Keen On America

The AI revolution, long in hype but short in practice, is finally beginning to happen. In today’s WSJ, the tech writer Joanna Stern introduces her own Joannabot to review the new iPhone 16. Soon, of course, we will increasingly struggle to distinguished between the real Joanna and her Joannabot. And the same will also be true for yours truly on KEEN ON who will, in the not too distant future, be easily replicated (ie: replaced) by an Andrewbot. That, at least, is the view of Toby Walsh, one of the world’s most respected AI experts and authors. As Walsh explained to me (the real AK), he’s been playing around with Google’s new NotebookLM, a break-through product which, he says, amazed him as much as his reaction to GPT3. Toby is right. NotebookLM is an astonishingly good product which, in the not too distant future, will make most podcasters like myself redundant. My only consolation is that my wife works for Google. And she, I’m proud to say, is impossible to replicate.

Toby Walsh is Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and CSIRO’s Data61. He is the winner of the prestigious Celestino Eureka Prize for Promoting Understanding of Science and was named on the international “Who’s Who in AI” list of influencers. He appears regularly on TV and radio, has been profiled by the New York Times and has authored four books on AI for a general audience, the most recent ones entitled “Machines Behaving Badly” and “Faking It: Artificial Intelligence in a Human World” (Fall 2023). He is a Fellow of the Australia Academy of Science and was named by the newspaper The Australian as one of the “rock stars” of Australia’s digital revolution. He has won both the Humboldt Prize and the NSW Premier’s Prize for Excellence in Engineering and ICT. His Twitter account was voted in the top ten to follow to keep abreast of developments in AI.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

This is the final episode of a trilogy of critical conversations about the digital revolution. Earlier this week, Gary Marcus explained how to tame Silicon Valley’s AI barons. Then Mark Weinstein talked to us the reinvention of social media. And now we have the former member of the European Parliament & current Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, Marietje Schaake, explaining how we can save democracy from Silicon Valley. In her provocative new book, Tech Coup, Schaake explains how, under the cover of “innovation,” Silicon Valley companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power from governments themselves. So what to do? For Marietje Schaake, in addition to government regulation, what we need is a radical reinvention of government so that our political institutions have the agility and intelligence to take on Silicon Valley.

Marietje Schaake is a Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN's High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009-2019 she served as a Member of European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy. She is the author of The Tech Coup.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

And still they come. Every week, it seems, there’s a new book celebrating resistance to Nazism. The latest is Two Wheels to Freedom, Arthur J. Magida’s true story of Cioma Schonhaus, a 20 year-old Jewish art student in Nazi Berlin who successfully forged papers for hundreds of Jews. Yes, of course, Magida’s new book is, in part, about the triumph of human agency in fighting the evils of Nazism. But as Magida - who has written two other acclaimed books about resistance to Nazi Germany - explains, the story of Cioma Schonhaus can also be read as a parable of contemporary America. If Trump does indeed win the November election and begin deporting millions of people, Magida argues, then we might all have a moral obligation to mimic Cioma Schonhaus and become heroic resisters ourselves.

Arthur J. Magida has been nominated for a Pulitzer and won multiple awards. His last two books—Code Name Madeleine (“absolutely gripping,” “tightly plotted”) and The Nazi Séance (“an astonishing story, brilliantly told,” “haunting, vivid”)—are optioned for films. He’s been a contributing correspondent to PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, senior editor of the Baltimore Jewish Times, and editorial director for Jewish Lights Publishing. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Early social media pioneer Mark Weinstein is deeply disturbed by the current state of social media. He’s not alone of course, but in his new book, Restoring Our Sanity Online, Weinstein lays out what he boasts is a “revolutionary social framework” to clean up social media. The book comes with blurbs from tech royalty like Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Steve Wozniak, but I wonder if Weinstein, in his attempt to right social media through a more decentralized Web3 style architecture , is trying a fix yesterday’s problem. In tech, timing is everything and the future of online sanity, as Gary Marcus noted a couple of days ago on this show, will be determined by our ability to harness AI. Rather than social media, that’s what we now need a revolutionary framework to protect us from.

MARK WEINSTEIN is a world-renowned tech entrepreneur, contemporary thought leader, privacy expert, and one of the visionary inventors of social networking. His adventure in social media has lasted over 25 years through three award-winning personal social media platforms enjoyed by millions of members worldwide. Mark is frequently interviewed and published in major media including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fox, CNN, BBC, PBS, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, The Hill, and many more worldwide. He covers topics including social media, privacy, AI, free speech, antitrust, and protecting kids online. During his social media years, Mark’s advisors have included Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web; Steve “Woz” Wozniak, co-founder of Apple; Sherry Turkle, MIT academic and tech ethics leader; Raj Sisodia, co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism movement; and many others. A leading privacy advocate, Mark's landmark 2020 TED Talk, “The Rise of Surveillance Capitalism,” exposed the many infractions and manipulations by Big Tech, and called for a privacy revolution. Mark has also been listed as one of the “Top 8 Minds in Online Privacy” and named “Privacy by Design Ambassador” by the Canadian government.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Yesterday, KEEN ON featured a conversation with the technologist Gary Marcus about how we can ensure that AI works for us. Today, on our regular That Was The Week tech weekly roundup, Andrew and Keith Teare discuss the role of human agency in determining our tech future. For Keith, optimism in itself is what he calls a “false God”. It’s not enough just to hope for a better future, he reminds us, echoing Gary Marcus, but we all have a responsibility to go out and build it. Perhaps. But as Andrew reminds us, our supposedly common future is vulnerable to the whims of imminent trillionaires like Elon Musk whose wealth and power is now eclipsing most of the world’s nation-states.

Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Few artificial intelligence experts have been as outspoken or prescient as the author and entrepreneur Gary Marcus. In his new book, Taming Silicon Valley, Marcus takes on the new AI barons of Silicon Valley - billionaires like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman who are building an AI future that works for them rather than for the rest of us. In technology, Marcus argues, human agency is all important. So Marcus’ new polemic seizes back the mantle from these Silicon Valley barons on its insistence that AI must work for us.

GARY MARCUS is a leading voice in artificial intelligence. He is a scientist, best-selling author, and serial entrepreneur (Founder of Robust.AI and Geometric.AI, acquired by Uber). He is well-known for his challenges to contemporary AI, anticipating many of the current limitations decades in advance, and for his research in human language development and cognitive neuroscience. An Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU, he is the author of six books, including, The Algebraic Mind, Kluge, The Birth of the Mind, and the New York Times Bestseller Guitar Zero. He has often contributed to The New Yorker, Wired, and The New York Times. His new book, Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure that AI Works for Us is published by MIT Press.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

As Donald Trump’s 79 year-old Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross was the oldest first-time Cabinet appointee in American history. Ross’ mom, however - Agnes, a lifelong New Jersey schoolteacher and proud Democrat - probably wouldn’t have been proud of her boy. As he acknowledges in his new memoir, Risks and Returns, Agnes always wanted her son to attend law school and was far from thrilled when Wilbur, then known on Wall Street as the “King of Bankruptcy,” became associated with Trump over one of his notorious bankruptcies. But as Wilbur confessed to me, he’s still thinking, at the grand old age of 86, of making Agnes proud by going back to law school. Although, of course, that plan might be waylaid if Trump is, indeed, elected in November and invites the Wall Street financier back into his administration.

Before being named President Trump’s secretary of commerce in 2017, Wilbur Ross had already earned a reputation as the “King of Bankruptcy” over his 55-year career on Wall Street. Often working on high-profile bankruptcies such as Pan Am and Texaco, Ross helped restructure more than $400 billion in assets, and was named among Bloomberg’s 50 most influential people in global finance. After coming to Washington, Ross faced equally tough challenges, yet survived in his post for all four years. Ross shares the story of how he got to the top and stayed there in his new book Risks and Returns: Creating Success in Business and Life. He rose from humble beginnings in North Bergen, New Jersey, applied simple principles with strict discipline, and ultimately Ross’s strategies and dealmaking skills led to relationships with King Charles, Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, the Rothschild family, Steve Wynn, Lakshmi Mittal, Mike Milken, and many other famous personalities.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

At the debate last night, Kamala Harris opened her remarks by talking about the need for America to fix its housing crisis. And crisis it is, at least according to Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer at The Atlantic who has written extensively on the increasing scarcity and rising cost of American housing. In her new collection of essays, On the Housing Crisis, Demsas suggests that the best way to confront this crisis is to aggressively construct new housing. Build Baby Build, in other words. And, for Demsas at least, the sooner the better.

Jerusalem Demsas is a staff writer at The Atlantic where she is an established voice on the housing crisis and local democracy. Her writing spans issues from infrastructure, labor economics, and federalism to race, gender, mobility and the politics of exclusion. She was recognized for her work in 2023 by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) with the ASME Next Award for journalists under 30. Demsas is also a Visiting Fellow with the Center for Economy and Society at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to writing at the Atlantic, Demsas was a policy journalist at Vox where she also cohosted the popular policy podcast The Weeds.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

At the debate tonight, there probably won’t be much talk about American education. Which is a shame - at least according to Josh Cowen, author of The Privateers, a new book about how radical conservative billionaires like Betsy De Vos have created a culture war to sell their idea of school vouchers. It’s all part of the right-wing Project 2025 vision, Cowen suggests, of collapsing the church-state boundaries and making American public schools mirror the country’s inequities and injustices. The alternative, Cowen suggests, is for Federal or State governments to fund these public schools more generously, thereby allowing all Americans to get a fair and decent education.

Josh Cowen is a nationally recognized expert and writer on topics related to school choice, teachers and teaching, policy analysis, and education politics. He has studied school vouchers, school accountability, charter schools, and parental decision-making as part of major research teams in Louisiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. His writing on school vouchers, culture wars, and other current events has appeared in major media outlets ranging from Slate to Time Magazine. He speaks and testifies across the country on the dangers of school privatization and is regularly quoted in state and national feature reporting. In addition to his appointment as professor of education policy at Michigan State University, Dr. Cowen has also served as one of five national directors of the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH) based at Tulane University. In 2016, he founded the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC), a strategic research partnership between Michigan State University and the state of Michigan. He has held a variety of editorial positions for major academic journals, and was co-editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis—the premier education policy journal in the United States. His research has been funded through federal, state and local government contracts, as well as a diverse array of philanthropies such as Arnold Ventures, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. Josh Cowen holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in history from the University of Michigan. Before beginning his research and writing career, he worked in CNN’s Washington, D.C. Bureau and on staff for the political debate show Crossfire. 

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The Serbian-American economist Branko Milanovic is one of the world’s leading authorities on inequality. In this KEEN ON America conversation, we talked about Milanovic’s interpretation of the history of American economic inequality - from slavery to contemporary capitalism. Why has America become so much unequal over the last fifty years, I asked. And today, in what Milanovic sees as a post neo-liberal age, how does he imagine the future of economic inequality?

Branko Milanovic obtained his Ph.D. in economics (1987) from the University of Belgrade with a dissertation on income inequality in Yugoslavia. He served as lead economist in the World Bank’s Research Department for almost 20 years, leaving to write his book on global income inequality, Worlds Apart (2005). He was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington (2003-2005) and has held teaching appointments at the University of Maryland (2007-2013) and at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University (1997- 2007). He was a visiting scholar at All Souls College in Oxford, and Universidad Carlos III in Madrid (2010-11). Professor Milanovic’s main area of work is income inequality, in individual countries and globally, including in preindustrial societies. He has published articles in Economic Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Development Economics, and Journal of Political Philosophy, among others. His book The Haves and the Have-nots (2011) was selected by The Globalist as the 2011 Book of the Year. Global Inequality (2016) was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for the best political book of 2016 and the Hans Matthöfer Prize in 2018, and was translated into 16 languages. It addresses economic and political effects of globalization and introduces the concept of successive “Kuznets waves” of inequality. In March 2018, Milanovic was awarded (jointly with Mariana Mazzucato) the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Knowledge. His most recent books are Capitalism, Alone, published in 2019, and Visions of Inequality, published in 2023..

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.