London Futurists's video: Debating digital dictatorship vs democracy

Digital technology is already heavily involved in decisions in numerous aspects of human lives. It recommends travel routes, box sets to watch, music to stream, potential romantic partners, and CVs that deserve the most attention when filling a job vacancy. It can find the best locations for adverts, and can reconfigure the content of these adverts depending on who happens to be watching. It can spot individual faces in crowds, draw attention to suspicious behaviour, and highlight which criminal suspects are deemed most likely to skip bail. Via chatbot interfaces, it can offer advice on medical issues, provide motivational guidance, and prepare students for examinations. Present-day digital technology has been found guilty from time to time of biases, prejudices, and weird misunderstanding - sometimes with serious consequences. But we can look ahead to improvements in that technology, in which it gains in reliability. In such a future, should we relinquish democratic human control over key political questions? Perhaps the remaining flaws in digital technology will be judged as less severe that the many well-known flaws of human democratic decision processes? Hence the motion for debate at this event: "A digital dictatorship will create a better society than democracy". It's a topic with some big implications for how individuals, businesses, and society as a whole, should approach digital technology. The event was jointly organised by London Futurists, https://londonfuturists.com and the Great Debaters Club, https://www.greatdebaters.co.uk/. The event was hosted by the BIO Agency, https://www.thebioagency.com/. Speaking for the motion: Sarraa Almahdi and Mathieu Gosselin. Speaking against the motion: Tony Koutsoumbos and Evan Parker. Chairing the debate: Paul Carroll. Introductory remarks by Katie Stotter of BIO and David Wood of London Futurists. The camera was operated by Iris Hulzink. The opening graphic is based on work by Geralt on Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/en/monitor-binary-binary-system-1307227/. For more information about the event and the participants, see https://www.meetup.com/London-Futurists/events/252596476/. Help us caption & translate this video! https://amara.org/v/kskk/