We live in truly historic times.
A couple of weeks ago, a former Facebook executive, Sarah Wynn-Williams, testified before the Senate. If you haven’t seen it, I highly encourage you check it out.
In her testimony, Ms. Wynn-Williams gave a detailed account of how Mark Zuckerberg allegedly worked directly with the Chinese Communist Party to build a massive surveillance system to spy on dissidents not just in China, but also private messages of American citizens of interest to the CCP. Zuckerberg then lied about it in his own Senate hearing in 2018. She also talked about how Facebook targets vulnerable teenage girls by noticing when they deleted their selfies, which is a signal for insecurity and sold them directly to advertisers.
Too Big To Innovate
We’ve all heard that power corrupts, that the desire for power should be disqualifying for positions of power. But I see it a little differently. It’s not about the individual and it’s not about the power. It’s about how power is distributed.
Humans have lived in hierarchies since the dawn of civilization. Whether it’s corporations or governments. Power is built on pyramids and concentrated at the top. That’s the way it has always been, the definition of status quo. But is it inevitable? Should we try to find a different way to work together, if it’s even possible?
Allow me to share my personal experience with corporate hierarchy to illustrate a point.
When I worked on the iPhone, there were just three people between me, a regular engineer and Steve Jobs. My main contribution to the iPhone was to make web gallery work in both landscape and portrait mode, a request that came directly from Steve. In three years we built a $650 device that changed the world.
“Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept”
-Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune
Ten years later, I was part of another secret project to change the world. The next iPhone, if you will. But this time with unlimited budget and an order of magnitude more staff. Six years later we produced the Vision Pro, a $3,500 device that, while technically far more sophisticated and impressive, hasn’t appeared to have anywhere near the same impact. So far, anyway.
My takeaway from that is that hierarchies are like speeches, the bigger they are, the worse they get for people who work in them and what they produce. You can see this across all kinds of hierarchical institutions aka bureaucracies, whether it’s university/hospital administrations, or tech companies. Inevitably the bureaucracy grows like a malignant cancer at the expense of the people doing the actual work.
Utopia or Dystopia
Now, we’ve all heard about how AI is going to take our jobs. Maybe. But it’s even worse than that.
China is building a surveillance state out of drones and AI, with Zuckerberg’s help. Drones with facial recognition can pick you out in a crowd. I’ve seen footages that came straight out of The Terminator.
Closer to home, a Tesla intern raised $16.5 million for Jolly, an AI platform that tracks every clock-in, task, and ‘micro-achievement’ then dangles gift-card carrots based on the data, a surveillance system with a smiley face. You can bet the billionaire CEOs are salivating at the idea of their own private surveillance states.
It’s always been this way. Those who gain power, the first order of business is to make sure they never lose it. It never works, of course, but they keep trying. And this time they just might succeed.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever."
- George Orwell
We are not going to change human nature anytime soon. But we can flatten the hierarchies that concentrates power at the hands of the few. AI could either empower hierarchies to enslave us, or it can liberate individuals from pyramids and distribute power more evenly.
It’s all about what stories we believe, because stories we believe become our reality.
Billionaires and dictators alike want us to believe that humans are inherently hierarchical, that the current system is inevitable. Well, the Marvel supervillain who boasted “I am inevitable” got his head lopped off, just like Louis XVI. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
Our institutions, built on hierarchies, are crumbling. We stand at a critical juncture in history that will decide whether technology will serve us, or make us serve billionaires and dictators forever. It’s time that we build technologies that’ll enable us to work together without massive pyramids of power that attracts the likes of Bezos, Zuckerberg and Musk.
Our Digital Legacy
The Wynn-Williams testimony demonstrates a critical truth: when technology intersects with concentrated power, the results can be devastating for individuals and democracies alike. Zuckerberg's alleged willingness to cooperate with the CCP isn't just one executive's failing, it's the predictable outcome of a system that rewards growth and control above all else.
AI is neither inherently good nor evil. Like fire that can cook a meal or burn down a house, or nuclear fission that can power cities or obliterate them, AI's impact depends entirely on how we govern its development and deployment. The Facebook revelations should serve as a warning: the same pattern could easily repeat with more powerful AI systems unless we fundamentally change how power is distributed in society.
“Science, therefore, has become too important to be left to the scientists,”
- Isaac Asimov
The future cannot be entrusted solely to tech executives whose incentives are misaligned with the public good. Instead, we need to reimagine technological development through distributed, transparent structures that resist centralization of power. This means creating alternatives to the massive corporate hierarchies that have dominated the digital landscape, alternatives that are accountable to users rather than shareholders.
When future generations look back at this pivotal moment in history, what will they say about your role? That you stood by while surveillance capitalism consolidated its grip? Or that you were part of the movement that ensured AI and other advanced technologies served human flourishing?
The whistleblowers have done their part. Now it's your turn. Share this post. Start conversations in your workplace. Support ethical technology initiatives. Question the unchecked power of tech giants. The time for passive consumption of technology is over, it’s time for active citizenship in our digital future now.
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