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A survey of 1,500 tech workers found that 77% of them think Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook have too much power. Only 8% disagreed.
Tech workers were also asked about a wide range of other tech issues, including working with law enforcement, China, and AI legislation.
The survey was carried out by Protocol, from the editor of Politico.
To take the pulse of the position of tech employees across the country on key issues facing the industry, Protocol is launching its first tech employee survey, a survey of 1,504 employees nationwide, from senior executives to partners. They are mostly from large tech companies – nearly 40% of respondents work in companies with annual sales exceeding $ 500 million and most companies have more than 1,000 employees.
The first topic was whether the tech giants are too powerful.
A whopping 78% of tech employees we polled agreed that the tech industry is too powerful, with just 11% disagreeing. The same goes for Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple. Over 77% of respondents said these companies had too much power and just over 8% disagreed.
Not only did the majority say the industry was too powerful, but around 40% also said the technology was doing more harm than good. Only about 45% of tech workers disagreed, noting that even in industry, tech workers are concerned about the negative impact of technology on the world.
And yet, remedies are scarce. More than 68% want their companies to partner or be acquired by a big tech player, and three-quarters said big tech companies should be allowed to acquire other companies. Just over 40% believe Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple should be dismantled. Despite their concerns about the power and negative influence of technology, tech workers do not see antitrust enforcement as the solution.
When it comes to China, a majority believe the U.S. government has been too aggressive, fearing that an equally robust response from China could cripple U.S. tech companies.
The Trump administration has taken a hawkish stance toward the Chinese tech industry, placing dozens of companies on the country’s commercial blacklist and signing several executive orders to ban Chinese social media apps – most notably TikTok – from the United States. . Overall, tech employees said they believe the stalemate should end, expressing an openness to working more closely with Chinese tech companies.
Fifty-six percent of those polled said they agreed that U.S. restrictions on Chinese tech companies had gone too far, while 28 percent said they were neutral on the matter. And 60% agreed that US tech companies should work more closely with Chinese tech companies. Ultimately, a majority of those polled said they believed the future of the tech industry was at stake, with 58% believing that a cold war with China could “cripple US tech companies.”
There are limits to their openness to Chinese technology, however – 46% said they agreed with Chinese telecommunications company Huawei should be banned from the United States.
AI is concerned, especially when it comes to proven problems with AI systems that detect and amplify the prejudices present in society.
AI can overload real-world stigma and disproportionately harm people of color. Seventy-three percent of respondents said they agreed the government should regulate AI. Only 9% disagreed and 18% said they were “neutral”.
You can consult the other results on Protocol. (If you’ve come to the comments to claim that sample size doesn’t make sense, you can get a quick sample theory grounding here, and a more detailed one here.)
Photo: Kevin Ku / Unsplash
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