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- [00:01]
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- [00:34]
Stephen Overlea
Hey, welcome back to Politico Tech. I'm your host, Stephen Overlea. When I met Valas Dhar a few weeks ago, he compared his tech background to a Picasso painting. Multiple perspectives. He's done business and human rights law. He's been an AI advisor to the un, OECD, and Stanford. And for the past five years, he's been president and trustee of The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, a philanthropic group that's spending millions of dollars to build AI for the public good. But I asked Valas to join me on Politico Tech because he believes our AI future is as much about developing humanity as it is about technology. And much of his work focuses on helping humans try to keep up. On the show today, Falas and I delve into this human versus technology power battle and the easy policy change he thinks Washington can make to help. Here's our conversation. Valas, welcome to Politico Tech.
- [01:54]
Valas Dhar
Thanks, Steven. I'm so happy to be here.
- [01:56]
Stephen Overlea
So, when you and I have talked before, there's something you told me and that's what I want to start with. This idea that what we need to think about in terms of technology is actually human power and human agency. Tease that out for me a bit. What do you mean?
- [02:11]
Valas Dhar
It's a wonderful and fantastical myth that technology is neutral. It's something that all of these technologists now want to tell us. The idea that, hey, we're just building for the sake of building and how our tools are used are somebody else's problem. But I've been a technologist my whole career, and in every line of code I've ever written or every product I've ever shipped, I know that the people who built them have embedded in them all kinds of assumptions about our society, about structure, about power. And I think this idea, the sleight of hand to say we build things but we hold no moral responsibility for them is deeply problematic. So let's take it to its logical conclusion. If we believe that technologies embed cultural values, then why wouldn't we Start from the idea that we first want to design what the human construct is and use that to build technologies that advance it. Constructs that include rights and principles and values and morals, that we put the human at the center. I'm a small town boy from rural Illinois. To me this is a common sense approach. And yet it is so far away from what you hear from some of our Silicon Valley friends.
- [03:18]
Stephen Overlea
Right? I mean, the focus there is very much on leading with technology. And that technology itself is going to save humanity from climate change, from health issues, from, you know, you name it. Technology is always the solution. So it's interesting bringing humanity to the fore. And I know that with your work through McGovern foundation, it's really all about building up the institutional capacity of humanity. And I guess the question that leads me to ask is, does that mean sort of right now, in your view, humanity is weak or ill equipped vis a vis technology?
- [03:54]
Valas Dhar
Well, let's come back to weak or ill equipped. But let me start with something basic that I observe, which is I think in many ways we have unintentionally or intentionally given up a sense of ownership and agency about how technology affects our lives. I think for the last 30 plus years, much of which I've been a technologist, our social conversation has moved away from how do we direct technology to how do we respond to it, how do we restrict its harms, how do we regulate it.
- [04:21]
Stephen Overlea
Right.
- [04:22]
Valas Dhar
And I think in that dynamic has become something that I see when I talk to people all across the country. People no longer feel like the technology story is a American story, or a personal story, or a story of being a part of this whole society. Instead it's somebody else does a technology thing far away and I maybe get to make a choice about whether I use it or not.
- [04:45]
Stephen Overlea
Right.
- [04:46]
Valas Dhar
Which itself is so deeply powerless. But nobody really feels like it's the kind of thing where they say I'm influencing what these technologies do. So if that's the individual intuition and the feeling that I hear from people all across the country, then we come back to your question, are we weak? Well, I never want to say we're weak, but I do feel like we're under equipped. It feels like we have not invested in innovating in our social systems at the same speed, the same resources, the same control that we have spent innovation in our technology. And I think we can fix that, but in order to do so requires intention.
- [05:23]
Stephen Overlea
When there are a lot of people, as you said, who feel like the technology isn't even an option of Whether you use it now, right. You don't really have the choice of how many systems you're interacting with or how your data is being collected. And when we talk about sort of this idea of almost like building up the human muscle around technology, right, like kind of restoring agency, restoring choice. I know you have some thoughts on where to start and the role that Washington can potentially play in all this, one of which is creating digital IDs. Can you talk to me? What's the idea here?
- [05:58]
Valas Dhar
Yeah, let me give you the broad scope and I'll come to digital id. I think the biggest thing that I have to say about government is we've kind of lost the thread on what government's role in technology should be.
- [06:07]
Stephen Overlea
Okay.
- [06:07]
Valas Dhar
It feels like every conversation is about how government restricts big tech or responds to big tech or limits the vulnerabilities created by big tech. But where is a forward looking vision of what technology does to make us better? Where are our policymakers asking the question, how do we apply public resources and public trust to, to invest in the things that actually make people's lives easier, that make commerce more efficient?
- [06:32]
Stephen Overlea
There are people who think Washington's asleep at the wheel when it comes to tech, unfortunately.
- [06:36]
Valas Dhar
You know, and I've spent a lot of time with policymakers and I never want to say that, you know, with a broad brush they're all asleep at the wheel. I think there are exceptional minds that are working on these issues, but in a political construct it's very hard for them to get through. But digital ID is a great example of something that I think of as low hanging fruit. You know, we've just gone through a very painful process in this country of developing Real ID. Moving from the standard state issued IDs to something that had a biometric backbone that had a common framework so that you could use it across. You know, as we all have felt very painfully, when you go to the airport, you can use the same ID in 50 states with the TSA and it's tied to a biometric. Well, what would it take to go from the fact that we all had to go to our DMVs or RMVs and go through that whole painful process to get a card, to simply say, let's flip that to be something that's also a digital certificate, much like what other became in India, what Estonia, Kenya and a number of other countries have done? Well, from a logistical issue. And this is what I mean by low hanging fruit. This is something that's quite easy to do because you already have the digital Equivalent. All we need to do is a federal mandate to say this can now be used as a digital id. The technology also exists. Right. I mean, we already have the backbone to it. We know that through the phone manufacturers and the open source, but also through open certificating and credentialing, we could set up a mechanism for this pretty easily. And I know that there's a bill being contemplated on this specific topic.
- [07:58]
Stephen Overlea
What about it would be so transformational because I hear you, and there are countries like Estonia that have had digital IDs for years now, and it does make a lot of their government services, for instance, more efficient or distribution of them them easier. I'm curious what you see a digital ID accomplishing that the physical ID in my pocket doesn't.
- [08:19]
Valas Dhar
Yeah. So the mechanism in the short term, if we were to go from real ID to digital ID would be a little bit of a half step. And unfortunately in the United States we take a lot of half steps.
- [08:29]
Stephen Overlea
Right.
- [08:30]
Valas Dhar
But here's what that half step would enable. The first is if you are somebody who cares deeply about fraud, which I do, the ways that you might be able to authenticate and validate yourself in the idea of government service delivery is that you no longer have to rely on something like, hey, here's a PDF of my driver's license, my Social Security card, here's a scan or I take it in to actually validate it with a human being, but rather you have a credentialed certificate, it makes it much more difficult for you to act in a fraudulent way. But the second part of this, and this is what I mean by half steps, the idea that we could eventually realize would be to restructure a whole number of ways that we interact with the digital world, to use our digital ID as a core part of the process. So from changing the ways that we think about E commerce, even today, if I go go online and I use a credit card, the vendor has no idea to know whether I'm the person that I say I am, whether that credit card is mine. And as we know, that leads to a massive amount of waste in the system. Whereas if a vendor could just authenticate me, then maybe we could actually cut out the credit card entirely. Maybe I could tie it to my banking infrastructure in commerce, in political domains, even in online communication and comments. Think about what we might say in terms of the information economy if I could actually go onto a political article and make a comment, not anonymously and not potentially with a Persona I had taken on, but say, hey, I stand by what I said, I'm going to validate it using my digital id. I think there might be a place where we have a much stronger and more robust and maybe even more polite and kind information discourse. Because people have to say who they are before they say a thing.
- [10:02]
Stephen Overlea
I mean, a more polite online discourse would.
- [10:06]
Valas Dhar
And here maybe I've become too.
- [10:08]
Stephen Overlea
But I do believe Nobel Peace Prize territory, if we can achieve that, without a doubt. And you know, to play the cynical journalist and be devil's advocate here, I mean, there will be some folks who like hear the idea of, you know, a digital ID issued by the government and it'll sound like the start of some, you know, dystopian sci fi, right, or, or right now. You know, obviously especially among liberals, there are concerns with this administration and how it is targeting some citizens. How do you prevent kind of that from happening?
- [10:41]
Valas Dhar
Well, Stephen, I've spent a good part of my life as a human rights lawyer and a constitutional law scholar. It's an odd kind of addition onto being a technologist, but it's made my life super fascinating and fun. What I'll say to you is this. I mean, I think it's important to start from first principles. How do today, when we go about our lives, how do we validate who we are? We use a government issued id, and how do billions of people on the planet today validate their identities? They use government issued digital IDs. So let's not go to a dystopian future. Let's just reason in smart practicality. Do we think that this is a foundational shift in how governments identify us? No, I don't think so. I mean, really what we're talking about is take the real ID that's in your pocket and make it easy on your phone so that you can use it there too. That's kind of a starting point. That seems pretty reasonable. And the second part of it is I recognize absolutely that one of the great critiques of government issued ID is at some point the government might be able to turn it off. Unfortunately, that's true also for, you know, real physical IDs. And you might say, and I might say that over time where we should really go is what's called a self sovereign digital id. Something that you control and own that nobody can ever turn off for you. But as I said, I'm a bit of a pragmatist in this day and age. And I don't mind the half step because it starts to get us closer to people realizing how important it is to have not just identity in the digital world, but I think identity that's then tied to agency and eventually to dignity. That to be able to transact is a really important thing and to be able to verify who you are is the thing that builds social trust.
- [12:26]
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- [12:58]
Stephen Overlea
The other question on digital IDs I have for you is just do you think this potential national ID system would be run by a Google or a Meta or a Microsoft? And would that be a problem?
- [13:10]
Valas Dhar
If it is, I absolutely reject the premise that one of the big tech companies needs to administer this. Instead, there's an alternate path that works incredibly well, and we've seen it, which are open, decentralized protocols for identity. What does that mean? It means that we have an open source stack that sits at the middle of this, that validates the rules of the game, that talks about how IDs should be able to interact with commerce and all the other things that are often administered by public grants. But then you have an open environment where anybody who wants to participate in the ecosystem can do so by creating a new value added service. As a capitalist right, as a person who has built businesses in America, I'm a strong defender of private market innovation. I don't think that's the only answer though. And the hybrid model that I'm telling you about here, that's been deployed successfully all around the world, says you have public responsibility for creating open infrastructure and then you create those hook on points, those on ramps, where private companies that say, hey, I can do better, say I'm going to build a better user experience. I'm going to create a more secure way for you to take this idea and make it portable, any number of outcomes, but because they operate on a common infrastructure, they can do great things. I'll give you an analog example. It's sort of like thinking about the highway system, a piece of public infrastructure that was developed by the government, and then saying you've got a lot of private auto manufacturers who are coming up with great new kinds of cars and trucks and all of the things that operate on that infrastructure and give us as consumers a lot of choice to say, this is something I want to use.
- [14:40]
Stephen Overlea
You know, we were talking about the power structures around technology, which is something we examine a lot here on the podcast. One of the biggest power structures to me are these corporations, you know, these Silicon Valley companies that develop most of the technology we use, that have gotten very wealthy off of data and human attention. When you think about kind of rebalancing the power around technology or strengthening the power of humanity, what changes need to happen from industry and its power?
- [15:10]
Valas Dhar
Well, from industry is a great framing, and I think that's a good starting point. I mean, I think the first is from industry. What I want to see is more than lip service to the idea of responsible development of new technologies. And we're not seeing that. In many ways it feels like we are going exactly the opposite direction. We are seeing what I think in science fiction 10, 20, 30 years ago was already identified. And I hate to use this term because it is a little provocative, but let's use the term megalomaniacal, right? Like individuals who are out there who are so driven by their conceited, self centered worldview that it makes sense for them to say, let's put a trillion dollar facility in Texas, something that was in the headlines, to build new AI and robots for the world, without asking the question, is that something that actually the world needs? Is it something that we have also invested in the social protections to ensure that when we build it, we do something good for humanity? I think there is a fundamental shift, and I want to be super clear again with you. I believe deeply in private enterprise and I believe deeply in the idea that firms like this are the drivers of innovation. And yet we should also acknowledge that when you build a thing that affects billions of people in really material ways, you have to be more than just a profit seeker or just an innovator. You have to bring into your conception of the work you do an understanding that you're part of a social contract and a social fabric. And in doing so, hopefully you'll make slightly better choices. I think that's the starting point from industry. But Steven, again, I will tell you I'm a deep optimist. I believe deeply in what we all need to do as the rest of us, which I think is to step forward and exert our agency in the space to say this is no longer something where we sit back and say somebody else will figure it out for us. And to do that, we have to start with a reformation of how we think about education and literacy around digital topics. I think, you know, the foundation that I lead has been one of the largest investors and funders in the country of just building broad based education around AI in schools and professional programs and in the public conversation.
- [17:11]
Stephen Overlea
Right.
- [17:12]
Valas Dhar
And the second part of it is going from knowledge and literacy to having points of view and perspectives that can be productively expressed. And that's where I think we need to be for the next 10 years.
- [17:23]
Stephen Overlea
I was going to ask you to end us out, and so I'm glad you're going this direction. We've talked about government and we talked about industry. I do want to talk about the role for philanthropy because I think there is the perception, right or wrong, that nonprofits have good intentions but few resources, often to execute them. Sometimes they're dependent on wealthy benefactors like a Bill Gates or a Jeff Bezos or Patrick McGovern, the businessman who I know sort of his wealth gave rise to your foundation. What is the role for philanthropy here in kind of shifting this balance of power between humanity and technology?
- [18:01]
Valas Dhar
Yeah, let me give you maybe a bit of an unexpected answer. I lead one of the most prominent philanthropic organizations in the world, and I will tell you I think we should have no role. I think it's actually a great tragedy that philanthropy has to step into this conversation because really, we should never have let things get to this point. We somehow said it's okay for us to have the aggregation of capital and power in these companies. It's okay for them to, without any form of social regulation, build the things that we've built. It was okay for them to create social harms at scale that nobody responded to. And now we're in a situation where we say, well, what role does philanthropy have? Well, I think it shouldn't have one at all because we should have never let it happen. Now that it has happened, I say a couple of things. The first is I think these philanthropic institutions that have access to massive amounts of public capital are understanding and recognizing that they can't sit out a conversation about technology anymore. The second is something we've pioneered that I'm quite proud of, which is the idea that technology development doesn't have to happen only in private companies, that if we had access to a significant amount of capital, that we had a sense of purpose, that if we had access to great talent, we can actually begin to build public AI products at scale with enterprise quality behind them and with management and the commitment to maintain these products and do it for the world in a way that creates an alternate path of how we create AI for public purpose. And there, I think philanthropies can play an incredible role by being both a capital provider, sure, but also by being the aggregators of talent, compute and data. And to say AI can be built in a way that makes it a public good.
- [19:35]
Stephen Overlea
Got it. Sounds like maybe, depending on how things go, there's a world where we don't need philanthropy to serve that purpose.
- [19:40]
Valas Dhar
In time, I think in so many ways, and I'm going to use that language that sometimes makes my private sector colleagues a little uncomfortable. I want to live in a world that's just and equitable, where everybody has access to the technologies that give them what they need in terms of economic agency. I want to live in that world that doesn't need philanthropy, that doesn't really even need civil society because we embed it so closely into the social fabric and compact of what we do that everybody gets to live a life of extreme dignity without having to have intermediary organizations.
- [20:12]
Stephen Overlea
Well, Valas, thanks for being here on Politico Tech.
- [20:15]
Valas Dhar
Thank you so much, Stephen. This has been a great conversation.
- [20:19]
Stephen Overlea
That's all for today's Politico Tech. If you enjoy Politico Tech, please subscribe, rate a review and recommend the show to a friend or colleague. And for more tech news, subscribe to our newsletters, Digital Future Daily and Morning Tech. Music in our show comes from the mysterious Brake Master Cylinder. Our producer is Normal Moleichel. I'm Stephen Overle. See you back here next week.