The Tech Policy Press Podcast

In this episode, we explore a topic that sits at the heart of global digital policy: the contrasting visions of internet governance championed by the United States and its Western allies versus those promoted by China and nations in its orbit. This debate is playing out across various international venues and has profound implications for the future of digital rights, privacy, and the open interne...

In October 2023, during the third Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China's leader Xi Jinping signaled a shift in focus from more grandiose physical infrastructure projects to 'small yet smart' initiatives. This shift underscores the need to understand China's ambitions to reshape global digital governance, moving away from an open and free internet towards a model rooted in government control and m...

A topic we returned to often in this podcast is the dire need for independent technology researchers to have access to platform data. Without it, we cannot understand the extent of the harms and effects of social media on people and on society, and we cannot understand the limits of those harms. This makes it difficult to respond in acute moments such as elections, and to understand issues such as...

Madhumita Murgia , AI editor at the Financial Times, is the author of a new book called Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI . The book combines reporting and research to provide a look at the role that AI and automated decision-making is playing in reshaping our lives, our politics, and our economies across the world.

Dr. Arati Prabhakar the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Technology Policy and Science Advisor to President Joe Biden . This week, she hosted an event in Washington DC called "AI Aspirations: R&D for Public Missions." Speakers included executive branch officials and agency leaders, from the Secretary of Education to the Food and Drug Administration C...

What are the risks to democracy as AI is incorporated more and more into the systems and platforms we use to find and share information and engage in communication? In this episode, Justin Hendrix speaks with Elise Silva , a postdoctoral associate at the University of Pittsburgh Cyber Institute for Law, Policy, and Security, and John Wihbey , an associate professor at Northeastern University in th...

What role did technology play in India's elections, and what impact will the outcome have on tech policy in the country? Joining Justin Hendrix are three experts: Amber Sinha and Vandinika Shukla , both fellows at Tech Policy Press, and Prateek Waghre , the executive director at the Internet Freedom Foundation. Plus, Tech Policy Press program manager Prithvi Iyer sums up the election result.

The guests in this episode are authors of a new study titled Political Machines: Understanding the Role of AI in the US 2024 Elections and Beyond . The study is based on interviews with a variety of individuals who are currently grappling with how generative AI tools and systems will change the way the work. In a series of field interviews, the authors spoke with three vendors of political generat...

This episode focuses on the role of shareholder activism in pursuing transparency and accountability from tech firms. In a week where board resolutions are up for a vote at Meta and Alphabet related to each company's development and deployment of artificial intelligence, Justin Hendrix spoke to five individuals working at the intersection of sustainable investing in tech accountability: Michael Co...

As we documented in Tech Policy Press, when the US Senate AI working group released its roadmap on policy on May 17th, many outside organizations were underwhelmed at best, and some were fiercely critical of the closed door process that produced it. In the days after the report was announced, a group of nonprofit and academic organizations put out what they call a " shadow report " to the US Senat...

A conversation with Marwa Fatafta , who serves as policy and advocacy director for the nonprofit Access now, which has worked on digital civil rights, connectivity and censorship issues for the past 15 years. Along with other groups, Access Now has engaged Meta in recent months over what it says is the “systematic censorship of Palestinian voices” amidst the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. 

On Wednesday, May 15, 2024, a bipartisan US Senate working group led by Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) released a report titled "Driving U.S. Innovation in Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence Policy in the United States Senate." Just hours after the report was released, Justin Hendrix spoke to two civil rights advocates who are working on AI policy a...

One tech journalist whose byline always draws me in is Chris Stokel-Walker . He writes for multiple publications including  The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Economist , Wired , Fast Company , and New Scientist . Now, he’s got a new book out: How AI Ate the World: A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence - And Its Long Future . Last week, I had the chance to speak with him...

Last October, Dr. Jasmine McNealy , as an associate professor at the University of Florida, a Senior Fellow in Tech Policy with the Mozilla Foundation, and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, wrote in Tech Policy Press about the need for a policy agenda for "Rural AI." “Rural communities matter,” she wrote. “And that...

The Hippocratic oath, named for a Greek physician who lived ~2,500 years ago that some call the father of modern medicine, is one of the earliest examples of an expression of professional ethics. It is a symbol of a profession that has built in a number of protections for patient interests, with ethical frameworks and requirements that seek to assure they are maintained. Today’s guest is Chinmayi...

One topic we come back to again and again on this podcast is disinformation. In many episodes, we’ve discussed various phenomena related to this ambiguous term, and we’ve tried to use science to guide the way. But the guests in this episode suggest that in the broader political discourse, the term is more than over used. Often, they say, lawmakers and other elites that employ it are crossing the l...

In an introduction to a special issue of the journal First Monday on topics related to AI and power, Jenna Burrell and Jacob Metcalf argue that "what can and cannot be said inside of mainstream computer science publications appears to be constrained by the power, wealth, and ideology of a small cohort of industrialists. The result is that shaping discourse about the AI industry is itself a fo...

Last week President Joe Biden signed into law a measure that would force the Chinese firm ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok, or risk the app being banned in the US. The measure also included restrictions on the sale of personal data to foreign entities. What are the implications of these moves for US and global tech policy going forward? What will the inevitable legal challenges look lik...

Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce held a hearing: “Legislative Solutions to Protect Kids Online and Ensure Americans’ Data Privacy Rights.” Between the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), both of which have bipartisan and bicameral support, Congress may be closer to acting on the issues than it has been recent memory. One of the witnesses that the...

This episode features two conversations. Both relate to efforts to better understand the impact of technology on society. In the first, we’ll hear from Sayash Kapoor , a PhD candidate at the Department of Computer Science and the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, and  Rishi Bommasani , the society lead at the Stanford Center for Research on Foundation Models. T...

Last week, a federal judge granted a motion to dismiss and strike a lawsuit brought by X Corp, formerly known as Twitter, against a nonprofit research outfit called The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).  To learn more about why the ruling matters, Justin Hendrix spoke to Alex Abdo , the litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University; Imran Ahm...

On this show, when we talk about technology and democracy, guests are often talking about the relationship between technology and existing democratic systems. Today's guest wants us to think more expansively about what doing democracy means and the role the technology can play in it. Nathan Schneider , an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, is the author of...

Last year, researchers at Human Rights Watch wrote about the global backlash against women’s rights. In multiple countries, they say, hard-won progress has been reversed amidst a wave of anti-feminist rhetoric and policies, and it may take decades to reverse the trajectory. It’s against that backdrop that today’s guest pursues concerns at the intersection of tech and digital rights with women’s hu...

On Monday, March 18, the US Supreme Court heard oral argument in Murthy v Missouri . In this episode, Tech Policy Press reporting fellow Dean Jackson is joined by two experts- St. John's University School of Law associate professor Kate Klonick and UNC Center on Technology Policy director Matt Perault - to digest the oral argument, what it tells us about which way the Court might go, and what more...

On March 18, the US Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Murthy v Missouri, a case that asks the justices to consider whether the government coerced or “significantly encouraged” social media executives to remove disfavored speech in violation of the First Amendment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tech Policy Press reporting fellow Dean Jackson speaks to experts including the Knight First Amendm...