The Zuckerberg-Facebook congressional hearings make one thing clear: There is a wide gap between what lawmakers understand about Social Media/AI and what Silicon Valley understands about it, particularly regarding privacy and content ownership.
Trying to put Facebook into a publishing container or media container just simply isn’t going to work. Niether will considering it a “tech” company. It is both, but neither.
In practice, what this means is that laws and regulations aren’t going to be very effective, because how do you regulate something you don’t understand? Mr. Zuckerberg pointed this out directly, when he implied that Facebook owes it to his customers within the next few years to help them understand how AI is going to be able to filter content without filtering free speech (For example, what is the difference between a very strongly held opinion and hate speech, and how is an algorithm going to figure that out?)
So, what does this mean for healthcare and the future 3.0 technologies coming down the pike?
Well for me it doesn’t bode well. The gap between lawmakers understanding of what the tech industry does versus what they actually do is too large just by itself, and factoring in the ethical questions revolving around privacy makes things even more challenging.
I suspect we are in for a bumpy ride.