25 October 2024 | The 23rd edition of Future States by Apolitical CEO and Co-Founder Robyn Scott. Subscribe to the newsletter

In this week's edition:

  • Are governments ready for new technologies?
  • Announcing Apolitical Day
  • ‘Thorny’ issue for a German mayor

Powerful emerging technologies are accelerating into view — and governments need to understand their implications before they arrive in the mainstream. The explosion of generative AI illustrates what happens when governments aren’t prepared. To see this in practice, if you’re a member of Apolitical, visit our nearly 5,000-member AI in Government community of practice. If you take a look at the ideas and questions fellow public servants are grappling with, you’ll quickly see that the knowledge gap around AI is as big as the ideas for its application.

Our research underscores this gap. Only 35% of public servants have received guidance on AI, and only 15% have received training. This gap needs to be closed. But instead of scrambling to upgrade knowledge of AI alone, governments should equip whole public services with the capability to deal with all the critical technologies — recently arrived and on the horizon.

Fasten your seatbelts for a quick tour of some of the technologies to expect! Let’s start with geoengineering, which includes solar radiation management. It's a controversial topic, but as the climate crisis worsens faster than climate action responds, research into the field is receiving more investment and interest, albeit quietly. This technology urgently needs to be better understood and discussed. It may present a critical contingency plan. It also comes with many risks, which would be made worse in the event of unilateral action from a desperate state in the grip of heatwaves and droughts.

Growing people: a regulator’s nightmare. I’ve written before about artificial wombs, and how we can already grow sheep in them. I’ll keep writing about the technology because it illustrates the power and complexity of many emerging technologies. Great for would-be parents who can't carry children. But what about dictators who want cannon fodder for wars? And — less scary but more likely — what about a nation in demographic collapse, which needs more people to stave off extinction? What’s the moral landscape for states growing children? If you think AI regulation is hard, this is the regulatory Olympics.

And we probably won’t even grow humans as we know them. Mind-machine integration has also begun in earnest, and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are no longer confined to science fiction. Neuralink, Elon Musk’s venture, and companies like Synchron are developing and testing implantable devices that could allow humans to control computers or prosthetics directly with their brains by sticking electrodes into brain tissue — a potential game changer for neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease. Human trials are still in the very early stages, with much still to be learned. Here the line between utopian and dystopian requires a microscope to discern.

DNA recipes in your kitchen. Staying on the topic of not-quite-human, synthetic biology is enabling us to redesign living organisms. Sounds like the preserve of the experts, right? Think again. For just $129 you can buy a CRISPR DNA editing kit on Amazon. Bioterrorism is the most obvious risk, but there are many others — and, as with most of these technologies, there is much to gain as well.

AI is supercharging change: technologies like synthetic biology and quantum computing are likely to advance faster thanks to AI. Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Deep Mind, writes about this in his excellent book, The Coming Wave. His Deepmind Co-Founder Demis Hassabis just won the Nobel prize in chemistry for his work to harness AI in protein folding, which could be transformative for drug discovery. Quantum computing meanwhile could be accelerated by AI in multiple ways, including the optimisation of quantum algorithms and improvements in error correction (a current Achilles Heel). And the sooner quantum computing gets good, the sooner a lot of humanity’s passwords are good for nothing.

Think things on earth are crazy? Try space. The revanchist space industry is currently worth over $500 billion annually and is projected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035. The 2020 Artemis Accords seek to regulate things in space like peaceful purposes, transparency and resource extraction. But they have yet to be signed by China (the world’s second-largest space-faring nation), Russia and India.

Is this going to keep you awake at night? It should! Governments that are not prepared for the arrival of technologies risk missing out on huge opportunities for citizens — or worse, being caught off guard by unintended consequences like BCI-enabled surveillance or quantum-driven cybersecurity breaches to name just a few. Cross-cutting questions governments need to pay particular attention to include how to establish adaptive and flexible frameworks to accommodate these new technologies, promoting equality of access (so that it’s not just a privileged few with access to their benefits), and international cooperation on managing both opportunities and downsides.

A new Government Campus on Emerging Technologies. To help governments do just this, I’m excited to share that we’ll soon be announcing a new Government Campus on Emerging Technologies. This has particular implications for peace and security, which I’ll expand on in coming editions.

The UK government took an important first step on these issues recently, announcing a new Regulatory Innovation Office, intended to “bring new technologies to the public, faster.” But without building public servants' understanding and confidence around these new technologies quickly and well, momentum may be harder.

Robyn Scott

Apolitical CEO & Co-Founder

In our diary

FWD50, 4-6 November, Ottawa, Canada | FWD50 is always a highlight on the Apolitical calendar, and I thoroughly enjoyed 2023’s gathering. If you’re attending in Ottawa this year, say hi to Jake Hirsch-Allen who will be representing Apolitical!

Apolitical Day, 20 November, London | Hosted by Apolitical and the Apolitical Foundation, the event will connect global thought leaders in government with our network of philanthropic, academic and corporate partners. The conversations will span the critical topics of our time from advanced technologies and climate to political leadership and defence. We will stream selected sessions on our YouTube channel and share highlights afterwards.

Recommendations

The state of learning in government, our new global insights report, is out. We surveyed over 2,000 public servants, with plenty of interesting data emerging. We found that 1 in 3 public servants lack clarity about which skills they need to develop to be successful. A smaller cohort, around 1 in 10, display high levels of uncertainty about their learning and career path. We call these ‘lost learners’. Work is more volatile; the relevance of knowledge and skills drains more quickly as technological innovation gets faster and faster. Governments need to support public servants and their learning journey to navigate this constant change. Give it a read.

We also had fun experimenting with a new AI tool, NotebookLM, to convert the report into an entirely AI-generated mini podcast, which the Apolitical team said is “jaw-dropping, but tonally odd.” Take a listen and let me know what you think.

And finally...

🌵 What’s the best way to manage a thorny issue in government workplaces? In Plettenberg, Germany, the humble cactus has been banned from town halls, schools and nurseries after a prickly incident left a man injured. The mayor's quirky decree, while seeming over-the-top, aims to protect staff and students from any more spiky surprises in municipal buildings!

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