Government Funding: Fueling Innovation or Lining Pockets in Assistive Tech?
A recent article on Axios discusses the growing market for assistive technologies powered by artificial intelligence that can improve the lives of people with disabilities. It notes that over 1 billion people globally live with a disability, representing a huge potential market for assistive tech. Companies showcased new products at CES 2023, like dotLumen’s headset that helps blind people navigate by vibrating to indicate obstacles. Other examples include OrCam’s device that reads text aloud and recognizes faces, and NeuroSkin trousers that use AI to stimulate leg muscles.
The article also covers the downsides - assistive tech can still fail in ways human helpers don't. And despite the life-changing potential, the high costs mean public subsidies are needed for widespread adoption.
The point of these articles
I’m always suspicious when articles such as this highlight the need for public subsidies for assistive technologies as the kicker. It’s like saying to a disabled person, “hey, this could all be yours if you would just lobby your Congressperson to earmark some money for us…” Thus, there is a case to be made that these articles serve as stealth advertisements by big tech firms to secure more government funding.
On one hand, the benefits of assistive tech for disabled and elderly populations are clearly substantial. Products like dotLumen's navigation headset could be truly life-changing for the blind. However, we should maintain a healthy skepticism about the role of these articles. Big tech firms are masters at narrating technological advancements as uplifting humanitarian stories, when the underlying profit motives remain dominant. Portraying subsidies as an ethical obligation makes for effective lobbying.
The wealthy never propose spending their own money
It is an iron law of politics and economics that those blessed with the fattest wallets are the most reluctant to personally fund public welfare programmes or technological innovations - no matter how apparently worthy the cause. This aversion to dipping into ample reserves transcends national boundaries and cultures.
Whether discussing investments into assistive technologies for disabled populations or acting on climate change or global health crises, there is a common refrain - the burden should fall on faceless taxpayer-funded government subsidies. Appeals are made to societal responsibility and ethics, but rarely to the direct philanthropy of the moneyed class.
The wealthy zealously protect intergenerational wealth and have perfected the art of avoiding taxes that could finance the greater good. But proposals calling for dug-in billionaires and booming multinational corporations to directly allocate portions of their mammoth profits for social causes are few and inevitably drowned out. Even promising technological breakthroughs for unambiguously noble aid programmes targeting society’s vulnerable elicit little voluntary financing by those with the deepest pockets.
This is not to fully deny claims of being socially-conscious or industry arguments for public technology subsidies. But peeling back the righteous veneer exposes a cold reality - the wealthy's wallets remain locked tight, with the keys firmly in their grip. One fears this parsimony shall persist so long as governments can be swayed to keep coins flowing from the average taxpayer’s strained purse into the bulging coffers of big technology’s richest. The exorbitantly comfortable will not loosen their own purse strings without immense public pressure.
Governments are Big Tech’s biggest sources of cash
Reviewing the assistive technologies showcased in the original article, from Google to Microsoft, to the venture-backed startups, one cannot help but wonder at the sheer greed of the companies behind them. The disabled and vulnerable stand to gain immensely from such emerging tech advancements. Yet inflated price tags place life-transforming innovations out of reach for the disadvantaged masses.
Rather than prioritising access and affordability to empower those most marginalised, big tech firms nourish their own bottom lines above all else. The excuse given is that unrelenting quarterly profit growth fuels further research. But how much higher can executive pay packages swell? Which shareholder’s third luxury yacht, or professional football team takes priority over the mobility of the blind or cognitively impaired?
These are calculated decisions to wring out maximum profits from an especially vulnerable community, abetted by capital markets rewarding such behaviour. As emerging tech firms enhanced by artificial intelligence swell into gargantuan corporations, we witness a widening abyss between their soaring monetary valuations and the deprived populations their tools could aid.
In truth, means exist to make this technologies affordable through flexible pricing programmes or direct research subsidies. But that might ding the compensation of directors or outside investors, so disabled people must pay inflated rates instead. Such is the darkness of unfettered neoliberal capitalism - it efficiently commodifies human suffering into handsome returns for the fortunate few. These companies construct wondrous machines whilst lacking the basic human decency to ensure all who need them can access them.
Until public pressure mounts or disabling accidents befall their own loved ones, the tech elite will continue profiteering gleefully off the disadvantaged. The quarterly reports of financial indexes are monitored far more closely than metrics of social equality and justice.