The Tech Policy Press Podcast

In February, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Vera Zakem as California’s State Chief Technology Innovation Officer at the California Department of Technology. Zakem brings deep experience from national security, democracy and human rights, and technology policy. Most recently, under former President Joe Biden, she served as the Chief Digital Democracy and Rights Officer at USAID, where she led global efforts to align emerging technologies with democratic values. Zakem assumes the role as California, like many governments, is accelerating its embrace of artificial intelligence.

Justin Hendrix spoke with Zakem about the promise of state-led innovation and how to avoid its perils, what responsible AI governance might mean in practice, and how California might chart a course that’s both ambitious and accountable to its citizens.

On May 29, the Center for Civil Rights and Technology at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights released its Innovation Framework, which it calls a “new guiding document for companies that invest in, create, and use artificial intelligence (AI), to ensure that their AI systems protect and promote civil rights and are fair, trusted, and safe for all of us, especially communities historically pushed to the margins.”

Justin Hendrix spoke to the Center’s senior policy advisor on Civil Rights and Technology, Frank Torres, about the framework, the ideas that informed it, and the Center’s interactions with industry.

On Thursday, May 22, the United States House of Representatives narrowly advanced a budget bill that included the "Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology Modernization Initiative," which includes a 10-year moratorium on the enforcement of state AI laws. Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix and associate editor Cristiano Lima-Strong discussed the moratorium, the contours of the debate around it, and its prospects in the Senate.

In his New York Times review of the book, Columbia Law School professor and former White House official Tim Wu calls journalist Karen Hao’s new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, “a corrective to tech journalism that rarely leaves Silicon Valley.”

Hao has appeared on this podcast before, to help us understand how the business model of social media platforms incentivizes the deterioration of information ecosystems, the series of events around OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s abrupt firing in 2023, and the furor around the launch of DeepSeek last year. This week, Justin Hendrix spoke with Hao about the book, and what she imagines for the future.

Today’s guest is Milton L. Mueller,  a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the School of Public Policy and the head of an advocacy policy analysis group called the Internet Governance Project. Mueller has long walked the halls and sat in the rooms where internet governance is discussed and debated, and has played a role in shaping global Internet policies and institutions. He’s the author of a new book called Declaring Independence in Cyberspace: Internet Self-Governance and the End of US Control of ICANN, which takes us into those rooms, telling the story of how and why the US government gave up its control of ICANN, a key internet governance institution responsible for internet names, numbers, and protocols. That history tells us a lot about where we are today when it comes to the broader geopolitics and governance of technology, and it has implications for the governance fights ahead, including over artificial intelligence.

In the wake of the most intense India-Pakistan escalation in two decades, experts are still trying to make sense of the role that the information war played in the physical one. In this episode, Tech Policy Press Associate Editor Ramsha Jahangir speaks to two experts from India and Pakistan who tirelessly navigated the deluge of rumor and disinformation during the crisis, and who came away with thoughts about the role of social media platforms and the incentives they create, particularly in times of conflict:

• Pratik Sinha, co-founder and editor at Alt News—one of India’s major fact-checking websites, and 
• Asad Baig, founder of Media Matters for Democracy—a non-profit focused on media literacy and development in Pakistan.

Sinha and Baig reflect on how the India-Pakistan conflict played out across digital platforms—and how it revealed a deeper, more dangerous dysfunction in the information ecosystem. 

 Last year, a United States federal judge ruled that Google is a monopolist in the market for online search. For the past three weeks, the company and the Justice Department have been in court to hash out what remedies might look like. Tech Policy Press associate editor Cristiano Lima-Strong spoke to two experts who are following the case closely, including Karina Montoya, a senior reporter and analyst for Center for Journalism and Liberty at the Open Markets Institute, and Joseph Coniglio, the director of antitrust and innovation at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).

Last year, Elon Musk's xAI set up its "Colossus" supercomputer in an old Electrolux manufacturing facility in Memphis, Tennessee. Now, the residents of nearby neighborhoods are pushing for facts and fair treatment as the company looks to expand its footprint amid questions about its environmental impact. Justin Hendrix considers the state of play with Dara Kerr, a reporter for The Guardian; Amber Sherman, a Memphis activist; and artifacts from local media reporting over the past year.

Catherine Bracy is a civic technologist and community organizer whose work focuses on the intersection of technology and political and economic inequality. Justin Hendrix spoke with her about her new book, World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy. In it, she suggests how the venture capital industry must be reformed to deliver true innovation that advances society rather than merely outsized returns for an increasingly monolithic set of investors.

From visions of AI paradise to the project to defeat death, many dangerous and unscientific ideas are driving Silicon Valley leaders. Justin Hendrix spoke to Adam Becker, a science journalist and author of MORE EVERYTHING FOREVER: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, just out from Basic Books.