The Tech Policy Press Podcast

Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is the host of  Through to Thriving , a special podcast series where she talks with technology policy practitioners to explore futures beyond our current moment. For this episode, Anika spoke with two experts on Trust & Safety about balance and resilience in a notoriously difficult field.  Alice Hunsberger is the head of Trust & Saf...

Last week, following months of negotiation and just weeks before the first legal deadlines under the EU AI Act take effect, the European Commission published the final Code of Practice on General-Purpose AI. The Code is voluntary and intended to help companies demonstrate compliance with the AI Act. It sets out detailed expectations around transparency, copyright, and measures to mitigate systemic...

In the United States, state legislatures are key players in shaping artificial intelligence policy, as lawmakers attempt to navigate a thicket of politics surrounding complex issues ranging from AI safety, deepfakes, and algorithmic discrimination to workplace automation and government use of AI. The decision by the US Senate to exclude a moratorium on the enforcement of state AI laws from the bud...

Helen Nissenbaum , a philosopher, is a professor at Cornell Tech and in the Information Science Department at Cornell University. She is director of the  Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech, which was launched in 2017 to explore societal perspectives surrounding the development and application of digital technology. Her work on contextual privacy, trust, accountability, security...

At Tech Policy Press we’ve been tracking the emerging application of generative AI systems in content moderation. Recently, the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL) released a comprehensive report titled Algorithmic Gatekeepers: The Human Rights Impacts of LLM Content Moderation , which looks at the opportunities and challenges of using generative AI in content moderation systems at scale...

If you’ve been reading Tech Policy Press closely over the last three weeks, you may have come across one or more posts from collaboration with Data & Society called “ Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis .” The articles in the series examine how powerful tech billionaires and authoritarian leaders and thinkers are leveraging AI and digital infrastructur...

For a special series of episodes dubbed Through to Thriving that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting discussions intended to help us imagine possible futures—for tech and tech policy, for democracy, and society—beyond the moment we are in. The third episode in the series features her conversation with Dr. Timnit Gebru , the founder and executive...

Concerns about AI chatbots delivering harmful, even profoundly dangerous advice or instructions to users is growing. There is deep concern over the effects of these interactions on children, and a growing number of stories—and lawsuits—about when things go wrong, particularly for teens. In this conversation, Justin Hendrix is joined by three legal experts who are thinking deeply about how to addre...

In Europe, the digital regulatory landscape is in flux. Over the past few years, the EU has positioned itself as a global leader in tech regulation, rolling out landmark laws like the AI Act. But now, as the much-anticipated AI Act approaches implementation, the path forward is looking anything but smooth. Reports suggest the European Commission is considering a delay to the AI Act’s rollout due t...

For a special series of episodes dubbed Through to Thriving that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting discussions intended to help us imagine possible futures—for tech and tech policy, for democracy, and society—beyond the moment we are in. The second episode in the series features her conversation with Dr. Desmond Upton Patton , who has long stu...

In this episode, Justin Hendrix speaks with Nerima Wako-Ojiwa , director of Siasa Place , and Odanga Madung , a tech and society researcher and journalist , about the intersection of technology, labor rights, and political power in Kenya and across Africa. The conversation explores the ongoing struggles of content moderators and AI data annotators, who face exploitative working conditions while pe...

Canadian political leaders are in a precarious moment. Fresh off the resignation of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and ascendancy of his successor, new Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader Mark Carney , the nation faces a brewing trade war with the United States and a deteriorating relationship with its president, Donald Trump . In addition to managing those global tensions, Canadian lead...

Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna are the authors of a new book that The Guardian calls “refreshingly sarcastic” and Business Insider calls a “funny and irreverent deconstruction of AI.” They are also occasional contributors to Tech Policy Press. Justin Hendrix spoke to them about their new book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want , just out from Harper Collins.&nb...

Earlier this year, an entity called the Observatory on Information and Democracy released a major report called INFORMATION ECOSYSTEMS AND TROUBLED DEMOCRACY: A Global Synthesis of the State of Knowledge on News Media, AI and Data Governance . The report is the result of a combination of three research assessment panels comprised of over 60 volunteer researchers all coordinated by six rapporteurs...

In February, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Vera Zakem as California’s State Chief Technology Innovation Officer at the  California  Department of Technology. Zakem brings deep experience from national security, democracy and human rights, and technology policy. Most recently, under former President Joe Biden, she served as the Chief Digital Democracy and Rights Officer at US...

On May 29, the Center for Civil Rights and Technology at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights released its  Innovation Framework , which it calls a “new guiding document for companies that invest in, create, and use artificial intelligence (AI), to ensure that their AI systems protect and promote civil rights and are fair, trusted, and safe for all of us, especially commun...

On Thursday, May 22, the United States House of Representatives narrowly advanced a budget bill that included the "Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology Modernization Initiative," which includes a 10-year moratorium on the enforcement of state AI laws. Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix and associate editor Cristiano Lima-Strong discussed the moratorium, the contours of the debat...

In his New York Times review of the book, Columbia Law School professor and former White House official Tim Wu calls journalist Karen Hao’s new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI , “a corrective to tech journalism that rarely leaves Silicon Valley.” Hao has appeared on this podcast before, to help us understand how the business model of social media platforms incentiv...

Today’s guest is Milton L. Mueller ,  a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the School of Public Policy and the head of an advocacy policy analysis group called the Internet Governance Project. Mueller has long walked the halls and sat in the rooms where internet governance is discussed and debated, and has played a role in shaping global Internet policies and institutions. He’s th...

In the wake of the most intense India-Pakistan escalation in two decades, experts are still trying to make sense of the role that the information war played in the physical one. In this episode, Tech Policy Press Associate Editor Ramsha Jahangir speaks to two experts from India and Pakistan who tirelessly navigated the deluge of rumor and disinformation during the crisis, and who came away wi...

 Last year, a United States federal judge ruled that Google is a monopolist in the market for online search. For the past three weeks, the company and the Justice Department have been in court to hash out what remedies might look like. Tech Policy Press associate editor Cristiano Lima-Strong spoke to two experts who are following the case closely, including Karina Montoya, a senior reporter and an...

Last year, Elon Musk's xAI set up its "Colossus" supercomputer in an old Electrolux manufacturing facility in Memphis, Tennessee. Now, the residents of nearby neighborhoods are pushing for facts and fair treatment as the company looks to expand its footprint amid questions about its environmental impact. Justin Hendrix considers the state of play with Dara Kerr , a reporter for The Guardian; Amber...

Catherine Bracy  is a civic technologist and community organizer whose work focuses on the intersection of technology and political and economic inequality. Justin Hendrix spoke with her about her new book, World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy . In it, she suggests how the venture capital industry must be reformed to deliver true innovation that advances society rath...

From visions of AI paradise to the project to defeat death, many dangerous and unscientific ideas are driving Silicon Valley leaders. Justin Hendrix spoke to Adam Becker , a science journalist and author of MORE EVERYTHING FOREVER: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity , just out from Basic Books.

For a special series of episodes that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting a series of discussions intended to help us imagine possible futures—for tech and tech policy, for democracy, and society—beyond the moment we are in. Dubbed Through to Thriving , the first episode in the series features a discussion on how to build community and solidarit...