International Context and the Specific Value of EU–US Collaboration

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Jonathan Cave discusses the overall international setting as it affects research and innovation (R&I) and policy collaboration between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US).

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Jonathan Cave discusses the overall international setting as it affects research and innovation (R&I) and policy collaboration between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US).

Image courtesy of interviewee. April 10, 2024

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This video video discusses the collaborative efforts between the EU and the US in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), emphasizing their historical ties and shared values. It outlines the need for collaboration due to emerging global challenges, particularly in rapidly developing technologies such as 5G, the Internet of Things, and cybersecurity.

The efforts included creating policy briefs, conducting studies to assess the ICT landscape, and organizing meetings between key stakeholders, which ultimately led to a book detailing common challenges and opportunities in the technological landscape of both regions.

This video video also notes that while both regions have common industrial interests, differences in regulatory approaches can lead to opportunities for learning and innovation. The project highlighted the need for coordination in addressing global issues like climate change and the impact of advanced technologies on society.

Collaboration is described as beneficial for joint policy developments, ethical frameworks, and leveraging the strengths of each region's scientific and industrial capacities. However, it also cautions about potential risks in collaborative endeavors, including the capture by vested interests and the challenges of maintaining a balanced approach to scientific research and technological development.

Finally, the document stresses the importance of navigating complexities inherent in the intersection of public and private interests and ensuring equitable cooperation, with an eye on global competition and innovation requirements.

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Here are some key quotes from the video you , focusing on the themes of EU-U.S. collaboration in ICT, scientific principles, and the challenges of technology and policy:

1. **Historical Convideo and Collaboration**:
- "The convideo of this study was, there's a long history between the EU and the US in general, but particularly in areas relating to ICT... and that long history includes shared institutions, shared values, and shared ... commercial cultures."

2. **Republic of Science vs. Kingdom of Industry**:
- "One would expect these collaborations to be built on existing, ... Republic of Science principles. The idea that scientists everywhere are part of the same common culture, and only transitory allegiance to their countries. But next to the republic of science is the kingdom of industry."

3. **Need for Collaboration**:
- "It was felt necessary for the EU and the US to collaborate together... because of the pace at which some of the challenges were developing, and in particular, certain types of technologies that were developing quite rapidly."

4. **Focus Areas and Challenges**:
- "The project had a series of technical areas that it paid attention to, in particular 5G, the Internet of things and cyber physical systems, and some application areas like big data, cybersecurity, next generation Internets."

5. **Comparative Experimentation**:
- "It was useful to conduct a kind of natural experiment to see whether these differences were significant or whether we could learn very much from each other."

6. **Regulatory Challenges**:
- "The law as it currently stands requires both of those to bring in antitrust prosecution. ... Technology, by removing humans from the loop, bypasses the law and the problems could become harder."

7. **Ethical Considerations**:
- "If the technologies that we develop, we in the US, we in the EU, develop, embed these values and they are spread out around the world, then as the technology spreads, the values that go with them also spread."

8. **Regulatory Differences**:
- "The EU has adopted a particular approach... which is a triangle of riskiness, with greater controls on those aspects of AI that are seen to be most risky, whereas the US has a more sector-specific and light touch approach."

9. **Natural Experimentation**:
- "The point about collaboration is that that natural experimentation takes place at the same moment... to benchmark them against each other."

10. **Common Goals and Challenges**:
- "Collaboration is not an unmitigated benefit, and it does carry certain risks... among them are the possibility of capture by particular incumbent industrial parties and interests."

These quotes encapsulate key ideas from the video regarding the historical convideo of EU-U.S. ICT collaboration, the importance of shared values in scientific inquiry, the regulatory challenges faced in the convideo of rapidly evolving technologies, and the ethical implications of technological development.

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The context of this study was, there's a long history

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between the EU and the US in general,

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but particularly in areas relating to ICT

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and that long history includes, shared institutions,

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shared values, and shared, let's call them scientific

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and commercial cultures.

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And there were many new developments in ICTs

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and many new global challenges to which they were connected,

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where it seemed very useful for the EU

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and the US to collaborate in the ordinary course of events.

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And I'm talking somewhat out of turn here.

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One would expect these collaborations to be built on

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existing, let's call them, Republic

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of Science principles.

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The idea that scientists everywhere are part

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of the same common culture,

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and only transitory allegiance to their countries.

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But next to the republic

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of science is the kingdom of industry.

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And in the kingdom of industry, there are divisions

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and there are specific interests.

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Now, as we move forward with this, in many cases,

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these are handled by free trade agreements

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between different blocks of countries.

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And increasingly new style free trade agreements include

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specific provisions for scientific collaboration,

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sharing intellectual property, and so on.

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However, the attempts to build such a free trade agreement

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between the US

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and the EU called ttip, didn't get very far in part

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because of political instability on one side or the other.

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And so therefore, it was felt necessary

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because of the pace at which some

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of the challenges were developing,

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and in particular, certain types of technologies

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that were developing quite rapidly.

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It was felt necessary for the EU

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and the US to collaborate together.

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So we put this project together.

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The project had a series of technical areas

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that it paid attention to, in particular 5G the Internet

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of things and cyber physical systems,

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and some application areas like big data, cybersecurity,

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next generation Internets,

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and certain policy tools like spectrum policy

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and standardization,

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and certain, let's say, ideas built on top

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of these like smart cities

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and other forms of digital communities.

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We assembled a team of US and EU experts,

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and with support from the European Union

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and American institutions like, NIST

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and the National Science Foundation,

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we put together a series of studies, first of all

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to assess the current landscape of ICT

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and policy, then to identify the industrial drivers,

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the sectoral needs and the kind of priority areas,

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shared priority areas,

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And to understand the nature of the relation

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between the EU and the US in these areas.

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And in particular, there are some things

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where we had common interests and common approaches,

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and that you might call just we're

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substitutes for each other.

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There are other areas in which we did things differently.

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And it was useful to conduct a kind of natural experiment

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to see whether these differences were significant

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or whether we could learn very much from each other.

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And then finally, in carrying it out, we, in addition

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to doing the panorama and identifying the drivers

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and the opportunities, we created a series of policy briefs,

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held a number of international meetings

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between study personnel and other people in the field

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and government officials and,

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industry people, and wrote a book.

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And the book contains the results of it.

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It has, a number of chapters on the technologies,

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on the application areas,

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and on the broader vision,

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identifying the situation in each country, the,

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common challenges and how we might work together.

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So that's the basic background of this study. It.

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The other thing I should mention is

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that it took place in the context defined

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by certain EUUS collaborative activities

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that I'll talk about shortly,

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but it led on to a series of further studies,

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including one called TrackStar that built on the results

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of this and fed into policy coordination activities,

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and has also fed into actions

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by the Internet Governance Foundation

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and other types of international civil

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society organizations.

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So it proved to be quite productive in terms of

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joint policy developments,

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developing ethical frameworks and so on.

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Well, first of all, in this area between science

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and policy, we found it useful

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to separate the two directions in which they interact.

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So in some cases, there's what you might call,

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let's say research based policy, which is to say,

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for example, the things that we know about

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artificial intelligence.

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Just to take your current hot topic,

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particularly generative ai,

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and machine learning, these raise a number

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of policy issues.

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Some of the problems we used to worry about quite hard,

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we can automate away.

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And so instead of having laws

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and regulations, we can have, algorithms, for example,

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that detect certain kinds of bad behavior

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and, deal

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with them like automated content mediation online.

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Uh, some other policy areas are made harder by the influence

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of, these technologies.

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So again, when firms price their goods,

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if they learn about each other through the use

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of data analytics, it's quite easy

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for the pricing algorithms that they use

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to fall into monopolistic behavior without either

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communication or intention.

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Now, the law as it currently stands, requires both of those

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to bring in antitrust prosecution.

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So the technology, by removing humans from the loop,

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bypasses the law and the problems could become harder.

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And it may be that we develop problems which

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are entirely new problems.

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Uh, a lot of our legal structures are predicated on the role

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of human beings, sovereign human beings

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who could be held responsible for their decisions.

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However, in a world in which we are surrounded by machines,

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machines that take actions without our direct supervision

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and where we take action in response

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to prompts from machines that we don't fully understand,

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for example, computer-based, financial trading,

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that whole legal structure needs to be rethought,

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and we get wholly new types of problems.

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So in that case, the science triggers a challenge

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to the policy, and then of course, they're the reverse,

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which is where the policy requires us.

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So things like climate change, for example,

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requires certain types of scientific development

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that might not occur, in one national setting

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or another, and may require cooperation between,

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let's say the research base and industry

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and universities that wouldn't naturally happen

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in one setting or another.

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Well, that, having said that, in the eu,

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there have been a series of flagship programs,

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currently taking the form of horizon in Europe,

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but that dates all the way back to about 1984

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with the early framework programs.

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And those were, not pure research in the sense

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of the European Research Center, not pure science,

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but applied science, science for policy

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and science for industrial and economic development.

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And those things continue to the, these days.

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There's a new structure,

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however, which includes, an identification

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of global challenges

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and European industrial competitiveness.

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So the reason I mention that is

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that there are some problems like climate change

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that affect the whole world, in which case the US

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and the EU need to collaborate

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because the solutions embed some of our common values.

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And if we don't act together, we will be left behind

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and will be faced with technologies that have views,

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for example, of individual privacy

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or individual sovereignty that,

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we're not entirely on board with

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and can challenge our domestic, models.

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There are other things which come from this competitive

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environment that the countries that share a common lethal

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and regulatory heritage are facing increasing economic

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and scientific challenge from other parts of the world.

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And a new bipolarity is beginning to emerge.

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Um, without naming the countries involved,

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it should be fairly obvious to people who look

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that there are different interests that are not

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so much interested in competition in the economic sense of

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where we strive together and all become better,

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but the kind of competition in which one side wins,

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and that kind of, requires us to step up to the mark,

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particularly when there are strong differences

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as regards to these things.

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So the EU has this, plan based on global challenges

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and industrial competitiveness, where the idea is

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to have the kind of competition that fosters innovation

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and other kinds of efficiency.

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There's also been a lot of work to identify

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and strengthen, innovation infrastructures

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and ecosystems, those two things, which is

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that innovation doesn't take place only in a laboratory.

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And particularly with these new technologies,

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the most profound innovations come from the users

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who discover things to do with these, these devices

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and capabilities that were never intended by the inventors.

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Now, if left unattended

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and unregarded, they can lead to negative consequences,

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but it may also be that the pace of invention is so fast

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that we move on to a new technology

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before we've discovered the capabilities

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of the old technology.

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So in order to have the kind of innovation that helps us,

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we have these structures within the

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EU research establishment.

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The US, of course, has similar kinds of things.

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National Science Foundation, department of Defense,

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national Institutes of Health, department of Energy,

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all under a common umbrella called the national IT r

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and D program, the Knit RD,

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umbrella package.

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Between the two, there have been, there's been an agreement,

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a series of five-year agreements for scientific

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and technological cooperation

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that have been going on since 1998,

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and just last year was renewed.

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Uh, so it'll now run till, 2028

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unless something happens.

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Um, at the implementation level, this is controlled

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by an EU US joint consultative group

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or JCG, across a wide number of areas, not just ICT,

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but a lot of the application areas like cancer,

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climate change, human health, and so on.

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Um, there are also within the science

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establishments, particularly the publicly funded science

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establishments of both sides, provisions for collaboration

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and collaboration could mean working together on a common

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project where you are paid by your own.

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Uh, so US scientists paid for by NSF EU scientists paid for

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by ERC or,

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or the Horizon program where they get to work together,

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together, because as Britain discovered in the wake

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of Brexit, providing the money

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for the scientists without providing the opportunities

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for shared endeavor

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and shared intellectual property development,

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is almost worthless.

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It's just duplicating effort, in many cases.

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So this idea for joint awards,

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and joint funding of common programs that has been part

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of this collaborative infrastructure.

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And in that respect, it's probably worth noting

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that the US has been the highest, the largest

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of the third countries in terms of

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participating in EU funded research.

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And just as in the economic sphere where the EU

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and the US are the largest investors in each other's

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economies, although not if you just consider goods,

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but if you consider goods

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and services, the ties are very large and very deep.

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And so it seems quite natural to build on this in terms

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of the scientific collaboration, particularly

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because the economy increasingly now is predicated on

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continual innovation to seize new opportunities

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and to deal with old problems.

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There's one obvious advantage,

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which is the advantage of scale.

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They're just, they're two large scientific establishments

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put them together, and you have more than the sum

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of their parts, at least in principle.

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It also means travel to other places to do your work

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and travel to a different location can open up all

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kinds of new ideas.

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But at a more fundamental level,

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ICT technologies in particular often embed certain,

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ethical values.

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And these are not always perceived well by the people

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who developed those technologies.

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We've seen, for example,

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real-time facial recognition was developed to solve a,

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a particular problem, and people didn't really think through

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to what the implications

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of this would be when applied in different settings.

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And, so to a certain extent, if the technologies

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that we develop, we in the us we in the, in the EU

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develop, embed these values

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and they are spread out around the world, then

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as the technology spread, the values that go

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with them also spread.

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So it is a form of soft power collaboration.

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Another thing is that our r and d systems or research

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and innovation systems

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and our value chains contain many complimentary parts.

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So for example, although it's not no longer part of the eu,

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the UK has got quite an advantage in terms

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of developing advanced microchips in the form

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of arm holdings.

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And ARM doesn't actually produce anything.

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It just develops new ideas

14:45.285 --> 14:47.265
and patents, which are then produced

14:47.405 --> 14:49.905
by fab facilities in other countries.

14:50.365 --> 14:53.125
So to maintain and extend these value chains

14:53.305 --> 14:56.245
and to make sure that innovation at one level

14:56.775 --> 14:59.565
bears fruit at another level, it's necessary

14:59.585 --> 15:02.445
to have a degree of integration of the social

15:02.465 --> 15:03.525
and research system.

15:04.255 --> 15:07.605
There are also ethical frameworks.

15:07.985 --> 15:11.685
So things like what are fundamental values in terms

15:11.685 --> 15:14.925
of human autonomy, for example, in terms of the meaning

15:14.925 --> 15:16.845
of life and DNA and so forth.

15:17.375 --> 15:20.885
These things all inform the creation of scientific agendas,

15:21.105 --> 15:24.365
and it's good to share them with other people,

15:24.625 --> 15:25.765
who share your values.

15:26.265 --> 15:30.005
But there's probably two more concrete advantages.

15:30.665 --> 15:34.125
One is the trade difficulties between our two blocks,

15:34.505 --> 15:37.085
as I mentioned, they're very tightly tied to each other.

15:37.705 --> 15:39.605
We have the largest bilateral trade

15:39.605 --> 15:40.885
and investment relationship,

15:41.265 --> 15:43.645
and the most integrated economic relationship,

15:43.835 --> 15:45.525
including on regulation.

15:46.225 --> 15:48.445
And if you only think about goods, of course,

15:48.495 --> 15:51.925
China has overtaken this as far as trading with the eu.

15:52.265 --> 15:56.005
But if you look at it more generally, then it,

15:56.065 --> 15:57.685
it remains the EU and the us.

15:57.835 --> 16:00.245
However, we don't have a trade agreement.

16:00.905 --> 16:04.395
And so we, the other thing is that the EU

16:04.395 --> 16:08.755
and the us between them are the largest training partners

16:09.095 --> 16:11.395
of almost every other country in the world,

16:11.935 --> 16:13.035
one or the other of us.

16:14.055 --> 16:17.435
So the scope of this ability to sort of develop

16:17.535 --> 16:19.355
and promulgate our values

16:19.455 --> 16:22.675
and technologies whose impacts we understand

16:22.775 --> 16:26.355
and at least deal with, if not control,

16:27.095 --> 16:28.235
is really quite important.

16:28.335 --> 16:30.635
And neither one of us can do it on our own.

16:31.215 --> 16:35.425
But you also mentioned the, lifecycle issue.

16:36.085 --> 16:39.145
One of the problems with these technologies is

16:39.145 --> 16:43.865
that the lifecycles may be so short that it's not possible

16:44.445 --> 16:47.865
not just to see what innovative uses they can be put to,

16:48.165 --> 16:49.385
but what their impacts,

16:49.385 --> 16:51.825
what their effects on our daily life really are.

16:52.525 --> 16:54.745
So the things that we get these devices

16:55.045 --> 16:56.625
for are rarely the things

16:56.625 --> 16:58.465
that wind up being important to using them.

16:58.925 --> 17:02.985
By s sharing them out across two different regulatory

17:03.045 --> 17:06.825
and cultural settings, we get a broader sense of

17:06.825 --> 17:08.505
what might be coming down the pike.

17:08.965 --> 17:12.225
And in that sense, the relation between the EU

17:12.225 --> 17:15.625
and the US might be seen as a kind of natural experiment

17:16.095 --> 17:19.705
that we can learn from seeing whether the same technology

17:20.435 --> 17:23.225
plays out differently in one side or another.

17:24.255 --> 17:28.645
And sometimes it may be the case than in applications.

17:29.145 --> 17:32.605
We want to have a convergence, a convergence that's informed

17:32.665 --> 17:34.725
by a broad understanding of what works

17:34.725 --> 17:37.445
and what doesn't work in some other.

17:37.745 --> 17:41.485
And so let's say common standards like we might have for

17:42.005 --> 17:44.805
spectrum utilization or, r

17:44.805 --> 17:46.565
and d itself, for that matter in the,

17:46.705 --> 17:49.205
in the ISO 9,000 standards,

17:49.385 --> 17:51.765
are really useful in helping us to interoperate.

17:52.305 --> 17:54.805
In other cases, we may want to do different things,

17:55.305 --> 17:57.245
but there is a great difference

17:57.595 --> 17:59.765
between appropriate localization

18:00.095 --> 18:03.365
where we do things differently here than they do in the US

18:03.555 --> 18:06.605
because our economies are, our societies are different,

18:06.865 --> 18:09.725
and it suits the needs in both places to things

18:09.725 --> 18:11.325
that are merely fragmentation.

18:12.025 --> 18:15.645
And it's only through having that common infrastructure

18:15.705 --> 18:18.045
of collaboration, the movement of people

18:18.145 --> 18:21.405
and ideas, as well as information and money back

18:21.405 --> 18:24.445
and forth that we can be sure that we move towards,

18:24.655 --> 18:27.965
let's say a rich diversity rather than a kind

18:27.965 --> 18:29.085
of, fragmentation.

18:29.665 --> 18:33.405
And so having technology lifestyles that are long enough

18:33.425 --> 18:35.405
to allow us to discover these things

18:35.825 --> 18:37.725
before we've moved on to something else

18:38.195 --> 18:41.885
that we dimly understand is I think probably the best way

18:41.885 --> 18:44.445
of dealing with what some have seen

18:44.865 --> 18:47.805
as the existential threats posed

18:47.865 --> 18:50.205
by things like the singularity by,

18:50.525 --> 18:53.685
artificial intelligence, for example, or nanotechnology,

18:54.025 --> 18:57.445
or certainly biotechnology and, synthetic biology.

18:58.135 --> 19:00.085
These things need to be thought about,

19:00.465 --> 19:03.405
but in the white heat of global economic competition,

19:03.865 --> 19:06.925
we don't always have time to to reflect on them.

19:07.915 --> 19:09.435
I should start by saying that

19:09.955 --> 19:11.715
although this is kind of forward looking,

19:13.285 --> 19:17.055
that collaboration has already been working across many,

19:17.085 --> 19:18.775
many areas,

19:19.275 --> 19:21.015
and the drivers for

19:21.015 --> 19:24.855
that are not just common economic development.

19:24.955 --> 19:27.495
So one of the things that we know, for example, is

19:27.495 --> 19:30.735
that there are many multinational enterprises involved in

19:30.735 --> 19:33.655
this area, and they develop technologies,

19:33.685 --> 19:37.815
whether it's pharma or it in many, many countries,

19:37.835 --> 19:39.535
and apply them in many, many others.

19:40.125 --> 19:42.095
Some technologies that work,

19:42.555 --> 19:45.775
at least in a commercial sense in one country

19:45.875 --> 19:49.215
or one area, will not work quite so well in another.

19:49.595 --> 19:54.335
So at the moment, we can see this in a policy driven area,

19:54.785 --> 19:57.455
which is the regulation of artificial intelligence.

19:58.275 --> 20:02.135
And as you're probably aware, the eu,

20:02.915 --> 20:06.175
the us, the uk and China

20:06.875 --> 20:10.535
and many other countries have all begun experimenting

20:10.885 --> 20:15.535
with ways to determine what about AI needs to be regulated

20:15.755 --> 20:19.255
and how to control it when we can't really see

20:19.285 --> 20:20.695
what it's going to do yet.

20:21.115 --> 20:23.375
So if you have too much ex anti-regulation,

20:23.955 --> 20:26.455
the science doesn't develop in the right way,

20:27.035 --> 20:29.695
but if you wait until you see what's happened,

20:30.075 --> 20:31.975
it may in many cases be too late.

20:32.395 --> 20:35.055
The EU has adopted a particular approach,

20:35.505 --> 20:39.015
which is a triangle of riskiness, and with greater

20:39.035 --> 20:42.775
and greater controls on those developments, those aspects

20:42.775 --> 20:45.215
of AI that are seen to be most risky.

20:46.555 --> 20:49.065
And it's a very kind of civil law,

20:49.465 --> 20:51.465
prescriptive hard approach.

20:52.365 --> 20:55.065
The US has got a more sector specific

20:55.325 --> 20:59.625
and light touch approach, which allows more experimentation

21:00.005 --> 21:01.705
and gets us more towards an

21:01.705 --> 21:03.265
outcome-based form of regulation.

21:03.675 --> 21:07.345
Those produce different types of technological development.

21:08.085 --> 21:11.145
And to see the which one works

21:11.765 --> 21:14.985
and to be able to take, take, take the best out of both

21:14.985 --> 21:18.945
of them is I think a kind of unique opportunity that's kind

21:18.945 --> 21:19.985
of well underway.

21:20.285 --> 21:22.865
So the reasons why things might work in one place

21:22.865 --> 21:25.385
and not another might be things like

21:25.745 --> 21:26.945
cultural understandings.

21:27.285 --> 21:29.705
Uh, the realtime facial recognition,

21:29.705 --> 21:33.065
works differently in China than it does in,

21:33.485 --> 21:36.345
in in the West, in particularly places like the US

21:36.845 --> 21:40.305
or the eu, where concepts of privacy are very different.

21:40.925 --> 21:45.675
Um, the other aspect is

21:45.705 --> 21:49.255
that, some of the differences

21:50.525 --> 21:53.935
between the different countries can produce an understanding

21:53.995 --> 21:55.935
of these, scientific developments

21:56.285 --> 21:58.575
that may be more robust or future proof.

21:59.115 --> 22:00.975
So an example here

22:01.235 --> 22:05.735
of the policy driven side would be something like the GDPR,

22:05.755 --> 22:07.975
the the general Data protection Regulation,

22:08.465 --> 22:11.015
which set a bunch of regulatory challenges

22:11.315 --> 22:13.815
to which there could be technological answers.

22:14.395 --> 22:15.935
And one of the things that came out

22:15.935 --> 22:18.695
of it was the development of the technology for

22:19.085 --> 22:21.855
what might be considered anonymous profiling

22:21.855 --> 22:24.855
of people's activity online, a way

22:24.855 --> 22:27.055
of understanding the behavior, not of me,

22:27.395 --> 22:30.215
but of people like me online in ways

22:30.285 --> 22:32.735
that did not target me directly.

22:33.155 --> 22:35.655
And one of the interesting developments was that

22:35.655 --> 22:37.855
that technology developed in Europe

22:38.125 --> 22:40.575
because of the form of the GDPR

22:41.515 --> 22:44.015
was greatly sold in the United States

22:44.115 --> 22:46.255
and heavily demanded in the United States,

22:46.545 --> 22:49.655
which lacked any form of general privacy protection.

22:50.275 --> 22:53.135
So that was a clear example where the differences

22:53.135 --> 22:56.935
between the two countries allowed different types of things

22:57.075 --> 22:58.815
to happen that wouldn't have done otherwise.

22:59.795 --> 23:02.995
The, the same is true with regulation.

23:03.305 --> 23:06.635
That regulation particularly of areas that are affected

23:06.775 --> 23:09.995
by scientific activity, is sometimes shared

23:10.135 --> 23:13.035
and in common, which is what we do with standards,

23:13.035 --> 23:14.955
activities, international standards,

23:15.775 --> 23:18.635
and sometimes complimentary to each other.

23:19.215 --> 23:21.915
And I think that the experiments in AI regulation

23:22.295 --> 23:23.515
are case in point there.

23:24.135 --> 23:28.275
Now, in terms of the scientific developments, we haven't

23:28.275 --> 23:31.315
yet seen too much in the way of policy driven

23:32.395 --> 23:33.915
specific scientific programs.

23:34.335 --> 23:37.835
Rather, what we see are scientific responses

23:37.855 --> 23:41.515
to common challenges like climate change, the development of

23:42.095 --> 23:47.045
vol tags, for example, that takes place in the US

23:47.545 --> 23:51.125
and in the eu, but takes different forms as a result

23:51.125 --> 23:52.765
of the regulatory environment.

23:53.745 --> 23:57.685
So it's not precisely the case that,

23:57.685 --> 23:59.485
the regulation is controlling the science,

23:59.745 --> 24:01.445
but it gets kind of close.

24:02.345 --> 24:06.825
On the other hand, there are certain areas where we know

24:06.825 --> 24:08.665
that there's a lot to learn from each other.

24:09.195 --> 24:12.225
Smart cities and smart transport at the time we did this

24:12.225 --> 24:14.865
study, those were the two prime areas.

24:16.045 --> 24:19.065
And the reason why we would learn from each other is

24:19.065 --> 24:21.625
that the nature of cities is different in the

24:22.305 --> 24:23.665
EU than it is in the us,

24:24.085 --> 24:27.185
but those were predicated on physical aspects

24:27.245 --> 24:28.985
of being close to other people.

24:29.485 --> 24:31.825
And as we move into virtual communities,

24:32.325 --> 24:34.585
we don't discard those heritages.

24:34.725 --> 24:36.465
We take from them things that are good,

24:37.085 --> 24:38.545
and yet there will be new forms

24:38.565 --> 24:42.265
of activity in which people's nearest neighbors in the sense

24:42.265 --> 24:45.905
that matter to them, may be located physically far away from

24:45.905 --> 24:48.185
them, and the people who are physically closest

24:48.325 --> 24:50.185
to them may be the kinds of people

24:50.185 --> 24:52.865
that they put up barricades to be away from.

24:53.205 --> 24:55.585
So the whole notion of what a city is

24:55.605 --> 24:59.345
and what it requires is different in the two countries,

24:59.685 --> 25:01.105
and we have to learn from each other

25:01.215 --> 25:03.665
because the future will be different from both of them.

25:04.765 --> 25:07.185
The same is true with things like smart transport

25:07.495 --> 25:11.065
because in the United States, the distances are much larger.

25:11.485 --> 25:14.185
The participation of public transport

25:14.285 --> 25:15.305
and publicly paid

25:15.325 --> 25:19.345
for transport activities is much lower than it is in Europe.

25:19.885 --> 25:23.585
And so the vigor of economic competition

25:24.325 --> 25:27.825
is contrasted with the economies of scale

25:28.205 --> 25:31.785
and regulatory fixity that we see, here in Europe.

25:33.495 --> 25:36.035
Now, the other thing to say is that

25:36.755 --> 25:38.755
collaboration gives us certain things

25:38.755 --> 25:40.435
that we couldn't get in other ways.

25:40.945 --> 25:43.635
I've mentioned na, natural experimentation.

25:44.815 --> 25:46.955
The point about collaboration is that

25:46.955 --> 25:50.395
that natural experimentation takes place at the same moment.

25:50.855 --> 25:51.995
So it makes it easier

25:52.135 --> 25:54.995
to compare what's going on in one place

25:54.995 --> 25:56.555
with what's going on in another,

25:56.615 --> 25:58.795
to benchmark them against each other.

25:58.985 --> 26:01.875
Because if they take place at different moments in time,

26:02.335 --> 26:05.635
as happened with previous general purpose technologies like

26:06.075 --> 26:09.275
electricity, you never know how much is due to the place,

26:09.575 --> 26:10.875
how much is due to the time,

26:11.375 --> 26:12.835
and how much is due to the fact

26:12.835 --> 26:15.475
that the early one has already come before.

26:15.815 --> 26:18.635
So you don't really know what works and what doesn't.

26:19.535 --> 26:22.865
Um, there are also a number

26:23.045 --> 26:26.945
of global decisions that we as the world need to take.

26:26.945 --> 26:31.785
Climate change being the obvious ones, and the EU and the U

26:32.085 --> 26:37.025
and the US will participate in making those decisions.

26:37.025 --> 26:38.105
They won't control them,

26:38.365 --> 26:39.505
and certainly in the future,

26:39.555 --> 26:41.145
their influence will be much less.

26:41.645 --> 26:43.105
So having a coordinated

26:43.215 --> 26:44.845
Scientific understanding

26:45.505 --> 26:47.805
and a common research culture

26:49.065 --> 26:52.765
is important if we are to be able to negotiate effectively,

26:53.545 --> 26:55.765
because we've already seen with climate change

26:56.155 --> 26:58.725
that we're right up to the edge of the precipice.

26:59.025 --> 27:03.935
Now, collaboration is not an unmitigated

27:04.445 --> 27:07.455
benefit, and it does carry certain risks,

27:07.955 --> 27:10.095
and it's important to be aware of those risks

27:10.745 --> 27:12.655
among them are the possibility

27:13.085 --> 27:16.495
because collaboration means joining up just not just

27:16.895 --> 27:21.215
national interests in terms of the publicly supported RRNI,

27:21.755 --> 27:24.455
but also public and commercial interests.

27:24.875 --> 27:27.535
And so there are risks of capture,

27:27.715 --> 27:31.255
by particular incumbent industrial par parties

27:31.435 --> 27:33.055
and interests,

27:33.315 --> 27:38.095
or indeed by, other darker national interests,

27:38.275 --> 27:39.415
or foreclosure.

27:40.125 --> 27:42.295
Another thing about collaboration is

27:42.325 --> 27:44.495
that particularly on scientific teams,

27:45.435 --> 27:50.135
and particularly if the breadth of disciplines is too wide

27:50.155 --> 27:53.615
or too narrow, it can lead to a kind of either group think

27:53.835 --> 27:57.775
or superficiality the curse of, interdisciplinarity

27:58.505 --> 28:01.855
where people, and you see this particularly in relation

28:01.855 --> 28:06.375
to policy with regard to technology where ministers get,

28:06.645 --> 28:10.255
very excited about the potential of some new technology.

28:10.915 --> 28:12.335
And because they are ministers

28:12.335 --> 28:16.295
and don't have to prove themselves to a journal referee

28:16.635 --> 28:20.335
or to a market, they can go really quite far in

28:20.335 --> 28:22.575
what may be a mistaken impression of

28:22.575 --> 28:24.055
what a technology can do

28:24.435 --> 28:28.415
and how easily some of the, risks can be handled.

28:28.915 --> 28:33.055
So there, there is a certain degree of riskiness involved in

28:33.055 --> 28:36.495
that, and there are also political

28:36.495 --> 28:39.895
and economic considerations and complexities,

28:40.675 --> 28:43.655
and including the boundaries between the public sector,

28:43.915 --> 28:46.215
by which I mean government, the private sector,

28:46.315 --> 28:48.655
by which I mean business and civil society,

28:49.035 --> 28:50.535
or different national interests.

28:50.725 --> 28:54.135
It's one of the reasons why I think the EU

28:54.155 --> 28:56.055
and the US want to collaborate

28:56.125 --> 28:57.855
because they're aware of the fact

28:58.085 --> 28:59.695
that they can't defend their national

28:59.855 --> 29:00.935
interests just on their own.

29:01.235 --> 29:02.815
But there are potential costs to that.

29:03.585 --> 29:05.175
There are certain technologies

29:05.445 --> 29:08.895
that are particularly fruitful areas for doing this.

29:09.265 --> 29:13.215
These to either globally spread ones like artificial

29:13.215 --> 29:16.415
intelligence or things that transform the economy,

29:17.005 --> 29:18.975
like the industrial internet of things

29:19.475 --> 29:22.095
or cyber physical systems,

29:22.595 --> 29:25.695
or communications technologies like 5G,

29:25.905 --> 29:29.495
which are local in the sense that, they use Spectrum,

29:29.585 --> 29:31.095
which is a local resource,

29:31.795 --> 29:35.965
but where the, the devices

29:36.075 --> 29:39.045
that are used have to be able to talk to each other,

29:39.335 --> 29:40.645
which means a degree of

29:41.005 --> 29:44.285
Standardization in the way spectrum is defined and used.

29:44.945 --> 29:48.325
So I mean, the frameworks themselves are

29:49.065 --> 29:51.125
fairly well known and well understood.

29:51.625 --> 29:54.605
The, as I mentioned, this, five year series

29:54.605 --> 29:56.165
of agreements on scientific

29:56.265 --> 30:00.045
and technological cooperation, the JCG,

30:00.105 --> 30:03.245
the joint consultative group between the EU and the us.

30:04.185 --> 30:05.845
Um, more recently

30:06.145 --> 30:09.325
and in the successors to this project, the EU

30:09.665 --> 30:12.165
and US TTC, the Trade

30:12.165 --> 30:14.725
and Technology Council, then there are a series

30:14.725 --> 30:18.645
of lower level frameworks for collaboration like between

30:19.275 --> 30:20.365
NIST in the US

30:21.025 --> 30:25.685
and the joint research council, the D-G-J-R-C,

30:25.975 --> 30:27.885
which is the think tank for the eu.

30:28.825 --> 30:32.325
And hopefully there will be a successor to the tt

30:32.345 --> 30:34.285
to the free trade agreement,

30:34.655 --> 30:38.165
which will contain in it chapters on scientific

30:38.685 --> 30:41.405
collaboration as well as, regulatory

30:41.515 --> 30:43.005
what are called non tariff barriers.

30:43.905 --> 30:47.285
The two points that I wanted to make about these frameworks

30:47.865 --> 30:50.725
and the general conclusion, looking back on the study

30:51.215 --> 30:53.835
after about four or five years, is

30:53.835 --> 30:55.995
that it really shows the value

30:56.375 --> 30:59.395
of what's sometimes called the new industrial policy.

31:00.135 --> 31:02.795
So an alternative to the old policy,

31:03.285 --> 31:05.875
which was identifying promising technologies

31:06.295 --> 31:09.035
and throwing a lot of public money at them, what used

31:09.035 --> 31:10.475
to be called picking winners.

31:11.255 --> 31:16.155
And it's that if you pick winners, many of the winners

31:16.155 --> 31:19.475
that we would identify the key technologies, all parts

31:19.495 --> 31:22.035
of the world would identify them at the same time.

31:22.615 --> 31:25.355
And that kind of herd behavior may not lead

31:25.375 --> 31:27.355
to a balanced scientific development.

31:28.495 --> 31:33.355
So collaboration may involve agreeing to differ, agreeing

31:33.355 --> 31:34.955
to differentiate what we do,

31:35.695 --> 31:37.595
and within some of the frameworks,

31:38.095 --> 31:39.995
not the more narrow low level ones,

31:39.995 --> 31:42.875
but the high level ones, it's quite possible to do that.

31:43.505 --> 31:46.955
Another problem with picking winners is that the influence

31:46.955 --> 31:49.995
of commercial enterprises is sometimes quite strong.

31:50.585 --> 31:52.515
Some of the projects that are recommended

31:52.575 --> 31:54.395
for public funding are ones

31:54.395 --> 31:56.235
that the private sector has passed over

31:56.615 --> 31:57.915
for perfectly good reasons

31:58.345 --> 32:00.635
what economists would call adverse selection.

32:01.685 --> 32:04.755
There are also problems of moral hazard, which is

32:04.755 --> 32:07.075
that once you have large institutional funding

32:07.455 --> 32:11.155
behind a technological development, you can use it

32:11.215 --> 32:12.915
for your own interests in ways

32:12.915 --> 32:15.675
that don't necessarily serve the public interest.

32:16.065 --> 32:19.115
This was the case with Texas Instruments development

32:19.415 --> 32:21.435
of the early integrated circuits

32:21.655 --> 32:23.315
for the US Department of Defense.

32:23.905 --> 32:26.275
They developed them for DOD computers

32:26.775 --> 32:29.675
and in the process they were able to produce lots

32:29.675 --> 32:33.275
and lots of them and lower their costs of production far

32:33.325 --> 32:35.755
below those of any potential competitor.

32:36.335 --> 32:39.195
So what should have been a leg up for a technology

32:39.745 --> 32:43.325
became a way of tipping the market into a form of monopoly.

32:44.065 --> 32:48.165
Um, the other thing to mention is that the boundaries

32:48.165 --> 32:49.165
between the public

32:49.225 --> 32:53.005
and the private sector need to be respected in creating

32:53.065 --> 32:54.805
and moving these frameworks forward.

32:55.425 --> 32:57.565
And in particular in the eu,

32:57.855 --> 33:00.845
there are very strong prohibitions on the use

33:00.905 --> 33:04.565
of public money to support commercial development,

33:04.665 --> 33:06.485
what's called the state aids program.

33:07.055 --> 33:10.285
These barriers are not quite so strong in the United States,

33:10.585 --> 33:13.565
and that leads to a kind of tension attention

33:13.565 --> 33:17.285
between the two regions and attention between commercial

33:17.625 --> 33:21.805
and public or publicly motivated interests in pursuing

33:21.905 --> 33:23.805
and framing scientific problems.

33:24.665 --> 33:27.645
And, that leads

33:27.705 --> 33:30.445
to the final thing about these frameworks, which is

33:30.445 --> 33:32.525
beyond the formal frameworks in the funding

33:32.945 --> 33:36.205
and joint conduct of research, lie, a range

33:36.225 --> 33:38.845
of soft power tools, for example,

33:39.095 --> 33:42.845
about intellectual property management, about standard

33:43.685 --> 33:45.165
standardization activities,

33:45.425 --> 33:48.485
and about the use of public procurement as a way

33:48.485 --> 33:52.005
of providing a sort of commercial lead in to the deployment

33:52.305 --> 33:55.285
and further exploration of innovations,

33:55.285 --> 33:58.725
that I think are necessary if they're gonna produce,

33:58.755 --> 33:59.445
good outcomes.

EU-US Collaboration in ICT Development

00:00:00 - The context of this study was, there's a long history between the EU and the US in general, but particularly in areas relating to ICT and that long history includes, shared institutions, shared values, and shared, let's call them scientific and commercial cultures. And there were many new developments in ICTs and many new global challenges to which they were connected,
00:00:33 - and the US to collaborate in the ordinary course of events. And I'm talking somewhat out of turn here. One would expect these collaborations to be built on existing, let's call them, Republic of Science principles. The idea that scientists everywhere are part of the same common culture, and only transitory allegiance to their countries. But next to the republic
00:01:04 - And in the kingdom of industry, there are divisions and there are specific interests. Now, as we move forward with this, in many cases, these are handled by free trade agreements between different blocks of countries. And increasingly new style free trade agreements include specific provisions for scientific collaboration, sharing intellectual property, and so on. However, the attempts to build such a free trade agreement between the US and the EU called ttip, didn't get very far in part
00:01:39 - And so therefore, it was felt necessary because of the pace at which some of the challenges were developing, and in particular, certain types of technologies that were developing quite rapidly. It was felt necessary for the EU and the US to collaborate together. So we put this project together. The project had a series of technical areas that it paid attention to, in particular 5G the Internet
00:02:10 - and some application areas like big data, cybersecurity, next generation Internets, and certain policy tools like spectrum policy and standardization, and certain, let's say, ideas built on top of these like smart cities and other forms of digital communities. We assembled a team of US and EU experts, and with support from the European Union and American institutions like, NIST
00:02:43 - we put together a series of studies, first of all to assess the current landscape of ICT and policy, then to identify the industrial drivers, the sectoral needs and the kind of priority areas, shared priority areas, And to understand the nature of the relation between the EU and the US in these areas. And in particular, there are some things where we had common interests and common approaches, and that you might call just we're

Exploring Differences in Science and Policy Collaboration

00:03:13 - There are other areas in which we did things differently. And it was useful to conduct a kind of natural experiment to see whether these differences were significant or whether we could learn very much from each other. And then finally, in carrying it out, we, in addition to doing the panorama and identifying the drivers and the opportunities, we created a series of policy briefs, held a number of international meetings between study personnel and other people in the field
00:03:47 - industry people, and wrote a book. And the book contains the results of it. It has, a number of chapters on the technologies, on the application areas, and on the broader vision, identifying the situation in each country, the, common challenges and how we might work together. So that's the basic background of this study. It. The other thing I should mention is that it took place in the context defined
00:04:20 - that I'll talk about shortly, but it led on to a series of further studies, including one called TrackStar that built on the results of this and fed into policy coordination activities, and has also fed into actions by the Internet Governance Foundation and other types of international civil society organizations. So it proved to be quite productive in terms of
00:04:50 - developing ethical frameworks and so on. Well, first of all, in this area between science and policy, we found it useful to separate the two directions in which they interact. So in some cases, there's what you might call, let's say research based policy, which is to say, for example, the things that we know about artificial intelligence. Just to take your current hot topic, particularly generative ai,
00:05:25 - of policy issues. Some of the problems we used to worry about quite hard, we can automate away. And so instead of having laws and regulations, we can have, algorithms, for example, that detect certain kinds of bad behavior and, deal with them like automated content mediation online. some other policy areas are made harder by the influence of, these technologies.
00:05:54 - if they learn about each other through the use of data analytics, it's quite easy for the pricing algorithms that they use to fall into monopolistic behavior without either communication or intention. Now, the law as it currently stands, requires both of those to bring in antitrust prosecution. So the technology, by removing humans from the loop, bypasses the law and the problems could become harder. And it may be that we develop problems which

Rethinking Law in a Machine-Driven World

00:06:25 - a lot of our legal structures are predicated on the role of human beings, sovereign human beings who could be held responsible for their decisions. However, in a world in which we are surrounded by machines, machines that take actions without our direct supervision and where we take action in response to prompts from machines that we don't fully understand, for example, computer-based, financial trading, that whole legal structure needs to be rethought,
00:06:57 - So in that case, the science triggers a challenge to the policy, and then of course, they're the reverse, which is where the policy requires us. So things like climate change, for example, requires certain types of scientific development that might not occur, in one national setting or another, and may require cooperation between, let's say the research base and industry and universities that wouldn't naturally happen
00:07:28 - Well, that, having said that, in the eu, there have been a series of flagship programs, currently taking the form of horizon in Europe, but that dates all the way back to about 1984 with the early framework programs. And those were, not pure research in the sense of the European Research Center, not pure science, but applied science, science for policy and science for industrial and economic development. And those things continue to the, these days.
00:08:00 - however, which includes, an identification of global challenges and European industrial competitiveness. So the reason I mention that is that there are some problems like climate change that affect the whole world, in which case the US and the EU need to collaborate because the solutions embed some of our common values. And if we don't act together, we will be left behind and will be faced with technologies that have views, for example, of individual privacy
00:08:33 - we're not entirely on board with and can challenge our domestic, models. There are other things which come from this competitive environment that the countries that share a common lethal and regulatory heritage are facing increasing economic and scientific challenge from other parts of the world. And a new bipolarity is beginning to emerge. without naming the countries involved, it should be fairly obvious to people who look that there are different interests that are not
00:09:08 - where we strive together and all become better, but the kind of competition in which one side wins, and that kind of, requires us to step up to the mark, particularly when there are strong differences as regards to these things. So the EU has this, plan based on global challenges and industrial competitiveness, where the idea is to have the kind of competition that fosters innovation

Strengthening Innovation Through Collaborative Structures

00:09:39 - There's also been a lot of work to identify and strengthen, innovation infrastructures and ecosystems, those two things, which is that innovation doesn't take place only in a laboratory. And particularly with these new technologies, the most profound innovations come from the users who discover things to do with these, these devices and capabilities that were never intended by the inventors. Now, if left unattended
00:10:11 - but it may also be that the pace of invention is so fast that we move on to a new technology before we've discovered the capabilities of the old technology. So in order to have the kind of innovation that helps us, we have these structures within the EU research establishment. The US, of course, has similar kinds of things. National Science Foundation, department of Defense, national Institutes of Health, department of Energy,
00:10:41 - and D program, the Knit RD, umbrella package. Between the two, there have been, there's been an agreement, a series of five-year agreements for scientific and technological cooperation that have been going on since 1998, and just last year was renewed. so it'll now run till, 2028 unless something happens. at the implementation level, this is controlled
00:11:13 - or JCG, across a wide number of areas, not just ICT, but a lot of the application areas like cancer, climate change, human health, and so on. there are also within the science establishments, particularly the publicly funded science establishments of both sides, provisions for collaboration and collaboration could mean working together on a common
00:11:43 - so US scientists paid for by NSF EU scientists paid for by ERC or, or the Horizon program where they get to work together, together, because as Britain discovered in the wake of Brexit, providing the money for the scientists without providing the opportunities for shared endeavor and shared intellectual property development, is almost worthless. It's just duplicating effort, in many cases.
00:12:14 - and joint funding of common programs that has been part of this collaborative infrastructure. And in that respect, it's probably worth noting that the US has been the highest, the largest of the third countries in terms of participating in EU funded research. And just as in the economic sphere where the EU and the US are the largest investors in each other's economies, although not if you just consider goods,

Collaboration in ICT: Innovation and Ethics

00:12:45 - and services, the ties are very large and very deep. And so it seems quite natural to build on this in terms of the scientific collaboration, particularly because the economy increasingly now is predicated on continual innovation to seize new opportunities and to deal with old problems. There's one obvious advantage, which is the advantage of scale. They're just, they're two large scientific establishments
00:13:16 - of their parts, at least in principle. It also means travel to other places to do your work and travel to a different location can open up all kinds of new ideas. But at a more fundamental level, ICT technologies in particular often embed certain, ethical values. And these are not always perceived well by the people who developed those technologies. We've seen, for example, real-time facial recognition was developed to solve a,
00:13:51 - to what the implications of this would be when applied in different settings. And, so to a certain extent, if the technologies that we develop, we in the us we in the, in the EU develop, embed these values and they are spread out around the world, then as the technology spread, the values that go with them also spread. So it is a form of soft power collaboration.
00:14:23 - and innovation systems and our value chains contain many complimentary parts. So for example, although it's not no longer part of the eu, the UK has got quite an advantage in terms of developing advanced microchips in the form of arm holdings. And ARM doesn't actually produce anything. It just develops new ideas and patents, which are then produced by fab facilities in other countries.
00:14:53 - and to make sure that innovation at one level bears fruit at another level, it's necessary to have a degree of integration of the social and research system. There are also ethical frameworks. So things like what are fundamental values in terms of human autonomy, for example, in terms of the meaning of life and DNA and so forth. These things all inform the creation of scientific agendas,
00:15:24 - who share your values. But there's probably two more concrete advantages. One is the trade difficulties between our two blocks, as I mentioned, they're very tightly tied to each other. We have the largest bilateral trade and investment relationship, and the most integrated economic relationship, including on regulation. And if you only think about goods, of course, China has overtaken this as far as trading with the eu.

EU-US Relations: Trade, Technology, and Collaboration

00:15:56 - it remains the EU and the us. However, we don't have a trade agreement. And so we, the other thing is that the EU and the us between them are the largest training partners of almost every other country in the world, one or the other of us. So the scope of this ability to sort of develop and promulgate our values and technologies whose impacts we understand
00:16:27 - is really quite important. And neither one of us can do it on our own. But you also mentioned the, lifecycle issue. One of the problems with these technologies is that the lifecycles may be so short that it's not possible not just to see what innovative uses they can be put to, but what their impacts, what their effects on our daily life really are. So the things that we get these devices
00:16:56 - that wind up being important to using them. By s sharing them out across two different regulatory and cultural settings, we get a broader sense of what might be coming down the pike. And in that sense, the relation between the EU and the US might be seen as a kind of natural experiment that we can learn from seeing whether the same technology plays out differently in one side or another. And sometimes it may be the case than in applications.
00:17:32 - by a broad understanding of what works and what doesn't work in some other. And so let's say common standards like we might have for spectrum utilization or, r and d itself, for that matter in the, in the ISO 9,000 standards, are really useful in helping us to interoperate. In other cases, we may want to do different things, but there is a great difference between appropriate localization
00:18:03 - because our economies are, our societies are different, and it suits the needs in both places to things that are merely fragmentation. And it's only through having that common infrastructure of collaboration, the movement of people and ideas, as well as information and money back and forth that we can be sure that we move towards, let's say a rich diversity rather than a kind of, fragmentation. And so having technology lifestyles that are long enough
00:18:35 - before we've moved on to something else that we dimly understand is I think probably the best way of dealing with what some have seen as the existential threats posed by things like the singularity by, artificial intelligence, for example, or nanotechnology, or certainly biotechnology and, synthetic biology. These things need to be thought about, but in the white heat of global economic competition,

Global Collaboration in Technology Regulation

00:19:07 - I should start by saying that although this is kind of forward looking, that collaboration has already been working across many, many areas, and the drivers for that are not just common economic development. So one of the things that we know, for example, is that there are many multinational enterprises involved in this area, and they develop technologies, whether it's pharma or it in many, many countries,
00:19:40 - Some technologies that work, at least in a commercial sense in one country or one area, will not work quite so well in another. So at the moment, we can see this in a policy driven area, which is the regulation of artificial intelligence. And as you're probably aware, the eu, the us, the uk and China and many other countries have all begun experimenting
00:20:15 - and how to control it when we can't really see what it's going to do yet. So if you have too much ex anti-regulation, the science doesn't develop in the right way, but if you wait until you see what's happened, it may in many cases be too late. The EU has adopted a particular approach, which is a triangle of riskiness, and with greater and greater controls on those developments, those aspects
00:20:46 - And it's a very kind of civil law, prescriptive hard approach. The US has got a more sector specific and light touch approach, which allows more experimentation and gets us more towards an outcome-based form of regulation. Those produce different types of technological development. And to see the which one works and to be able to take, take, take the best out of both
00:21:18 - of well underway. So the reasons why things might work in one place and not another might be things like cultural understandings. the realtime facial recognition, works differently in China than it does in, in in the West, in particularly places like the US or the eu, where concepts of privacy are very different. the other aspect is
00:21:50 - between the different countries can produce an understanding of these, scientific developments that may be more robust or future proof. So an example here of the policy driven side would be something like the GDPR, the the general Data protection Regulation, which set a bunch of regulatory challenges to which there could be technological answers. And one of the things that came out

Comparative Regulation and Innovation in Europe and US

00:22:19 - what might be considered anonymous profiling of people's activity online, a way of understanding the behavior, not of me, but of people like me online in ways that did not target me directly. And one of the interesting developments was that that technology developed in Europe because of the form of the GDPR was greatly sold in the United States and heavily demanded in the United States,
00:22:50 - So that was a clear example where the differences between the two countries allowed different types of things to happen that wouldn't have done otherwise. The, the same is true with regulation. That regulation particularly of areas that are affected by scientific activity, is sometimes shared and in common, which is what we do with standards, activities, international standards, and sometimes complimentary to each other.
00:23:22 - are case in point there. Now, in terms of the scientific developments, we haven't yet seen too much in the way of policy driven specific scientific programs. Rather, what we see are scientific responses to common challenges like climate change, the development of vol tags, for example, that takes place in the US and in the eu, but takes different forms as a result
00:23:53 - So it's not precisely the case that, the regulation is controlling the science, but it gets kind of close. On the other hand, there are certain areas where we know that there's a lot to learn from each other. Smart cities and smart transport at the time we did this study, those were the two prime areas. And the reason why we would learn from each other is that the nature of cities is different in the
00:24:24 - but those were predicated on physical aspects of being close to other people. And as we move into virtual communities, we don't discard those heritages. We take from them things that are good, and yet there will be new forms of activity in which people's nearest neighbors in the sense that matter to them, may be located physically far away from them, and the people who are physically closest to them may be the kinds of people that they put up barricades to be away from.
00:24:55 - and what it requires is different in the two countries, and we have to learn from each other because the future will be different from both of them. The same is true with things like smart transport because in the United States, the distances are much larger. The participation of public transport and publicly paid for transport activities is much lower than it is in Europe. And so the vigor of economic competition

Collaborative Science: Advancements and Risks

00:25:28 - and regulatory fixity that we see, here in Europe. Now, the other thing to say is that collaboration gives us certain things that we couldn't get in other ways. I've mentioned na, natural experimentation. The point about collaboration is that that natural experimentation takes place at the same moment. So it makes it easier to compare what's going on in one place
00:25:56 - to benchmark them against each other. Because if they take place at different moments in time, as happened with previous general purpose technologies like electricity, you never know how much is due to the place, how much is due to the time, and how much is due to the fact that the early one has already come before. So you don't really know what works and what doesn't. there are also a number of global decisions that we as the world need to take.
00:26:32 - and the US will participate in making those decisions. They won't control them, and certainly in the future, their influence will be much less. So having a coordinated Scientific understanding and a common research culture is important if we are to be able to negotiate effectively, because we've already seen with climate change that we're right up to the edge of the precipice.
00:27:04 - benefit, and it does carry certain risks, and it's important to be aware of those risks among them are the possibility because collaboration means joining up just not just national interests in terms of the publicly supported RRNI, but also public and commercial interests. And so there are risks of capture, by particular incumbent industrial par parties
00:27:33 - or indeed by, other darker national interests, or foreclosure. Another thing about collaboration is that particularly on scientific teams, and particularly if the breadth of disciplines is too wide or too narrow, it can lead to a kind of either group think or superficiality the curse of, interdisciplinarity where people, and you see this particularly in relation
00:28:06 - very excited about the potential of some new technology. And because they are ministers and don't have to prove themselves to a journal referee or to a market, they can go really quite far in what may be a mistaken impression of what a technology can do and how easily some of the, risks can be handled. So there, there is a certain degree of riskiness involved in

Collaborative Frameworks Between EU and US

00:28:36 - and economic considerations and complexities, and including the boundaries between the public sector, by which I mean government, the private sector, by which I mean business and civil society, or different national interests. It's one of the reasons why I think the EU and the US want to collaborate because they're aware of the fact that they can't defend their national interests just on their own. But there are potential costs to that.
00:29:05 - that are particularly fruitful areas for doing this. These to either globally spread ones like artificial intelligence or things that transform the economy, like the industrial internet of things or cyber physical systems, or communications technologies like 5G, which are local in the sense that, they use Spectrum, which is a local resource, but where the, the devices
00:29:39 - which means a degree of Standardization in the way spectrum is defined and used. So I mean, the frameworks themselves are fairly well known and well understood. The, as I mentioned, this, five year series of agreements on scientific and technological cooperation, the JCG, the joint consultative group between the EU and the us. more recently
00:30:09 - and US TTC, the Trade and Technology Council, then there are a series of lower level frameworks for collaboration like between NIST in the US and the joint research council, the D-G-J-R-C, which is the think tank for the eu. And hopefully there will be a successor to the tt to the free trade agreement, which will contain in it chapters on scientific
00:30:41 - what are called non tariff barriers. The two points that I wanted to make about these frameworks and the general conclusion, looking back on the study after about four or five years, is that it really shows the value of what's sometimes called the new industrial policy. So an alternative to the old policy, which was identifying promising technologies and throwing a lot of public money at them, what used
00:31:11 - And it's that if you pick winners, many of the winners that we would identify the key technologies, all parts of the world would identify them at the same time. And that kind of herd behavior may not lead to a balanced scientific development. So collaboration may involve agreeing to differ, agreeing to differentiate what we do, and within some of the frameworks, not the more narrow low level ones,

Challenges of Public Funding and Commercial Influence

00:31:43 - Another problem with picking winners is that the influence of commercial enterprises is sometimes quite strong. Some of the projects that are recommended for public funding are ones that the private sector has passed over for perfectly good reasons what economists would call adverse selection. There are also problems of moral hazard, which is that once you have large institutional funding behind a technological development, you can use it
00:32:12 - that don't necessarily serve the public interest. This was the case with Texas Instruments development of the early integrated circuits for the US Department of Defense. They developed them for DOD computers and in the process they were able to produce lots and lots of them and lower their costs of production far below those of any potential competitor. So what should have been a leg up for a technology became a way of tipping the market into a form of monopoly.
00:32:48 - between the public and the private sector need to be respected in creating and moving these frameworks forward. And in particular in the eu, there are very strong prohibitions on the use of public money to support commercial development, what's called the state aids program. These barriers are not quite so strong in the United States, and that leads to a kind of tension attention between the two regions and attention between commercial
00:33:21 - and framing scientific problems. And, that leads to the final thing about these frameworks, which is beyond the formal frameworks in the funding and joint conduct of research, lie, a range of soft power tools, for example, about intellectual property management, about standard standardization activities, and about the use of public procurement as a way
00:33:58 - and further exploration of innovations, that I think are necessary if they're gonna produce, good outcomes.

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