A world infused with new technologies demands courageous, imaginative policy solutions that will both harness technology’s tremendous potential for good and mitigate the displacement effects of rapid change. This is one of the greatest policy challenges of our generation, and one of the biggest gaps in the prospectus across the political spectrum.
A world infused with new technologies demands courageous, imaginative policy solutions that will both harness technology’s tremendous potential for good and mitigate the displacement effects of rapid change. This is one of the greatest policy challenges of our generation, and one of the biggest gaps in the prospectus across the political spectrum.
This paper is our first contribution to a new platform for public policy in an era of rapid technological change. It lays out an initial set of policy proposals that are bold and ambitious, pragmatic with respect to the broader political environment, and deliverable with the right momentum behind them.
The opportunities are truly transformational: delivering lifelong access to education and good work, building world-class internet infrastructure, automating government administration and doubling down on front-line staff, bringing cutting edge tools and business models into the public sector, developing a new social contract with big tech – and much more besides. This is the sort of territory that centre-ground leaders who are serious about inspiring people with a practical, radical vision for the future ought to be occupying.
Of course, with opportunities come risks and unknowns – so whilst there’s a huge prize to be won in terms of harnessing new technologies for the greater good, we also have to make a determined effort to protect the most vulnerable and ensure that power and responsibility are apportioned justly. Faced with challenges that are so big and complex, it’s easy to see why politicians and policymakers often end up paralysed, look to the past, or take only the most cautious of steps forward. But this is a gross abdication of responsibility: the technologies around us cannot be uninvented, and must be responded to confidently and with clarity of purpose.
This, then, is the world as we ought to be talking about it: with both optimism and realism, and a firm view that although government remains essential, its role must necessarily evolve alongside new technologies and the wider environment. Our proposals build on what’s been achieved already, embrace the astonishing opportunities on offer, and address the challenges they bring with them head on.
The future is arriving now, and together we can change it for the better.
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