Big Tech Research Articles

Undersea cables in Africa: The new frontiers of digital colonialism

The Internet has become the backbone of the social fabric. The United Nations Human Rights Council declared access to the Internet a fundamental human right over a decade ago. Yet, Africa remains the region with the widest Digital Divide where most of the population is either sparsely connected or has no access to the Internet. This has in turn created a race amongst Western big tech corporations scrambling to “bridge the Digital Divide”. Although the Internet is often portrayed as something that resides in the “cloud”, it heavily depends on physical infrastructure, including undersea cables. In this paper, we examine how current undersea cable projects and Internet infrastructure, owned, controlled, and managed by private Western big tech corporation, often using the “bridging the Digital Divide” rhetoric, not only replicates colonial logic but also follows the same infrastructural path laid during the trans-Atlantic slave trade era. Despite its significant impact on the continent’s digital infrastructure, we find publicly available information is scarce and undersea cable projects are carried out with no oversight and little transparency. We review historical evolution of the Internet, and detail and track the development of undersea cables in Africa, and illustrate its tight connection with colonial legacies. We provide an in-depth analysis of two current major undersea cable undertakings across the continent: Google’s Equiano and Meta’s 2Africa. Using Google and Meta’s undersea cables as case studies, we illustrate how these projects follow colonial logic, create a new cost model that keep African nations under perpetual debt, and serve as infrastructure for mass data harvesting while bringing little benefit to the Global South. We conclude with actionable recommendations for and demands from big tech corporations, regulatory bodies, and governments across the African continent.

Broad collection of consumer data by Big Tech: exclusionary or exploitative abuse?

ABSTRACT The ability to gather and process large amounts of personal data is primarily held by a small group of companies. Some regulators, scholars, and practitioners have expressed concerns that major advertising-based platforms such as Google and Facebook may abuse their dominant position in the data market by requiring users to agree to the intensive collection of their data as a condition to the free access and use of those platforms’ core services. This raises the question of whether such broad collection of consumer data should be examined by European competition authorities as a foreclosure aiming at excluding current and potential competitors from the market of consumer data or as an excessive collection of personal data having the effect of lowering user’s privacy. This paper seeks to discuss this matter by examining the recent ruling in Meta by the European Court of Justice.

Sphere transgressions in medical research: tactical engagements with Apple’s ResearchKit

ABSTRACT In the last decade, large technology companies have started many initiatives to stimulate and innovate in the sphere of medical research. A prominent example is the ResearchKit software framework launched by tech giant Apple in 2015. This software framework enablesmedical researchers to developresearch apps on the iPhone that collect and access diverse types of research data. The ‘sphere transgressions’ theoretical lens (Sharon, 2021a; 2021b) draws attention to the risks associated with such initiatives. For instance, that large technology companies could utilize the initiatives to change the sphere of medical research in line with their own values and interests. However, the theoretical lens risks portraying a simplistic one-directional understanding of Big Tech colonizing the sphere of medical research. This paper draws attention to medical researchers and their everyday interactions. Based on interviews with medical researchers using Apple’s ResearchKit in the Netherlands and the United States, the paper shows that researchers are not passive recipients of Big Tech’s initiatives. Instead, they respond to their initiatives in a variety of ways: not simply by welcoming or resisting Apple’s ResearchKit, but also by ‘making do’ using a variety of tactics (de Certeau, 1984). Thinking in terms of tactics, it is argued in the discussion, helps to identify needs and interests that are of crucial importance to researchers and the broader sphere of medical research. These insights can be used to strengthen the sphere of medical research and promote responsible innovation.

Stepping on Toes? Role Dynamics between Journalists and Lobbyists Regarding Big Tech’s Accountability Agenda

The expanding political role of Big Tech(nology) corporations has triggered concerns about the role of the media in holding corporate power to account. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of role dynamics between journalists and lobbyists toward the agenda for Big Tech’s responsibilities. Based on semi-structured interviews with European journalists ( n = 15) and lobbyists representing large technology corporations ( n = 15), we use professional role perceptions as a heuristic for examining the relationship of both actor groups in tandem. Journalists, who report an overlap of audience-focused with passive watchdog role ideals geared toward legislative accountability, interact with lobbyists, who assert a more concrete and active role perception. Journalists cautiously appropriate their normative watchdog role in accordance with the ideals of detachment and balance to maintain their own media legitimacy and access to an oligopolistic information environment. Remaining strategically sovereign over information, lobbyists perceive a strong mandate to establish Big Tech as a relevant stakeholder in the agenda on their regulatory accountability, but in mid of a perceived techlash, the majority of corporations avoid public attention. Both actor groups’ limited and off-the-record interaction reflects a defensive corporate stance, keeping their negotiation of Big Tech’s accountability off-stage. The technological and regulatory complexity of the information environment might render these corporations unfit for soft regulation by news media. We discuss implications for their co-dependence in the context of fast technological advancement and disruption of (corporate) mediatization processes.

Distinction and alternative tech: Exploring the techno-critical disposition

How should we understand alternative social media and open-source technologies that seek to challenge the dominance of Big Tech? Are these ethical substitutes for monopolistic platforms and technological infrastructures, or “alternative” in the sense we might talk of alternative forms of culture? Here we offer new perspective on these questions by conceptualizing alternative tech through Bourdieu’s theories of cultural production and distinctive consumption. Building on the work of Holm, Coleman and others, we explore the “techno-critical disposition” through a case study of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS), arguing this is manifested primarily as “critical craftiness,” or hacker aesthetics in a critical register. Finally, we consider how ATNOFS represents a “distinctive” path to the wider adoption of alternative platforms, as well as how the techno-critical disposition may be reconfiguring legitimacy in the broader field of technology production.

Why and how is the power of Big Tech increasing in the policy process? The case of generative AI

Abstract The growing digitalization of our society has led to a meteoric rise of large technology companies (Big Tech), which have amassed tremendous wealth and influence through their ownership of digital infrastructure and platforms. The recent launch of ChatGPT and the rapid popularization of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) act as a focusing event to further accelerate the concentration of power in the hands of the Big Tech. By using Kingdon’s multiple streams framework, this article investigates how Big Tech utilize their technological monopoly and political influence to reshape the policy landscape and establish themselves as key actors in the policy process. It explores the implications of the rise of Big Tech for policy theory in two ways. First, it develops the Big Tech-centric technology stream, highlighting the differing motivations and activities from the traditional innovation-centric technology stream. Second, it underscores the universality of Big Tech exerting ubiquitous influence within and across streams, to primarily serve their self-interests rather than promote innovation. Our findings emphasize the need for a more critical exploration of policy role of Big Tech to ensure balanced and effective policy outcomes in the age of AI.

Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labour Markets and How We Will Win Them Back

Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labour Markets and How We Will Win Them Back

Personalization of tech corporations: Examining personalized news and the media reputation of Google, Facebook, and Apple in Swiss news media

Tech corporations, such as Google, Facebook, and Apple, have increasingly become the focus of public media attention and are subject to public scrutiny due to their prominence and scandals. Often, the news media reports on the corporations’ chief executive officers and founders as representatives of the corporations to make complex company-related information comprehensible and gain more public attention. The personalization trend in the news media has turned some corporate leaders into celebrities and is linked to tech companies’ media reputations, that is, the evaluations of tech companies in the news media. However, research on personalization in corporate news is rare and conflicting, and whether and how personalization is linked to the media reputations of Big Tech corporations is not yet clear. By focusing on different personalization types, this study investigates the relationship between personalization and the evaluation of tech companies in the news. A quantitative content analysis of media articles ( N = 5234) in Swiss news outlets revealed that the news on tech companies is frequently personalized, and personalized news is more negative and more often related to the social aspects of tech corporations than non-personalized news. Our study indicates that personalization is used as a journalistic style in the news about tech corporations but is most common in negative reporting in which the role of tech corporations in society is critically assessed.

Digital expansionism and big tech companies: consequences in democracies of the European Union

Big digital companies have become key elements in economy, communication, education, and politics in 21st century societies. The neutral ideology in their digital platforms, applications, and services, as well as the exponential growth in their activities can be used by world superpowers —especially the United States and China— to implement geostrategical operations, massive social manipulation or influence democratic processes with the objective of increasing their power and dominance over other nations. The aim of this paper is to state the different strategies of digital expansionism performed by the United States and China, and, additionally, to showcase the negative consequences of these strategies on the population and democracies of the European Union. The first section of this paper will define the concepts of digital sovereignty and digital expansionism as well as their importance in 21st century geopolitics. Next, the important role that big digital companies have on digital expansionism will be analysed, and the usage of digital authoritarianism and digital instrumentarianism performed by the United States and China will be further examined. Finally, the negative consequences of the implementation of these methods in the democratic systems of the European Union will be analysed, as well as what possible solutions there might be for said consequences.

Cross-disciplinary AI supply chain risk assessment

While AI remains chip based and part of both commercial and national strategic superiority goals, it is useful to examine the security and risks associated with achieving those goals.  The future strategy rests perilously on an unstable inverted triangle of financial and economic reality. This paper presents the AI chip supply chain as an inverted triangle which base/apex is dependent on a global single supplier with the capability of producing equipment essential for their manufacture.  It highlights the dependence on a single company for the fabrication of those chips, and the security risks associated with that supplier being Taiwanese in limited foreign ownership.  It is suggested that the increasing tensions between China and the USA have resulted, in part, from this dependence, which was demonstrated by the supply chain crisis resulting from Covid-19.  The attempt to reduce this dependence led to the CHIPS and Science Act 2022, signed into law by President Biden.  In part of the inverted triangle are found Big Tech and the major Cloud Service Providers.  They vary between 60% - 80% of their market capital being in financial institutional ownership, most of which is held by a very limited number of institutions, not all of whom are publicly quoted.  To doubt the influence wielded by those financial institutions, just a single institution with major Big Tech and Cloud holdings has, at 31 December 2022, USD 8.59 trillion of assets under management.  This represents economic power and places it between the equivalent Gross Domestic Product of China (USD 19.37 trillion) and Japan (USD 4.41 trillion) the second and third entries behind the USA in the GDP rankings.  Financial institutions are market driven to achieve growth, contribute to economic stability, and are to an extent regulated by unelected vested interests and organisations. The battlefield for national supremacy of AI may concern chips, until the arrival of quantum AI.   Current Chinese economic woes are providing the momentum for pre-emptive strikes at the semiconductor industry, and an inverted triangle is neither a secure nor stable structure for a supply chain.

The silicon future

This article proposes the concept of the silicon future—a privileged temporal position that functionally precedes the present—to argue for an increased focus on temporality and the role it plays in technodeterminist discourse. By interpreting how Silicon Valley firms employ this silicon future as an inevitability that they themselves have already reached, the article describes a temporal paternalism—a claim to authority that validates itself not according to arguments or facts, but to temporal supremacy—that executives and venture capitalists rely on to justify their actions and investments. In kind, this article shows how this idea of an already-existing future is used by big tech to frame its own inventions as inevitable, unregulatable, and beyond critique. Using news reports and other publicfacing technophilic materials, it traces the temporal forms that underwrite the power of Silicon Valley’s technodeterminism.

A Critical Inquiry into ‘Abuse’ in EU Competition Law

Abstract Disagreement abounds on what exactly constitutes an ‘abuse’ within article 102 TFEU, EU competition law’s prohibition of an abuse of a dominant position. This situation is highly undesirable, given the important role this prohibition is expected to play in alleviating concerns about substantial market power and its use in important sectors, typified by actions against ‘Big Tech’. This article responds to this problem by analysing and synthesising the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union and its evolution to establish the constituent elements of an exclusionary ‘abuse’. The article corrects crucial legal misconceptions, including the putative dichotomy between violations ‘by object’ and ‘by effect’; the assumed disparate legal tests for pricing and non-pricing conduct; and the lost distinction between the ‘as efficient competitor test’ and the ‘as efficient competitor standard’. This critical inquiry allows one to draw concrete predictions on the future development of this challenging, yet vital, area of law.

Big AI: Cloud infrastructure dependence and the industrialisation of artificial intelligence

Critical scholars contend that ‘There is no AI without Big Tech’. This study delves into the substantial role played by major technology conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google (Alphabet), in the ‘industrialisation of artificial intelligence’. This concept encapsulates the shift of AI technologies from the research and development stage to practical, real-world applications across diverse industry sectors, resulting in new dependencies and associated investments. We employ the term ‘Big AI’ to encapsulate the structural convergence of AI and Big Tech, characterised by the profound interdependence of AI with the infrastructure, resources, and investments of these major technology companies. Using a ‘technographic’ approach, our study scrutinises the infrastructural support and investments of Big Tech in the AI sector, focussing on corporate partnerships, acquisitions, and financial investments. Additionally, we conduct a detailed examination of the complete spectrum of cloud platform products and services offered by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. We demonstrate that AI is not merely an abstract idea but an actual technology stack encompassing infrastructure, models, applications, and an ecosystem of applications and companies relying on this stack. Significantly, these tech giants have seamlessly integrated all three components of the stack into their cloud offerings. Furthermore, they have developed industry-focussed solutions and marketplaces aimed at attracting third-party developers and businesses, fostering the growth of a broader AI ecosystem. This analysis underscores the intricate interdependence between AI and cloud infrastructure, emphasising the industry-specific aspects of cloud AI.

India To Replace Information Technology Act With The Proposed Digital India Act: Out With The Old, In With The New?

India is still in its nascent stage where cyber laws are concerned. However, the Indian government has ambitious plans to overhaul the cyber framework and bring it in line with global best practices. The nucleus of this framework in the proposed Digital India Act (DIA) which is intended to replace the existing Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act). The government has noted that the IT Act is unable to adapt with the rapidly evolving cyber sector and intends to overcome these shortcomings with the DIA. The governments, through the DIA, intents to bring about enhanced safety, classification of intermediaries, fair and open internet and increased accountability. While the DIA is a step in the right direction to ensure that India stays current, it has the potential to considerably impact Big Tech and their balance sheets. Privacy, Data Protection, Cyber Security, Intermediary, Safety, Global, News, India, Big Tech

As Hype Fades, LLMs Gaining Acceptance in Upstream as New Age Research and Coding Tool

After using ChatGPT-4 for more than a year, Clinton Lott has made familiarity with the large language model (LLM), a requirement for new software programming hires. The director of Houston-based Spotter Tech gave this reasoning: “Taking 2 hours to do something that ChatGPT can do in 15 seconds is unacceptable today.” It’s a line you’re likely to hear from the most ardent champions of LLMs which have simultaneously reignited the world’s interest in and ire for artificial intelligence (AI). And while Spotter Tech, a small hydraulic fracturing data specialist, may be an exception with its hiring practices, it is far from the only upstream company embracing the new technology. Both BP and Shell have recently given thousands of employees access to Microsoft’s new cloud service called Copilot, which at its core is powered by GPT-4, OpenAI’s latest and most capable LLM. Others including ExxonMobil have placed use of LLMs under lockdown while still signaling a long-term interest in their embrace. As chair of SPE’s Data Science & Engineering Analytics Technical Section, Pushpesh Sharma has spent the past several months speaking with peers in the industry about how and where LLMs are being used. The product manager for field automation firm Aspen Technology told JPT that it’s clear from those conversations that a good number of energy firms are interested in tailoring the technology to their needs, albeit many are doing so quietly as it remains early days. “The big focus right now is on what they call fine tuning,” he said. “You take an existing base model that one of the big tech companies have created and make it more of a fit for your business. It’s kind of like taking a graduate student and then letting them work on their PhD with very specific subject matter.” While OpenAI’s ChatGPT has become the popular symbol of LLMs, there are a growing number of alternatives in the mix. In February, Google introduced its latest model called Gemini 1.5 which seeks to rival GPT-4. There are also open source LLMs that oil and gas companies can use as templates for internal projects. Or they may turn to other big tech firms such as NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services (AWS) which are in the business of helping industrials build and train their own private, custom LLMs. SPE joined the trend after inking a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in October with AI firm i2k Connect and Aramco Americas. The collaboration is expected to result in a new domain-specific LLM that industry engineers and researchers can use to answer questions with more technical depth than can be done with the current slate of commercial offerings. One enabling aspect of this current phase of experimentation with LLM technology is retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). The method is considered essential for models to provide more-accurate and actionable responses by extending their scope beyond initial training datasets to include more authoritative and even real-time data.

보험비교플랫폼 규율 방향

Even after the insurance comparison and recommendation services of fintech companies, including big tech companies, were allowed as a regulatory special case, it took more time for the service to start. Now, big tech companies are allowed to enter the insurance market. This is desirable in that it has a net function of bringing competition to the insurance market, rationally adjusting the price of insurance products according to the market mechanism and increasing the convenience of insurance for consumers. However, it is now time to pay attention to prevent consumer damage by framing business conduct regulations well.
 Referring to overseas cases that have experienced such services and faced regulatory concerns before us, we can come to the conclusion that we do not need to be bound by the principle of same function, same regulation. Even among traditional insurance brokers and platform companies, there are significant differences between small fintechs and big techs in terms of market power and group structure. Even if they provide the same service, there is a need to establish an entity-based dual regulatory system. The Korean insurance market is expected to have a greater impact than in the West because it has not experienced traditional insurance brokerage services, and there will be a need for a stronger regulatory framework. As big tech is allowed to enter the new financial market of insurance, it should not accept the strengthened behavioral regulation as an unfair regulation. On the contrary, there is an advantage to expanding insurance services within the framework of legislative regulation if it proves its role in promoting the convenience and welfare of insurance consumers under enhanced behavioral regulation.
 For the time being, the system will be guided by the financial authorities, but we should prepare for legislation. While the focus will be on business conduct regulation, the framework for prudential regulation should also be discussed in stages.

“Quantum 3.0”: What Will It Mean for War, Peace, and World Order?

Without quantum mechanics, the nuclear and information revolutions of the twentieth century would not have happened. In this article, we examine how new quantum technologies are coming to reshape war and peace in the twenty-first century. Research and development across quantum computing, communications, and sensing has taken on the dynamic of a “quantum race” between major powers, big tech, and academic institutions. A quantum advantage in these areas could radically reshape political and economic as well as strategic balances of power. In a world already marked by global entanglement, deep uncertainty, and superpositional states of war and peace, quantized modes of understanding need to expand from the natural and physical sciences into the social and political sciences, which remain stuck in causal, linear, and deterministic worldviews inherited from the seventeenth century. We use this article to begin to push beyond the classical limits of traditional international relations to consider new epistemic tools, ethical frameworks, and geopolitical strategies for a world order transformed by Quantum 3.0.

The fight for our personal data: analyzing the economics of data and privacy on digital platforms

Purpose Personal data is a powerful tool. The more someone know about us, the more power they got over us. But who will control the most of our personal data? Does the government and the big tech really care about our personal data? This paper aims to look at data practices, data-related policy making as well as its economic consequences in the context of emerging economies. Design/methodology/approach Using qualitative methods such as literature review and analysis of numerous government documents, this paper inquires into the dynamics in the use of data by the business sectors, explains how data governance can add value to the business sectors while ensuring customers’ data privacy protection based on the data governance mechanism framework and details what it takes. Findings Using the case of Indonesian recent development on data privacy regulation, this paper describes the problems and threats to personal data protection. The advent of latest computing and mobile technology is shifting power relations between the governments, the big tech, as well as the end users. To conclude, the strategy and policy recommendations for implementing data privacy protection are also presented. Originality/value This paper provides a timely synthesis of data practices in the context of developing countries, particularly in relation to policy making and economic consequences. This paper also identifies and shares several promising future research ideas.

Cornelius Castoriadis’ agonistic theory of the future of work at Amazon Mechanical Turk

ABSTRACT Digital innovations are rapidly changing the contemporary workplace. Big Tech companies marketing algorithmic management increasingly decide on the Future of Work. Political responses, however, often focus on managing the impact of these technologies on workers. They leave the question of how these technologies are designed or how workers can determine their own futures unanswered. This approach risks surrendering the Future of Work debate to techno-determinist imaginaries aligned with corporate interests. Using Cornelius Castoriadis’ early writings on worker struggles in French Tayloristic factories and his later oeuvre on conflictual social imaginaries, I propose an agonistic approach to the Future of Work. Not merely companies implementing workplace technologies, but also workers themselves possess agency in determining the Future of Work. Workers’ frequent contestations against machinic surveillance and technologically mediated coordination of the labour process disclose an alternative Future of Work in which technologies are used to enhance worker autonomy rather than bureaucratic control. Worker struggles at Amazon Mechanical Turk illustrate this agonistic dynamic: Amazon mobilizes algorithmic management to fragment and control a workforce of globally dispersed remote workers, but the latter form online social communities and create counter-technologies to reappropriate control over the labour process.

Access Rules: Freeing Data from Big Tech for a Better Future

Access Rules: Freeing Data from Big Tech for a Better Future