest of our society and institutions — to reason through the ethical implications of these technologies without seeking this idea of techno-utopia. What could government be doing regarding tech that it isn't? Given advances in hybrid cloud and AI, federal agencies have the massive task of modernizing our infrastructure, to improve productivity, to better serve our missions. They have a lot of work to do to get with the program. On the legislative side, Congress should appropriate what it has authorized in the CHIPS and Science act. CHIPS is fully funded, but the science piece is not. Our top priority should be to fund the National Science Foundation at the close to $12 billion mark that was authorized. We really believe that expanding basic and applied research is going to be strategic for the workforce development of STEM and to fuel our technological national security. What has surprised you most this year? The speed with which we've entered into a technological Cold War. Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, gave a speech recently in which he framed computing technologies — which included semiconductors, AI, quantum, biotech and clean energy technologies — as being at the very heart of national security strategy for the United States. We just witnessed Xi Jinping doubling down on the intersection of advanced technologies and national security. We're witnessing the elevation of technology to the same level of geopolitical importance as trade and military alliances. We are seeing that technology is the new power paradigm.   DON'T MISS POLITICO'S 2nd ANNUAL DEFENSE SUMMIT ON 11/16: The United States is facing a defining moment in the future of its defense, national security and democratic ideals. The current conflicts and developments around the world are pushing Washington to reshape its defense strategy and how it cooperates with allies. Join POLITICO for our second annual defense summit, "At a Crossroads: America's Defense Strategy" on November 16 in person at the Schuyler DC or join online to hear keynote interviews and panels discussing the road ahead for America's national security. REGISTER HERE .     checking in with meta Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg. | Jack Taylor/Getty Images The headline from Nick Clegg's appearance at a Fortune conference in Palm Beach yesterday might have been his welcoming Elon Musk to "the club" of social media moguls, but he also spoke with relative candor about the state of Meta's own ongoing, industry-disruptive project of building the metaverse. "One of the unusual things of having a founder-led company is that that restlessness to continue to invest in the next new wave of technological developments remains alive and well," Clegg said. "But at the same time, I think we are entitled to be pretty forthright in rejecting what is actually I think a sort of lazy headline caricature of the health of our existing businesses… we've got to be disciplined about costs where it's right to do that, and we've got to explain to people why you can't just invent these AR and VR computing platforms overnight." Clegg's emphasis on VR as a "computing platform" reflects the company's approach to metaverse-building, which at the business level is less about adding legs to avatars and more about using its wealth to drive a maddeningly tricky hardware development process. Despite Meta's down year, that wealth is unlikely to dissipate in any meaningful way soon. After all, as Clegg pointed out in the company's defense, it owns the globally ubiquitous WhatsApp — the exact kind of platform into which Musk apparently hopes to convert Twitter. — Derek Robertson is ai art about to eat the world? The ubiquity of AI-generated art grows apace: OpenAI announced yesterday that its image generator DALL-E is now available as an API, for developers to integrate into their own projects. Translated: DALL-E and its products could now theoretically show up in, say, Instagram. OpenAI has played its cards close to its chest when it comes to DALL-E and similar generative technologies, fearful of the ethical implications of releasing such powerful image-manipulating software into the world. But with the rise of projects like Stable Diffusion , a deeply similar product that was completely open to the public from its release. (OpenAI has now followed suit .) Some of the uses for their API that OpenAI now touts are its integration into a new Microsoft graphic-design app , a startup that helps people build photo walls in their homes and something referred to as a " fashion and lifestyle operating system ."  — Derek Robertson the future in 5 links How does AI fare when asked to handle… a Thanksgiving menu? Policy might have turned its way, but the chip manufacturing industry is struggling. Where in the world is Terra founder-cum-fugitive Do Kwon? Despite sanctions, Binance has processed $8 billion in Iranian transactions since 2018. A (relatively) new programming language is going "viral" for its huge security benefits. Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger (bschreckinger@politico.com); Derek Robertson ( drobertson@politico.com ); Steve Heuser (sheuser@politico.com); and Benton Ives (bives@politico.com). Follow us @DigitalFuture on Twitter. If you've had this newsletter forwarded to you, you can sign up and read our mission statement at the links provided.   DON'T MISS A THING FROM THE MILKEN INSTITUTE'S MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA SUMMIT : POLITICO is partnering with the Milken Institute to produce a special edition "Digital Future Daily" newsletter with insider reporting and insights from the Milken Institute's Middle East and Africa Summit happening November 17-18. Hundreds of global leaders will convene, highlighting the important role connection plays in advancing global well-being. The special edition will be the only Digital Future Daily newsletter sent on November 17-18. As a subscriber to Digital Future Daily, you will receive the special edition version for those two days. Learn more about the Milken Institute's Middle East and Africa Summit .       Follow us on Twitter Ben Schreckinger @SchreckReports Derek Robertson @afternoondelete Steve Heuser @sfheuser Benton Ives @BentonIves   Follow us

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