The Tech Policy Press Podcast

Just ahead of the start of the new school year, districts across the United States are issuing new policies on the use of artificial intelligence applications in classrooms. Last Wednesday, New York City effectively banned most student facing AI in all K-8th grade classes while allowing a limited set of approved tools to be used for high schoolers for the upcoming school year. And on the same day, Los Angeles school officials announced the district was placing a one-year moratorium on generative AI for all of its estimated 378,000 students.
To learn more about these announcements and the politics driving them, Justin Hendrix spoke to two individuals who covered these matters for Tech Policy Press this summer: Tech Policy Press fellow Chris Mills Rodrigo and audio reporter Laura Karpas, who interned at Tech Policy Press this summer and is currently a graduate student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Tech Policy Press fellow Jake Laperruque, who is also the Deputy Director of Center for Democracy and Technology’s Security and Surveillance Project, spoke to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) about the  the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and ongoing efforts to reform it.

State legislatures across the United States are actively developing new laws on a range of issues related to artificial intelligence. In Virginia, that process is informed by an entity established by the Virginia General Assembly called the Joint Commission on Technology and Science. To learn more about the Joint Commission and some of its recent work on AI chatbots, Justin Hendrix spoke to its chief policy analyst, Dr. Kira Allmann.

How can human rights and social justice advocates and investigators protect their data and technology infrastructure in an age of rising authoritarianism in the United States and abroad? Earlier this month, a coalition of human rights, justice, and data organizations launched the Technology Freedom Cooperative, a project designed to help nonprofit organizations protect evidence, reduce their dependence on big tech platforms, and "build independent capacity to work with large language models." Justin Hendrix spoke to two of its members, Maheen Khan, director of technology at the Invisible Institute, and Patrick Ball, director of research at HRDAG.

Days into a bellwether trial brought by four states, Meta reached a settlement with a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general to resolve their claims, agreeing to pay up to ~$17 billion and to make a series of teen-safety changes to Instagram and Facebook.
The day after the settlement was announced, Tech Policy Press convened a live podcasting recording with to assess the settlement and its implications. Expert guests included:
Alissa Cooper, Executive Director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute (KGI)
Meetali Jain, Executive Director of Tech Justice Law (TJL)
Matthew B. Lawrence, Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law