The a16z Show - a16z Podcast: The Politics of Technology

Starting point is 00:00:00 The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. For more details, please see A16Z.com slash disclosures. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6&Z podcast. I'm Sonal. I'm here today with a very special guest visiting Silicon Valley, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, Mr. Tony Blair, who now runs an Institute for Global Change, working with governments, policymakers, and others all around the world.

Starting point is 00:00:35 Also joining us, we have Andresen Horowitz managing partner Scott Cooper, who has a new book, Just Out, called Secrets of Sand Hill Road, venture capital and how to get it. And given that startups are drivers of economic growth and innovation, Cooper also often weighs in on various policy issues, especially those that affect the flow of capital, people, and ideas around the world. And that's the focus and theme of this episode. It's more of a hallway-style conversation where we invite our audience to sort of eavesdrop on internal meetings and convos.

Starting point is 00:01:04 We discuss the intersection of governments and technology and where policy comes in, focusing mainly on the mindsets that are required for all of this. But then we do also suggest a few specific things we can do when it comes to supporting tech change for the many, not just for the few. Welcome, Tony, since you asked me to call you that. Thank you. Just not let everyone know he said it was okay. And Cooper, welcome. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:01:28 So let's just get started. I think the context is that there's so much discussion right now about tech in the context of inequality. One of the points of view that I have particularly coming from a background where my family came from India, et cetera, is that it's also very democratizing. And a lot of people can do new things in better ways because of technology. But I think the big question, the question I think we care about today is how do we bring more people into the system and make sure that tech benefits everyone. The first thing I would say from the political perspective

Starting point is 00:02:00 is that technology is essentially an empowering and enabling thing. So I regard it as benign, but it's got vast consequence. So the question is how do you deal with the consequence? How do you access the opportunities and mitigate its risks and disbenefits? So that is, I think, the right framework to look at it. But because it's accelerating in its pace of change and because the change is so deep, and I look upon this technological revolution

Starting point is 00:02:26 is like the 21st century equivalent of the 19th century industrial revolution. Yes, I agree. It's going to transform everything. So I think the fundamental challenge is that the policy makers and the change makers are not in the right dialogue with each other. And this is where misfortune will lie

Starting point is 00:02:41 if you end up with bad regulation or bad policy and where the tech people kind of go into their little huddle because, you know, I'd say this with great respect, but they tend to be slightly... You know, you come to the... this Silicon Valley and it's like walking into another planet, frankly. Yes, that's actually really interesting. I'm personally offended by that comment.

Starting point is 00:02:59 Now, I think the difficulty is that, yes, you're right, it's very empowering. On the other hand, it's actually quite frightening to people because you kind of all understand it and the rest of the world doesn't quite understand it. And, you know, so far as they do understand it, they find it somewhat dystopian in its look. I was actually sitting with some people from my old constituency in the north of England a few months back. And, you know, I said to them, you know, I wonder what's going to happen when we have driverless cars. And their attitude was, it's never going to happen. And the role of the politician is to be able to, in a sense, articulate to the people those changes and then fit them

Starting point is 00:03:35 into a policy framework that makes sense. And that's the worry, because if the politicians don't understand it, they'll fear it. If they fear it, they'll try and stop it. Yeah. You articulated the vision that we've always had, which is we've always invested around this theme called Software is Eating the World. It's exactly what you which is technology no longer kind of sits in its own box. It really is the case that technology will permeate almost every industry over time. I think that's where the big change is happening now is it used to be that technology was a piece of the puzzle now. Every company is a technology company.

Starting point is 00:04:04 Yeah, exactly. So that is the kind of board on which people are playing. So the issue I think is this, is how do you get the structured dialogue between the change makers and the policy makers? What would you say the number one thing if you could give advice to entrepreneurs in the valley that they should do differently to engage this kind of a framework that you're describing. My advice would be stop looking at your own narrow interest in what you're doing and understand you've got a collective interest in making the world of policy and politics understand the technology, what's going to happen, how you get, A, the right system of regulation, and be how you allow government to enable these transformative changes.

Starting point is 00:04:43 Well, I actually have a question for both of you. Today is the 30th anniversary of the web, the worldwide web. And I just thought Google Doodle this morning. morning, a note from Tim Berners-Lee, his original memo, information management, colon, a proposal. The question I have is that a lot of people would argue that the best technologies can develop when you don't try to a priority predict the consequences because, A, you cannot. They're complex adaptive systems. And B, there was an environment of, quote, permissionless innovation that allowed the web to thrive because the original makers may have foreseen some apps, but the whole point is that the innovation is what allowed it to thrive. So I'd love to hear from both of you on how to balance that

Starting point is 00:05:19 perspective. So I agree with that. I think, though, what's different is we used to be able to compartmentalize technology. It was a piece of software that you used at work to help you, you know, be more productive. But if technology really is going to be part and parcel of everything, then I think it changes the nature of how we think about that responsibility, because it is regulated industries in many cases that have been largely immune over time from technology in a way that appears to be different today. So I would say that then there are two questions that derive from that. One is how do you make regulation intelligent? How do you make it abide by the public interest or enhance the public interest, but at the same time not dampen,

Starting point is 00:05:55 that creative and, in a way, entrepreneurial drive behind the development of new ideas. And then secondly, what are the ways that government should be working with those that are going to be impacted by technology? If you're in the car industry, it's going to be a huge change, right? I mean, if you get these driverless cars, it's going to change, obviously, jobs, it's going to change insurance. It's going to change the method of production, what you produce. It probably changed the concept of car ownership in some way. It might even reshape entire cities. Everything will be impacted by it. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:06:27 I am fascinated by the potential of technology to allow African nations and governments to circumvent some of the legacy problems we have within our systems. And that goes for everything from basic healthcare and education, through to how you help agricultural smallholders develop a better yield, cooperate better together, and link up better with the market. And in fact, one thing that's happening in Africa today is there are applications of tech that are growing up in interesting ways. So my point is you've got all these different facets. And yet at the moment, the curious thing is if you were to go to virtually any European country or if you were to come here and say, okay, name the top four issues,

Starting point is 00:07:06 where would technology be in that list? Would it be at the top of the list? Is what you're saying? No, I think it wouldn't be in the list. Cooper, you spent a lot of time actually in your role of the manager in front of Congress and various entities giving testimonies about policy. I'm curious for your take on this. Yeah, there is a concern I often hear from entrepreneurs, which is how do we know if we go there, how does that not just bring us into the fold of regulation and therefore have negative consequences versus, you know, we talk about things out here. Sometimes you do things you ask for permission later is a better strategy. Right. Ask for forgiveness. Right. Yeah, I completely get that.

Starting point is 00:07:38 That's why I think it's got to be a big, it's got to be done in a big way from the collectivity, rather than individual people going, because of course, you're absolutely right. What will happen is that the entrepreneurs think, okay, if I go and say I've got the following five problems that I can see in this technology I'm developing, they're going to regulate it away, yeah. I think the hard question will be you're getting people

Starting point is 00:07:58 and companies that have wield enormous power. I mean, not just the big tech players, but the others as well. So I think one of the things that, in a sense, it's my question to you is, how do you manage to get into that dialogue with policy makers, where, you know, these very powerful people recognize that in the end, however powerful they are, they are not more important than the public interest.

Starting point is 00:08:25 Part of we believe our role is to help provide, you know, visibility. I don't want to say education because I think politicians are very well educated and certainly well-meaning, but to connect the divide between, in our case, D.C. and Silicon Valley. And so we will often reach out to regulators, legislators, and help them understand this is what's happening from an innovation perspective. And therefore, these are things that you might want to interpret. anticipate that you need to think about. So autonomous driving is a great example, right, which you

Starting point is 00:08:48 mentioned, is in order to make that work in the United States, we probably need forward-looking governments to say there are test zones or areas where we might have almost regulatory free zones for testing purposes, right, that have proper supervision, but to enable something that otherwise might not exist ahead of its time. Obviously, you've got specific micro issues. I mean, they can be big in their impact like driverless cars, but there are a specific thing. They've got specific issues attached to them. But where does the tech sector go if it wants to engage on, you know, the bigger macro question of how do you redesign government, by the way, as well as individual sectors, because government itself is going to have to change.

Starting point is 00:09:26 That organization doesn't exist today, at least. I'm not aware of where you would do that. And I think the other problem with it is we have to think beyond geographic and national borders on this stuff because technology and capital are free-flowing in our society. You almost need a United Nations or some kind of, you know, type of organization to convince. to have those discussions, I think. Yeah, I would say there's a couple of things, too. There's a couple of factors. One, there are obviously lobbying entities, like the NVCA,

Starting point is 00:09:52 there's the Internet Association, which a lot of major companies are a part of. Then there is a group of players, like there's a group of think tanks and a middle layer, and then the government agencies themselves have been soliciting testimony. Cooper has actually done testimony on all kinds of topics, from CFIUS to crypto to various different topics. But what's really interesting to me especially is there's organizations like 18F and USDS, in the US government at least,

Starting point is 00:10:19 where you have technologists doing literally rotating apprenticeships, it's like the rotating missions essentially, where they go for three years and they're contributing to actually reinventing government systems. This is a very important initiative, I think. Yes, I think it is too. And what's really amazing is that it's got tangible impacts

Starting point is 00:10:35 of a specific example is we have a huge veterans administration that doesn't get great health care. So they redesign the VA site in order to make sure that people who have accessibility issues can use the site in a friendly way. There's many more applications of the types of things they're doing. We've actually had them on this podcast. But I think those are some avenues. But to Cooper's point, there is no single entity. I will say that at Wired, I edited a big set of op-eds around the ITU, which is sort of like a UN for the Internet.

Starting point is 00:11:03 And it was during the WC-12 hearings, which you might recall. I think Hamadun Ture was the head of the commission, and I edited him as well. And what's fascinating to me is that there's a lagging versus a leading approach to it because you're sort of taking the data that's past not really looking forward. And that was what I saw as a big drawback when I was working with the WC12 op-ed. So I'm curious for your take on how do we shift it. So you are listening to those being affected by technology, but with the point of view that spins it forward for future generations.

Starting point is 00:11:34 Because if we had listened to all the farmers in the first wave of the Industrial Revolution, we may not have many of the things today. but their grandkids are benefiting from those things. Yeah, no, absolutely. So look, I think there are two caps that I see, and I just look at this from the side of the, as we're, ordinary politician because I think there are initiatives that are happening inside government where people or departments will get it,

Starting point is 00:11:57 and therefore they'll embrace it and, you know, bring in smart people to help them and so on. But I think there are two sort of lacunae. One is your average politician does not understand a lot about this. And that is not sort of a disrespect to your average politician. It's that it's new. It's complicated. It takes your time to get your head around it.

Starting point is 00:12:17 My eldest son is in technology, and I'm always trying to get them to explain blockchain too much. We're big on crypto. I know. I remember you sent me the other day saying, this is the idiot's guide to cryptocurrency, and I still couldn't understand it. I'm going to send you our crypto canon.

Starting point is 00:12:35 We took a stab at compound a lot of resources. We probably shouldn't test me on it. But that is one, LACUNA, those people have to understand. This is like the 19th century Industrial Revolution. So you've got to get your ordinary politicians to understand. And then there's another lacuna, which is, I think, in getting the dialogue at the top level between particularly the Americans and the Europeans, because I also think it would be immensely helpful if we had a more transatlantic approach. I think there's a third piece. There's an incentives problem.

Starting point is 00:13:03 I would imagine if you did a survey of most politicians, they would say, my fundamental role is how do I improve long-term economic growth and job sustainability for my constituents? I mean, if people kind of cut through a lot of the politics, that's really why they think they're there is, look, they want to make a better life and make a better opportunity for their constituents. The problem we have, though, is because their short-term incentive program is to get re-elected, which I understand it is a good thing from political perspective. It's very hard for them to take that long-term view because the shorter-term opportunity is to say, look, I really need to do no harm to my constituents, and by allowing technology, which might be in the short-term,

Starting point is 00:13:35 displacing and unsettling to job growth and other stuff, particularly for different segments of the population. It's very hard, I would imagine, as a politician, to square those two things, which is how do I help my constituents understand, you know, to Sonal's point that, yes, over a period of time, it was a good idea to have industrialized farming as opposed to pure manual agrarian farming. But that's an incredibly unsettling thing, particularly in the U.S. here, if every two years you have to get re-elected or you go find a new job. By the way, this happened in the 19th century, and you had whole new politics created around it. On the other hand, I think there are two things that are important here.

Starting point is 00:14:10 First of all, I think the technology will in some way provide solutions to what is a constant dilemma for an ordinary politician, which is we need to do more for our people, but we can't just keep spending more and taxing more. If the technology can help unlock part of that, that is something they're prepared to be. go for. And secondly, with most politicians, if they're able to see this within a longer term perspective, then you say to them, look, we'll help you and guide you through this process of change, but in the end, it's a beneficial change. And what I found when I was in government is some of them are difficult reforms we put through, for example, around education reform, health care reform. You know, we were able, in some ways with at least some people,

Starting point is 00:14:55 to say this short-term difficulty is going to be worth it. How did you pull that off, though? Like, was it the education, the explanation? Was it consensus building? I mean, let me take a very specific example, which, I mean, of course, is under attack now. But we introduced tuition fees in the UK. But my point was very, very simple, that universities are going to be major engines of economic growth in the future, in particular because of the link between universities and technology and the development of technology.

Starting point is 00:15:26 Therefore, we cannot afford for UK universities not to be able to get the best talent and they're going to have to therefore have an extended funding base. They can't get it all from government. And my point is, if you get it all from government in the end, some governments will start to slice it away, and you're always hand-to-mouthed as universities. And I reckon when we did that, you know, it was very difficult. In fact, you know, it was extremely difficult.

Starting point is 00:15:49 But in the end, you were able to say to people, look, if we want to save our position as a country that, along with the US, probably is most high-quality universities in the top 50 in the world, that we've got to be prepared to do that. Now, some people, by the way, rejected it, and today it's a big political issue again. But you can get to at least some form of alignment between long-term and short-term. It's a fundamental rethinking of what the role of government is, quite frankly, right, which is, again, if you take the premise that the overall objective

Starting point is 00:16:18 for government is to create economic conditions that hopefully generate long-term economic growth and sustainability for individuals and companies, then you're right. Maybe the ancillary role of government is how do we deal with short-term issues that have market dislocation? for people. Maybe that's a more proper way to describe what the role of government is in many cases. I think the other thing will be, I think there's another question for politics which will be very challenging because, you know, what would be weird is if the whole of the world is undergoing this revolution in politics is just kind of staying fixed. The type of people who go into politics, what happens often is people leave university, they're going to become

Starting point is 00:16:50 a researcher for an MP and then they become an MP and then become an MP, but they're no experience of the outside world, right? So that's one, and it becomes a constraint over time. And then the types of people who work in government. So you were saying something about the people who have been brought in to say the Veterans Administration here. So how do you actually open up public service and then get a greater interoperability between public service and the private sector? Because all of the sort of pressure, certainly coming from the media has been not to allow that to happen and not to allow politicians to have anything other than the union is focused on. Okay, let's say we all agree, which I think we do, that there needs to be.

Starting point is 00:17:28 a connection between all the entities working together, no question. More engagement, more explanation, more understanding, thinking of consequence. I think those are all table stakes. The question now is, how do you then think about unintended consequences? Because the story, to me, is not that bad things have bad consequences. It's that often the worst consequences come from very well-intended things. And quite frankly, the perfect example that comes to mind is GDPR. Yeah, to make it concrete, There's been a over the last several months, and I'm sure probably more so in Europe as well, there's been a number of articles talking about when you look at kind of the broad impact of GDPR, you know, essentially it's inured largely to the benefit of the very large incumbents,

Starting point is 00:18:06 which was probably not intended to be. Because they've got the resource to be able to handle. That's exactly right. And, you know, the analogy we have here in the States was the Dodd-Frank legislation that came out of the global financial crisis where financial institutions had to comply with a whole new set of regulations. What it really did here in the U.S. was it really entrenched those incumbents very well, and it made it very hard for startup financial institutions to grow. It was very hard for a new institution to get a banking license for many years, in part because of the regulatory cost of doing so. And so how do you balance that?

Starting point is 00:18:35 And maybe the answer is, look, it's an education problem, but well-meaning and politicians certainly expect and intend that regulation is the appropriate way to deal with these things. It does, in some cases, interfere with the overall goal of entrepreneurship and of startup formation. But you see, that's why I think the attitude of the technology sector to engagement with government is so important. Because if you're engaging with government saying, look, we understand there's a massive set of issues here,

Starting point is 00:18:59 and we're really going to sit down and work with you as to how we get the right answer, then government's in a position where they regard you as a partner. But I think for this moment and time, a bit like actually the aftermath of the financial crisis, government kind of regards, you're looking after yourselves, but we've got to look after the public. Yes. And that's where it leads to poor regulation. I mean, poor regulation is nearly always the consequence of a failure to, on the regulating side, to get to really understand what's going on.

Starting point is 00:19:31 And on the founder's side, what I'm hearing is to really communicate the benefits of the technology. Yes, and to be so defensive that you're just thinking all the time, how can we ward these people off? But here's the thing, you can sometimes, if you have wealth, which a lot of these big tech players do, and power, and you also have access, and they can go and see whoever they want to see, it can sometimes mask your essential underlying vulnerability. Ah, interesting.

Starting point is 00:19:58 Right. And your vulnerability is that comes a point when suddenly the mood flips. That's so true. God, that's so true. How much wealth and power and access you have, you're the target. So that point, everything changes. So if you want to avoid that,

Starting point is 00:20:13 I think it's got to be a dialogue that's structured and it requires, you know, not just things happening between, the tech sector and government, but for people like my own institute, you know, to use our sort of convening power, the political side to say to the politicians, look, let's get a heads around this. Here's my essential challenge. How do you take this technological revolution and as a politician weave it into a narrative

Starting point is 00:20:37 of optimism about the future? Yes. I want that too. Right. So what's driving the populism is pessimism. If people are pessimistic, then they look for someone to blame. If people are optimistic, they look for something to assume. aspire to. And that's the essential difference. It's really interesting also. Sonal and I'm having

Starting point is 00:20:53 this conversation. And we've been having this conversation in the U.S. about ESG, right, which obviously, you know, certainly. Environmental social governance. Which Europe is way ahead of the U.S. there. Larry Fink, who's the head of BlackRock here, has written this letter, you know, appealing to CEOs. And it really goes to the same issue you're talking about, which is fundamentally, what is the role of the corporation and how do corporations think about, obviously, enhancing value for their shareholders, but also, to your point, recognizing that they impact constituents in many other ways. And I think that's kind of the dialogue we ought to be having with politicians, which is, look, we can create a world where it's compatible to have, you know,

Starting point is 00:21:23 maximizing shareholder opportunity, but also recognizing and being a part of the broader community discussion about the impact on society. The other thing is to recognize that when we create these things, we have some obligation to share. It comes out of fundamental macroeconomics, right, which is we can improve growth for a country by either population growth and or productivity growth, right? Those are the two levers in theory that we can impact. And if we could frame the discussion around technology, that's a lot of where the U.S.

Starting point is 00:21:49 done well, right? We've generally, obviously times are changing, but we've generally been very open to immigration and thought about population growth as a way to help improve the lot for people generally. And we've also been very open to productivity growth, right, in the form of technology and automation. And if we can frame it that way, but also to your point, recognize that there are going to be disintermediations along the way. And part of our responsibility is to help from, you know, kind of a training and education perspective and even potentially, you know, the role of government in subsidizing the transition from less automated to more automated society. Yeah, what happens to education in all of this? I mean, I don't think we have a singular

Starting point is 00:22:22 point of view on it. We have talked about education a lot on this podcast and shared a diversity of views, but I think a couple of the high-level things are that universities are huge drivers, of course, as you mentioned, of innovation. And in every study of regional innovation, every innovation cluster is successful because of the collaboration between universities, government, local entrepreneurial communities. The other key point, however, is it's a combination of top-down and bottom-up. People who have tried top-down industrial-planned, smart cities or things like Silicon Valley never work. The only bottom-up ones alone don't necessarily work. You need a combination of the two. That's the number one finding. But the

Starting point is 00:22:58 second thing, and this is a big topic we talk about in this podcast, is the importance of apprenticeship and a new type of education that really thinks about skills-based education. I mean, we have sort of this elitist attitude that education has to be a certain way when, in fact, in this day and age, especially with increased automation and this. need for jobs. We might want to be really thinking about very specific skills-based education. It's actually fascinating because, in fact, my eldest son's got a company that's on apprenticeships and technology. So that's exactly what he does. And I think it's really, really interesting because the idea that, you know, you don't necessarily have to go to

Starting point is 00:23:33 university, you can develop. Well, there are alternative universities coming about, too. Like, you know, we're investors in Udacity. There's this Lambda school. There's all these interesting types of containers where people can get what they call nanodigrees or microskent. or specific skills. There's so much that's actually in play. Because the point I want to raise here, this is kind of an underlying theme to me, is that technology, as you pointed out,

Starting point is 00:23:54 you can take an optimistic view. It also gives you the means to address many of the problems that we are complaining about. Because when I think of some of the trade-offs between waiting for a government to update policy, what I love is that a massive users on a platform can essentially vote with saying, leave that platform.

Starting point is 00:24:13 and immediately that platform is going to act the next day in a way that a lawmaker cannot overnight. Yes, in a political perspective. You want this thing at least to have some sort of rational. Of course. It shouldn't be mobbed. I mean, I agree. I can indulge it to mob justice. If you take, so a lot of what drove, for example,

Starting point is 00:24:31 pregnant in the UK is, apart from the immigration issue, was this idea of communities people left behind. So what is it that technology would do to go into those communities and help people gain better education, get connectivity to the world because in the end this is what it's all about

Starting point is 00:24:46 if you're not connected you're not really if you're left behind right so I think one big question is how does the technology sector help us as policy makers reach those people for whom the conversation we've just been having there'd be sort of scratching their heads

Starting point is 00:25:00 and thinking I know what these guys are on about that's a fantastic question and actually it's interesting because we're investors in Nation Builder which is one of the companies that mobilize a lot of the communities that actually organized for pro and for con around these things So a quick thing, I do want to make sure we actually give answers

Starting point is 00:25:14 because we're asking a lot of questions. So can you both give a little bit more on what concretely we need to do? So from the point of view of my institute, what we're doing is we're creating a tech and public policy center and the idea is to bring a certain number of people who really understand the tech side and a certain number of people who come from the public policy side,

Starting point is 00:25:31 put them together in a structured way. I will kind of curate that. And out of it should come what I call serviceable policy and a narrative about the future, right, which makes sense of this technological revolution. And then to link up with politicians, not just in the UK and Europe, but actually over here, and create a sense that this technological revolution should be at the center of the political debate. How do we handle it? How do we, as I say, mitigate its risks and access its opportunities?

Starting point is 00:26:00 So that's one very specific thing. And then I think the other thing, frankly, is just to be out there, myself and a number of other people, at least have access, to the airwaves to say, guys, we've got to switch the conversation. You've got to put this technology question at the heart of the political debate. Now, the solutions, some people may go to the left, some people may go to the right, you know, some people will as ever be in between, but make it the conversation. Put it at the top four of those priorities for every country, every organization. I think that's right. We're fundamentally, we're talking around the issues. It's either immigration or it's incommunic equality or other things that drive the debate. But the

Starting point is 00:26:36 fundamental question is exactly that, which is how do we move forward with broader economic growth initiatives? So, you know, sitting here in Silicon Valley, any individual company is probably better off, quite frankly, taking the break glass first and then ask for forgiveness later, right? And so it's, I think the idea of having, kind of, you know, solving that collective action problem through a convening organization makes a lot of sense. But you come to the issues of very traditional, like income inequality. Now, there is a perfectly good question that is where you raise the minimum wage and if so by how much, and my government was for the company

Starting point is 00:27:05 to introduce a minimum wage in the UK, so I'm very familiar with all those arguments. But in the end, there is a whole other dimension to that individual, which is about the world that's changing and their place in it, and whether they're going to have the skills and the aptitude to be able to...

Starting point is 00:27:22 So you're just saying completely, at every level, reframe that technology is at the center of that. So it's not that you displace traditional questions of taxation and inequality, but the truth of the matter is, it's going to be probably in the long term more significant for that individual and for the society if this technological revolution is handled properly. So, you know, if you had a debate in the UK at the moment about our healthcare system,

Starting point is 00:27:46 national health service, right, it would be, should we spend 10 billion pounds a year more on it or 5 billion? But how do you change the whole of the way we implement care for people because of technology is going to have a much bigger impact? I agree. I guess the only thing I would add to this, because I think, about this a lot, interestingly, is that we treat technology like this word, this homogenous, nebulous entity. And the reality is that every single instance so depends on the specific technology. So my call to action, I guess, would be to think about it very specifically. The way we think about AI, that's such a broad phrase, and it's a very scary phrase,

Starting point is 00:28:24 that suggests everything from generalized intelligence to very specific automation that gets your bank account updated automatically. So I think there's two things to this. One that we need to be incredibly specific about what technology we're talking about, in what context, and then B, we also dial in the right degree to what we're talking about at what point. Because it really makes a difference. I completely agree with that.

Starting point is 00:28:45 I mean, I think the only thing I would say is right now we're actually far away from even getting the big macro message. You've got a good point. That's fair. You know, I was just to say to people in politics when we were campaigning. And they'd say, you know, I'd say, right, because we campaigned in the slogan in 1990, I said, right, new labor, new Britain. Right, right.

Starting point is 00:29:04 And they say, no, but it's much more complicated now. I say, okay, guys, it is. But actually it's complicated, but sometimes you need to go straight. I hear you. You're saying that when you go back to your old constituency, constituency in Northern England, they don't care about the specifics. They just need to have their fears of.

Starting point is 00:29:19 The first thing that you need to persuade them of, you're going to say to them, guys, technology is going to change the world and we've got to prepare for it. They're not there yet. When you get them there, then, obviously, in all sorts of different ways. But this is where I think that the gulf, that there is between the technology sector and the politicians and therefore the people

Starting point is 00:29:35 is so big. And how do we deal with the fundamental challenges that we have, as we talked about earlier, from an incentive perspective and short tenures on office and people's ability to be in office? Is that a conversation you think that the country and the nations are prepared to have? I think so, but it's a very good question. I would also say that in all of the change that's going to happen, I mean, this is a whole topic for another podcast, probably with different people. How you exchange information?

Starting point is 00:30:02 and the validation of that information is an essential part of having a democratic debate and that is a big problem in today's world. So I think it is possible to have that conversation with people but all political conversations today are extremely difficult because they happen in such a fevered environment with so much polarization and the interaction between conventional and social media

Starting point is 00:30:29 makes a rational debate occasionally extremely difficult. With that qualification, I answer this. Okay, good. I think the better way to approach that problem is to say, how do we make the U.S. and or Europe or other places attractive to entrepreneurship and encourage people to think about the regulatory framework and the economic framework as want to be participants in these markets, as opposed to the anti-kind of policies we have,

Starting point is 00:30:52 which is let's make it harder for free flow of capital and try to stave off those opportunities. It used to be that 90% of venture capital and entrepreneurship happen in the U.S., literally almost as early as 20 years ago. And if you look at those numbers today, it's about 50%. And so the amount of capital that's kind of been distributed globally and therefore the amount of opportunity set distributed globally is interesting. We have to think about this beyond kind of regional borders.

Starting point is 00:31:15 We will have talent and people that are free flowing across geographies. And so we have to think about this from a broader, you know, global initiative. Well, you guys, I just want to say thank you for joining the A6 and Z podcast. Thank you. Thank you, Settle.

The a16z Show - a16z Podcast: The Politics of Technology

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