The Technically Human Podcast

My guest today is Avi Tuschman , founder and CEO of Crickit.ai, an AI tool that live fact-checks social media videos. It’s a visionary technology that analyzes and verifies claims made on videos shared on social media platforms in real time. Crickit.ai aims to help people make smarter, healthier decisions about what they accept as facts on social media. It arrives at a timely moment, as nearly 4 i...

After a year away writing my book, I'm back with more of the conversations that got me through it — starting with Miranda Bogen , founding Director of the Center for Democracy & Technology 's AI Governance Lab and CDT's Chief Technologist. Miranda has spent her career at the intersection of AI, policy, and civil rights — most recently leading responsible AI strategy at Meta, where she drove co...

In this episode of the show, I speak with Tom Coughlin, the standing President and CEO of IEEE , the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. We discuss the IEEE's vision of technological innovatinon, what it really means to "benefit humanity" through tech, and how the tech sector can, and should, move toward a values-driven...

Today we are bringing you a conversation featuring one technologist who is rethinking and reshaping social media—to build platforms that spark empathy and joy, not division and hate. Vardon Hamdiu is the co-founder and head of Sparkable , a young nonprofit organization that builds a social media platform aimed at bridging divides. Growing up immersed in diverse cultures, Vardon has always been a b...

In this episode of "Technically Human," I bring you a conversation with one of the great thinkers working at the intersection of ethics and technology, Professor Todd Presner, for an episode about his new book, Ethics of the Algorithm: Digital Humanities and Holocaust Memory. In the conversation, we talk about new direction in Holocaust memory and scholarship, how technologies are enabling new app...

In this week's episode of the show, I speak with Daniel Kelley about the culture of online gaming, and the unique set of challenges in the gaming space, related to hate, harassment, and extremism. We talk about the possibilities, and limitations, of regulating that space, and what the landscape of gaming might foretell about the future of increasingly online lives that we live, as more and more of...

Hi Technically Human listeners! Welcome back to another episode of the show. Today I'm sitting down with Alva Noë . We talk about his new book, The Entanglement, and the relationship between technology, philosophy, and art. In  The Entanglement , Professor Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, arguing that we have greatly underestimated what this entangled reality means for...

In this episode of the show, I speak with Dr. Thomas Mullaney about his new book, The Chinese Computer . In the book, Dr. Mullaney outlines the history and evolution of Chinese language computing technology, and explores how the technology of the QWERTY keyboard changed this history of computing. We talk about how the structure of language has shaped the history of digital technologies, and Dr. Mu...

Hi Technically Human Listeners! After a long summer break we are back with a brand season and brand new episodes of the show! To kick off the season, we are bringing you an episode that I’m calling “agree to disagree,” with two guests, Robert D. Atkinson and David Moschella, who join me to argue that the critiques of tech circulating in our environment are full of “myths and scapegoats.” That’s th...

Today I’m speaking with Projjal Ghatak , CEO & Co-Founder At Onloop, about the ethics of teamwork, collaboration, and providing constructive feedback. Projjal founded OnLoop in 2020 to create a category called Collaborative Team Development (CTD) to fundamentally reinvent how hybrid teams are assessed and developed,  after over a decade of frustration with clunky, traditional enterprise perfor...

In this episode of the show, I speak with Sarah Fairweather about what it is like to be an ethics worker. We talk about how ethical work can sync up with business practices, how to develop a culture of ethics in industry, and Sarah talks me through what it is like to practice ethics as a day job. Sarah Fairweather is the Senior Program Manager of Ethics at WellSaid Labs , shaping Responsible AI fo...

In this episode of the show, I sit down with author Mike Trigg about his new novel, Burner . Mike Trigg is an author, a novelist, a tech executive, a tech founder, and an investor in dozens of technology start-up companies for over twenty-five years. His first novel, Bit Flip, was released in August 2022 to critical acclaim, lauded by the San Francisco Chronicle as a “twisty, acerbic corporate thr...

In this episode of the show, I sit down with Dr. Robert Pearl to talk about his new book,  ChatGPT, MD: How AI-Empowered Patients & Doctors Can Take Back Control of American Medicine , a book he co-authored with...ChatGPT! We talk about the deep fractures and problems in American health care that Generative AI may be positioned to solve, the changing landscape of health care, and  the possibil...

In this episode of the show, I talk to Dr. Tamara Kneese about Data and Society's initiative to develop standards and ways to measure the environmental impact of AI . I talk to Dr. Kneese about her work at the Algorithmic Impact Methods Lab (AIMLab), we talk about the links and frictions between tech and climate change, and we consider how AI may be changing how we experience not only life, but al...

In today's episode, I sit down with Dr. Peter Bonutti to talk about the ways in which technologies are revolutionizing our understanding of the brain, and how they may be used to treat crippling brain disorders such as stroke and seizures. Dr. Peter Bonutti, M.D. is a surgeon, inventor, author, professor, consultant, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of  Bonutti Research , a medical device incub...

Today I am interviewing Dr. Sam Sammane about his forthcoming book, "The Singularity of Hope”, which aims to guide readers through the challenges and opportunities of the AI era, advocating for a harmonious fusion of human intelligence and machine capabilities. Dr. Sammane envisions a world where the rapid advancements in AI and technology are harnessed for the greater good, leading to a new age o...

Welcome back to a brand-new season of Technically Human! We’re thrilled to be back with new episodes of the show. We are kicking off the new season, and the new year, with an episode featuring one of my favorite thinkers, Dr. Deborah Stone , to talk about what it means to count—that is to say, what it means to measure, and what it means to matter. Dr. Deborah Stone is currently a Lecturer in Publi...

In this episode of the show, I talk with Jared Maslin about what it means to have privacy on the internet. We talk about the difference between privacy and secrecy, the benefits and limitations of GDPR and the possibility of privacy regulation coming to the US, and we explore the biggest challenges facing data privacy today. His most recent work, including his most recent publication, " Learning F...

In this week’s episode of the show I sit down with Dr. Tonya Evans to talk about the state of crypto in the wake of last week’s landmark criminal fraud conviction of the former CEO of FTX and the former prophet of crypto, Sam Bankman-Fried. Dr. Evans and I discuss what new crypto economy might emerge in the wake of his conviction. We discuss the principles and the possibilities of new digital asse...

In today’s episode, I talk about how to create new legal rules to guide tech toward reflecting human values with Brian Beckcom, one of the leading lawyers of his generation. Brian Beckcom is a Texas Super Lawyer, a designation that recognizes him as one of the top legal experts and practitioners in his arena. In addition to his work as a lawyer, he is also a Computer Scientist and a Philosopher. H...

In this episode of the show, I sit down with Dr. Mark Sagar to talk about his vision of an embodied form of AI. Dr. Sagar is the co-founder and Chief Science Officer at  Soul Machines , a company investigating how to use natural language processing with hyper-realistic visuals to create autonomously animated, emotionally dynamic Digital People. In addition to developing new technologies, the resea...

Hi Technically Human listeners. This is a show about ethics and tech, but it’s also a show about what it means to be human. There is no area of being human in this moment that technologies does not touch. I know that many members of this listening community have been deeply affected by the loss of life and the brutality that began with the Hamas attack on Israel and is ongoing in Israel and in Gaz...

In today’s conversation, I sit down with Amy Kurzweil , the author of the new graphic memoir, Artificial: A Love Story . Artificial: A Love Story tells the story of three generations of artists whose search for meaning and connection transcends the limits of life. The story begins with the LLM generated chatbot that Amy’s father, the futurist Ray Kurzweil , created out of his father’s archive, but...

Hi Technically Human listeners! I’m on vacation this week, and our team has pulled one of our favorite interviews, and definitely hands down our funniest from our archives to share with you—an episode with Dan Lyons on hat makes Silicon Valley funny--and how that humor gets at some of the deeply sobering realities of Silicon Valley culture.  If you haven’t had a chance to listen to the interview y...

In this episode of Technically Human, I sit down with Dr. Julie Albright to talk about her new book: Left to Their Own Devices: How Digital Natives Are Reshaping the American Dream. We talk about the way that digital culture is changing the American Dream for the next generation, we discuss how the internet is changing political culture, and Julie explains how our connections to our devices are ch...