Speakers sound a warning that tech must be tamed

AUSTIN, Texas – “We’re all chasing the shiny,” futurist Amy Webb said in a talk at the SXSW conference here Sunday morning.

That info-pundit was speaking of metaverse hype in particular. But the description also applies generally to this talkfest that marked its 35th birthday and its first re-birthday. The festival, which continues through Sunday, is happening in person after 2020’s pandemic-imposed cancellation and 2021’s digital-only event.

As in the Before Times, SXSW panels veered between starry-eyed forecasts of the future and stark warnings about the same. Webb’s talk, for example, spotlighted best- and worst-case scenarios for such budding technologies as artificial intelligence and digital identities.

The largest social network in the world figured in many of these conversations. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen lit into the company in a talk Monday morning, saying Facebook still teems with toxic misinformation because “it makes more money running the system the way it does today.”

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“Facebook has claimed third-party fact checking will save us; AI will save us. And the reality is it doesn’t,” Frances Haugen said.

She urged Facebook to make re-sharing a little slower (for example, by adding Twitter’s nag to read a story before sharing a link to it) and stop pushing giant groups. But she also suggested that Elon Musk should block Facebook from his Starlink satellite-internet service in countries in which Facebook can’t effectively moderate content in local languages (spoiler alert: he won’t).


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