The Nebraska Technology and Governance Center, Cinema 16, and Ash Eliza Smith, Robert Twomey and NovySan from the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts organized and co-hosted a one-day intensive AI film-making Hackathon in April 2023 where creatives offered up speculative visions of the future and emergent system designs to offer us clues and strategies of ways that we can shape an interspecies future. In this episode, Gus highlights the process and creative workflows throughout the day, and also sits down with Ash and Robert to discuss the hackathon.

This special episode of Tech Refactored is co-produced by a student fellows group consisting of Lauren Bruning, Diego Villalpando, Baba Yussif, and Niloofar Mansoor. Niloofar joins Gus for a conversation with Mrinal Rawool, a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Mrinal, Niloofar, and Gus discuss large language models such as Chat GPT, examining how they work, use cases, and the impacts these models have in society.

In this special episode of Tech Refactored, Salome Perez and Amy Barry, both student fellows at the NGTC, host the show to discuss the role of software in agriculture. Salome and Amy are joined by George Grispos, Assistant Professor in Cybersecurity at UNO, and Santosh Pitla, Associate Professor in Advance Machinery Systems at UNL. Together they examine the many cybersecurity challenges faced in the agriculture space.

Samantha Zyontz, an Assistant Professor at Boston University School of Law, returns to the podcast to expand on the conversation about CRISPR from an episode of Tech Refactored released in February of 2021. Despite the dispute over who owns the IP, companies have been developing products and technologies that use CRISPR. Samantha and Gus discuss these technologies, how the IP is affecting innovation, and much more.

Asaf Lubin, Associate Professor of Law at Indiana University, joins the podcast to discuss commercial spyware. Asaf and Gus examine how countries around the world use spyware, new technologies within spyware, and how it's developed and sold by private companies.

Jerry Hudgins, Professor and Chair of the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, joins the podcast to discuss small modular nuclear reactors. The Nebraska Public Power District recently received approval to study potential sites across the state for these reactors. Jerry and Gus discuss what small modular nuclear reactors are, how they work, and how they can complement the usage of existing renewable energy sources.

Kathy Kleiman joins the podcast to discuss her recent book, Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World's First Modern Computer. Kathy and Gus start their conversation with background on the ENIAC computer itself – how it was funded, what its purpose was, and how it worked. Kleiman then explains the extraordinary story of the six women who were hired to program the ENIAC.

Eric Alston joins the podcast to discuss the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, marking the largest failure of a United States bank since 2008. Eric and Gus examine why and how this happened, the regulatory oversight of banks, and much more.

Marc Scribner, a Senior Transportation Policy Analyst at Reason Foundation, joins the podcast to discuss the East Palestine train derailment. Marc outlines potential causes of the incident and debunks some of the finger pointing claims on Twitter before shifting gears to train regulation more broadly. Gus and Marc also discuss new technologies being implemented into modern trains and rail systems.

Matthew Tokson, Law Professor at the University of Utah, joins the show to discuss a range of issues around privacy in public spaces, your own backyard, and more.