Technoprogressive Hub Podcast

J Hughes, Sarah Shahed, Matteo MacDermant discuss Sarah’s editorial on age verification laws. We all want to protect children from harm, and age-gating social media websites has broad support. But mandating age-verification means identifying everyone, giving platforms much more information about consumers and putting the anonymity of journalists, activists and whistleblowers at risk. They also obl...

Thomas Baudinette is Senior Lecturer in Global Cultures at Macquarie University in Australia, a cultural anthropologist whose work maps the role popular culture plays in shaping gender and sexuality across East and Southeast Asia. His first book, Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media, and Masculinity in Tokyo (University of Michigan Press, 2021), examined how commercial gay media and the bar cul...

Today on Technoprogressive Hub I’m speaking with Dr. Evie Kendal, a bioethicist and public health scientist at Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology. She is the author of the provocative and influential monograph, Equal Opportunity and the Case for State Sponsored Ectogenesis , in which she argued that artificial wombs are a potential requirement for genuine social and gender equality. In...

As anxiety about data centers, AI-driven precarity, and tech oligarch authoritarianism mount, progressives have mostly responded with proposals to slow down AI. Bernie in particular has been channeling some of the existential risk concerns of Eliezer Yudkowsky, Geoffrey Hinton and Max Tegmark, and with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, promoting regulation of data center construction. On the other hand, C...

Today on Technoprogressive Hub we’re speaking with Aleksandra Przegalińska, a philosopher and social scientist of AI. Dr. Przegalińska is Vice Rector and the head of the Human-Machine Interaction Research Center at Kozminski University in Poland. Currently she is Senior Research Associate at the Center for Labour and Just Economy at Harvard University. She works on the future of work, humanoid and...

This week on Technoprogressive Hub, Eli, Matteo and J discuss the legislation proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders to restrict the building of AI data centers. “Opposing AI’ is Luddite, not technoprogressive, but the sentiment against oligarchs, AI and data centers is so strong now that we may need to accept some Luddite positioning to get the Left to promote desirable AI safety...

ProWorker AI? This week on Technoprogressive Hub, Eli, Matteo and J are discussing proposals for pro-worker artificial intelligence laws. Recently David Autor, Daron Acemoglu, and Simon Johnson and the UK Trades Union Council have proposed a set of regulatory and legal reforms to protect workers from automation and enhance human expertise. Arguably technoprogressive, will they only work briefly un...

On Technoprogressive Hub, Dr. J. spoke with philosopher Mark Walker about moral enhancement, universal basic income, theology and technoprogressivism. Mark Walker holds the Richard L. Hedden Endowed Chair in Advanced Philosophical Studies at New Mexico State University. Links Happy-People-Pills For All by Mark Walker Free Money for All by Mark Walker Mark Walker’s Papers This is a public episode....

The Pro-Human AI Declaration  On Technoprogressive Hub, Matteo and J react to the Pro-Human AI Declaration. Co-signed by major progressive and conservative organizations and leaders, does it finally represent a tenuous alliance of the populist Right with the progressive Left, united by anti-AI Luddism? Or is the Declaration actually a technoprogressive project dressed as Luddism? Links Pro-Human A...

Post-Labor Economics With David Shapiro  David Shapiro is a futurist, author, social media producer, and one of the most prolific popularizers of post-labor economics — the argument that accelerating automation isn't a bug to be managed but a civilizational transition to be designed. Drawing on ideas ranging from universal basic income and sovereign wealth funds to the radical deflationary potenti...

David Wood is a prominent British futurist, author, and pioneer of the smartphone industry as a co-founder of Symbian , the world’s first successful smartphone operating system. David serves as the Chair of London Futurists , one of the world’s largest foresight communities, as the Executive Director of the Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation , and as a member of the IEET Board of Directors...

Join James Hughes and George Dvorsky for a timely discussion on the Technoprogressive Hub podcast, at the intersection of technology and progressive politics. They explore the Left's identity crisis in Canada, the politics of universal access to GLP-1 drugs, and the evolving landscape of AI regulation. Links “What Ever Happened to the Transhumanists?” by George Dvorsky George on Wikipedia  George...

Today on Technoprogressive Hub, Matteo and J unpack Cory Doctorow’s enshittification thesis, the emerging concept of technofascism, and the connection between them.  “The Age of Enshittification” by Kyle Chayka.  “The Enshittifcation of Government” by Christian Sarkar  “Technofascism comes to America” by Kyle Chayka “Technofascism: AI, Big Tech, and the new authoritarianism” by Mark Coeckelbergh T...

Richard (RJ) Eskow is a journalist and policy consultant, and host of The Zero Hour, a nationally syndicated radio and television program. He has served as a Senior Fellow with Social Security Works and the Campaign for America’s Future, and is a member of the IEET Board of Directors.  We talk about the challenge of promoting technoprogressive solutions to progressives who associate the technologi...

The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies is working to create a technoprogressive policy agenda. This Technoprogressive Hub podcast will be hosted by IEET Executive Director J. Hughes, a sociologist and ethicist, interviewing people about technoprogressive ideas. For this initial podcast Dr. J. is joined by Eli Zupnick, a Washington DC-based political operative, and Matteo McDermant who...