A survey of 1,500 tech employees found that 77% of them think Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook have a lot of power. Only 8% disagreed.
Technology workers were also asked about a wide range of other technology issues, including law enforcement work, China and AI legislation …
The research was carried out by Protocol, from the editor Political.
To assess the position of technology employees across the country on the key issues facing the industry, Protocol is presenting its first Technology Employee Survey, a survey of 1,504 employees across the country, from C-level executives to associates. They come mainly from large technology companies – almost 40% of respondents work for companies with annual revenues in excess of $ 500 million and most companies have more than 1,000 employees.
The first topic was whether the tech giants are very powerful.
A staggering 78% of the technology employees we interviewed agreed that the technology industry is very powerful, with only 11% disagreeing. The same goes for Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple. More than 77% of respondents said that these companies have a lot of power and just over 8% disagreed.
Not only did the majority say that the industry is very powerful, but about 40% also said that technology does more harm than good. Only about 45% of technology employees disagreed, signaling that even within the industry, technology workers are concerned about the negative impact that technology is having on the world.
And yet, remedies are scarce. More than 68% want their companies to partner with or be acquired by a Big Tech player, and three-quarters said that Big Tech companies should be allowed to acquire other companies. Just over 40% think Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple should be spun off. Despite their concerns about the power and negative influence of technology, technology officials do not see antitrust enforcement as the solution.
In China, most think the US government has been too aggressive, fearing that an equally robust response from China could hurt US technology companies.
The Trump administration has taken an aggressive stance towards China’s technology industry, putting dozens of companies on the country’s commercial black list and signing several executive decrees aimed at stopping Chinese social media applications – mainly TikTok – from the United States. . Technology officials in general said they think the impasse should end, expressing an openness to work more closely with Chinese technology companies.
Fifty-six percent of respondents said they agreed that the US restrictions on Chinese technology companies went too far, while 28% said they were neutral about it. And 60% agreed that US technology companies should work more closely with Chinese technology companies. Ultimately, most respondents said they believed that the future of the technology industry was at stake, with 58% agreeing that a cold war with China could “paralyze US technology companies”.
However, there are limits to its openness to Chinese technology – 46% said they agreed that Chinese telecommunications company Huawei should be banned from the United States.
There is concern about AI, especially when it comes to demonstrated problems with AI systems capturing and amplifying the prejudices present in society.
AI can overwhelm real-world prejudices and disproportionately harm people of color. Seventy-three percent of respondents said they agreed that the government should regulate AI. Only 9% disagreed and 18% said they were “neutral”.
You can check the other findings at Protocol. (If you came to the comments to state that the sample size doesn’t make sense, you can get a quick base on the sample theory here and a more detailed one here.)
Photo: Kevin Ku / Unsplash
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