C.O.D.E. (CUNY on Digital Ethics)

Speaker: Gaia Bernstein, Professor of Law at Seton Hall University and Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution

Description: Recorded live before a CUNY audience as the Season 1 finale, this episode asks whether Big Tech is running Big Tobacco’s playbook. Gaia Bernstein discusses the California verdict against Meta and Google over addictive design, why AI companion bots call for public health regulation, the push to preempt state AI laws, and the loneliness built into everyday automation. The conversation closes with audience questions.

About the speaker: Gaia Bernstein is a Professor of Law at Seton Hall University, where she co-directs the Institute for Privacy Protection and the Gibbons Institute for Law, Science and Technology. She is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a board member of Fairplay for Kids, and the author of the award-winning book Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies.

Show notes:

• Gaia Bernstein, Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies

• Gaia Bernstein, Why AI Companions Need Public Health Regulation, Not Tech Oversight
• Yafit Lev-Aretz, Social Media’s Big Tobacco Moment Is Just a First Step
• Yafit Lev-Aretz and Aileen Nielsen, Privacy as a Matter of Public Health
• Gaia Bernstein’s Substack: Digital Crossroads
• Nizan Geslevich Packin, Financial Inclusion Gone Wrong: Securities and Cryptoassets Trading for Children

Speaker: Hannah Bloch-Wehba, Professor of Law at Texas A&M University School of Law

Description: Hannah Bloch-Wehba examines how Flock Safety's license-plate readers have grown into a nationwide surveillance network assembled through local contracts and public-private data sharing. The conversation explores transparency, trade secrecy, procurement, constitutionallimits, and practical ways to build accountability before surveillance technologies enter widespread use.

About the speaker: Hannah Bloch-Wehba is a Professor of Law at Texas A&M University School of Law. Her scholarship examines the relationship between technology and democratic governance, with a focus on free expression,privacy, policing, national security, and government accountability.

Show notes:

• Why some cities are ditching their Flock license plate readers
• ShotSpotter, now SoundThinking
• Hannah Bloch-Wehba, Rights, Knowledge, and Capture in the Datafied State
• Hannah Bloch-Wehba, How Tech Took Over
• Carpenter v. United States
• Helen Nissenbaum's framework of contextual integrity

Speaker: Sean Stein Smith, Associate Professor of Accounting at Lehman College

Description: Sean Stein Smith brings the accountant's perspective to digital ethics. The episode examines blockchain, cryptoassets, decentralized finance, AI-assisted auditing, and the profession's public-interest role as both a gatekeeper and a user of automated systems. It also considers how accountants can verify algorithms and financial infrastructure that are increasingly opaque.

About the speaker: Sean Stein Smith is an Associate Professor of Accounting at Lehman College, where he developed CUNY's first courses on blockchain and cryptoassets. He advises professional and industry organizations, trains practitioners, and writes about accounting, financialreporting, digital assets, and policy.

Show notes:

• Nizan Packin and Yafit Lev-Aretz, Decentralized Credit Scoring: Black Box 3.0
• Nizan Packin and Yafit Lev-Aretz, Crypto-Native Credit Score: Between Financial Inclusion and Predatory Lending
• Wall Street Blockchain Alliance
• Sean Stein Smith's Forbescolumn on accounting and financial technology

Speaker: Shirley Bluvstein, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Baruch College

Description: Shirley Bluvstein discusses experimental research showing that a chatbot can appear more human and more helpful when it makes and corrects a small mistake. The episode connects perceived humanness to trust, manipulation, disclosure, tipping interfaces, defaults, and the broader power of seemingly minor design choices to shape consumer behavior.

About the speaker: Shirley Bluvstein is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business. Her research focuses on consumer behavior, choice architecture, behavioral pricing, and how people perceive and interact with artificial intelligence.

Show notes:

• Shirley Bluvstein et. el., Imperfectly Human: The HumanizingPotential of (Corrected) Errors in Text-Based Communication
• Shirley Bluvstein Netter and Priya Raghubir, Tip to ShowOff: Impression Management Motivations Increase Consumers’ Generosity
• Shirley Bluvstein Netter and Priya Raghubir, "PayingMoney to Avoid Social Costs: The Surprising Impact of the Zero Tip Option"
• Nizan Packin, Consumer Finance and AI: The Death of the Second Opinion

Speaker: Jonathan Iwry, Fellow at the Wharton Accountable AI Lab

Description: Jonathan Iwry explores what happens whenresponsibility for AI harms is divided among developers, deployers, data providers, users, and regulators. The episode considers causation, strict liability for advanced AI, institutional responsibility for AI agents, explainability, and control as a governance principle.

About the speaker: Jonathan Iwry is a Fellow at the Wharton Accountable AI Lab and a Technology, Law, and Policy Fellow at Florida Atlantic University's Center for the Future of AI, Mind, and Society. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and writes about accountability, governance, responsibility, and control in advanced AI systems.

Show notes:

• Nizan Packin and Yafit Lev-Aretz, Decentralized Credit Scoring: Black Box 3.0
• Yafit Lev-Aretz and Aileen Nielsen, Privacy as a Matter of Public Health
• The Wharton Blueprint for AI Agent Adoption

Speaker: Kelly Clancy, political scientist, author, and founder of PACES

Description: Kelly Clancy reframes the debate over AI in schools as a democratic question about who benefits, who bears the risks, and who has authority to decide. The conversation addresses classroom surveillance, studentdata, cognitive and developmental concerns, voluntary guardrails, the campaign for a moratorium in New York City public schools, and ways parents can participate in technology decisions.

About the speaker: Kelly Clancy is a political scientist and the author of Democracy: A Love Letter. She founded Parents for AI Caution in Educational Spaces and serves on Community Education Council District 20 in New York City.

Show notes:

• Kelly Clancy, Democracy: A Love Letter
• Parents for AI Caution in Educational Spaces
• AI Moratorium Coalition statement and petition
• New York City Department of Education AI guidance
• Brookings research on generative AI in children's education
• NizanGeslevich Packin & Karni Chagal-Feferkorn, This Is Not a Game: TheAddictive Allure of Digital Companions

Speaker: Minerva Tantoco, former Chief Technology Officer of New York City

Description: Minerva Tantoco reflects on three decades of building technology across city government, banking, and public-interest innovation.

About the speaker: Minerva Tantoco served as New York City's first Chief Technology Officer and co-founded Grasshopper Bank. She has held senior technology roles in financial services, holds four U.S. patents in intelligent workflow systems, and serves as an EY Advisor in Residence.

Show notes:

• Minerva Tantoco’s Substack: Humanist Ex Machina
• Nizan Packin and Yafit Lev-Aretz, On Social Credit and the Right to Be Unnetworked
• Nizan Packin and Yafit Lev-Aretz, Decentralized Credit Scoring: Black Box 3.0
• CityStrategies, LLC

Speakers: Professors Yafit Lev-Aretz and Nizan Geslevich Packin

Description: Meet your hosts! We explain why a CUNY-centered podcast on digital ethics is needed and describe the questions that will guide the series.

About the speakers: Yafit Lev-Aretz and Nizan Geslevich Packin are Professors of Law at Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business. Their work spans artificial intelligence, financial technology, privacy, consumer and investor protection, digital governance, and technology policy.

Show notes:

• Frank Pasquale, The Black Box Society
• Helen Nissenbaum's work on contextual integrity