Making Tech More Human: Gary Shapiro's Vision for Innovation That Uplifts Society

Say what the rules are, we'll follow the rules. Don't make it too difficult for small companies to enter because that's an article of faith of our organization. That we have all the big companies as members, they actually agree with us that small companies have to be able to start because that's our— it's easier to start a small company and make things happen and to innovate.

Welcome to Tech Talks hosted by myself, David Savage, and powered by Nash Squared. On today's show, my guest is Gary Shapiro. He is the CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, and he's talking to us all about his vision for ensuring tech innovation creates positive human impact, something that I think we could all agree is a good thing. The idea that technology would have a positive impact on society, right, Kat?

Yeah, well, you'd hope so. I think, um, as we're moving into this very largely automated, um, and technologically advanced era, um, you'd hope that, uh, yes, we can kind of use it in conjunction, conjunction to improve the everyday lives of normal people.

Just out of interest, before we get into anything else, is there any particular app that you think has absolutely— you could not live without? I literally couldn't live without?

This is really interesting. Honestly, probably WhatsApp, which is like—

You couldn't live without WhatsApp?

Well, yeah, like, I think I have so many friends and family, um, abroad, and for me, the way in which I keep in contact with them is all through WhatsApp. You can video call, you can message, etc. Like, maybe not, not live without, but it would probably— if WhatsApp just disappeared, it would probably have quite damaging effect on my relationship. But in terms of like actual a different sort of app, I tried to stay off my phone as much as possible these days, so I don't know.

Really?

Try to, try to is the keyword. I do, I do love it.

No comment.

No, but I'm an avid Instagram, TikTok, etc. user, but I think maybe saying that I couldn't live without any of those— like, my parents do listen to this podcast, so I think they'd have something to say about that.

We'll scratch that topic.

What about you? What about you?

Oh, what could I not live without? I mean, I couldn't live the way that I live my life right now, quite frankly, without Teams or Zoom or equivalent because I work in a role that is largely remote. And because of technology, I've decided to make choices that mean that I live in a particular place and style I probably wouldn't have done had those technologies not been available. Like, I wouldn't live as far out of London with the train prices that I would have to suffer if I had to come into London 5 days a week. Yeah, so I suppose you can make that argument.

Yeah, it is interesting. We all kind of base our lives off it.

Because of what it's enabled.

Yeah, which is cool.

Yeah, and look, this is a really interesting interview today because one of the key strands that comes out of this is how you balance innovation with societal impact. So whilst you can focus on technology advancement, Gary does emphasize not losing sight of that human impact of ensuring that innovation truly makes humanity better, citing examples of healthcare, food production, clean energy. So, look, a lot of this hopefully talks to digital leaders when they're weighing potential positive impacts of technologies that they're building versus the impacts that it has on society. We'll hand over to the interview. Obviously, it talks a little bit about what's coming up at CES in January in Vegas. Myself and Cal come back afterwards. Gary Shapiro, thank you very much for sitting down with me and spending a bit of time. How is your day going?

Great. How's your day going?

I'm enjoying it.

I did have one guy I had to kick out of the line. That was you. Yes. After you win.

Queuing for your book.

No, he was right in the front. I said, I started writing.

Yeah, because he has, yeah, he already had a book. Well, I thought it would be just kind and nice to queue for the book.

No, it was very polite. Very polite. Thank you.

I was going to ask you about the book. We'll get to the book in a moment. First of all, let's ask a really generic question to get us going. What are you most excited about, about this year's conference? Obviously, we're a couple of months away.

CES in Las Vegas is going to be amazing. It's It just keeps growing. At least it appears that way as of today. And it's some of the new things we have there are very exciting. We have a creators area for the show, which you just heard about. And we have a focus on energy creation because a lot of great things are coming down the pike like self-driving— I'm sorry, electric vehicles, as well as generative AI and quantum, and they, they use energy. And I don't think the world power grid is equipped yet to do that. There's only France has like mostly nuclear energy.

Yeah.

And so they have energy and obviously you could burn oil and get more energy, but that's not our goal. We like— there's, there's solar, there's wind, and there's people working on hydrogen and all sorts of different ways of collecting energy. I just spoke to an exhibitor down there who gets energy from sound. I didn't even know you could do that. You know, I don't know how real it is, but it was like, what a great idea. I didn't know there was energy in sound.

I suppose there must be.

I guess you have to push out the sound waves. I don't know.

Yeah.

So like these people who have these lousy apartments that are next to like roaring trains, I mean, all of a sudden that can become valuable real estate, right? If it's a real product, if you can get energy.

Having lived next to a train track, I— well, maybe it would be, but I, I'd rather not.

We have a, we have a house the CTA does next to a train track in Washington, D.C. Anyway, you get used to it.

One thing I did want to ask is you've gone through a bit of a rebrand with the logo.

Absolutely.

And so on for CES and CTA. And you might be wondering where I'm going with this, but I did read that you said that it was, it was a deeply human logo and that would be reflected in the show. And whilst obviously we're here to talk about technology, I think it's really interesting that you talk about it being deeply human. How do you think that is reflected in something like CES?

Well, as someone who's personally involved in that redo, there's two things that work there, at least. One is we wanted to make sure everyone understood the connection between the Consumer Technology Association and CES. So they're integrated in terms of the logos. I mean, you could see it in different ways, like right behind you right there. But also, if you look at the actual— the circle represents human. That's not a a technology shape. They usually don't have round shapes. They're often rectangular. So I'm thinking of chips. Yeah, we did. And we took the space in between the two to reflect the fact that there is an intersection. Because even when we've done marketing campaigns for years, you know, sometimes it's all products. But I'm always— I'm the person who says, no, I want the humans in there because that's what this is about. I mean, I guess we could have put in animals and we— one time we had a whole vegetable campaign, which was very clever. But it's, it's This is about making humanity better. And that's what innovation does. And that's what CES is focused on. We partner with the United Nations on fundamental human securities. We do all these things like clean air, clean water, food production, healthcare is— if you've been going for years, as you know, it's a fast-growing area still. So it's about making humanity better.

Yeah, no, and I kind of asked that because I think the areas around the conference that I think are most interesting to to me are the human securities piece, are the energy piece. I was really interested to hear that you're going to have a whole new track around sustainability and energy. Absolutely. Because it's such a big issue.

Actually, it's not only sustainability. I hate to say it, but it's— we need more energy for these new technologies. So it's creation of energy. And it's different, more efficiency in producing. We have a number of people I've talked to today, actually, who have various types of products, whether it's in the cloud computing arena or other ways like this sound thing, which I'd never heard about until today.

Well, one of the things I wanted to ask you is kind of— I think you said it yourself on stage this morning— is where is all this energy going to come from?

Right.

Talking there about electric vehicles, AI, that's out on the floor. There's a Quantum Computing—

Quantum, we have a whole conference on which we've never had before.

So Quantum, very energy hungry.

Absolutely.

Propositions. But also with the potential to unlock a lot. So I suppose, bit of a chicken and an egg question, but what are some of the innovative energy solutions that you see coming down the pipe that might provide some of these solutions to some of the challenges that we're facing when we know that cloud computing, data centers, they are all so energy hungry?

Well, there's a multifold answer to that. So one is actually the energy creation. The announcement that Microsoft made with Constellation about opening up the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, which has been closed for decades, that's a huge shift. The fact that it was fairly well received in the United States, I mean, there's been a shift in the— at least in the United States, of how people view nuclear energy. The France model is considered very positive. Even the people that are— the green people that were concerned are saying, "Yeah, we need energy, and nuclear is clean. You don't get black lung disease." There's obviously— There's controversy over coal. There's definitely some mixed views on oil. Natural gas, I think, is very favorable, and the US is very blessed with a lot of natural gas because it's relatively clean. There's developments in hydrogen production. There's solar and wind, which is real, but it's limited. Now I could talk about sound and energy. Am I missing something there? There's probably something else. I don't know.

Look, it's a fascinating area.

So I will add one thing. So like with quantum, the question that we— and even with generative AI, they both use a lot of electricity. Yeah, but if they, if they solve fundamental problems, like let's say they cure diseases in healthcare, if you're not going back from the doctor all the time or the hospital and you're not wasting those resources, is it a net gain or a net loss? And if you're really curing illness, isn't it better? To use some energy. I mean, we faced that dilemma during COVID We wanted to use the Las Vegas Convention Center. We said, "You have to open up your doors and windows." And they said, "No, but our buildings are LEED certified and they have to be closed." Like, what's more important, human health or saving a little bit of energy in the short term? And I would argue human health is more— I did argue successfully that human health was more important.

I did want to ask you just some kind of big picture questions, I suppose, because this year has been such a turbulent year when you look at kind of the macroeconomic picture. I don't want to get into politics and whatever else, but you can kind of see that there's, there's various different conflicts around the world that are going to provide some question marks for the technology sector. How do you think the tech sector is responding to the external influences, and, and what's your kind of reading given that you're at such a You're in the crosshairs at the CTA of so many different influences. You get to talk to so many different people. How do you think the technology sector is faring and coming through this potential period of upheaval?

I think the tech center is providing the solutions. I think for mostly, the tech sector is not as political as people think it is. I think they're focused on solving problems. And there's a can-do attitude. And this is cross cultures. This is other countries as well. I mean, looking at the floor, you could see— Someone sees a problem, they try to solve it using technology. So I don't— I think this is an opportunity for the tech sector to do more and more. I mean, you know, Elon Musk is a great example. Like every day he has a new news story about him. But, you know, some of the problems he's solved just in the last few weeks and what he's tried to do, whether it's helping out with the hurricanes or what he's done in Ukraine. I mean, he's getting people linked to broadband and communications in a way. I mean, he's provided a solution for the space station problems. The guy is amazing. He's like— there must be 25 people in that body or something because he's always— I mean, he's also very controversial. But if you look past that, he's a problem solver, as is a lot of the tech leaders. Are there issues? Some of the technology is so new to humankind, like some of the social media, the big platforms, for example. There are issues that everyone's just trying to resolve. But in the scheme of things, those issues are minor compared to the benefits. So my view is you always focus on the biggest possible harms and try to deal with those. And that's what we encourage our government to do. Say what the rules are, we'll follow the rules. Don't make it too difficult for small companies to enter because that's an article of faith of our organization that we have all the big companies as members. They actually agree with us that small companies have to be able to start because that's our— it's easier to start a small company and make things happen and to innovate in most categories other than, for example, building a semiconductor chip plant. Billions of euros. But a lot of the things are small companies have the ideas, and they can move quickly. So let's make sure we're allowing them to be creative. They create jobs, they create wealth, they do great things. And if they play it right, they go public or they sell out to a big company.

I think it's interesting kind of picking up on, I suppose, some of the themes there about what you're talking around how you allow companies to thrive, and perhaps how you kind of balance controversial voices. I read that you said that the tech sector thrives on open conversations. To protect innovation and free speech, we need smarter, balanced rules that foster growth and diverse voices. Where does that balance come from? You know, if we don't have regulation, censorship—

You know where the balance comes from?

Yeah.

It comes from legislative and regulatory policy that listens. Yeah. Listens and communicates and agrees on big goals. So I was involved in the shift to HDTV, the shift to commercialization of the internet. And we succeeded totally because we knew what our goal was. Our goal was, with HDTV, is to have an amazing system that was crisp and clean and did all these things. With the internet commercialization, the internet was to allow business to be done over the internet the way it had been traditionally done using the various countries' commercial codes, which are pretty similar. And we did that successfully. So there's signatures and documents. Here, what are the goals? The goals are to improve mankind in different ways, to make people healthier, to make sure people are fed, make sure they're informed, make sure they have opportunity. And there's great things, and technology enables all of that and saves society a tremendous amount of money because every country, including the U.S., has gotten into a lot of debt, and we have to figure out how we're going to have the next generation be better. Technology is a solution. I mean, most countries have a level on a number of healthcare professionals. Everyone doesn't have enough, even the United States, believe it or not. There's a law on how many doctors can be trained, which has been fixed for over 20 years. Well, technology allows remote sensing and whether you should go back to the hospital, whether you need to go, or else telehealth. Technology is solving the most fundamental problems that, that most economies have. So we have to make sure it could continue to innovate, and innovation can come from anywhere in the world, and that's what we have to foster.

Look, I don't have long with you, and I do want to ask about your book because, um, these are some of the things I talk about in my book, but go ahead. Um, well, look, the book's just come out, Pivot or Die. Um, everyone reads books differently and take something different from any given book. But what would you hope that someone reading that book, in particular a technology leader, might take away from it, given the experience that you've had leading this organization for so many years?

Well, I hope they take away a self-awareness that the fundamental human condition we all have and will never get rid of, in a sense, is that we have a bias towards the here and now, and we think that condition should should stay the way it is. So like, you know, when we're kids and we grow up and we see people around us getting old and dying, it's traumatic. And in the business world, you think that everything's going to stay the same. In reality, your competitors are out there trying to figure out the next thing to do, and you're all looking at the same data, and sometimes you end up all in the same place. So what you have to do is you have to always be thinking of the future and be opportunistic. You can't set a 5-year plan and then just follow it blindly for 5 years because it's going to be invalid and you'll go out of business. That's the pivot or die. And whether it's in your personal decision-making, your life decision-making, you have to separate the important decisions from the— and really critical decisions from the less important. For humans, I always say there's 4 critical decisions that you should be very careful making: whether you commit a major crime, whether you do something very unsafe, whether you have children, and even who you marry. I mean, the last one you can get out of, but it's difficult, trust me. So the— but When kids are talking about what school they go to or where they major or what their first job is, those are not— those are important decisions, yeah, I get it, but don't fret over them because you'll learn no matter what you do. You'll learn about yourself, what you're good at, what you enjoy, and you'll get a self-awareness you can't get even until you're in your 30s. So go for it. So in terms of business and the technology world, you have to act quickly because the world changes around you. It's not going to stay the same. It is not. And that is— it's a problem in companies. Some companies, and there's a lot of research in this, are very backwards-facing. Like everyone talks around the water cooler in the kitchen about the way things used to be, and some are like excited about the future. I think it's good to be excited about the future. I mean, not that— especially as I'm older— not that the past isn't unimportant, because I talk about some of our own history at CES, the history of CES, and a lot of companies in the industry, how they made decisions, how they pivoted. How a startup was about to go under and change what they do, how they thought about it. And the book is for better decision-making for anyone in their lives or business.

One last quick question then before I let you go. I want to acknowledge the fact that we're here in Europe. And I suppose ask you how you see collaboration between the US and European tech ecosystems strengthening, how it helps drive innovation forward. And I suppose I ask that because Europe's going through a lot of change at the minute. You know, there are different attitudes in different pockets of Europe. There's a change of government in Britain. How do you see us fostering that stronger collaboration across the Atlantic?

Well, I think, I mean, it happens naturally, frankly, and events like CES and like this one and other trade shows and business events, you have to collaborate if you're a tech company. You have to. You cannot survive without collaborating because nobody has a monopoly on all the patents and the ideas. And there's the brands now are viewed as as boosting each other up. There's— you know, the technology is so great because you'd be great at one thing, you could outsource everything else. So the collaboration is natural, and those that figure that out can build companies off one great idea and just bring others into the fold. So that's a great skill for people to have. In terms of Europe and the U.S., I think culturally, and our value system is matched perfectly. So I don't think that— I think people love— first of all, Americans love going to Europe. Second of all, I think they enjoy meeting new people and getting new ideas. And I'm always hearing about— I mean, that's what CES is about, is a collaboration between countries, between companies, and creating something better. And our job is to foster that environment so innovation can occur. And that's why we're so intense on how we produce our events. We want them done really well so those type of relationships can build.

Look, I want to thank you for your time.

Thank you.

It's very much appreciated. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and time over here.

Well, thank you. I appreciate you taking the time. We'll have to do this every year, right?

In the interview, there's nothing that definitely talks about what's happening tomorrow. As in, today is the 4th of November and we're not talking about Guy Fawkes Night, we're talking about the US election. Although I hope you went to some fireworks displays over the weekend. He talks about the fact that we should balance innovation with societal impact. So here's a quote from, from what we've just heard: "Say what the rules are, we follow the rules. Don't make it too difficult for small companies to enter because of an article of faith of an organization that we all have the big companies as members. They actually agree with us that small companies have to be able to start because it's easier to start a small company and make things happen than to innovate in most categories." So I think that's quite interesting because that really does relate to kind of government regulations and policies in terms of fostering or hindering innovations, especially for small startups. Put a pin in that for a second, Kat. And then he also talks a lot about the US and Europe. So, in terms of the US and Europe, culturally, he talks about the fact that our value system is perfectly matched. First of all, we know that Americans love coming to Europe. They like the culture. And secondly, they enjoy meeting new people and getting new ideas. And obviously, the outcome of tomorrow will set in motion kind of that relationship with Europe and the US. I said put a pin in that first point. There's a lot in this election around the big tech companies liking one particular side of this because of a lack of regulation. It's got to be about finding a balance, right?

Yeah, of course. And I think that's where maybe your point that you said earlier to technology leaders potentially maybe moving slightly astray from that human-centric perspective that is needed a lot of the time. And I understand a deregulated market for most business— I mean, for most industries, but specifically technology, obviously fosters innovation and encourages growth and so on. And it's—

You can print money.

Yeah, and I get it, and there is obviously— it's give and take, um, but it is, it is really, really interesting that this sort of technology can— yes, fine, okay, there are some tech technology leaders that are, as you say, leaning towards one specific candidate, but I think that there are also a lot of people who are in the tech industry that recognize, um, potential dangers, I think, of a lot of rhetoric that's happening around this election at the moment. And are trying to combat against that, which is a good thing. It shows a democratization of technology.

Yeah, just because you can build something doesn't necessarily mean you should build something.

Yes.

What we haven't been very good at in this rapid period of tech advancement is necessarily pausing and editing and wondering whether or not what we're doing is the right thing.

Yeah.

Hence asking that question at the top of the, top of the show about What tech could you actually live without these days? Anyway, one thing that I did want to throw a spotlight on, a few weeks ago we had a guest, Dominic Midori Davies, who is a writer, rather, a senior writer and reporter for TechCrunch. I sent this article to you, Kat. Do you wanna kinda talk about it and set it up for the listeners?

Yeah, I mean, it's really, really, really interesting. Basically, I mean, I'll just talk about it from my perspective as a young person because the article does go into it a lot as well.

We'll share the article that Dom's written so that you can read this in your own time as well in the show notes.

Of course. Um, so I think it's true the younger generation has been politicized probably a lot further than, um, previous younger generations before us. It's a combination of multiple factors. A main one I think is, um, social media and the fact that we've had this diffusion of power down, um, and you see things happening in real time on your live TikTok and Instagram feeds. And how can you not be politicized when you actually have access to, like, images, videos, whatever it is, um, and you're forming your own opinion? Now, I found it kind of shocking, to be honest. I remember my first election I ever voted in, I just turned 18, um, and I didn't— it wasn't easy at all to access the policies and promises of different officials that were running. Um, and I think the same is, is in America. So this My Ballot AI interactive mobile platform has been built to hopefully combat against that. So you can like go on there, I assume, and I don't know, pick a particular politician, judge, whatever it is.

Well, the, the, the, the, the Dom's article says that all a user has to do is to type into a chat box whatever they want to know about any upcoming elections, and they will receive real-time answers to their questions.

Yeah, which is really, really cool and really necessary, and honestly a gap in the market that I think needs to be addressed, like especially with young people. He's right, the article also goes on to say, um, that I mean, where most search engines now don't really prioritize, um, formal news outlets, for example, young people don't want to trawl through a load of like internet articles and try and figure out, okay, well, is this person onside? Is this person not onside? What's misinformation? What's not misinformation? Having one centralized function app, whatever it is, that you can just type in and say, 'As this person who believes in this, should I vote for this person?' Or 'What does this person believe?' It's really cool.

And coming back to your first point, right, a generation has got very heavily politicised and we know this, the algorithms of social media push people to the extremes. So if you lean left or you lean right, then you will get served content that pushes you further in that direction.

Yeah.

And that's how we end up in our echo chambers. And sometimes it can be very difficult to get a very balanced view of the world with moderate voices from either side that question— like, it's all very well finding your tribe, but you also do need people who can, I think, reasonably challenge and question you, because that's how you learn. And you kind of go, okay, fair enough, I might have thought that, but maybe there's an element of this that I can also kind of concede, and whatever else. And that doesn't happen enough. And we just get flooded with an information overload. And you don't know what's credible, to your point. You don't know what's fake, what's not, what's skewed, what's— and it's all 10 seconds, 30 seconds, and taken out of context and fed to you in these very inflammatory soundbites. And it can be really challenging to know actually who represents what. So something that allows you to query that and to go, I, I think this is a really valuable tool.

When I see it on a daily basis, I would say I'm quite, I'm quite politicized. I speak a lot about politics, and, um, my TikTok feed or Instagram feed is, I mean, it's full of sort of information and articles that just further consolidate sort of my confirmation bias. And if you're not aware of how these algorithms work, as you say, then you're not going to have access to any other differing opinion, which is a very, very bad thing. And it's ultimately caused the polar— the polarization we've seen at the moment in politics. And there's no middle ground. People can't really speak to one another, um, and resonate and appreciate other people's stories. And so therefore, we're in this— I don't know, we're in this I suppose echo chamber almost of politics where there's one side that hates the other and the other side hates the other and you can't really reach, um, yeah, you can't reach a harmonious solution. And I think even with tomorrow, regardless of whichever way it goes and whatnot, I mean, I think there's a huge worry that, um, the polarization of politics will ultimately lead to, even though there will be a decision, Is it going to be accepted? How, how, what if it's that close? Half of the country fully don't agree with who's been voted in, whoever it is. It's just, um, yeah.

And look, Dom wrote this article. It was published on TechCrunch 3 days ago, November 1st. It was— the app was publicly launched on Friday, so it's brand new. It was founded by a guy called Mark Larman. It's powered by Google Gemini, sources its data from Google Civic API and the BallotReady API. But just if people are interested, I think this really kind of sets it up beautifully. Lahren says he wanted to build an app like this since the 2020 election. He spent time that year protesting the murder of George Floyd, and then he found himself in the voting booth, and he recalled looking at the ballot and not recognizing who any of the judges were. I was out there protesting, and when it came to the vote, I didn't even know which of these judges was for us and against us. And I think to your point, Kat, you know, you can be heavily politicised, you can be really engaged, but sometimes you get into a voting booth and you look at a whole load of names and it's like, hang on a minute, who are these people? What do they mean? What do they represent? Do they represent what I think? And sometimes, what do you— I think something that can help you form your opinions in a practical and considered way, which I suppose is what we're talking about. So look, it's the day before the election, hopefully, when people are listening to this, or even the morning of if they're listening to it a few hours after we publish, why not go on and check out this tool where you can literally throw some questions in and try and find out whether the issues that matter to you, who represents them.

Yeah, it's really cool and I'd recommend diversify your perspectives, guys. It's always a good thing.

Yes, and look, this, whilst we're obviously talking about the US election and we do have a large amount of US listeners and that's tomorrow, this isn't built specifically for that election. This is something that can help kind of people all around the world in this year where there is election after election after election, it seems.

Cool.

Well, look, Kat, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. Pleasure as always.

And we'll be back on Wednesday. Tech Talks is hosted and edited by David Savage. It is produced by Nash Squared, and we have special thanks to LEMSI for supplying music to this show.