In this second installment of our oral history project we meet a man trying to solve AI’s black box problem with symbolic AI, a subfield that communicates how decisions are made.

We Meet:

Casper Wilstrup, the Founder & CEO of Abzu

Credits:

SHIFT is produced by Jennifer Strong and Anthony Green, with help from Emma Cillekens. It’s mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski.

In an increasingly digital world, ensuring equitable access to broadband and digital tools has become a pressing societal issue—particularly within the Black community. This episode, a conversation moderated by our show’s co-creator and senior producer, Anthony Green. It was taped in front of a live audience at The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC.

We Meet:

Dr. Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings, and also serves as Co-Editor-In-Chief of TechTank

Sean Mickens, Associate Vice President, External Affairs, Comcast

Dr. Jon Gant, director, Department of Commerce, NTIA, Office of Minority Broadband Initiatives

Justice Ukadike, Manager, Senior Analyst, U.S. Government Affairs & Public Policy, Google

Credits:

SHIFT is produced by Jennifer Strong and Anthony Green, with help from Emma Cillekens. It’s mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski.

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Privacy officers from Google, Microsoft, Meta and IBM discuss how they approach AI governance before a live audience at the general meeting of the IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals) on November 3, 2023 in Boston, Massachusetts. 

We Meet:

Julie Brill, Chief Privacy Officer, Corporate Vice President, Global Privacy & Regulatory Affairs, Microsoft

Keith Enright, Global Chief Privacy Officer, Google

Christina Montgomery, Chief Privacy and Trust Officer, IBM

Rob Sherman, Vice President and Deputy Chief Privacy Officer, Policy, Meta

Credits:

SHIFT is produced by Jennifer Strong and Anthony Green, with help from Emma Cillekens. It’s mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski.

We explore what impact the U.S. President's executive order on artificial intelligence might have as governments across the globe move to regulate AI.

We Meet:

Khari Johnson, senior writer, Wired

Suresh Venkatasubramanian, director of the Center for Technological Responsibility, Reimagination, and Redesign with the Data Science Institute at Brown University

Credits:

SHIFT is produced by Jennifer Strong, Anthony Green and Emma Cillekens. It’s mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski.

The hardest part of making something in space right now might just be getting it back to Earth. A conversation with Quartz’s Tim Fernholz about the opportunities and challenges of making goods in orbit.

In the first installment of our oral history project we meet the woman overseeing Airbnb's efforts to build an anti-party AI system to try to combat fraud and stop bad actors from using the company’s platform.

We Meet: Naba Banerjee, head of trust and safety at Airbnb

Credits: SHIFT is produced by Jennifer Strong and Anthony Green, with help from Emma Cillekens. It’s mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski.

Stanford University measured the transparency of top AI foundation models–all failed. The researchers are urging companies to reveal more information such as the data and human labor used to train these models.

We Meet: Karen Hao, contributing writer at The Atlantic

Credits: SHIFT is produced by Jennifer Strong and Anthony Green, with help from Emma Cillekens. It’s mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski.

We take you to the heart of New York City’s manufacturing center, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, for a conversation about AI ethics and geopolitics. It’s taped in front of a live audience of students and manufacturing experts at a factory owned by Nanotronics - a company that manufactures hardware and software capable of working on a nanometer scale - during Manufacturing Week.

We Meet:

John Paul Farmer, Chief Innovation Officer & President, WeLink Cities

Anwaar AlMahmeed, Strategic Advisor, Republic MENA

Geoffrey Levene, Director Worldwide AI Initiatives and Global Public Sector, Head of Climate Action, Defense and Space, NVIDIA

Credits:

The show is produced by Jennifer Strong and Anthony Green with help from Emma Cillekens. The theme music was composed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski.

We hop into the backseat of a police car and learn how officers in Rwanda have adopted and deployed AI on the streets of its capital city, Kigali.

We Meet:

Chief Inspector of Police Paul Ryamugwiza, director of traffic and road enforcement systems for Rwanda National Police

Credits:

The show is produced by Jennifer Strong and Anthony Green with help from Emma Cillekens. It’s mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski.

Advances in off the shelf commercial technologies have helped manufacturers build complex war machines at much lower prices. It’s changed how drone combat works and who can wage it. This episode, we examine the implications on international security and everyday life.

We Meet:

Abishur Prakash, Founder & CEO of The Geopolitical Business

Lorenz Meier, Founder & CEO of Auterion

Credits:

The show is produced by Jennifer Strong and Anthony Green with help from Emma Cillekens. It’s mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski.