The Tech Policy Press Podcast

Over the past few months, there have been a range of voices calling for the urgent regulation of artificial intelligence. Comparisons to the problems of nuclear proliferation abound, so perhaps it’s no surprise that some want a new international body similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But when it comes to AI and global governance, there’s already a lot in play- from ethics c...

Earlier this month, Justin Hendrix traveled to RightsCon, the big gathering of individuals and organizations concerned with human rights and technology organized by Access Now. The sprawling event had hundreds of sessions on a wide range of themes, but one topic discussed across multiple tracks was the importance of encrypted communications, especially to groups such as political dissidents and jo...

In the United States, it’s fair to say that federal, state and local governments have struggled in the era of digitalization. Decades in to that era, there is still a gap between the policy outcomes we seek and what citizens often get when they engage with government agencies and services online. At its worst this gap means people aren’t receiving critical services that sustain their lives; and at...

Last week, a group of very important people, including the U.S Secretaries of State and Commerce and trade representatives from President Joe Biden’s administration, met with top European Union officials in the heart of the Swedish Lapland for the fourth Ministerial meeting of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, or “TTC”. Pressing needs were tackled, new initiatives were launched, commitment...

Today’s show has two segments both focused on generative AI. In the first segment, Justin Hendrix speaks with Irene Solaiman , a researcher who has put a lot of thought into evaluating the release strategies for generative AI systems. Organizations big and small have pursued different methods for release of these systems, some holding their models and details about them very close, and some pursui...

Last week, the Supreme Court released decisions in Gonzalez v. Google , LLC , and Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh . In this episode we’ll discuss what it tells us about how the Court is thinking about social media and intermediary liability, and what it might tell us about future cases the Court may hear. I’m joined by an expert who follows these issues closely, and has shared his expertise with us on th...

Today’s episode features a discussion with Nick Seaver , a professor at Tufts University and the author of Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation from the University of Chicago Press. Nick is an anthropologist who studies how people use technology to make sense of cultural things. His book is the product of ethnographic observation and conversations with developers work...

Justin Hendrix speaks to writer Malcolm Harris about his book, PALO ALTO: A HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA, CAPITALISM, AND THE WORLD , which considers the historical antecedents for the project of Silicon Valley.

Recently Justin Hendrix caught up with Gus Hurwitz , a professor of law at the University of Nebraska and the director of the Governance and Technology Center. He’s also the Director of Law and Economics Programs at the International Center for Law and Economics, a Portland based think tank that focuses on antitrust law and economics policy issues. Hurwitz told Hendrix he’s leaving Nebraska at the...

In the course of its investigation into the insurrection at the US Capitol, the House Select Committee on January 6th spoke to hundreds of witnesses, including social media executives with insight into the role that platforms played in propagating the false claims that motivated violence that day, and in connecting and facilitating the movement and organization of people that sought to overthrow t...

Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix is joined by a UK lawmaker and advocate who has been influential in the global push for more protections for children online. Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE is a Crossbench member of the House of Lords and sits on the Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee, and she’s a Commissioner for UNESCO's Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, where s...

In this episode, Tech Policy Press board member and UCLA School of Law postdoctoral research fellow Courtney Radsch interviews Anne Marie Engtoft Larsen , Denmark’s Tech Ambassador, who represents the Danish Government to the global tech industry and in global governance forums on emerging technologies. The discussion focuses on the role of tech in society, how to regulate artificial intellig...

This episode features two segments. We’ll hear from Ellen P. Goodman , Senior Advisor for Algorithmic Justice at the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which just  launched an inquiry  seeking comment on “what policies will help businesses, government, and the public be able to trust that Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems work as claimed – and with...

In this episode, Justin Hendrix is joined by a columnist and author who’s spent the last few years thinking about a past era of automation, a process that yielded him a valuable perspective when considering this moment in time. Los Angeles Times technology columnist Brian Merchant is the author of a recent column under the headline, " Afraid of AI? The startups selling it want you to be ," and the...

This is Part 1 of two episodes looking back on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which arguably kicked off five years ago when the New York Times and the Guardian published articles on March 17, 2018. The Times headline was “ How Trump Consultants Exploited the Data of Millions ,” while the Guardian went with “ Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data b...

This is Part 2 of two episodes looking back on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which arguably kicked off five years ago when the New York Times and the Guardian published articles on March 17, 2018. The Times headline was “ How Trump Consultants Exploited the Data of Millions ,” while the Guardian went with “ Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data b...

Two weeks ago, Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix participated in Tech and Society week, a series of events across Georgetown’s campus hosted by Emily Tavoulareas , Managing Chair of the Georgetown Initiative on Tech & Society. The panel featured a discussion between three podcast hosts focused on tech and tech policy, including Hendrix and: Bridget Todd, director of public communica...

Across the United States, there is a growing number of lawsuits that seek to hold tech firms accountable for various alleged harms. My guest today is tracking such suits closely. Gaia Bernstein is a Law Professor, Co-Director of the Institute for Privacy Protection and Co-Director of the Gibbons Institute for Law Science and Technology at the Seton Hall University School of Law. She writes teaches...

Is technology ultimately neutral? Are the biases we discover in the systems we interact with today just bugs or defects that we can trust will be addressed in version 2.0 or 3.0 of the system? Or is there something inherently wrong with the tech industry’s approach to developing algorithms and software?  In today’s podcast, we speak to the author of a new book that takes on this question. In...

In this episode of the podcast, we hear three perspectives on generative AI systems and the extent to which their makers may be exposed to potential liability. I spoke to three experts, each with their own views on questions such as whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act-- which has provided broad immunity to internet platforms that host third party content-- will apply to systems l...

At Columbia University, data scientist Chris Wiggins and historian Matthew Jones teach a course called Data: Past, Present and Future . Out of this collaboration has come a book, How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms , to be published on Tuesday, March 21st by W.W. Norton. It should be required reading for anyone working with data of any sort to solve problem...

Answers on how best to regulate technology differ depending on the values and politics of any particular jurisdiction. Yet it’s worth looking for points of consensus. In general these days, we in the United States have a lot to learn from lawmakers and regulators in Europe, who are further down the path in their regulatory experiments. In this episode, Justin Hendrix speaks with one German lawmake...

In the spring, Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix teaches a course called Tech, Media and Democracy that is a partnership of faculty at NYU, Cornell Tech, CUNY’s Queens College, The New School and Columbia Journalism School. The course hosts a range of expert speakers on issues at the intersection of those topics, and graduate students in journalism, information science, computer science, med...

In this episode we look at questions around ethical, legal and business risks surrounding so-called generative AI and synthetic media, and the opportunity that exists if they are employed responsibly. The first segment features Matthew Ferraro , an attorney at the firm WilmerHale who counsels clients about such risks and, with his colleagues, recently wrote a piece for Tech Policy Press on the " T...

How will so-called "generative AI" tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT change our politics, and change the way we interact with our representatives in democratic government? This episode features three segments, with: Kadia Goba , a politics reporter at Semafor and author of a recent report on the AI Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives; Micah Sifry , an expert observer of the relationship betwe...