The next wave of generative foundation models (GFMs) succeeding ChatGPT and DALL-E, will make indistinguishable and arbitrarily manipulable simulation of human content (e.g. video, voice, documents) ubiquitous, liquidating much of the foundation of social cooperation and trust.

Maintaining trust and collaboration will require a revolution in verification and dramatically expanded applications of cryptography. Luckily Web3 ecosystems like Ethereum and countries like Taiwan have been coping with similar threats for years now. In this talk, I will draw lessons from these experiences to help individuals and organizations of all sizes survive and thrive in this disruption.

I am the co-inventor of Quadratic Funding, the hottest new approach to supporting social entrepreneurship and cross silo-collaboration within companies, I am Microsoft’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer Political Economist and Social Technologist and Founder of the RadicalxChange Foundation. 

I will explain how QF works, how it has been mathematically proven as the optimal way to support public goods and how it is transforming open source software, the blockchain, media and social service provision.  Whether you’re looking to tap the wisdom of your employees to catalyze new cross-company entrepreneurship or catalyze effective charitable giving, QF is one of the most powerful tools available today and there’s no one better to learn about it from than its pioneer.

As a former professor of economics at the University of Chicago, I developed the economic theory behind many recent advances in antitrust policy, from the 2010 US merger guidelines to the use of antitrust to protect workers.  As Microsoft’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer Political Economist and Social Technologist, I am today at the forefront of technology competition and regulatory policy. 

My talk will cover some of the most innovative approaches to addressing the problems of technology monopoly platforms, including treating data as labor, forming collective bargaining institutions such as data coalitions, the democratization or utilization of platforms and the use of new open protocols to facilitate meaningful portability.  Today every company is a digital company and we all depend on the infrastructure controlled by a few dominant technology platforms.  Here is a clear glimpse into the future that will determine the fate of your business and how you can shape it.

Democracy and technology are increasingly at loggerheads, with technology undermining democracy and democracies neglecting and constraining technology.

The reason for this conflict is our choice to invest in directions for technology (artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies) that are fundamentally antithetical to democratic pluralism. But a different path is possible and has been pioneered in the world's most advanced digital democracy, Taiwan. In this talk, I will describe Plurality, a vision for the future of technology rooted in the history of the internet and personal computers and matured in the Taiwanese geopolitical forge that focuses on empowering collaboration across social differences. I'll show how this new vision goes far beyond politics to transform media, productivity, health and more.