Commissioner Vestager cautions on technology and politics 

Earlier this week, Margrethe Vestager, the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, gave a speech on the future of technology and politics at the Institute for Advanced Study. Vestager begins her speech by acknowledging the historical significance of the venue and paying tribute to great thinkers who have influenced the world, such as Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer is used throughout the speech as a backbone to the lessons. As we are living in a digital age, many contemporary challenges are being posed by technologies. Vestager claims the main challenges are in, democracy, humanity, and economic security. 

“Europe is on its way to answering all three of these challenges. Over the last decade, we shaped our own model of digitisation…Today, this model positions Europe at the forefront of the global efforts to govern tech. But we need a much broader range of democratic partners to do this.”

Vestager moves on to discuss regulation, claiming that regulation does not go against innovation but that laws mitigate risks and open-up markets. Vestager offers three lessons for today’s technology.

• Platform regulation

Vestager discusses how we are living in a world where the fundamentals of democracy are challenged by the rise of large digital platforms. There is an emphasis put on need to protect users’ rights while holding digital platforms accountable for harmful content. Europe’s efforts in this can be highlighted by the Digital services Act. 

• Artificial Intelligence

“Never in history have we been confronted with a technology that has this much power, but no predefined purpose”.

Vestager highlights the importance shaping Artificial Intelligence (AI) development to align with societal values and potential risks, within privacy and bias. Although, Europe has legislative efforts in place there is a call for international cooperation.

• Economic security 

Technology is not the only challenge we are facing, it is how the race for the technologies we need the most, is changing the global economy. Vestager explains how both the Covid pandemic and Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine have shown the world its vulnerabilities. Europe’s efforts to address dependencies on foreign technologies are highlighted, such as investigations into subsidies and proposals to restore fairness in Europe’s economic relations.

Vestager concludes her speech by emphasising the importance of policy choices in shaping the future of technological developments and how they are used. Drawing parallels with nuclear energy and how that had the power to unfold a completely new world. It is highlighted that there is a need for proactive and collaborative approaches to technology governance.