From the steam engine to electricity to the internet, technology has had a profound impact on the modern world. In the coming decade, five powerful emerging technologies are poised to fundamentally reshape societies.
The EU and like-minded partners can pass laws and regulations that encourage research, development, and innovation while still protecting public safety and individual agency. Understanding the risks associated with these technologies and how they intersect with one another is an essential first step.
Changes in markets and global power dynamics are already underway. As Thierry Breton observed earlier this year, “We have entered a global race in which the mastery of technologies is central” to navigating the “new geopolitical order.”
To be sure, technological disruption is not a new phenomenon. What sets today’s emerging technologies apart is that they have reached a point where even their creators struggle to understand them.
Consider, for example, generative artificial intelligence. The precise mechanisms by which large language models like ChatGPT generate responses to user prompts are still not fully understood, even by their own developers.
What we do know is that AI and other rapidly advancing technologies, such as quantum technologies, biotechnology, neurotechnology, and climate-intervention tech, are growing increasingly influential by the day.
These might sound like far-off issues - mere speculation. But the research suggests that some of these technologies could be deployed before the end of this Parliamentary term.
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The biological sequences for most viral families are available online and the raw materials needed to synthesise or modify them can be ordered with a few clicks. Before the end of this decade, benchtop DNA synthesisers could become capable of printing the entire genomes of some of the simpler viruses and potentially creating new pathogens.
Where Europe needs to get ahead of the curve
There is a growing consensus that a truly competitive Europe must win some of the innovation battles ahead of us.
Over the past 20 years, a handful of American tech giants have invested heavily in research and amassed wealth and talent that empowers them to capture new markets before potential competitors emerge. Such concentration of innovation power enables these few players to maintain their market dominance – and to call the shots on how their technologies are used worldwide. Regulators have scrambled to enact societal safeguards for increasingly powerful, complex technologies, and the public-private knowledge gap is worsening.
It is time for EU decision-makers to get ahead of the next curve. They must educate themselves on what exactly is happening at the cutting edge. Waiting until new technologies are introduced to the market is waiting too long.
For example, in addition to developing vaccines and early detection systems to trace the spread of viruses, bioengineers are developing new tools to engineer molecules, cells, or entire organisms, leading to new medicines, materials, and crops. Neuralink - a company owned by Elon Musk, who also owns X (formerly Twitter) - is working on trials with chip implants in the bodies of disabled people, and on enhancing the speed at which humans communicate with systems through direct brain-computer interaction.
Meanwhile, quantum engineers are developing a new type of computer that could break existing encryption systems crucial for cybersecurity and privacy. With rapid planetary heating and associated droughts, floods and storms now a clear and present threat, there are growing numbers of leaders exploring radical options for curbing global warming through technological interventions like solar radiation modification, but we still face a dearth of real-world research, and lack the global governance structures to decide jointly and – should we want to – make them work to the benefit of all in the long term.
While these developments hold great promise, applying them recklessly could lead to irreversible harm. The destabilising effect of unregulated social media on political systems over the past decades is a prime example.
The importance of EU policy
Regardless of whether one is excited by the possibilities of technological innovation or concerned about potential risks, the unique characteristics, corporate power, and global scale of these technologies require guardrails and oversight. These companies’ immense power and global reach, together with the potential for misuse and unintended consequences, underscore the importance of ensuring that these systems are used in ways that benefit society.
Here, governments face a seemingly impossible task: they must oversee systems that are not fully understood by their creators while also trying to anticipate future breakthroughs. To navigate this dilemma, policymakers must deepen their understanding of how these technologies function, as well as the interplay between them.
To this end, regulators must have access to independent information. Democratic leaders need policy-oriented expertise about emerging technologies – not lobbyists’ framings.
The EU is uniquely positioned to govern emerging technologies on the basis of solid rule of law. Over the last decade, the EU has emerged as a global leader in technology policy, ushering in a wave of new digital and data laws—many of them first-of-a-kind, landmark legislations—that together form a strong legal basis underpinning Europe’s markets and societies. From the flagship data protection law (General Data Protection Regulation) to online platform regulation (Digital Services Act), to modernising digital competition (Digital Markets Act), to the world’s first artificial intelligence law (Artificial Intelligence Act), these laws underscore the EU’s commitment to fostering innovation, protecting fair markets, and safeguarding democratic principles, setting the stage for a more secure and human-centric digital future.
But these recent measures are just the beginning. Implementing, enforcing, updating, and future-proofing such regulations will be a never-ending task. And even as it performs this task for AI, the EU needs to ensure robust frameworks along similar lines for domains such as biotechnology, neurotechnology and climate intervention technologies.
To learn more, contact Rowan Emslie, CCO of ICFG at r.emslie@icfg.eu.