Tim Cook delivered Stanford’s 2019 commencement speech Sunday. He told the Class of 2019 that tech giants must take responsibility for “chaos” their products create (via CNBC).
Tim Cook Warns We Are Risking The ‘Freedom to Be Human’
Mr. Cook said that “Stanford and Silicon Valley’s roots are woven together. We’re part of the same eco-system.” Teferring to Steve Jobs’s famous “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” Stanford commencement address, he added: “That was true when Steve stood on this stage 14 years ago, and it’s true today.”
Mr. Cook also recalled some sports clashes with Stanford from his student days. However, he soon turned to more serious matters. Discussing a number of high profile data breaches, he said:
Lately it seems this industry is becoming better known for a less noble innovation – the belief you can claim credit without accepting responsibility. We see it every day now with every data breach, every privacy violation, every blind eye turned to hate speech, fake news poisoning our national conversation, the false miracles in exchange for a single drop of your blood.
“You can’t dodge responsibility for the chaos,” the Apple CEO warned his peers in other tech firms. Mr. Cook went on to say that people “lose the freedom to be human” if they “accept as normal and unavoidable that everything in our lives can be aggregated, sold and even leaked in the event of a hack.”
The speech touched on familiar themes for Mr. Cook. He has become an increasingly vocal critic of tech firms who do not respect and protect users privacy. He made privacy a key tenant of Apple products.