On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins chats with Alice Siu on how deliberative polling fosters informed, respectful public dialogue. They discuss the method’s use in both in-person and on AI-assisted virtual forums, its role in shaping policy, and its potential to reduce polarization. Alice highlights the importance of teaching deliberative skills in schools and how real-time, structured conversations can strengthen democracy.

Dr. Alice Siu is an Associate Director at Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab and a senior research fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

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Show Notes:

• Alice’s book chapter, “Reimagining Democracy: The Role of Technology and Deliberation”
• Alice's paper for the American Political Science Review, "Can Deliberation Have Lasting Effects?"
• Alice’s paper for the American Political Science Review, “Is Deliberation an Antidote to Extreme Partisan Polarization? Reflections on ‘America in One Room’”
• Results of Alice’s work with Meta, April 2024, April 2025, “Results of First Global Deliberative Poll® Announced by Stanford’s Deliberative Democracy Lab”
• New York Times article, “She Is in Love With ChatGPT”
• S1E4, Jennifer Forestal on Designing Democratic Digital Spaces
• S3E1, Kris Rose on Deliberative Democracy and Meta's Community Forums

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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins chats with Hannah Gais on the far-right rallies and social media presence on platforms like Telegram and X. Hannah explores the events of the Unite the Right rally, the storming of the capital on January 6th, the far-right in the wake of the first and second Trump presidencies, and the dangers of expanding domestic terrorism laws.

**This episode was recorded in December 2024.

Hannah Gais is a journalist and researcher focused on the radical right at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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Show Notes:

• Hannah's work with Cassie Miller, "Capitol Insurrection Shows How Trends On The Far-Right’s Fringe Have Become Mainstream"
• Hannah’s 2021 New Republic article, "A New 'War on Terrorism' Is the Wrong Way to Fight Domestic Extremists"
• Brennan Center report co-authored by Mike German, "Fighting Far-Right Violence and Hate Crimes"
• Hannah’s work drawing connections between more extreme figures and more mainstream figures like Tucker Carlson, "In Rural Pennsylvania, Extremists Declare ‘Victory is Ours’" and "For CPAC Attendees, ‘America Is Under Attack’"
• Hannah's article, "welcome to america"
• On Terrorgram indictments, "That's three strikes, run for your life"

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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins chats with Eileen Hunt on her latest book, The First Last Man: Mary Shelley and the Postapocalyptic Imagination (2024), which focuses primarily on Mary Shelley's 1826 novel, The Last Man, the first major modern pandemic novel. Hunt explains the tragic life events that motivated Mary Shelley's darker themes*, how the novel relates to our Covid-19 experience, and more.

*This episode features conversation on topics including suicide, suicidal ideation, and death.

Eileen Hunt is a Professor of Political Science and a political theorist whose scholarly interests cover modern political thought, feminism, the family, rights, ethics of technology, and philosophy and literature. She has published five solo-authored books, including her recent trilogy on Mary Shelley and political philosophy for Penn Press.

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Show Notes:

• 60 Words Podcast with Congresswoman Barbara Lee
• Congresswoman Barbara Lee's Speech on 9/14/01
• Max Weber's "Politics as a Vocation"
• Max Weber's The Vocation Lectures

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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins chats with Roos Slegers on the uncanny valley, Freud, and cyborg science fiction. They explore the uncanny valley and Freud’s concept of the uncanny, connecting them to ETA Hoffmann’s “The Sandman”, Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”, and contemporary AI debates. While Mori’s uncanny valley describes discomfort with almost-human robots, Freud links the uncanny to repressed fears, particularly around gender and sexuality. Roos critiques Freud’s reading of “The Sandman”, highlighting its deeper commentary on romantic ideals and the preference for submissive, artificial women—paralleling modern AI assistants like those in the American sci-fi film, Her. Haraway’s cyborg offers an alternative, challenging rigid binaries and embracing technology’s potential for transgression and liberation. They critique how today’s AI and transhumanist movements reinforce traditional hierarchies rather than dismantling them, urging a more critical and playful engagement with technology’s role in shaping human identity.

Dr. Roos Slegers is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

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Notes:

• Masahiro Mori, 1970, “The Uncanny Valley"
• Sigmund Freud, 1919, “The Uncanny"
• Donna Haraway, 1985, “Cyborg Manifesto”
• ETA Hoffman, 1817, “The Sandman”
• Meghan O’Gieblyn, God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning, 2021

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Season 3 is here!

On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interview Kris Rose on deliberative democracy and Meta's community forums. Kris discusses Meta’s efforts to incorporate public input into decision-making through the Oversight Board and Community Forums. The Oversight Board, an independent body with binding authority over content moderation decisions, provides external accountability, while Community Forums proactively engage users on emerging technologies and policies. In particular, they focus on Meta’s Generative AI Community Forum, held in the US, Germany, Spain, and Brazil, which aimed to gather diverse perspectives on the principles that should guide AI development and use. Kristen also raises several concerns including selection biases, lacking transparency, and the potential influence of political pressures on corporate decision-making.

**This conversation was recorded in August 2024

Kris Rose is a Governance Director at Meta, where he works across the company to drive thought on emerging trends at the intersection of technology, society, and governance. He also leads the team's community governance work, including community forums and other pilots focused on empowering user voice in the company's decision making. Prior to this role, Kris helped launch the company’s Oversight Board, served as a geopolitical analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency for a decade—to include a secondment as the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) briefer to then US Vice President Mike Pence—and most recently served as a Senior Advisor at the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) during the Biden administration. Kris holds a Master’s in Public Policy from Georgetown University and is a Term Member with the Council on Foreign Relations.

Read more work from Kristen Collins.

Notes:

• Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab’s Deliberative Polling Methodology
• Meta’s 2023 Community Forum on Generative AI, conducted in collaboration with Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab and the Behavioral Insights Team
• Meta’s January 7, 2025 Policy Announcement
• Meta’s Transparency Reports

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A special thanks to our listeners for joining us, and please enjoy the final episode of Season 2. We hope to see you again soon!

On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews Lida Maxwell on whistleblowers, queer love, and outsider truth-telling. Lida uses Chelsea Manning, a representative outside truth-teller, as a case study to understand the interplay between personal identity and political activism, exploring the nuanced differences between public engagement and privacy. Lida also discusses her upcoming work on environmental and queer political theory that focuses on Rachel Carson’s public advocacy, influenced by her private relationships, and emphasizes the role that personal experiences and identities have in shaping public truths and political actions.

Professor Lida Maxwell is a political theorist and a Professor of Political Science and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Boston University. She is the author of Public Trials: Burke, Zola, Arendt, and the Politics of Lost Causes (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Insurgent Truth: Chelsea Manning and the Politics of Outsider Truth-Telling (Oxford University Press, 2019). She is currently working in environmental and queer political theory and is in the process of publishing her next book, Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love (Stanford University Press, forthcoming).

Check out Lida's work, "Another Silent Spring?" and "Whistleblower, Traitor, Soldier, Queer?: The Truth of Chelsea Manning"

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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews Samantha Cole on her book, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex. Their conversation features discussion on the origins of deepfake technology, nonconsensual pornography, the rights of sex workers, concerns regarding sexual content bans, the importance of sex and intimacy in online interactions, and more.

Samantha Cole is a technology journalist and co-founder of 404 Media, a worker-owned tech publication. She is the author of How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex.

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On today's episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews John Kaufhold on the history of image recognition and deep learning. With over 30 years of experience in the artificial intelligence and machine learning world, John shares his history starting from his early days in speech recognition in the 90s. He covers the ImageNet Big Bang in 2012, the dramatic improvement of image recognition error rates and hardware power, neural networks, the development of chatbots, terminology, and discusses challenges such as data privacy, bias reproduction, existential risk, transparency in data sets, and more!

Dr. John Kaufhold is an expert with over 30 years of experience in artificial intelligence and deep learning. He is the founder of Deep Learning Analytics, a machine learning company, and serves on the Advisory Board of the DC Data Community.

References and related works to this episode: "Munk Debate on Artificial Intelligence | Bengio & Tegmark vs. Mitchell & LeCun" and Data Science DC's "How Attention in 2017 got us Chat GPT."

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On today's episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews Salomé Viljoen on relational data, governance, and privacy. Salomé shares insights into some of the key positions and debates about legal reforms relating to digital privacy and data governance, particularly the relational nature of digital data. In this conversation, Salomé balances serious concern for the harms presented by the status quo and the dangers of surveillance with a true desire to also appreciate and improve the benefits that we in our communities can derive from digital data.

Salomé Viljoen is an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she teaches and writes about contracts, privacy, commercial surveillance and data governance. Her work includes "A Relational Theory of Data Governance," "Data Relations," "Design choices: Mechanism design and platform capitalism," and "Valuing Social Data."

References and related works to this episode: Janet Vertesi's "My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data Made Me Look Like a Criminal"

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Kristen Collins interviews Eric Schliesser on playing, liberty, and the Das Adam Smith Problem. In their conversation, they discuss the "Das Adam Smith Problem" which addresses the perceived inconsistency between Smith's works, "Wealth of Nations" and "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," as well as other topics including Smith's critique of Stoicism, how Smith's ideas still apply today in the modern era of AI technology, the invisible hand and its reinterpretation, and the division of labor and the side affects of social alienation. They converse on the role of childhood play and innovation on liberalism and building a sense of togetherness in society, and more!

Eric Schliesser is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Adam Smith: Systematic Philsopher and Public Thinker (Oxford University Press, 2017), and he received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. Eric runs a substack called "Digressions Impressions."

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