Recently Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, and Carol Browne shared their top 10 Tech Policy Issues for the 2020s. Achieving number 1 status was “Sustainability”. For purposes of this list, sustainability is shorthand for climate change issues. Both governments and corporations will be expected to prioritize sustainability. The movement is now changing from direct sources of carbon emissions to indirect sources – meaning companies’ entire value chain from manufacturing to the concrete used in new buildings.
Carbon issues are now considered “multifaceted” – defined as including impacts on water, waste, biodiversity, ecosystems and just about anything else that can be stated as affecting this category. According to Mr. Smith, data science, artificial intelligence, and ultimately quantum computing will all be used toward new technologies and innovations directed at addressing this concern.
The other issues (in order of importance) are 2) defending democracy (both internally and internationally); 3) needing to have healthy journalism; 4) privacy in an AI era; 5) tension between digital technology and geopolitics (particularly related to the movement of large data sets and economics); 6) digital safety; 7) internet inequality; 8) a tech “cold war” (between the US and China); 9) ethnics for AI – humans need to govern artificial intelligence; and 10) jobs and income inequality in an AI economy.
In a future blog I will discuss how these developments will only make communications strategies and public affairs some of the most important sources of strength for successful corporate outcomes in relationships with governments and the public during this upcoming turbulent decade.