The Tech Policy Press Podcast

Dr. Arati Prabhakar the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Technology Policy and Science Advisor to President Joe Biden. This week, she hosted an event in Washington DC called "AI Aspirations: R&D for Public Missions." Speakers included executive branch officials and agency leaders, from the Secretary of Education to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, as well as lawmakers such as Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner, and Representative Don Beyer. Prior to the event, Justin Hendrix spoke to Dr. Prabhakar about OSTP's priorities.

What are the risks to democracy as AI is incorporated more and more into the systems and platforms we use to find and share information and engage in communication? In this episode, Justin Hendrix speaks with Elise Silva, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Pittsburgh Cyber Institute for Law, Policy, and Security, and John Wihbey, an associate professor at Northeastern University in the College of Arts, Media, and Design. Silva is the author of a recent piece in Tech Policy Press titled "AI-Powered Search and the Rise of Google’s 'Concierge Wikipedia.'” Wihbey is the author a paper published last month titled "AI and Epistemic Risk for Democracy: A Coming Crisis of Public Knowledge?"

What role did technology play in India's elections, and what impact will the outcome have on tech policy in the country? Joining Justin Hendrix are three experts: Amber Sinha and Vandinika Shukla, both fellows at Tech Policy Press, and Prateek Waghre, the executive director at the Internet Freedom Foundation. Plus, Tech Policy Press program manager Prithvi Iyer sums up the election result.

The guests in this episode are authors of a new study titled Political Machines: Understanding the Role of AI in the US 2024 Elections and Beyond. The study is based on interviews with a variety of individuals who are currently grappling with how generative AI tools and systems will change the way the work.

In a series of field interviews, the authors spoke with three vendors of political generative AI tools, a political candidate, a legal expert, a technology expert, an extremism expert, a digital organizer, a trust and safety industry professional, four Republican campaign consultants, and eight Democratic campaign consultants. Joining Justin Hendrix to discuss the results are:

• Dean Jackson, the principal at Public Circle LLC and a reporting fellow with Tech Policy Press;
• Zelly Martin, a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin and a senior research fellow at the Propaganda Research Lab at the Center for Media Engagement; and
• Inga Trauthig, head of research at the Propaganda Research Lab at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin.

This episode focuses on the role of shareholder activism in pursuing transparency and accountability from tech firms. In a week where board resolutions are up for a vote at Meta and Alphabet related to each company's development and deployment of artificial intelligence, Justin Hendrix spoke to five individuals working at the intersection of sustainable investing in tech accountability:

• Michael Connor, Executive Director of Open MIC
• Jessica Dheere, Advocacy Director at Open MIC
• Natasha Lamb, Chief Investment Officer at Arjuna Capital
• Jonas Kron, Chief Advocacy Officer at Trillium Asset Management
• Christina O'Connell, Senior Manager for Shareholder Engagement and Investments at Ekō

As we documented in Tech Policy Press, when the US Senate AI working group released its roadmap on policy on May 17th, many outside organizations were underwhelmed at best, and some were fiercely critical of the closed door process that produced it. In the days after the report was announced, a group of nonprofit and academic organizations put out what they call a "shadow report" to the US Senate AI policy roadmap. The shadow report is intended as a complement or counterpoint to the Senate working group's product. It collects a bibliography of research and proposals from civil society and academia and addresses several issues the Senators largely passed over. To learn more, Justin Hendrix spoke to some of the report's authors, including:

• Sarah West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute
• Nasser Eledroos, policy lead on technology at Color of Change
• Paramita Shah, executive director of Just Futures Law
• Cynthia Conti-Cook, director of research and policy at the Surveillance Resistance Lab

A conversation with Marwa Fatafta, who serves as policy and advocacy director for the nonprofit Access now, which has worked on digital civil rights, connectivity and censorship issues for the past 15 years. Along with other groups, Access Now has engaged Meta in recent months over what it says is the “systematic censorship of Palestinian voices” amidst the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. 

One tech journalist whose byline always draws me in is Chris Stokel-Walker. He writes for multiple publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Wired, Fast Company, and New Scientist. Now, he’s got a new book out: How AI Ate the World: A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence - And Its Long Future. Last week, I had the chance to speak with him about it, and about how he covers technology and tech policy generally.

On Wednesday, May 15, 2024, a bipartisan US Senate working group led by Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) released a report titled "Driving U.S. Innovation in Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence Policy in the United States Senate." Just hours after the report was released, Justin Hendrix spoke to two civil rights advocates who are working on AI policy about the good and the bad of the Senate report, and more broadly about how to set AI policy priorities that ensure a brighter future for all:

• Alejandra Montoya-Boyer, Senior Director at the Center for Civil Rights & Tech at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
• Claudia Ruiz, Senior Civil Rights Policy Analyst at UnidosUS

Last October, Dr. Jasmine McNealy, as an associate professor at the University of Florida, a Senior Fellow in Tech Policy with the Mozilla Foundation, and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, wrote in Tech Policy Press about the need for a policy agenda for "Rural AI." “Rural communities matter,” she wrote. “And that means they should matter when it comes to the development of policies on artificial intelligence.”

The piece was a preview of sorts to a two-day workshop Dr. McNealy organized at the University of Florida in Gainesville that touched on topics ranging from connectivity to bias and discrimination in algorithmic systems to the connection between AI and natural resources. Justin Hendrix attended the workshop, and recently he checked in with Dr. McNealy and three of the other attendees he met there:

• Michaela Henley, program director and curriculum writer at Black Tech Futures and a senior research fellow representing Black Tech Futures at the Siegel Family Endowment;
• Dr. Dominique Harrison, founding principal of Equity Innovation Ventures; and
• Dr. Theodora Dryer, who is director of the Water Justice and Technology Studio, founder of the Critical Carbon Computing Collective, and teaches on technology and environmental justice at New York University.