On Monday, Oct. 30, President Biden released a sweeping executive order that addresses many risks of artificial intelligence. Tom Wheeler, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, shares his insights on the order with Tristan and Aza and discusses what’s next in the push toward AI regulation. 

Clarification: When quoting Thomas Jefferson, Aza incorrectly says “regime” instead of “regimen.” The correct quote is: “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. And as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered, and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regime of their barbarous ancestors.”

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The AI Executive Order

President Biden’s Executive Order on the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of AI

UK AI Safety Summit

The summit brings together international governments, leading AI companies, civil society groups, and experts in research to consider the risks of AI and discuss how they can be mitigated through internationally coordinated action

aitreaty.org

An open letter calling for an international AI treaty

Techlash: Who Makes the Rules in the Digital Gilded Age?

Praised by Kirkus Reviews as “a rock-solid plan for controlling the tech giants,” readers will be energized by Tom Wheeler’s vision of digital governance

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Inside the First AI Insight Forum in Washington

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang

The AI Dilemma

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

In this interview, Dr. Joy Buolamwini argues that algorithmic bias in AI systems poses risks to marginalized people. She challenges the assumptions of tech leaders who advocate for AI “alignment” and explains why some tech companies are hypocritical when it comes to addressing bias. 

Dr. Joy Buolamwini is the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League and the author of “Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines.”

Correction: Aza says that Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, predicts superintelligence in four years. Altman predicts superintelligence in ten years.

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Unmasking AI by Joy Buolamwini

“The conscience of the AI revolution” explains how we’ve arrived at an era of AI harms and oppression, and what we can do to avoid its pitfalls

Coded Bias

Shalini Kantayya’s film explores the fallout of Dr. Joy’s discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all

How I’m fighting bias in algorithms

Dr. Joy’s 2016 TED Talk about her mission to fight bias in machine learning, a phenomenon she calls the "coded gaze."

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Mustafa Suleyman Says We Need to Contain AI. How Do We Do It?

Protecting Our Freedom of Thought with Nita Farahany

The AI Dilemma

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

This is going to be the most productive decade in the history of our species, says Mustafa Suleyman, author of “The Coming Wave,” CEO of Inflection AI, and founder of Google’s DeepMind. But in order to truly reap the benefits of AI, we need to learn how to contain it. Paradoxically, part of that will mean collectively saying no to certain forms of progress. As an industry leader reckoning with a future that’s about to be ‘turbocharged’  Mustafa says we can all play a role in shaping the technology in hands-on ways and by advocating for appropriate governance.

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The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma

This new book from Mustafa Suleyman is a must-read guide to the technological revolution just starting, and the transformed world it will create

Partnership on AI

Partnership on AI is bringing together diverse voices from across the AI community to create resources for advancing positive outcomes for people and society

Policy Reforms Toolkit from the Center for Humane Technology

Digital lawlessness has been normalized in the name of innovation. It’s possible to craft policy that protects the conditions we need to thrive

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AI Myths and Misconceptions

Can We Govern AI? with Marietje Schaake

The AI Dilemma

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Last week, Senator Chuck Schumer brought together Congress and many of the biggest names in AI for the first closed-door AI Insight Forum in Washington, D.C. Tristan and Aza were invited speakers at the event, along with Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, and other leaders. In this update on Your Undivided Attention, Tristan and Aza recount how they felt the meeting went, what they communicated in their statements, and what it felt like to critique Meta’s LLM in front of Mark Zuckerberg.

Correction: In this episode, Tristan says GPT-3 couldn’t find vulnerabilities in code. GPT-3 could find security vulnerabilities, but GPT-4 is exponentially better at it.

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In Show of Force, Silicon Valley Titans Pledge ‘Getting This Right’ With A.I.
Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and others discussed artificial intelligence with lawmakers, as tech companies strive to influence potential regulations

Majority Leader Schumer Opening Remarks For The Senate’s Inaugural AI Insight Forum
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) opened the Senate’s inaugural AI Insight Forum

The Wisdom Gap
As seen in Tristan’s talk on this subject in 2022, the scope and speed of our world’s issues are accelerating and growing more complex. And yet, our ability to comprehend those challenges and respond accordingly is not matching pace

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Spotlight On AI: What Would It Take For This to Go Well?

The AI ‘Race’: China vs. the US with Jeffrey Ding and Karen Hao

Spotlight: Elon, Twitter and the Gladiator Arena
 

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Where do the top Silicon Valley AI researchers really think  AI is headed? Do they have a plan if things go wrong?  In this episode, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin reflect on the last several months of highlighting AI risk, and share their insider takes on a high-level workshop run by CHT in Silicon Valley. 

NOTE: Tristan refers to journalist Maria Ressa and mentions that she received 80 hate messages per hour at one point. She actually received more than 90 messages an hour.

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Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates: The titans of tech will talk AI at private Capitol summit

This week will feature a series of public hearings on artificial intelligence. But all eyes will be on the closed-door gathering convened by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer

Takeaways from the roundtable with President Biden on artificial intelligence

Tristan Harris talks about his recent meeting with President Biden to discuss regulating artificial intelligence

Biden, Harris meet with CEOs about AI risks

Vice President Kamala Harris met with the heads of Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, and OpenAI as the Biden administration rolled out initiatives meant to ensure that AI improves lives without putting people’s rights and safety at risk

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The AI Dilemma

The AI ‘Race’: China vs the US with Jeffrey Ding and Karen Hao

The Dictator’s Playbook with Maria Ressa

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

In the debate over slowing down AI, we often hear the same argument against regulation.   “What about China? We can’t let China get ahead.” To dig into the nuances of this argument, Tristan and Aza speak with academic researcher Jeffrey Ding and journalist Karen Hao, who take us through what’s really happening in Chinese AI development. They address China’s advantages and limitations, what risks are overblown, and what, in this multi-national competition, is at stake as we imagine the best possible future for everyone.

CORRECTION: Jeffrey Ding says the export controls on advanced chips that were established in October 2022 only apply to military end-users. The controls also impose a license requirement on the export of those advanced chips to any China-based end-user.

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Recent Trends in China’s Large Language Model Landscape by Jeffrey Ding and Jenny W. Xiao

This study covers a sample of 26 large-scale pre-trained AI models developed in China

The diffusion deficit in scientific and technological power: re-assessing China’s rise by Jeffrey Ding

This paper argues for placing a greater weight on a state’s capacity to diffuse, or widely adopt, innovations

The U.S. Is Turning Away From Its Biggest Scientific Partner at a Precarious Time by Karen Hao and Sha Hua

U.S. moves to cut research ties with China over security concerns threaten American progress in critical areas

Why China Has Not Caught Up Yet: Military-Technological Superiority and the Limits of Imitation, Reverse Engineering, and Cyber Espionage by Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli

Military technology has grown so complex that it’s hard to imitate

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The Three Rules of Humane Tech

A Fresh Take on Tech in China with Rui Ma and Duncan Clark

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

For all the talk about AI, we rarely hear about how it will change our relationships. As we swipe to find love and consult chatbot therapists, acclaimed psychotherapist and relationship expert Esther Perel warns that there’s another harmful “AI” on the rise — Artificial Intimacy — and how it is depriving us of real connection. Tristan and Esther discuss how depending on algorithms can fuel alienation, and then imagine how we might design technology to strengthen our social bonds.

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Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel

Esther's debut work on the intricacies behind modern relationships, and the dichotomy of domesticity and sexual desire

The State of Affairs by Esther Perel

Esther takes a look at modern relationships through the lens of infidelity

Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel

Listen in as real couples in search of help bare the raw and profound details of their stories

How’s Work? with Esther Perel

Esther’s podcast that focuses on the hard conversations we're afraid to have at work 

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

A young man strikes up an unconventional relationship with a doll he finds on the internet

Her (2013)

In a near future, a lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with an operating system designed to meet his every need

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Big Food, Big Tech and Big AI with Michael Moss

The AI Dilemma

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang
 

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

We are on the cusp of an explosion of cheap,  consumer-ready neurotechnology - from earbuds that gather our behavioral data,  to sensors that can read our dreams. And it’s all going to be supercharged by AI. This technology is moving from niche to mainstream - and it has the same potential to become exponential. 

Legal scholar Nita Farahany talks us through the current state of neurotechnology and its deep links to AI. She says that we urgently need to protect the last frontier of privacy: our internal thoughts. And she argues that without a new legal framework around “cognitive liberty,” we won’t be able to insulate our brains from corporate and government intrusion.

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The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology by Nita Farahany

The Battle for Your Brain offers a path forward to navigate the complex dilemmas that will fundamentally impact our freedom to understand, shape, and define ourselves

Computer Program Reveals What Neurons in the Visual Cortex Prefer to Look At

A study of macaque monkeys at Harvard generated valuable clues based on an artificial intelligence system that can reliably determine what neurons in the brain’s visual cortex prefer to see

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan

An influential work by a fixture in media discourse

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The Three Rules of Humane Tech

Talking With Animals… Using AI

How to Free Our Minds with Cult Deprogramming Expert Dr. Steven Hassan

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Social media was humanity’s ‘first contact’ moment with AI. If we’re going to create laws that are strong enough to prevent AI from destroying our societies, we could benefit from taking a look at the major lawsuits against social media platforms that are playing out in our courts right now.

In our last episode, we took a close look at Big Food and its dangerous “race to the bottom” that parallels AI. We continue that theme this week with an episode about litigating social media and the consequences of the race to engagement in order to inform how we can approach AI harms. 

Our guest, attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett, left her predominantly defense-oriented practice to join the Social Media Victims Law Center in February 2022. Laura is literally on the front lines of the battle to hold social media firms accountable for the harms they have created in young people’s lives for the past decade. 

Listener warning: there are distressing and potentially triggering details within the episode.

Correction: Tristan refers to the Social Media Victims Law Center as a nonprofit legal center. They are a for-profit law firm.

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1) If you're a parent whose child has been impacted by social media, Attorneys General in Colorado, New Hampshire, and Tennessee are asking to hear your story. Your testimonies can help ensure that social media platforms are designed safely for kids. For more information, please visit the respective state links.

Colorado

New Hampshire

Tennessee

2) Social Media Victims Law Center
A non-profit legal center that was founded in 2021 in response to the testimony of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen

3) Resources for Parents & Educators

Overwhelmed by our broken social media environment and wondering where to start? Check out our Youth Toolkit plus three actions you can take today

4) The Social Dilemma
Learn how the system works. Watch and share The Social Dilemma with people you care about

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Transcending the Internet Hate Game with Dylan Marron

A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen

Behind the Curtain on The Social Dilemma with Jeff Orlowski-Yang and Larissa Rhodes

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

In the next two episodes of Your Undivided Attention, we take a close look at two respective industries: big food and social media, which represent dangerous “races to the bottom” and have big parallels with AI.  

And we are asking: what can our past mistakes and missed opportunities teach us about how we should approach AI harms? 

In this first episode, Tristan talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Michael Moss. His book Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us rocked the fast food industry when it came out in 2014. 

Tristan and Michael discuss how we can leverage the lessons learned from Big Food’s coordination failures, and whether it’s the responsibility of the consumer, the government, or the companies to regulate.
 

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Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Michael’s New York Times bestseller. You’ll never look at a nutrition label the same way again

Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions

Michael’s Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé of how the processed food industry exploits our evolutionary instincts, the emotions we associate with food, and legal loopholes in their pursuit of profit over public health

Control Your Tech Use

Center for Humane Technology’s recently updated Take Control Toolkit

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AI Myths and Misconceptions

The AI Dilemma

How Might a long-term stock market transform tech? (ZigZag episode)

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_