Is Technology at War With Democracy?
With rampant disinformation online and deep fakes lurking on political campaign trails, is digital technology becoming a threat to democracy?
On this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, TaiwanPlus reporter Chris Gorin sits down with Glen Weyl, an economist at Microsoft Research. Glen also coauthored a new book with Taiwan’s former Digital Minister Audrey Tang called “Plurality,” which argues that tech and democracy are more friends than foe. We first zoom out on Glen‘s principle of “plurality,” then zoom in on how it can be implemented in practice.
On this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, TaiwanPlus reporter Chris Gorin sits down with Glen Weyl, an economist at Microsoft Research. Glen also coauthored a new book with Taiwan’s former Digital Minister Audrey Tang called “Plurality,” which argues that tech and democracy are more friends than foe. We first zoom out on Glen‘s principle of “plurality,” then zoom in on how it can be implemented in practice.
Transcript
00:00Welcome to Zoom In Zoom Out, your global look at news from Taiwan and around the region.
00:17I'm Chris Gorin.
00:19This week, tech CEOs and innovators of the technology behind Bitcoin, known as blockchain,
00:24are meeting in Taipei for one of the world's largest crypto events of the year.
00:28It's called the Asia Blockchain Summit, and this year they're focused on how the technology
00:32can work alongside AI and follow a specific set of principles known as plurality.
00:38We're joined today by an advocate of plurality, Glenn Weil.
00:41Glenn leads research at Microsoft's Plural Technology Collaboratory and is one of the
00:46keynote speakers at the Asia Blockchain Summit.
00:49He is also the co-author alongside Taiwan's former digital minister, Audrey Tong, and
00:53other collaborators, including maybe you, of their new book, Plurality, which explores
00:58the relationship between technology and democracy.
01:01Glenn, it's such a pleasure to have you with us today.
01:03It's my honor.
01:04So let's first zoom out a little bit.
01:08How did you come to this concept of plurality?
01:11Well, in 2018, I was introduced by Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, to Audrey
01:17Tong.
01:19And we started working together on using an idea I developed in a previous book called
01:26Quadratic Voting for the Taiwanese presidential hackathon.
01:32And I became aware during that time of how much influence the book was having here in
01:37Taiwan.
01:39And Audrey and I started to work together more.
01:41We met in person.
01:43And I was just incredibly moved by the work she was doing here and how it was helping
01:48to transform the society.
01:50And we ended up working together on this book, which in turn used this name plurality
01:58that had initially showed up in Audrey's job description back in 2016.
02:06And that became sort of the symbol, the way of describing the work that she'd done, the
02:11philosophy lying underneath it.
02:13You and your co-author, Audrey Tong, have chosen a very clever name for the Chinese
02:19version of the book.
02:20Tell us a little bit about that.
02:21So the book is named Digital Shuhui Plurality in English.
02:28And it's got a Chinese name as well.
02:32And it uses these two characters, shuhui.
02:36Shuhui means both digital and plural at the same time.
02:41Because in traditional Mandarin, shuhui is both a way of saying digital, but it's also
02:46a way of saying that whatever word comes after it is turned into a plural.
02:51So Audrey was both digital minister and kind of many ministers at the same time, or minister
02:55of pluralism.
02:57And the book is actually filled with all these kind of multiple meanings.
03:00There's also a symbol that you can see on the book down here, which is these two intersecting
03:10squares.
03:11This is a universal coded character, a Unicode character.
03:16So it can be written on any computer.
03:19And it means this notion of intersection of different people from different societies
03:25finding a way to productively work together.
03:29So we put a lot of effort not just into the words or ideas, but the way in which we meld
03:37these different cultures, how we bring together the Western and Eastern perspectives, and
03:43the way that we symbolize that in ways that respect and yet transcend each of the cultures
03:48visually as well as in words.
03:52And at the beginning of the book, you set up a kind of conflict between democracy and
03:57technology.
03:58But you say that it also, the two things are actually allies in a certain way.
04:02So tell us where you see conflicts and how they can actually work together.
04:05Well, I think things in Taiwan are quite different than what they are in the West.
04:11And I think that's part of the synergy of this book.
04:13I grew up in Silicon Valley.
04:15I very much come from the heart of the tech industry in the US.
04:19And Audrey grew up here.
04:20And so we bring these two different perspectives.
04:22So in the US, it very much feels like democracy and technology are really almost at war with
04:28each other.
04:29Technology is eroding the foundations of democracies.
04:32It's creating polarization.
04:34It's creating misinformation.
04:37And you see it.
04:38You see the really decay in Europe and the US of democracy in the face of technology.
04:45And at the same time, technologists feel under attack from democracies.
04:48They feel they get complaints and regulations and much less investment.
04:53There's actually a big decline in investment in technology development by governments.
04:58So they feel this under assault from democracy at the same time.
05:01So these are at loggerheads with each other.
05:04In Taiwan, it's very different.
05:06And it's very clear why that's happening.
05:09Because Taiwan is a place where Taiwan has a greater share of its economy coming from
05:15the digital economy than anywhere else in the world.
05:17So you can't have a livelihood here without having really big focus on technology.
05:23At the same time, Taiwan's existence, Taiwan's identity is all about being a democracy.
05:31It wouldn't continue to exist if Taiwan didn't have that identity.
05:36So democracy and technology, you can't choose between them here.
05:41You're either choosing your life as an island or your livelihood if you have to choose between
05:48technology and democracy.
05:49So they've had to make them work together.
05:51And they've done that incredibly well.
05:53It's become the world's leading example of digital democracy.
05:57So I think the book is really about saying that there's an alternative to this conflict
06:01that exists in the West that comes from this example here in Taiwan.
06:06So tell us a little bit more about the work that you and Audrey Tong have done together
06:09in Taiwan on some of these plurality issues.
06:12Yeah.
06:13So some of the things that Audrey has, together with the Gov Zero and us, helped develop are
06:20this idea of vTaiwan, which is a system that's kind of like social media, X, but that rather
06:29than kind of hiding the divisions that exist within society and then harnessing them to
06:33sell people advertisements by sort of exacerbating the divisions, instead it shows people what
06:39the divisions are and then highlights the things that bring people together and actually
06:43uses those as a basis for legislation.
06:47And in fact, I think there have been about 20 laws passed in Taiwan on the basis of these
06:53conversations through vTaiwan.
06:55That idea has been very influential to my work.
06:59And then, you know, they've used things that have come out of my work in conjunction with
07:03those for Presidential Hackathon and other things.
07:05Well, tell us a little bit more about the Presidential Hackathon that you mentioned.
07:09I mean, what were you seeing there that sort of inspired you to develop this idea more?
07:13Well, so the Presidential Hackathon was this attempt to bring civil innovation into the
07:22government by bringing attention to the most important innovations that were developed
07:30by people in the civil sector at a local level and then raising them into the national profile,
07:34turning them into national digital public infrastructure.
07:39And they needed a way to invite citizens to participate in selecting what those were,
07:46which ones were the best, which ones deserve that attention.
07:49And they decided to use this technique that I developed called quadratic voting to help
07:54do that.
07:55I thought it was, you know, very well suited to that circumstance because the idea of quadratic
08:00voting was to allow people to participate in circumstances where you really want to
08:04show how important things are to you, not just, you know, to have voting in a simplistic
08:10way, but to really give a sense of your priorities.
08:13And so I thought it was a great fit.
08:15Okay, well, let's zoom in a little bit and talk about a few of the concrete ways in which
08:23plurality can be put into practice.
08:24Now, you've already mentioned several times about this quadratic voting system that you've
08:29come up with.
08:30Tell us, what is quadratic voting?
08:32So I think quadratic voting is like an example of a broader set of approaches to voting,
08:38which try to do what is the core idea of plurality, which is allow more diversity and more cooperation
08:45at the same time.
08:46So in a standard voting rule, like they use to elect the president here, a big problem
08:52is that you might want to vote for a third or fourth or fifth party, but you're afraid
08:59that that will end up being a spoiler.
09:01And, you know, if you prefer one of the top two candidates, that if you vote for someone
09:06who you really like, that you won't be able to make a decision on the main thing.
09:12And that was actually an issue in the most recent Taiwanese presidential election, because
09:17there were three parties.
09:18And do you vote for one of the leading two, the KMT or the DPP?
09:22Or do you vote for the TPP, which some people were more excited about, et cetera?
09:26And the idea is that there are many approaches that you could take to make that less of an
09:31issue, to allow people to express more fully what they want.
09:34So one example is approval voting.
09:37Approval voting just says you can vote for as many candidates as you want.
09:40So you could vote for both the DPP and the TPP, or both the KMT and the TPP.
09:47But quadratic voting takes it one level deeper.
09:50So if I'm just your everyday voter and I go into the voting booth or the voting website,
09:55as it were, what am I going to see in a quadratic voting ballot?
09:59So you're going to see up at the top of the screen, you've got like 100 credits.
10:03And you put more on or against one candidate.
10:07And as you do, it increments up the votes, and it draws down your credits.
10:13But the more you put on a candidate or against a candidate, the more expensive it is out
10:19of your budget to get more.
10:21So the first vote costs one.
10:23The second vote costs additional three.
10:26The third vote costs five, et cetera.
10:28Which means that if you put a few credits, you get more influence per credit than if
10:33you put a lot on one thing.
10:35In fact, there's a game called Civilization VI, which is the bestselling strategy game
10:39of all time.
10:41And this uses this dynamic.
10:42So in Civilization VI, you've got like credits at the top, and then you vote on these diplomatic
10:47things where you're negotiating with other countries.
10:49And it has exactly this structure.
10:52This type of voting system is a little bit more complicated than just an up or down vote.
10:57Is there any risk that a voter might be intimidated by this, and they might just choose to stay
11:03out of an election altogether?
11:04I mean, does having this slightly more complicated system, even though it may be better at showing
11:10preferences among people, might it reduce voter turnout?
11:13Yeah, I think that that's a really interesting question.
11:16It's a question that happens with pretty much all advanced technology.
11:19So anytime you try to bring in computers, cell phones, word processing, there's going
11:26to be some people who find it challenging to interact with this new modality, even though
11:31it lets them, it opens them up to a new world.
11:35And I think that Taiwan has been a world leader in terms of really connecting young people,
11:42connecting the government to make sure that everyone in society has understanding and
11:46access to that technology, universal broadband, and really thinking of cell phones as a human
11:54right that everyone has.
11:56So absolutely, if you're going to experiment with these things, it's critical that you
12:01kind of build them into the social fabric, and you do it in a gradual way that invites
12:06everyone into participation.
12:08But on the other hand, it really, I think, opens up the possibilities for people.
12:12And one great thing about quadratic voting is you can do things that are very simple
12:16in it.
12:17You can just put all your votes on one candidate and whatever.
12:21And I think you'd want functionality so that maybe that's how it initially starts, and
12:27it's easy for people.
12:28If they just want to do the simple thing, they can just do that.
12:30That's what, in technology, we call backwards compatibility.
12:34You want to offer people new opportunities, but you also want to make it easy for them
12:38if they just want to do what they're used to, to do that as well.
12:42All right.
12:43Last question.
12:44You know, 10, 20 years from now in your sort of ideal world, what does the world look like
12:49at that time?
12:50So my dream is that people come to expect their democracies to advance just as quickly
12:58as their devices.
13:00That Taiwan is a symbol throughout the world of the future of democracy, and that it's
13:07in people's hearts because of that.
13:11That people, conservative people, people from all different parts of society, very religious
13:16people, come to have unpredictable heroes, like Audrey, who's the first non-binary minister
13:23of a major country.
13:26And that people see a new future for technology that is not about an AI doing everything for
13:31you or blockchains wiping away governments and communities, but instead seeing technology
13:39as a way to connect to people across difference, to work together towards a better future,
13:44and to build relationships.
13:45Well, Glenn, it was a real pleasure to have you on the show today.
13:49Really appreciate having your insights.
13:51It's an honor to be with you.
13:53This has been Zoom In Zoom Out.
13:54For more stories from Taiwan Plus News, check us out on social media.
13:58We'll see you next time.
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