Frances Haugen’s 2024 DataGrail Summit Keynote: Lessons from the Past to Drive Responsible Innovation

On August 27, 2024, the second annual DataGrail Summit kicked off with a stellar keynote presentation from Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen. Frances took the audience of 100+ security, legal and privacy professionals back in time to reflect on eras of history characterized by uncertainty and reminded the audience how we worked our way toward clarity.

With the event being focused on the future of responsible innovation, we knew we needed a fierce advocate for accountability and transparency to set the stage for the importance of proceeding cautiously when it comes to artificial intelligence. AI is changing the way we think about security and data privacy. It’s scary. It’s unknown. But Frances emphasized that we’ve been through challenging times before and come out the other side stronger – there’s no reason to think we can’t do it again.

What is the “intangible economy” and why is it throwing us for a loop?

Frances began by breaking down the concept of the intangible economy. Historically, we’ve thought of economic drivers as being things like oil, steel and manufacturing. Obviously, those are still crucial to economic development, but over the past 20 years, we’ve moved to a world where not everything can be touched or seen with the naked eye. 

In fact, we’re now at a point where 40% of our economy comes from things that are entirely intangible. Where does that leave us? At a turning point from what we’ve known to what we’ve barely explored.

“It feels overwhelming, the world that we live in,” Frances said. Why? “The idea of knowing where we are in the world is a really hard concept.” We don’t have a North Star we can use for navigating ethical dilemmas associated with privacy and the incorporation of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. 

However, Frances emphasized that “We have faced very hard circumstances before.” Although AI may pose new challenges, we’ve felt pummeled by obstacles before, and come out the other side stronger. 

Looking back to guide a path forward

Harking back to the 16th and 17th centuries, Frances noted to the audience that just one in five ships that tried to sail to India between 1550-1650 made it back successfully. The other four had no way of measuring where they were in the world, and thus drifted substantially off course or ran aground.

“The intangible economy opens up another opportunity for us to drift off course,” because we stop having what Frances called “absolute references.” She then pulled up an image of a map drawn of the “old world” and the “new world” from the same time period. 

“Differences in measurement lead to differences in accuracy.”

On the right hand side, referred to as the “Old World” is a rather accurate portrayal of the Europe, Asia and African continents. Then there’s the left hand “New World” side, where North and South America look more like giant, rounded blobs than anything else. 

“Voyagers had 2000 years to measure the old world, but only minutes to hours to measure the new world,” Frances said. Of course it was going to take time to get an accurate full picture. But eventually, “we innovated our way to clarity.”

In 1736, John Harrison developed the most reliable clock of his time and one that was portable and suited for sea voyages. It worked, but not nearly perfectly. Over the next several decades, Harrison and his descendants continued making new versions of this device, fine-tuning and improving it as they had more trial results to reference. To this day, Harrison is credited with solving the problem of longitude.

Clearly, time-telling technology looks entirely different in 2024 than it did in 1736. Frances’ point is that the way we measure the world is bound to evolve as we continue to explore. 

Innovating responsibly requires weights and measures

As we continue testing what’s possible, we will continue developing new methods for measuring success. We have to, and we’ll have to collaborate to get there if we’re ever going to set boundaries of what’s just and what’s not. 

After all, “Without a north star, acceptability can shift over time,” Frances said. She saw it first-hand at Facebook, explaining that over the two years she was with the company, she saw the now-rebranded Meta brand make “trade-offs” time and again that favored profit rather than people. One of the reasons this continued to happen was there was no North Star for what transparency looked like…and many big tech and social media companies still lack that guiding force.

It’s time to make a change, especially given the complicated regulatory landscape facing privacy, security and legal professionals today. Twenty states have now passed comprehensive data privacy laws, with more to come. 

Now is the time to get our ship in order. The waters of security, privacy and artificial intelligence are turbulent at best, but we can stay afloat – and even sail – if we work together to get to a place “where we’re not afraid to innovate,” but instead have the tools for success to “make the most impact out of these technologies.”

To watch Frances’ keynote and other presentations from this year, head here for on-demand access.

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