Author Archives: James Betts

How will the Liberal Democrats prepare the UK for emergent technologies?

By James Betts | Mon 25th July 2016 - 12:33 pm

Let’s take a brief look at the list of things that are on my Letter to Santa:

Artificial intelligence
Quantum computing
In-vitro meat and vertical farming
Mass-commercialised 3D printing
Transparent solar panels
Li-Fi and 5G
Male contraception
Autonomous cars and electric cars
And so, so much more…

Yeah, I’m a nightmare to buy presents for.

Some of these are already causing stirs in the legal world.

Just the other week there were reports of telecoms companies promising 5G sooner if the EU crippled net neutrality. That’s a fairly clear statement of their desire that we need to be prepared to stand up to. The Lib Dem stance on that should be obvious: we can wait if it means maintaining net neutrality.