TOOLS AND WEAPONS : THE PROMISE AND THE PERIL OF THE DIGITAL AGE

Περίληψη

Microsoft President Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief: when your technology
changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world you have helped
create.
This might seem uncontroversial, but it flies in the face of a tech sector long obsessed
with rapid growth and sometimes on disruption as an end in itself. While sweeping digital
transformation holds great promise, we have reached an inflection point. The world has
turned information technology into both a powerful tool and a formidable weapon, and
new approaches are needed to manage an era defined by even more powerful inventions
like artificial intelligence. Companies that create technology must accept greater
responsibility for the future, and governments will need to regulate technology by moving
faster and catching up with the pace of innovation.
In Tools and Weapons, Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne bring us a captivating narrative
from the cockpit of one of the world's largest and most powerful tech companies as it
finds itself in the middle of some of the thorniest emerging issues of our time. These are
challenges that come with no pre-existing playbook, including privacy, cybercrime and
cyberwar, social media, the moral conundrums of artificial intelligence, big tech's
relationship to inequality, and the challenges for democracy, far and near. While in no
way a self-glorifying "Microsoft memoir," the book pulls back the curtain remarkably wide
onto some of the company's most crucial recent decision points as it strives to protect the
hopes technology offers against the very real threats it also presents. There are huge
ramifications for communities and countries, and Brad Smith provides a thoughtful and
urgent contribution to that effort.