Educational Program: The Critical Role of Technology in Advancing Human Security for All
Advancements in technology can absolutely improve the quality of human life but it can also be used for more illicit purposes. Therefore it’s essential for humans to address the spillover effects and potential threats of our technological age, which is changing minute by minute.
Garry Jacobs is the President and CEO of the World Academy of Art & Science (WAAS) and Executive Chairman of HS4A, the global campaign on Human Security for All launched by the UN Trust Fund for Human Security and WAAS. He is an American consultant, author and researcher on business, economy, education, governance, peace and security.
Jacobs is interested in the power of technology to help close equity gaps by reaching the most vulnerable children and youth, and ensuring learning continues in times of crisis. The Association of Foreign Press Correspondents (AFPC-USA) met with Jacobs to glean insights into the pressing questions that have arisen in our technological age.
This educational program was held on Monday, February 13 and was moderated by journalist Thanos Dimadis, who is AFPC-USA’s Executive Director.
The AFPC-USA is solely responsible for the content of this educational program. Below, readers will find a summary of some of the most important takeaways from the presentation.
ON HOW TO STOP NEW THREATS GENERATED BY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Science was “not in the mainstream” until the 1940s, when WAAS founders Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and Robert Oppenheimer understood the power of the atomic bomb, says Jacobs. It was then and after that scientists understood that science could destroy humanity as much as it could improve it, which raised “a very important point on the social responsibility of science.”
A lot of today’s controversy centers around artificial intelligence (AI) and how society can both “manage” and “control” the “application and distribution of knowledge.” Threats posed by nuclear bombs and artificial intelligence are not contained by one nation alone and thus “require the full cooperation of global society, especially the major powers who control them.” But today, in respect to nuclear weaponry, we have a security dilemma because “we've been struggling for decades to get the limited number of nuclear powers to agree that this technology is too dangerous for anybody to possess.”
Cooperation at the global level is paramount, says Jacobs, who says a “multilateral system” is necessary “to support cooperation to the benefit of all humanity.” The problem, he says, is “our technology and our science has outstripped our governance systems” and we haven’t developed global governance to the point where we can fully control them.
ON WHETHER STAKEHOLDERS IN SCIENCE HAVE BEEN SENSITIVE TO PROMOTING SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Jacobs is “optimistic that we are recognizing more and more the absolute essential requirement for putting in place global structures, laws, systems” to promote social responsibility. He points to a partnership between WAAS and the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) which resulted in many technology leaders agreeing they have a major role in promoting social responsibility in regard to science and technology and that technology should be used for the “common good.”
Jacobs is not sure whether this response is due to growing nuclear threats or concerns about the rise of artificial intelligence but said nonetheless we “need the full support of the global public absolutely behind the human security move.”
ON WHY HUMANITY IS STILL EXPERIENCING RISING LEVELS OF UNCERTAINTY AND INSECURITY IN SPITE OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS
According to Jacobs, climate change is undeniably threatening human security around the world and it’s because of our global technological advancement and “the lifestyles we’ve developed.”
“We've been thinking of security as something that we get pretty narrowly defined by protecting ourselves against foreign invasion, protecting ourselves against an enemy, uh, protecting our, particularly in military terms,” says Jacobs. He says the word ‘security’ is “usually used in common political language to refer to military support and military threats” but COVID-19 posed a security threat which required global cooperation.
Multiple threats, such as the war in Ukraine, food insecurity, inflation, health security, and job security are interlinked, and diminished resources, such as water, will force us to “rethink our concept of security that “starts with the human being.” The real threats, says Jacobs, are not military threats despite the presence of military threats.
ON RETHINKING SECURITY
After pointing to the United Nations’ history of fostering multilateral cooperation and how that’s impacted global society since, Jacobs says that today we are “much more conscious of our collective responsibility to collaborate with each other and to focus on the welfare of individuals” and not just those who rule. He notes that the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are “collective goals” that address human security for all.
ON HOW BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY LEADERS SHOULD RECONSIDER THEIR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES
While there is a commonly accepted notion that businesses exist solely to create profits and serve their shareholders, that wasn’t the original intention, says Jacobs. Initially, “society recognized business has a positive role to play for serving society” and modern economic theory “got kind of carried away by the idea of maximizing profit as if it has no responsibility in the world.”
Much has changed and continues to change because more companies than ever are recognizing their social responsibility in response to human security threats on which Jacobs elaborated above.
ON THE LIMITATIONS OF EDUCATION IN PREPARING PEOPLE TO CONFRONT ISSUES OF HUMAN SECURITY
Jacobs says education is perhaps humanity’s greatest invention but the problem it faces now is that “things are changing so fast” that knowledge of the past “is no longer sufficiently relevant.” As it stands, our educational institutions and systems “are not geared up to change as quickly as society.”
“Education is a conservative institution in the sense we try to collect all the past knowledge, but the future knowledge, how do you collect it?” asks Jacobs. “You have to get it, you have to experience it and codify it and figure out what's important and what's true.”
Because education has become more specialized—the United States alone has “thousands of subdisciplines”—we are losing “perspective of the whole” and it’s “very difficult for scientists who are experts in a particular field to understand what's going on in other fields or to understand the implications of that.”
“We need a fundamental change in our educational system to recognize that all dimensions of our lives are important and they're all interconnected and that may sound like an impossible task, but I think it's not impossible,” says Jacobs. That many people lack access to education is also a major issue. A revolutionary change is vital and while that would take decades to implement, it would absolutely close the gap, particularly in “less prosperous countries.”
ON THE FUTURE OF HUMAN SECURITY
While humanity is facing “unprecedented challenges” at the moment, there are also “unprecedented opportunities,” says Jacobs. Growing prosperity is “undermining our environment,” which creates “new needs and appetites” complicated by the fact that educational systems and governments “have not caught up with the needs of the time.”
“We can't solve [our] problems just by relying on our governments. We need the whole of society and every part of civil society to contribute,” he says elsewhere, noting that “we have enormous power to accelerate our social progress” if people come together even if they have different values, traditions, or beliefs.
“As citizens, we all have a power to influence, and we all have a responsibility to contribute to making the world better. And our educational system should teach us that, should impart that sense,” Jacobs concludes.
