The Tech Policy Press Podcast

On Wednesday, January 31st, the US Senate Judiciary Committee hosted a hearing titled "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis." The CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X, Discord and Snap were called to the Capitol to answer questions from lawmakers on their efforts to protect children from sexual exploitation, drug trafficking, dangerous content, and other online harms. Gabby Miller reported on the hearing from New York, and Haajrah Gilani reported from Washington D.C.

Last year, the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit research organization, conducted an international review of AI governance tools. The organization analyzed various documents, frameworks, and technical material related to AI governance from around the world. Importantly, the review found that a significant percentage of the AI governance tools include faulty AI fixes that could ultimately undermine the fairness and explainability of AI systems. 

Justin Hendrix talked to Kate Kaye, one of the report’s authors, about a range of issues it covers, from the involvement of large tech companies in shaping AI governance tools the role of organizations like the OECD in developing AI governance tools, to the need to consult people and communities that are often overlooked when making decisions about how to think about AI.

In October 2022, a group of researchers published a manifesto establishing a Coalition for Independent Technology Research.

“Society needs trustworthy, independent research to relieve the harms of digital technologies and advance the common good,” they wrote. “Research can help us understand ourselves more clearly, identify problems, hold power accountable, imagine the world we want, and test ideas for change. In a democracy, this knowledge comes from academics, journalists, civil society, and community scientists, among others. Because independent research on digital technologies is a powerful force for the common good, it also faces powerful opposition.”

In the months since that document was published, that opposition has grown. From investigations in Congress to lawsuits aimed at specific researchers, there is a backlash particularly against those who study communications and media, especially where the subjects of that research are often those most interested in advancing false and misleading claims about issues including elections and public health. 

Justin Hendrix, who is a member of the coalition, caught up with Brandi Geurkink, who was hired as the coalition's first Executive Director in December 2023, to discuss its priorities.

Today’s guest is Robert Weissman, president of the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. He is the author of a letter addressed to the California Attorney General that raises significant concerns about OpenAI’s 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. The letter questions whether OpenAI has deviated from its nonprofit purposes, alleging that it may be acting under the control of its for-profit subsidiary, potentially violating its nonprofit mission. The letter raises broader issues about the future of AI and how it will be governed. 

Today is the three month anniversary of the vicious Hamas attack and abduction of hostages that ignited the current war in Gaza. Just before the New Year, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) published a report titled “Distortion by Design: How Social Media Platforms Shaped Our Initial Understanding of the Israel-Hamas Conflict.” This week, Justin Hendrix spoke to the report’s authors— Emerson T. Brooking, Layla Mashkoor, and Jacqueline Malaret— about their observations of the role that platforms operated by X, Meta, Telegram, and TikTok have played in shaping perceptions of the initial attack and the brutal ongoing Israeli siege of Gaza, which now continues into its fourth month. 

“Evident across all platforms,” they write, “is the intertwined nature of content moderation and political expression—and the critical role that social media will play in preserving the historical record.”

In a report released December 20, 2023, the Stanford Internet Observatory said it had detected more than 1,000 instances of verified child sexual abuse imagery in a significant dataset utilized for training generative AI systems such as Stable Diffusion 1.5.

This troubling discovery builds on prior research into the “dubious curation” of large-scale datasets used to train AI systems, and raises concerns that such content may contributed to the capability of AI image generators in producing realistic counterfeit images of child sexual exploitation, in addition to other harmful and biased material. 

Justin Hendrix spoke the report’s author, Stanford Internet Observatory Chief Technologist David Thiel.

If you’ve listened to some of the dialogue in hearings on Capitol Hill about how to regulate AI, you’ve heard various folks suggest the need for a regulatory agency to govern, in particular, general purpose AI systems that can be deployed across a wide range of applications. One existing agency is often mentioned as a potential model: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But how would applying the FDA work in practice? Where does the model break down when it comes to AI and related technologies, which are different in many ways from the types of things the FDA looks at day to day? To answer these questions, Justin Hendrix spoke to Merlin Stein and Connor Dunlop, the authors of a new report published by the Ada Lovelace Institute titled Safe before sale: Learnings from the FDA’s model of life sciences oversight for foundation models.

At the end of this year in which the hype around artificial intelligence seemed to increase in volume with each passing week, it’s worth stepping back and asking whether we need to slow down and put just as much effort into questions about what it is we are building and why.

In today’s episode, we’re going to hear from two researchers at two different points in their careers who spend their days grappling with questions about how we can develop systems and modes of thinking about systems that lead to more just and equitable outcomes, and that preserve our humanity and the planet:

• Dr. Batya Friedman is a Professor in the Information School and holds adjunct appointments in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, the School of Law, and the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington, where she co-directs the Value Sensitive Design Lab and the UW Tech Policy Lab.
• Dr. Aylin Caliskan is an Assistant Professor in the Information School at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, is an affiliate of the UW Tech Policy Lab, part of the Responsible AI Systems and Experiences Center, the NLP Group, and the Value Sensitive Design Lab. She is also co-director elect for the Tech Policy Lab, a role she will assume when Dr. Friedman retires from the university.

In April 2021, the European Commission introduced the first regulatory framework for AI within the EU. This Friday, after a marathon set of negotiations, EU policymakers reached a political consensus on the details of the legislation. This AI Act represents the most significant comprehensive effort in the world’s democracies to regulate a technology that promises major social and economic impact. While the AI Act will still have to go through a few final procedural steps before its enactment, the contours of it are now set. To find out more about what was decided, Justin Hendrix spoke to one journalist who reported directly on the negotiations in Brussels: Luca Bertuzzi, technology editor at EURACTIV.

In both the US and Europe, policymakers are making important decisions about the governance of the bulk collection of communications and data for intelligence purposes. In the US, some of these questions are at the fore as Congress considers how to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's Section 702 program, which is set to expire at the start of 2024. To get a sense of how the broader policy debate around government surveillance is advancing in both the US and Europe, Justin Hendrix spoke to two experts on the subject who happened to be meeting together in Washington DC last week: Dr. Thorsten Wetzling, head of the Digital Rights, Surveillance and Democracy research unit of the Berlin think tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (SNV), and Greg Nojeim, Director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).