Korea should not import West's 'techlash'

 

Technological innovation and production are the most important factors determining Korea’s economic future. Only technology can deliver the necessary growth, productivity and scale to enable the Korean economy to compete with the rest of the world, especially China.

The recipe for innovation is no secret. History has shown that the key ingredients are: science and engineering research, STEM and entrepreneurial skills, effective mass education, modern infrastructure, and the success of technology firms of all sizes, including large, dominant ones. Innovation also requires smart, supportive government policies that put accelerating the rate of progress at the center of economic thinking.

However, both innovation and innovation policy must be grounded on a bedrock of aspiration and optimism. If society sees innovation as a necessary force for good there will be more innovation and better innovation policies. But if the dominant narrative is that technology is an out-of-control force for harm, there will be detrimental policies and less innovation. This latter situation is where the United States, Europe and Commonwealth nations (e.g., the West) find themselves today. Technology, especially digital technology and the corporations that produce it, are often seen as inherently suspect and problematic. Like Gulliver, they are giants to be tied down, not the necessary pillars of an advanced technological society.

These attitudes reduce both the enthusiasm for innovation and the efforts by government needed to spur it. While Korea is allied with the West, it also competes with Western economies. And the greater “techlash” in these places relative to Korea will make it easier for Korea to win global market share in technology industries, provided Korea doesn’t go further down the Western techlash road.

Too often, the West has shifted its focus from delivering technological wonders to preventing “harmful” change. This mindset has led to technology bans, counter-productive taxes, overly stringent regulations, excessive approval cycles, and a general fear of the future. Once widely seen as a savior of humanity, technology is increasingly viewed as an oppressor. The knowledge of Athena gets treated more like the curse of Eris, the goddess of discord.

These overly negative attitudes are leading the West to increasingly retreat from the future, at risk of ceding important innovation areas to its global rivals. While Chinese leader Xi Jinping proclaims: “The Internet Age will promote the development of human life, production and productivity,” U.S. President Biden, reflecting the view of many Western leaders, recently wrote with regard to artificial intelligence: “We must be clear-eyed and vigilant about the threats.” Unless such fear-based narratives are rejected and replaced with more hopeful ones of the kind that enabled the West to become the most advanced region in the world, the West can expect slower rates of progress and the eventual loss of global leadership.

Such a loss risks transforming the West into a different kind of place: fearful, static, and increasingly angry. In this sense, technological pessimism and opposition are like dry rot eating away at the foundations of the West. Today, it is most advanced in Europe, but it has also spread widely across the United States and Commonwealth nations. The West needs to clean out the rot and return to its optimistic, dynamic and appreciative technology roots.

What keeps this narrative and worldview alive and powerful is a set of techno-economic myths that are now widely seen as truth. These techno-mythologies are deeply embedded in the popular consciousness, repeated endlessly by anti-tech advocacy groups, the elites and a mainstream media that often uses scaremongering to attract “eyeballs.”

We hear them regularly: AI will destroy jobs, technology is eroding privacy, social media is the cause of political polarization, productivity no longer helps the average worker, the pace of technological change is too fast, profits are too high, digital technologies are addictive, AI is inherently biased, and of course, AI will become sentient and destroy humanity. In "Technology Fears and Scapegoats: 40 Myths About Privacy, Jobs, AI and Today’s Innovation Economy," my co-author and I examine 40 major myths about technology and technology firms and we find they are all either wrong or severely exaggerated.

Korea thankfully lags behind with West in techlash “thinking” and the embrace of myths that support it, but it is by no means free from this corrosive force. Korea has seen it in Luddite-inspired opposition to ride sharing apps. Korean civil society groups have advocated that the Korean legislature adopt EU-style AI regulation, something that would surely slow AI innovation in Korea. Similarly, groups have called for bans on facial recognition technology.

This is not to say that tech companies and their innovations are a panacea, and that there are no problems or role for regulators. Many of the promises of the information age such as the transformation of health care, education and transportation have yet to be fulfilled, and criticism of tech company shortcomings and business practices is sometimes warranted. But when the detractors are so blinded by hostility that they exaggerate the downsides and ignore the many things these companies do right, their critiques cease to be part of a productive debate, and take on the character of an angry mob.

Both the West and Korea need a more positive and balanced perspective that doesn’t make technology the source of today’s societal ills. More broadly, the West needs to rediscover, and Korea not abandon, what used to be a deep-seated optimism about technology, progress and the future. For if the West and Korea drift too far from these roots global technological leadership will more easily shift to China, a country where technology is welcomed, not feared.

Dr. Robert D. Atkinson (@RobAtkinsonITIF) is the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), an independent, nonpartisan research and educational institute focusing on the intersection of technological innovation and public policy. The views expressed in the above article are those of the author and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.