THE BATTLE TO force Big Tech to act fairly and responsibly could be won if people around the world did “two or three things that make a difference”. That’s the view of creators’ champion Baroness Kidron who says the struggle won’t be decided by “a few people doing a lot”. Instead:
“It gets solved by a lot of people doing a little.”
Speaking to Charting Gen AI the tireless campaigner on creative copyright and online child safety say she would be able to “give up campaigning if everybody felt this was 10% their problem”. Her call to inspire grassroots action is a theme of her new book, Users: How Big Tech Took Control And How To Fight Back.
The book is part memoire, telling the story of her journey from a Hollywood film director to tech activist, and part probe into Big Tech’s dominance and power.
Beeban Kidron became a member of the UK’s upper house — where she sits as an independent peer — in 2012. That same year she directed and produced the groundbreaking documentary InRealLife which explored teens’ use of smartphones and social media, and the impacts they were having on their lives:
In her interview with Charting she says that within weeks of filming beginning she realised a “generational injustice” had been committed on young people.
“So we cut to today where I did something on the news and they said 50% of all children have seen a beheading. I mean, what an incredible world we live in.”
Last year Baroness Kidron inflicted five consecutive defeats on the UK government as she sought to add emergency AI transparency protections to a data bill. Her amendments — which were repeatedly defeated by Labour MPs voting on the orders of former tech secretary Peter Kyle — would have forced AI developers to reveal creators’ works used to train generative models.
In her Charting interview she reflects on what she believes lay behind Kyle’s refusal to help the plight creatives, an experience that has left her “with an anger that this is not sorted”, adding:
“Until this is fixed, the world is on the wrong path.”
She also:
Discusses how tech exceptionalism took hold, and how Big Tech’s power has endured through the deployment of its lobbying playbook.
Explains why young people are angry over AI, and why she’s confident that young voters are going to say: “Get in line, tech bros.”
Reveals her communications with Pope Leo, who she invited to become a tech activist since governments had been “captured”.
Recalls how Mark Zuckerberg used his power to block a “tiny” child safety measure that she’d persuaded his shareholders to support.
📣 COMMENT: It’s an interview that will make you think. And, on occasions, smile too, since there’s cause for hope and optimism in what Baroness Kidron tells Charting, and writes about in Users which is an extraordinary read. Hopefully what she says will also inspire you to push back against unregulated unethical tech, supporting her brand of tech activism which she describes as “a form of guerrilla warfare” that seeks to act like the “relentless rain that somehow gets in through the closed window”. It’s the perfect metaphor.
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