✪ Jia Kai | School of Public Administration, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
On November 29, 2021, WeChat issued a statement announcing that direct access to external links will be allowed in the peer-to-peer chat scenario, and will pilot the open e-commerce external link direct access function in the group chat scene. Since the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology organized a number of Internet enterprises to hold the "Administrative Guidance Meeting on blocking URL Links", the problem of different Internet platforms blocking external links from each other has improved, but some media and the public believe that progress is still limited and unsatisfactory. It is worth asking how the Internet has built its own "moat" step by step, moving towards a closed "island" state? In order to reshape the Internet ecology that is more in line with human needs, in addition to opening up external links, is there another new technology route that is different from the current digital technology model?
This paper points out that the original intention of the Internet is to create an autonomous space for human collaborative innovation, but the web-centered Internet technology architecture does not separate applications from data, resulting in user data being divided into different web pages and companies, and it is difficult to share openly. This not only enables the first-mover digital platform companies to enjoy network effects and monopoly power by virtue of user data advantages, but also enables them to easily obtain huge profits through advertising models. The current wave of regulation of digital formats in various countries in the world is actually a response to the disorderly competition of the Internet.
The authors argue that we need to explore another path of technological innovation that takes into account governance requirements beyond the traditional perspective of digital technology. Taking the three fields of Internet, artificial intelligence and 3D printing as examples, he presented the potential of alternative new technology routes in breaking the closure and monopoly of the Internet, avoiding the crisis of labor substitution and labor alienation, and reshaping the traditional production process and the global industrial chain, providing a reference for us to think and imagine a better digital future.
This article was published in The Culture Journal, No. 6, 2021, which only represents the author's views and is hereby compiled and distributed for your consideration.
Multiple technology routes for the digital future
Since the 1960s, the invention of computers and the Internet has opened up the historical process of digital transformation of human society. At that time, people's optimistic attitude towards technological innovation not only gave birth to a wave of technological "utopianism", but also influenced the inclusive governance concept of emerging digital formats in various countries. Driven by multiple factors such as technology, capital, society, and the state, the digital economy has finally become the most important economic form in human society.
However, after more than half a century of rapid development, the governance risks and challenges inherent in the digital transformation process are also becoming increasingly apparent. French President Emmanuel Macron's november 2018 speech at the Internet Governance Forum made it very clear that "the Internet has reached a 'turning point.'" People are beginning to realize that the process of digital transformation does not necessarily lead to the fundamental values that human society has long upheld. The rise and fall of digital risks expose the "governance deficit" of human society in different areas, prompting researchers and policymakers to reflect on the shortcomings of digital technology itself and the limitations of people's ability to understand and unleash the transformation of digital technology.
Therefore, whether there is another technical route different from the current digital technology development and its application model, and how we should choose between different possibilities, has become a new focus of stakeholder theoretical discussion and practical exploration from an international perspective.
▍ Digital reflection on the possibility of "another" Internet
"Freedom" and "openness" are the concepts and hopes of the creators of the Internet. In the course of more than 50 years of development, the Internet has indeed realized its vision at that time, bringing about a spectacular new era of digitalization, and open source software, Wikipedia and even the sharing economy are the concentrated embodiment of its achievements. However, with the deepening and popularization of the commercialization process, the Internet has become not only a symbol of freedom and openness, but also full of rights infringement, power struggle and risk surge. At his 2019 event to mark the 30th anniversary of the Birth of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee summarized the current "chaos" of the Internet into three points: the deliberate dissemination of malicious content to influence the political process (represented by the Cambridge Analytica incident), the polarization of the network due to the misuse of technology, and the flawed design of Internet protocols that incentivize mismatches.
At present, the wave of supervision against digital formats that is common in various countries in the world is actually a response to the "chaos" of the Internet. But governance reform for specific issues is only one perspective for stakeholders to reflect on the digital process, and exploring technological innovation paths that take into account governance requirements is another important perspective. The history of the development of the Internet proves that relying only on "end-to-end" open network architecture does not necessarily bring about a free human society and a liberated knowledge economy. The diversified technical routes of the evolution and development of the Internet deserve more in-depth reflection and competitive exploration. As the inventor of the World Wide Web protocol, Berners-Lee's "alternative" Internet design ideas that have been actively practiced in recent years are typical in this direction.
The original intention of the World Wide Web is to create an autonomous space where all human beings can innovate collaboratively, and different knowledge is gathered and opened up on the network, and then more human intelligence is created progressively. To achieve this, the key innovations of the World Wide Web lie in two ways: grafting hypertext technology onto the Internet so that more types of information such as pictures, videos, audio, etc. can be disseminated on the Internet, and the use of one-way linking, which allows anyone to link the resource without any response from the owner of the resource, thus maintaining maximum openness (i.e., open linking is the default state). The unique technical design of the World Wide Web has opened the prelude to the commercialization process of the Internet, which has had a positive impact of "openness for innovation". However, on the other hand, the technical solution that mainly focuses on "link openness" has ultimately become a bottleneck and threshold that hinders the opening up of "data" as a key production factor. Specifically, the Web's web-centric architecture does not separate applications from data, resulting in user data being split across different web pages (behind different companies) and making it difficult to share openly. Berners-Lee figuratively likens this situation to "data silos" (Silos). The "data silo" not only enables the first-mover digital platform companies to enjoy network effects and monopoly power by virtue of the advantages of user data, but also enables them to easily obtain huge profits through advertising models. The immediate consequences of both are comprehensive monitoring of user information and violations of privacy rights, leading all companies to expand their market size to collect and monopolize user data, rather than improving the level of application services.
It is precisely because of such problems that Berners-Lee has launched the Solid open source project in recent years, trying to pull the Internet back to the "original intention" track through the innovation of technological solutions. The core idea of solid open source projects is to change the mainstream model of the current Internet business format by separating applications from user data and returning control of data to users. Solid's philosophy is in fact in line with the EU's "Right to Data Portability" in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), but the difference is that data portability tends to be practiced with more emphasis on applications for different business platform companies The standardization and uniformity of the Programming Interface, API), which still follows the technical path of integrating applications and user data within the traditional World Wide Web framework, does not fundamentally change the motivation of digital business platform companies to try to collect user data and create "data silos". In contrast, Solid adopts a different technology path, the data generated by users on the Internet is stored in a specific location and therefore separated from the application (or web page) that provides the service, and the business platform company must first obtain the user's consent to obtain the data to provide the service, which has two effects: on the one hand, the phenomenon of "data silos" is eliminated, any digital platform company does not own the user data, and with the user's consent, different business platform companies can call the same set of user data. This breaks the network effect and promotes market competition; on the other hand, the incentive mismatch in the process of Internet commercialization is eliminated, at this time, the motivation of digital platform companies is no longer to collect and control user data, but to improve and innovate products and services, privacy violations, fake news and other Internet chaos is expected to be fundamentally solved. At the same time, it is worth noting that Solid does not aim to restrict data applications, its essence is still to promote applications and openness, which once again reflects berners-Lee's repeated emphasis on the "original intention" of the Internet - to achieve an autonomous space where all mankind can innovate collaboratively.
We're not sure if the future of the Solid project will be as successful as the World Wide Web, but Berners-Lee's "second" venture at least reminds us that the Internet is not a perfect architecture to build overnight. Different technical routes not only represent differentiated technical solutions and characteristics, but also reflect different governance ideas and approaches. At a time when stakeholders recognize that the Internet is currently facing a "turning point", technological innovation is still an indispensable way to break through the governance dilemma and return to the "original intention". Considering the wide range of topics involved in the global governance of the Internet, technological innovations such as the Solid project even have the role and value of fundamental changes.
▍ The possibility of "another" artificial intelligence in the context of labor crisis
The technological innovation and popularization of artificial intelligence are promoting the outbreak of a new round of technological revolution and industrial revolution, and the social changes accompanying it are ushering in the development dividend at the same time, but also filled with concerns and questions about whether the development dividend can be shared universally and whether artificial intelligence technology will further expand social differentiation.
The discussion around the labor crisis in the context of artificial intelligence application is a typical embodiment, which is embodied in two aspects: the alienation of labor and the substitution of labor itself. The former, for example, the fear that workers are "trapped" in the technology system and lose autonomy, and the latter is the reduction or even disappearance of jobs themselves under the wave of artificial intelligence-driven automation change. Although the governance needs caused by the labor crisis can be responded to through a tax-based redistribution mechanism or a social empowerment mechanism such as the universal basic income system, the more fundamental question is: Does the technological development and application route of artificial intelligence inevitably lead to a labor crisis? In other words, is there a "nother" technological possibility that is different from the current model of AI technology development and application?
The above questions are the key questions raised by MIT professor Daron AsimoGlu in his new book "Redesigning AI" in 2021, which in fact reflects the new exploration and new trends in the field of artificial intelligence technology research and development and application in recent years. In AsimoGlu's view, there are two different technological development and application routes for artificial intelligence. On the one hand, AI can be seen as a substitute for human work and reduce labor costs or increase labor efficiency in the process of automation. Whether it is the unmanned factory in the automobile manufacturing industry or the scheduling and planning of workers in the takeaway industry, it can be regarded as a copy or continuation under such thinking. But as a general-purpose technology, the potential of artificial intelligence is not limited to this, or should not be limited to this, AsimoGlu believes that another technical route is to see artificial intelligence as an auxiliary to human labor processes, in order to better release human creativity, judgment and flexibility. Taking the application of artificial intelligence in the education industry as an example, new technologies can be used to automatically score students or automatically generate teaching content to replace teacher functions, but they can also assist teachers to discover the preferences, strengths or difficulties of different students to truly achieve differentiated and personalized education.
On the basis of understanding the two technical routes of artificial intelligence, the comparison of its advantages and disadvantages has become an important issue. More theories or practices show that with the deepening of the automation process, the second technical route may be more conducive to the iterative innovation of technology itself and the sustainable development of human society. In AsimoGlu's view, when more and more human work is replaced by artificial intelligence, the marginal utility of further pursuit of labor substitution will decline rapidly, and the value of human labor (such as work that requires hand-eye coordination) will be more and more prominent. Similarly, Robert Unger, a professor at Harvard Law School, also proposed in his 2019 book The Knowledge Economy that human work can be divided into two types: regular and non-regular. The former refers to repetitive, modular, paradigmized work, which is repeated under clear rules; the latter is the process of forming new ideas and new discoveries in the case of jumping out of or denying existing rules, which is also called "the power to imagine". The function of artificial intelligence can be roughly summarized as improving the efficiency of "rule" work, but not the ability to complete "non-regular" work, which is the value of human labor. In this context, Unger argues that "human-machine cooperation" can bring about the most advanced productivity: while machine intelligence continues to replace human repetitive work — in other words, the mechanization of labor — human beings are liberated to enter more "innovation no man's land", thus further mechanizing more work while constantly expanding the boundaries of human knowledge, thus forming the common development of machines and people.
Theoretical discussions have also been confirmed in practice. In April 2018, Musk gave an interview to CBS Television and allowed mass media to visit the Model 3 workshop for the first time. In the interview, Musk elaborated on Tesla's distress of applying automated machines: Efforts to try to automate the entire production process often made the production process too complicated, so he had to hire more workers to increase the production rate. In other words, unmanned chemical factories are not necessarily the ideal model, and the one-sided pursuit of automation to replace human labor will limit the release of production performance (in Tesla, this is reflected in the bottleneck of production capacity).
It is worth noting that the choice or adjustment of the AI technology route cannot be achieved spontaneously through the market mechanism, and Asimo Gru believes that the reason is that there is an "externality" in the second technical route: the technological innovation of artificial intelligence in assisting people will be distributed among a wide range of stakeholders, and will not be unique to technology developers or applications. The beneficiaries of AI technology innovations aimed at unlocking the value of human labor are more likely to be workers, as well as enterprises that can find the most suitable organizational model for "human-machine cooperation", rather than necessarily the technological innovators themselves. Therefore, public policy guidance and even regulation for different technical routes are particularly important.
At the same time, the debate around the employment crisis in the context of artificial intelligence is in fact closely related to the choice of technology route. In the study of the employment impact of technological innovation, job creation and job substitution are two competing influencing mechanisms. In a 2014 Pew Research Center survey on whether AI would replace more jobs than it created, 1,896 experts had a huge divergence in response and opinion. But if we look at it from the perspective that artificial intelligence has different technical routes, then the debate between job creation and job substitution is in fact reflected in the choice of different technical routes. At this time, exploring the second technical route of artificial intelligence is given greater social value: that is, whether the development of artificial intelligence will be conducive to creating more jobs and ultimately narrowing social differentiation.
▍ The possibility of "another" digital transformation of manufacturing under the transformation of the global industrial chain
The ongoing changes in the global industrial chain are the focus of the international political and economic field, and many commentators regard it as the result of the global trade war and the external shock of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, but Professor Cui Zhiyuan of Tsinghua University pointed out the endogenous logic of the industrial chain change in more depth, which is essentially a new upgrade of "post-Fordism" driven by "Additive Manufacturing" technology. This can be seen as an "alternative" path to the digital transformation of manufacturing.
The current common concept often equates the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry with the construction of the industrial Internet, focusing on improving production efficiency through digital transformation or forming a more flexible production organizational structure. For example, Xinchang County, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, promotes the connection of bearing factory equipment into the industrial Internet, and realizes the dynamic invocation of equipment in various factories in the county while monitoring the dynamics of equipment in real time, thereby improving the utilization rate of equipment; and the collaborative manufacturing platform similar to "Business Gang" can flexibly organize different producers on the platform to complete different links of specific products, so as to adapt to the uncertain and dynamically changing market environment. As Professor Cui Zhiyuan pointed out, the above reform ideas are still only to use digital technology to improve production speed or efficiency without changing the traditional production process or product attributes, which is essentially a limited improvement of "Fordism"; however, the greater potential of digital technology may be to change the traditional production process and realize the new model and new structure of "post-Fordism", which is reflected in the development and application of "additive manufacturing" technology.
"Additive manufacturing", often referred to simply as "3D printing", is a technology that can use digital control (computer-aided design) to manufacture parts or finished products at once, thereby reducing the delicate division of labor for production tasks in traditional manufacturing. For example, in Tesla's first quarter 2020 financial report, the 3D printing technology used by Tesla was introduced for the first time, replacing the original rear car body composed of 70 parts with a large die casting; in the August 2021 report, Tesla further replaced the entire car body composed of 370 parts with 2 to 3 large die castings. This change in the production process not only makes Tesla the car manufacturer whose supply chain has been least affected by the impact of the epidemic, but also means the opening of the historical process of the industrial chain from the global deep division of labor to the local return.
It is worth noting that the impact of "additive manufacturing" technology is not limited to the production process itself, it will further change the organizational model and industrial model of the manufacturing industry. A 2017 MIT Sloan Management Review research article cited by Professor Cui points out that the "Pan-Industrial Platform" based on "additive manufacturing" technology may not only become a new manufacturing "conglomerate", but also may have greater flexibility and innovation than SMEs.
The digital transformation of the Internet, artificial intelligence, and manufacturing are three typical cases listed in this article that reflect the possibilities of different technical routes. The emergence of relevant practical exploration in recent years not only represents the digital transformation process into the deep water, but also means that our usual development model has reached a "turning point". In this context, a broader theoretical vision and a more open space for reform may be the best choice for facing the digital future.
This article was originally published in The Culture Journal, No. 6, 2021, pages 8-11, originally titled "Multiple Technology Routes for the Digital Future". The article only represents the author's own views, welcome to share, the media reprint please contact this public number.
