What Are the Implications if the AI Boom Turns to Bust?
This episode considers whether today’s massive AI investment boom reflects real economic fundamentals or an unsustainable bubble, and how a potential crash could reshape AI policy, public sentiment, and narratives about the future that are embraced and advanced not only by Silicon Valley billionaires, but also by politicians and governments. Justin Hendrix is joined by:Ryan Cummings, chief of staff at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and coauthor of a recent New York Times opinion on the possibility of an AI bubble;Sarah West, co-director of the AI Now Institute and coauthor of a Wall Street Journal opinion, "You May Already Be Bailing Out the AI Business"; andBrian Merchant, author of the newsletter Blood in the Machine, a journalist in residence at the AI Now Institute, and author of a recent piece in Wired on signals that suggest a bubble.
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Why Independent Researchers Need Better Access to Platform Data
This episode was recorded in Barcelona at this year’s Mozilla Festival. One session at the festival focused on how to get better access to data for independent researchers to study technology platforms and products and their effects on society. It coincided with the launch of the Knight-Georgetown Institute’s report, “Better Access: Data for the Common Good,” the product of a year-long effort to create “a roadmap for expanding access to high-influence public platform data – the narrow slice of public platform data that has the greatest impact on civic life,” with input from individuals across the research community, civil society, and journalism. In a gazebo near the Mozilla Festival mainstage, Justin Hendrix hosted a podcast discussion with three people working on questions related to data access and advocating for independent technology research:Peter Chapman, associate director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute;Brandi Geurkink, executive director of the Coalition for Independent Tech Research and a former campaigner and fellow at Mozilla; andLK Seiling, a researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin and coordinator of the DSA40 Data Access Collaboratory.Thanks to the Mozilla Foundation and to Francisco, the audio engineer on site at the festival.
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Through to Thriving: Connecting Art and Policy with Mimi Ọnụọha
For her special series of podcasts, Through to Thriving, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli spoke to artist Mimi Ọnụọha, whose work "questions and exposes the contradictory logics of technological progress." The discussion ranged across changing trends in nomenclature of data and artificial intelligence, the role of art in bearing witness to authoritarianism, the interventions and projects that Ọnụọha has created about the datafication of society, and why artists and policy practitioners should work more closely together to build a more just and equitable future.
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Ryan Calo Wants to Change the Relationship Between Law and Technology
Ryan Calo is a professor at the University of Washington School of Law with a joint appointment at the Information School and an adjunct appointment at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. He is a founding co-director of the UW Tech Policy Lab and a co-founder of the UW Center for an Informed Public. In his new book, Law and Technology: A Methodical Approach, published by Oxford University Press, Calo argues that if the purpose of technology is to expand human capabilities and affordances in the name of innovation, the purpose of law is to establish the expectations, incentives, and boundaries that guide that expansion toward human flourishing. The book "calls for a proactive legal scholarship that inventories societal values and configures technology accordingly."
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Evaluating Instagram's Promises to Protect Teens
Instagram has spent years making promises about how it intends to protect minors on its platform. To explore its past shortcomings—and the questions lawmakers and regulators should be asking—I spoke with two of the authors of a new report that offers a comprehensive assessment of Instagram’s record on protecting teens:Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University and co-director of Cybersecurity for Democracy, and Arturo Béjar, the former director of ‘Protect and Care’ at Facebook who has since become a whistleblower and safety advocate.Edelson and Béjar are two of the authors of “Teen Accounts, Broken Promises: How Instagram is Failing to Protect Minors.” The report is based on a comprehensive review of teen accounts and safety tools, and includes a range of recommendations to the company and to regulators.
Tech Policy Press is a nonprofit media and community venture intended to provoke new ideas, debate and discussion at the intersection of technology and democracy.
You can find us at https://techpolicy.press/, where you can join the newsletter.
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