IT Essentials: Public pitfalls

The private sector could shine this year, but there's a warning note

Tech can protect democracy in the coming year of elections.

Nearly 70 countries will choose new leaders in 2024 (though some elections, like Russia's, are clearly shams), and there are concerns that voters can no longer trust the evidence of their own eyes and ears.

The first casualty of war is truth, and what is an election but a polite war?

Gen-AI hypercharges people's ability to spin their own version of the truth (or outright lie). It's happening around the world, in the USA, UK, Slovakia, Argentina - and more to come.

Regulators, led by the EU, are moving to control AI, but the laws will not be active fast enough to make a difference this year. Even the AI Act, which has already been approved, isn't expected to come into force until late 2025 at the earliest.

This is a perfect opportunity for private sector evangelists to prove companies can step in where governments lag behind. Private firms are often described as nimble, agile, responsive, efficient: descriptors that are critical to deal with the fast-moving AI sector.

If a private sector team can devise a fool-proof way to fight against deepfakes and misinformation (McAfee already announced a proof of concept at CES), electoral regulators will beat a path to their door.

A fresh Horizon

The other big IT news this week was the Post Office's Horizon scandal finally reaching mainstream consciousness, thanks to ITV's Mr Bates vs. The Post Office.

I'll admit to being a bit cheesed off at this one, as we in the tech press have been covering the issue since 2009 (with full props going to Computer Weekly for their investigations). Still, the dramatisation wouldn't have been possible without that groundwork.

A few lines above, I urged more private sector involvement. The Horizon case is an example of where that can go horribly wrong: a huge amount of money wasted on systems that aren't fit for purpose, due to ignorance or the sunk cost fallacy.

The problem is that, as a country, we are terrible at public procurement. Public sector leaders lack the technical knowledge to judge progress, and there is a tendency to blindly accept whatever the partner/computer says (the very root of the Horizon problem).

In the 21st century, it is just not good enough that those responsible for procurement can't tell software from servers.

January job cuts

2023 infamously began with one of the biggest ever rounds of tech job cuts, with upwards of 25,000 professionals out of work. We're not at that scale this year, but the market is still under strain, with Google, Duolingo, Amazon, Unity Software and Xerox all announcing dismissals in the last seven days.

Duolingo was the only one of those companies to overtly point to AI as the reason for the cuts, but it wasn't the first and won't be the last.

December and January are colloquially known as layoff season, so these cuts are probably mostly strategic reforms and trimming: a bit of nip and tuck to start the year. That won't make those affected feel any better, but it might make it easier for them to find their feet at a new firm.