Today, the tech industry is  the second-biggest lobbying power in Washington, DC, but that wasn’t true as recently as ten years ago. How did we get to this moment? And where could we be going next? On this episode of Your Undivided Attention, Tristan and Daniel sit down with historian Margaret O’Mara and journalist Brody Mullins to discuss how Silicon Valley has changed the nature of American lobbying. 

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

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government - Brody’s book on the history of lobbying.

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America - Margaret’s book on the historical relationship between Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill

More information on the Google antitrust ruling

More Information on KOSPA

More information on the SOPA/PIPA internet blackout

Detailed breakdown of Internet lobbying from Open Secrets

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

U.S. Senators Grilled Social Media CEOs. Will Anything Change?

Can We Govern AI? with Marietje Schaake
The Race to Cooperation with David Sloan Wilson

CORRECTION: Brody Mullins refers to AT&T as having a “hundred million dollar” lobbying budget in 2006 and 2007. While we couldn’t verify the size of their budget for lobbying, their actual lobbying spend was much less than this: $27.4m in 2006 and $16.5m in 2007, according to OpenSecrets.

The views expressed by guests appearing on Center for Humane Technology’s podcast, Your Undivided Attention, are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CHT. CHT does not support or oppose any candidate or party for election to public office

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It’s been a year and half since Tristan and Aza laid out their vision and concerns for the future of artificial intelligence in The AI Dilemma. In this Spotlight episode, the guys discuss what’s happened since then–as funding, research, and public interest in AI has exploded–and where we could be headed next. Plus, some major updates on social media reform, including the passage of the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act in the Senate. 

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

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

The AI Dilemma: Tristan and Aza’s talk on the catastrophic risks posed by AI.

Info Sheet on KOSPA: More information on KOSPA from FairPlay.

Situational Awareness by Leopold Aschenbrenner: A widely cited blog from a former OpenAI employee, predicting the rapid arrival of AGI.

AI for Good: More information on the AI for Good summit that was held earlier this year in Geneva. 

Using AlphaFold in the Fight Against Plastic Pollution: More information on Google’s use of AlphaFold to create an enzyme to break down plastics. 

Swiss Call For Trust and Transparency in AI: More information on the initiatives mentioned by Katharina Frey.

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War is a Laboratory for AI with Paul Scharre

Jonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis

Can We Govern AI? with Marietje Schaake 

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

The AI Dilemma

Clarification: Swiss diplomat Nina Frey’s full name is Katharina Frey.

The views expressed by guests appearing on Center for Humane Technology’s podcast, Your Undivided Attention, are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CHT. CHT does not support or oppose any candidate or party for election to public office

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What does a functioning democracy look like in the age of artificial intelligence? Could AI even be used to help a democracy flourish? Just in time for election season, Taiwan’s Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang returns to the podcast to discuss healthy information ecosystems, resilience to cyberattacks, how to “prebunk” deepfakes, and more. 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page

This academic paper addresses tough questions for Americans: Who governs? Who really rules? 

Recursive Public

Recursive Public is an experiment in identifying areas of consensus and disagreement among the international AI community, policymakers, and the general public on key questions of governance

A Strong Democracy is a Digital Democracy

Audrey Tang’s 2019 op-ed for The New York Times

The Frontiers of Digital Democracy

Nathan Gardels interviews Audrey Tang in Noema

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Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang

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The AI Dilemma

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

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An information system that relies on advertising was not born with the Internet. But social media platforms have taken it to an entirely new level, becoming a major force in how we make sense of ourselves and the world around us. Columbia law professor Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants and The Curse of Bigness, takes us through the birth of the eyeball-centric news model and ensuing boom of yellow journalism, to the backlash that rallied journalists and citizens around creating industry ethics and standards. Throughout the 20th century, radio, television, and even posters elicited excitement, hope, fear, skepticism and greed, and people worked together to create a patchwork of regulation and behavior that attempted to point those tools in the direction of good. The Internet has brought us to just such a crossroads again, but this time with global consequences that are truly life-and-death.

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We agree more than we think we do, but tech platforms distort our perceptions by amplifying the loudest, angriest and most dismissive voices online. In reality, they’re just a noisy faction. This Earth Day we ask Anthony Leiserowitz, Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, how he shifts public opinion on climate change. We’ll see how tech platforms could amplify voices of solidarity within our own communities. More importantly, we’ll see how they could empower 2 billion people to act in the face of global threats. 

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How can tech companies help flatten the curve? First and foremost, they must address the lethal misinformation and disinformation circulating on their platforms. The problem goes much deeper than fake news, according to Claire Wardle, co-founder and executive director of First Draft. She studies the gray zones of information warfare, where bad actors mix facts with falsehoods, news with gossip, and sincerity with satire. “Most of this stuff isn't fake and most of this stuff isn't news,” Claire argues. If these subtler forms of misinformation go unaddressed, tech companies may not only fail to flatten the curve — they could raise it higher. 

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What difference does a few hours of Congressional testimony make? Tristan takes us behind the scenes of his January 8th testimony to the Energy and Commerce Committee on disinformation in the digital age. With just minutes to answer each lawmaker’s questions, he speaks with Committee members about how the urgency and complexity of humane technology issues is an immense challenge. Tristan returned hopeful, and though it sometimes feels like Groundhog Day, each trip to DC reveals evolving conversations, advancing legislation, deeper understanding and stronger coalitions. 

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We are in the middle of a global trust crisis. Neighbors are strangers and local news sources are becoming scarcer; institutions that used to symbolize prestige, honor and a sense of societal security are ridiculed for being antiquated and out of touch. To replace the void, we turn to sharing economy companies and social media, which come up short, or worse. Our guest on this episode, academic and business advisor Rachel Botsman, guides us through how we got here, and how to recover. Botsman is the Trust Fellow at Oxford University, and the author of two books, including “Who Can You Trust?” The intangibility of trust makes it difficult to pin down, she explains, and she speaks directly to technology leaders about fostering communities and creating products the public is willing to put faith in. “The efficiency of technology is the enemy of trust,” she says.

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“You can binge watch an ideology in a weekend,” says Tony McAleer. He should know. A former white supremacist, McAleer was introduced to neo-Nazi ideology through the U.K. punk scene in the 1980s. But after his daughter was born, he embarked on a decades-long journey from hate to compassion. Today’s technology, he says, make violent ideologies infinitely more accessible and appealing to those who long for acceptance. Social media isolates us and can incubate hate in a highly diffuse structure, making it nearly impossible to stop race-based violence without fanning the flames or driving it further underground. McAleer discusses solutions to this dilemma and the positive actions we can take together.

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Brittany Kaiser, a former Cambridge Analytica insider, witnessed a two day presentation at the company that shocked her and her co-workers. It laid out a new method of campaigning, in which candidates greet voters with a thousand faces and speak in a thousand tongues, automatically generating messages that are increasingly aiming toward an audience of one. She explains how these methods of persuasion have shaped elections worldwide, enabling candidates to sway voters in strange and startling ways.

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Maria Ressa is arguably one of the bravest journalists working in the Philippines today. As co-founder and CEO of the media site Rappler, she has withstood death threats, multiple arrests and a rising tide of populist fury that she first saw on Facebook, in the form of a strange and jarring personal attack. Through her story, she reveals, play by play, how an aspiring strongman can use social media to spread falsehoods, sow confusion, intimidate critics and subvert democratic institutions. Nonetheless, she argues Silicon Valley can reverse these trends, and fast. First, tech companies must "wake up," she says, to the threats they've unleashed throughout the Global South. Second, they must recognize that social media is intrinsically designed to favor the strongman over the lone dissident and the propagandist over the truth-teller, which is why it has become the central tool in every aspiring dictator's playbook.

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What causes addiction? Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream, travelled some 30,000 miles in search of an answer. He met with researchers and lawmakers, drug dealers and drug makers, those who were struggling with substance abuse and those who had recovered from it, and he came to the conclusion that our whole narrative about addiction is broken.  "The opposite of addiction is not sobriety," he argues. "The opposite of addiction is connection." But first, we have to figure out what it really means to connect.

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Every 40 seconds, our attention breaks. It takes an act of extreme self-awareness to even notice. That’s why Gloria Mark, a professor in the Department of Informatics at University of California, Irvine, started measuring the attention spans of office workers with scientific precision. What she has discovered is not simply an explosion of disruptive communications, but a pandemic of stress that has followed workers from their offices to their homes. She shares the latest findings from the “science of interruptions,” and how we can stop forfeiting our attention to the next notification, and the next one, ad nauseam.

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Was it political progress, or just political theater? The recent Senate hearing with social media CEOs led to astonishing moments — including Mark Zuckerberg’s public apology to families who lost children following social media abuse. Our panel of experts, including Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, untangles the explosive hearing, and offers a look ahead, as well. How will this hearing impact protocol within these social media companies? How will it impact legislation? In short: will anything change?

Clarification: Julie says that shortly after the hearing, Meta’s stock price had the biggest increase of any company in the stock market’s history. It was the biggest one-day gain by any company in Wall Street history.

Correction: Frances says it takes Snap three or four minutes to take down exploitative content. In Snap's most recent transparency report, they list six minutes as the median turnaround time to remove exploitative content.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Get Media Savvy

Founded by Julie Scelfo, Get Media Savvy is a non-profit initiative working to establish a healthy media environment for kids and families

The Power of One by Frances Haugen

The inside story of France’s quest to bring transparency and accountability to Big Tech

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Real Social Media Solutions, Now with Frances Haugen

A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen

Are the Kids Alright?

Social Media Victims Lawyer Up with Laura Marquez-Garrett

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

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In the second part of our interview with Renée DiResta, disinformation expert, Mozilla fellow, and co-author of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation, she explains how social media platforms use your sense of identity and personal relationships to keep you glued to their sites longer, and how those design choices have political consequences. The online tools and tactics of foreign agents can be very precise and deliberate, but they don’t have to be -- Renée has seen how deception and uncertainty are powerful agents of distrust and easy to create. Do we really need the ease of global amplification of information-sharing that social media enables, anyway? We don’t want spam in our email inbox so why do we tolerate it in our social media feed?  What would happen if we had to copy and paste and click twice, or three times? Tristan and Aza also brainstorm ways to prevent and control disinformation in the lead-up to elections, and particularly the 2020 U.S. elections. 

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Today’s online propaganda has evolved in unforeseeable and seemingly absurd ways; by laughing at or spreading a Kermit the Frog meme, you may be unwittingly advancing the Russian agenda. These campaigns affect our elections integrity, public health, and relationships. In this episode, the first of two parts, disinformation expert Renee DiResta talks with Tristan and Aza about how these tactics work, how social media platforms’ algorithms and business models allow foreign agents to game the system, and what these messages reveal to us about ourselves. Renee gained unique insight into this issue when in 2017 Congress asked her to lead a team of investigators analyzing a data set of texts, images and videos from Facebook, Twitter and Google thought to have been created by Russia’s Internet Research Agency. She shares what she learned, and in part two of their conversation, Renee, Tristan and Aza will discuss what steps can be taken to prevent this kind of manipulation in the future. 

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When we press play on a YouTube video, we set in motion an algorithm that taps all available data to find the next video that keeps us glued to the screen. Because of its advertising-based business model, YouTube’s top priority is not to help us learn to play the accordion, tie a bow tie, heal an injury, or see a new city — it’s to keep us staring at the screen for as long as possible, regardless of the content. This episode’s guest, AI expert Guillaume Chaslot, helped write YouTube’s recommendation engine and explains how those priorities spin up outrage, conspiracy theories and extremism. After leaving YouTube, Guillaume’s mission became shedding light on those hidden patterns on his website, AlgoTransparency.org, which tracks and publicizes YouTube recommendations for controversial content channels. Through his work, he encourages YouTube to take responsibility for the videos it promotes and aims to give viewers more control.

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Aza sits down with Yael Eisenstat, a former CIA officer and a former advisor at the White House. When Yael noticed that Americans were having a harder and harder time finding common ground, she shifted her work from counter-extremism abroad to advising technology companies in the U.S. She believed as danger at home increased, her public sector experience could help fill a gap in Silicon Valley’s talent pool and chip away at the ways tech was contributing to polarization and election hacking. But when she joined Facebook in June 2018, things didn’t go as planned. Yael shares the lessons she learned and her perspective on government’s role in regulating tech, and Aza and Tristan raise questions about our relationships with these companies and the balance of power. 

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In part two of our interview with cultural anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll, author of Addiction by Design, we learn what gamblers are really after a lot of the time — it’s not money. And it’s the same thing we’re looking for when we mindlessly open up Facebook or Twitter. How can we design products so that we’re not taking advantage of these universal urges and vulnerabilities but using them to help us? Tristan, Aza and Natasha explore ways we could shift our thinking about making and using technology.

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Natasha Dow Schüll, author of Addiction by Design, has spent years studying how slot machines hold gamblers spellbound, in an endless loop of play. She never imagined the addictive designs which she had first witnessed in Las Vegas would go bounding into Silicon Valley and reappear on virtually every smartphone screen worldwide. In the first segment of this two-part interview, Natasha Dow Schüll offers a prescient warning to users and designers alike: How far can the attention economy go toward stealing another moment of your time? Farther than you might imagine. 

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Technology has shredded our attention. We can do better.

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Over the past year, a tsunami of apps that digitally strip the clothes off real people has hit the market. Now anyone can create fake non-consensual sexual images in just a few clicks. With cases proliferating in high schools, guest presenter Laurie Segall talks to legal scholar Mary Anne Franks about the AI-enabled rise in deep fake porn and what we can do about it. 

Correction: Laurie refers to the app 'Clothes Off.' It’s actually named Clothoff. There are many clothes remover apps in this category.

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Revenge Porn: The Cyberwar Against Women

In a five-part digital series, Laurie Segall uncovers a disturbing internet trend: the rise of revenge porn

The Cult of the Constitution

In this provocative book, Mary Anne Franks examines the thin line between constitutional fidelity and constitutional fundamentalism

Fake Explicit Taylor Swift Images Swamp Social Media

Calls to protect women and crack down on the platforms and technology that spread such images have been reignited

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No One is Immune to AI Harms

Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy

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The AI Dilemma

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

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We usually talk about tech in terms of economics or policy, but the casual language tech leaders often use to describe AI — summoning an inanimate force with the powers of code — sounds more... magical. So, what can myth and magic teach us about the AI race? Josh Schrei, mythologist and host of The Emerald podcast,  says that foundational cultural tales like "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" or Prometheus teach us the importance of initiation, responsibility, human knowledge, and care.  He argues these stories and myths can guide ethical tech development by reminding us what it is to be human. 

Correction: Josh says the first telling of "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice" myth dates back to ancient Egypt, but it actually dates back to ancient Greece.

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The Emerald podcast

The Emerald explores the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, and imagination

Embodied Ethics in The Age of AI

A five-part course with The Emerald podcast’s Josh Schrei and School of Wise Innovation’s Andrew Dunn

Nature Nurture: Children Can Become Stewards of Our Delicate Planet

A U.S. Department of the Interior study found that the average American kid can identify hundreds of corporate logos but not plants and animals

The New Fire

AI is revolutionizing the world - here's how democracies can come out on top. This upcoming book was authored by an architect of President Biden's AI executive order

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How Will AI Affect the 2024 Elections?

The AI Dilemma

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

AI Myths and Misconceptions

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

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2024 will be the biggest election year in world history. Forty countries will hold national elections, with over two billion voters heading to the polls. In this episode of Your Undivided Attention, two experts give us a situation report on how AI will increase the risks to our elections and our democracies. 

Correction: Tristan says two billion people from 70 countries will be undergoing democratic elections in 2024. The number expands to 70 when non-national elections are factored in.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

White House AI Executive Order Takes On Complexity of Content Integrity Issues
Renee DiResta’s piece in Tech Policy Press about content integrity within President Biden’s AI executive order

The Stanford Internet Observatory
A cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies, with a focus on social media

Demos

Britain’s leading cross-party think tank

Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality by Renee DiResta

Pre-order Renee’s upcoming book that’s landing on shelves June 11, 2024

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The Spin Doctors Are In with Renee DiResta

From Russia with Likes Part 1 with Renee DiResta

From Russia with Likes Part 2 with Renee DiResta

Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy

The AI Dilemma

A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen

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

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You asked, we answered. This has been a big year in the world of tech, with the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence, acceleration of neurotechnology, and continued ethical missteps of social media. Looking back on 2023, there are still so many questions on our minds, and we know you have a lot of questions too. So we created this episode to respond to listener questions and to reflect on what lies ahead.

Correction: Tristan mentions that 41 Attorneys General have filed a lawsuit against Meta for allegedly fostering addiction among children and teens through their products. However, the actual number is 42 Attorneys General who are taking legal action against Meta.

Correction: Tristan refers to Casey Mock as the Center for Humane Technology’s Chief Policy and Public Affairs Manager. His title is Chief Policy and Public Affairs Officer.

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Tech Policy Watch

Marietje Schaake curates this briefing on artificial intelligence and technology policy from around the world

The AI Executive Order

President Biden’s executive order on the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of AI

Meta sued by 42 AGs for addictive features targeting kids

A bipartisan group of 42 attorneys general is suing Meta, alleging features on Facebook and Instagram are addictive and are aimed at kids and teens

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The Three Rules of Humane Tech

Two Million Years in Two Hours: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari

Inside the First AI Insight Forum in Washington

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang

The Tech We Need for 21st Century Democracy with Divya Siddarth

Mind the (Perception) Gap with Dan Vallone

The AI Dilemma

Can We Govern AI? with Marietje Schaake

Ask Us Anything: You Asked, We Answered

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

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As AI development races forward, a fierce debate has emerged over open source AI models. So what does it mean to open-source AI? Are we opening Pandora’s box of catastrophic risks? Or is open-sourcing AI the only way we can democratize its benefits and dilute the power of big tech? 

Correction: When discussing the large language model Bloom, Elizabeth said it functions in 26 different languages. Bloom is actually able to generate text in 46 natural languages and 13 programming languages - and more are in the works.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Open-Sourcing Highly Capable Foundation Models

This report, co-authored by Elizabeth Seger, attempts to clarify open-source terminology and to offer a thorough analysis of risks and benefits from open-sourcing AI

BadLlama: cheaply removing safety fine-tuning from Llama 2-Chat 13B

This paper, co-authored by Jeffrey Ladish, demonstrates that it’s possible to effectively undo the safety fine-tuning from Llama 2-Chat 13B with less than $200 while retaining its general capabilities

Centre for the Governance of AI

Supports governments, technology companies, and other key institutions by producing relevant research and guidance around how to respond to the challenges posed by AI

AI: Futures and Responsibility (AI:FAR)

Aims to shape the long-term impacts of AI in ways that are safe and beneficial for humanity

Palisade Research

Studies the offensive capabilities of AI systems today to better understand the risk of losing control to AI systems forever

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A First Step Toward AI Regulation with Tom Wheeler

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

The AI Dilemma

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

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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.”

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

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_

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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.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

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_

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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.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

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_

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AI has been a powerful accelerant for biological research, rapidly opening up new frontiers in medicine and public health. But that progress can also make it easier for bad actors to manufacture new biological threats. In this episode, Tristan and Daniel sit down with biologist Kevin Esvelt to discuss why AI has been such a boon for biologists and how we can safeguard society against the threats that AIxBio poses.

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

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Sculpting Evolution: Information on Esvelt’s lab at MIT.

SecureDNA: Esvelt’s free platform to provide safeguards for DNA synthesis.

The Framework for Nucleic Acid Synthesis Screening: The Biden admin’s suggested guidelines for DNA synthesis regulation.

Senate Hearing on Regulating AI Technology: C-SPAN footage of Dario Amodei’s testimony to Congress.

The AlphaFold Protein Structure Database

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

U.S. Senators Grilled Social Media CEOs. Will Anything Change?

Big Food, Big Tech and Big AI with Michael Moss

The AI Dilemma

Clarification: President Biden’s executive order only applies to labs that receive funding from the federal government, not state governments.

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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.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

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

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

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_

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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.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

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

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

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_

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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.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

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

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

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_

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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.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

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

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

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_

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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.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

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

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

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_

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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

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

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_

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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.
 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

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

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

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_

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What happens when creators consider what lifelong human development looks like in terms of the tools we make? And what philosophies from Sesame Street can inform how to steward the power of AI and social media to influence minds in thoughtful, humane directions?

When the first episode of Sesame Street aired on PBS in 1969, it was unlike anything that had been on television before - a collaboration between educators, child psychologists, comedy writers and puppeteers - all working together to do something that had never been done before: create educational content for children on television. 

Fast-forward to the present: could we switch gears to reprogram today’s digital tools to   humanely educate the next generation? 

That’s the question Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin explore with Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, the Senior Vice President of Curriculum and Content for the Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind Sesame Street. 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

This documentary offers a rare window into the early days of Sesame Street, revealing the creators, artists, writers and educators who together established one of the most influential and enduring children’s programs in television history

Sesame Street: Ready for School!: A Parent's Guide to Playful Learning for Children Ages 2 to 5 by Dr. Rosemarie Truglio

Rosemarie shares all the research-based, curriculum-directed school readiness skills that have made Sesame Street the preeminent children's TV program

G Is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street co-edited by Shalom Fisch and Rosemarie Truglio

This volume serves as a marker of the significant role that Sesame Street plays in the education and socialization of young children

The Democratic Surround by Fred Turner

In this prequel to his celebrated book From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Turner rewrites the history of postwar America, showing how in the 1940s and 1950s American liberalism offered a far more radical social vision than we now remember

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

Neil Postman’s groundbreaking book about the damaging effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century

Sesame Workshop Identity Matters Study

Explore parents’ and educators’ perceptions of children’s social identity development

Effects of Sesame Street: A meta-analysis of children's learning in 15 countries

Commissioned by Sesame Workshop, the study was led by University of Wisconsin researchers Marie-Louise Mares and Zhongdang Pan

U.S. Parents & Teachers See an Unkind World for Their Children, New Sesame Survey Shows

According to the survey titled, “K is for Kind: A National Survey On Kindness and Kids,” parents and teachers in the United States worry that their children are living in an unkind world

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Are the Kids Alright? With Jonathan Haidt

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

When Media Was for You and Me with Fred Turner

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

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You’re likely familiar with the modern zombie trope: a zombie bites someone you care about and they’re transformed into a creature who wants your brain. Zombies are the perfect metaphor to explain something Tristan and Aza have been thinking about lately that they call zombie values.

In this Spotlight episode of Your Undivided Attention, we talk through some examples of how zombie values limit our thinking around tech harms. Our hope is that by the end of this episode, you'll be able to recognize the zombie values that walk amongst us, and think through how to upgrade these values to meet the realities of our modern world. 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Is the First Amendment Obsolete?

This essay explores free expression challenges

The Wisdom Gap

This blog post from the Center for Humane Technology describes the gap between the rising interconnected complexity of our problems and our ability to make sense of them

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

A Problem Well-Stated is Half Solved with Daniel Schmachtenberger

How To Free Our Minds with Cult Deprogramming Expert Steve Hassan

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

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There’s really no one better than veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher at challenging people to articulate their thinking. Tristan Harrris recently sat down with her for a wide ranging interview on AI risk. She even pressed Tristan on whether he is a doomsday prepper. It was so great, we wanted to share it with you here. 

The interview was originally on Kara’s podcast ON with Kara Swisher. If you like it and want to hear more of Kara’s interviews with folks like Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman and others, you can find more episodes of ON with Kara Swisher here: https://link.chtbl.com/_XTWwg3k

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

AI Myths and Misconceptions

The AI Dilemma

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

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

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Will AI ever start to think by itself? If it did, how would we know, and what would it mean?

In this episode, Dr. Anil Seth and Aza discuss the science, ethics, and incentives of artificial consciousness. Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and the author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.

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

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

A free, plain text version of the Shelley’s classic of gothic literature.

OpenAI’s GPT4o Demo

A video from OpenAI demonstrating GPT4o’s remarkable ability to mimic human sentience.

You Can Have the Blue Pill or the Red Pill, and We’re Out of Blue Pills

The NYT op-ed from last year by Tristan, Aza, and Yuval Noah Harari outlining the AI dilemma. 

What It’s Like to Be a Bat

Thomas Nagel’s essay on the nature of consciousness.

Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?

Philosopher Nick Bostrom’s essay on the simulation hypothesis.

Anthropic’s Golden Gate Claude

A blog post about Anthropic’s recent discovery of millions of distinct concepts within their LLM, a major development in the field of AI interpretability.

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy

Talking With Animals... Using AI

Synthetic Humanity: AI & What’s At Stake

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Democracy in action has looked the same for generations. Constituents might go to a library or school every one or two years and cast their vote for people who don't actually represent everything that they care about. Our technology is rapidly increasing in sophistication, yet our forms of democracy have largely remained unchanged. What would an upgrade look like - not just for democracy, but for all the different places that democratic decision-making happens?

On this episode of Your Undivided Attention, we’re joined by political economist and social technologist Divya Siddarth, one of the world's leading experts in collective intelligence. Together we explore how new kinds of governance can be supported through better technology, and how collective decision-making is key to unlocking everything from more effective elections to better ways of responding to global problems like climate change.

Correction:

Tristan mentions Elon Musk’s attempt to manufacture ventilators early on in the COVID-19 pandemic. Musk ended up buying over 1,200 ventilators that were delivered to California.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Against Democracy by Jason Brennan

A provocative challenge to one of our most cherished institutions

Ledger of Harms

Technology platforms have created a race for human attention that’s unleashed invisible harms to society. Here are some of the costs that aren't showing up on their balance sheets

The Wisdom Gap

This blog post from the Center for Humane Technology describes the gap between the rising interconnected complexity of our problems and our ability to make sense of them

DemocracyNext

DemocracyNext is working to design and establish new institutions for government and transform the governance of organizations that influence public life

CIP.org

An incubator for new governance models for transformative technology

Ethelo

Transform community engagement through consensus

Kazm’s Living Room Conversations

Living Room Conversations works to heal society by connecting people across divides through guided conversations proven to build understanding and transform communities

The Citizens Dialogue

A model for citizen participation in Ostbelgien, which was brought to life by the parliament of the German-speaking community

Asamblea Ciudadana Para El Clima

Spain’s national citizens’ assembly on climate change

Climate Assembly UK

The UK’s national citizens’ assembly on climate change

Citizens’ Convention for the Climate

France’s national citizens’ assembly on climate change

Polis

Polis is a real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words, enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang 

They Don’t Represent Us with Larry Lessig

A Renegade Solution to Extractive Economics with Kate Raworth

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

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A few episodes back, we presented Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin’s talk The AI Dilemma. People inside the companies that are building generative artificial intelligence came to us with their concerns about the rapid pace of deployment and the problems that are emerging as a result. We felt called to lay out the catastrophic risks that AI poses to society and sound the alarm on the need to upgrade our institutions for a post-AI world.

The talk resonated - over 1.6 million people have viewed it on YouTube as of this episode’s release date. The positive reception gives us hope that leaders will be willing to come to the table for a difficult but necessary conversation about AI.

However, now that so many people have watched or listened to the talk, we’ve found that there are some AI myths getting in the way of making progress. On this episode of Your Undivided Attention, we debunk five of those misconceptions. 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Opinion | Yuval Harari, Tristan Harris, and Aza Raskin on Threats to Humanity Posed by AI - The New York Times

In this New York Times piece, Yuval Harari, Tristan Harris, and Aza Raskin call upon world leaders to respond to this moment at the level of challenge it presents.

Misalignment, AI & Moloch

A deep dive into the game theory and exponential growth underlying our modern economic system, and how recent advancements in AI are poised to turn up the pressure on that system, and its wider environment, in ways we have never seen before

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

The AI Dilemma

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

Can We Govern AI? with Marietje Schaake

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

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Despite our serious concerns about the pace of deployment of generative artificial intelligence, we are not anti-AI. There are uses that can help us better understand ourselves and the world around us. Your Undivided Attention co-host Aza Raskin is also co-founder of Earth Species Project, a nonprofit dedicated to using AI to decode non-human communication. ESP is developing this technology both to shift the way that we relate to the rest of nature, and to accelerate conservation research.

Significant recent breakthroughs in machine learning have opened ways to encode both human languages and map out patterns of animal communication. The research, while slow and incredibly complex, is very exciting. Picture being able to tell a whale to dive to avoid ship strikes, or to forge cooperation in conservation areas. 

These advances come with their own complex ethical issues. But understanding non-human languages could transform our relationship with the rest of nature and promote a duty of care for the natural world.

In a time of such deep division, it’s comforting to know that hidden underlying languages may potentially unite us. When we study the patterns of the universe, we’ll see that humanity isn’t at the center of it.

Corrections:

Aza refers to the founding of Earth Species Project (ESP) in 2017. The organization was established in 2018.

When offering examples of self-awareness in animals, Aza mentions lemurs that get high on centipedes. They actually get high on millipedes. 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Using AI to Listen to All of Earth’s Species

An interactive panel discussion hosted at the World Economic Forum in San Francisco on October 25, 2022. Featuring ESP President and Cofounder Aza Raskin; Dr. Karen Bakker, Professor at UBC and Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow; and Dr. Ari Friedlaender, Professor at UC Santa Cruz

What A Chatty Monkey May Tell Us About Learning to Talk

The gelada monkey makes a gurgling sound that scientists say is close to human speech

Lemurs May Be Making Medicine Out of Millipedes

Red-fronted lemurs appear to use plants and other animals to treat their afflictions

Fathom on AppleTV+

Two biologists set out on an undertaking as colossal as their subjects – deciphering the complex communication of whales 

Earth Species Project is Hiring a Director of Research

ESP is looking for a thought leader in artificial intelligence with a track record of managing a team of researchers

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

The AI Dilemma

Synthetic Humanity: AI & What’s At Stake

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

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When it comes to AI, what kind of regulations might we need to address this rapidly developing new class of technologies? What makes regulating AI and runaway tech in general different from regulating airplanes, pharmaceuticals, or food? And how can we ensure that issues like national security don't become a justification for sacrificing civil rights?

Answers to these questions are playing out in real time. If we wait for more AI harms to emerge before proper regulations are put in place, it may be too late. 

Our guest Marietje Schaake was at the forefront of crafting tech regulations for the EU. In spite of AI’s complexity, she argues there is a path forward for the U.S. and other governing bodies to rein in companies that continue to release these products into the world without oversight. 

Correction: Marietje said antitrust laws in the US were a century ahead of those in the EU. Competition law in the EU was enacted as part of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, almost 70 years after the US.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

The AI Dilemma 

Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin’s presentation on existing AI capabilities and the catastrophic risks they pose to a functional society. Also available in the podcast format (linked below)

The Wisdom Gap

This blog post from the Center for Humane Technology describes the gap between the rising interconnected complexity of our problems and our ability to make sense of them

The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) & Digital Markets Act (DMA)

The two pieces of legislation aim to create safer and more open digital spaces for individuals and businesses alike

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang

The AI Dilemma

The Three Rules of Humane Tech


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

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In our previous episode, we shared a presentation Tristan and Aza recently delivered to a group of influential technologists about the race happening in AI. In that talk, they introduced the Three Rules of Humane Technology. In this Spotlight episode, we’re taking a moment to explore these three rules more deeply in order to clarify what it means to be a responsible technologist in the age of AI.

Correction: Aza mentions infinite scroll being in the pockets of 5 billion people, implying that there are 5 billion smartphone users worldwide. The number of smartphone users worldwide is actually 6.8 billion now.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

We Think in 3D. Social Media Should, Too
Tristan Harris writes about a simple visual experiment that demonstrates the power of one’s point of view

Let’s Think About Slowing Down AI

Katja Grace’s piece about how to avert doom by not building the doom machine

If We Don’t Master AI, It Will Master Us

Yuval Harari, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin call upon world leaders to respond to this moment at the level of challenge it presents in this New York Times opinion piece

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

The AI Dilemma

Synthetic humanity: AI & What’s At Stake

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

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You may have heard about the arrival of GPT-4, OpenAI’s latest large language model (LLM) release. GPT-4 surpasses its predecessor in terms of reliability, creativity, and ability to process intricate instructions. It can handle more nuanced prompts compared to previous releases, and is multimodal, meaning it was trained on both images and text. We don’t yet understand its capabilities - yet it has already been deployed to the public.

At Center for Humane Technology, we want to close the gap between what the world hears publicly about AI from splashy CEO presentations and what the people who are closest to the risks and harms inside AI labs are telling us. We translated their concerns into a cohesive story and presented the resulting slides to heads of institutions and major media organizations in New York, Washington DC, and San Francisco. The talk you're about to hear is the culmination of that work, which is ongoing.

AI may help us achieve major advances like curing cancer or addressing climate change. But the point we're making is: if our dystopia is bad enough, it won't matter how good the utopia we want to create. We only get one shot, and we need to move at the speed of getting it right.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

AI ‘race to recklessness’ could have dire consequences, tech experts warn in new interview

Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin sit down with Lester Holt to discuss the dangers of developing AI without regulation

The Day After (1983)

This made-for-television movie explored the effects of a devastating nuclear holocaust on small-town residents of Kansas

The Day After discussion panel

Moderated by journalist Ted Koppel, a panel of present and former US officials, scientists and writers discussed nuclear weapons policies live on television after the film aired

Zia Cora - Submarines 

“Submarines” is a collaboration between musician Zia Cora (Alice Liu) and Aza Raskin. The music video was created by Aza in less than 48 hours using AI technology and published in early 2022

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

Synthetic humanity: AI & What’s At Stake

A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen

Two Million Years in Two Hours: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari

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

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A few months ago on Your Undivided Attention, we released a Spotlight episode on TikTok's national security risks. Since then, we've learned more about the dangers of the China-owned company: We've seen evidence of TikTok spying on US journalists, and proof of hidden state media accounts to influence the US elections. We’ve seen Congress ban TikTok on most government issued devices, and more than half of US states have done the same, along with dozens of US universities who are banning TikTok access from university wifi networks. More people in Western governments and media are saying that they used to believe that TikTok was an overblown threat. As we've seen more evidence of  national security risks play out, there’s even talk of banning TikTok itself in certain countries. But is that the best solution? If we opt for a ban, how do we, as open societies, fight accusations of authoritarianism? 

On this episode of Your Undivided Attention, we're going to do a deep dive into these questions with Marc Faddoul. He's the co-director of Tracking Exposed, a nonprofit investigating the influence of social media algorithms in our lives. His work has shown how TikTok tweaks its algorithm to maximize partisan engagement in specific national elections, and how it bans international news in countries like Russia that are fighting propaganda battles inside their own borders. In other words, we don't all get the same TikTok because there are different geopolitical interests that might guide which TikTok you see. That is a kind of soft power that TikTok operates on a global scale, and it doesn’t get talked about often enough.

We hope this episode leaves you with a lot to think about in terms of what the risks of TikTok are, how it's operating geopolitically, and what we can do about it.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Tracking Exposed Special Report: TikTok Content Restriction in Russia
How has the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected the content that TikTok users see in Russia? [Part 1 of Tracking Exposed series]

Tracking Exposed Special Report: Content Restrictions on TikTok in Russia Following the Ukrainian War
How are TikTok’s policy decisions affecting pro-war and anti-war content in Russia? [Part 2 of Tracking Exposed series]

Tracking Exposed Special Report: French Elections 2022
The visibility of French candidates on TikTok and YouTube search engines

The Democratic Surround by Fred Turner
A dazzling cultural history that demonstrates how American intellectuals, artists, and designers from the 1930s-1960s imagined new kinds of collective events that were intended to promote a powerful experience of American democracy in action

RECLOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

When Media Was for You and Me with Fred Turner

Addressing the TikTok Threat

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

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

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It may seem like the rise of artificial intelligence, and increasingly powerful large language models you may have heard of, is moving really fast… and it IS. 

But what’s coming next is when we enter synthetic relationships with AI that could come to feel just as real and important as our human relationships... And perhaps even more so. 

In this episode of Your Undivided Attention, Tristan and Aza reach beyond the moment to talk about this powerful new AI, and the new paradigm of humanity and computation we’re about to enter. 

This is a structural revolution that affects way more than text, art, or even Google search. There are huge benefits to humanity, and we’ll discuss some of those. But we also see that as companies race to develop the best synthetic relationships, we are setting ourselves up for a new generation of harms made exponentially worse by AI’s power to predict, mimic and persuade.

It’s obvious we need ways to steward these tools ethically. So Tristan and Aza also share their ideas for creating a framework for AIs that will help humans become MORE humane, not less.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Cybernetics: or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine by Norbert Wiener

A classic and influential work that laid the theoretical foundations for information theory

New Chatbots Could Change the World. Can You Trust Them?

The New York Times addresses misinformation and how Siri, Google Search, online marketing and your child’s homework will never be the same

Out of One, Many: Using Language Models to Simulate Human Samples by Lisa P. Argyle, Ethan C. Busby, Nancy Fulda, Joshua Gubler, Christopher Rytting, David Wingate

This paper proposes and explores the possibility that language models can be studied as effective proxies for specific human sub-populations in social science research

Earth Species Project

Earth Species Project, co-founded by Aza Raskin, is a non-profit dedicated to using artificial intelligence to decode non-human communication

Her (2013)

A science-fiction romantic drama film written, directed, and co-produced by Spike Jonze

What A Chatty Monkey May Tell Us About Learning To Talk

NPR explores the fascinating world of gelada monkeys and the way they communicate

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

How Political Language is Engineered with Drew Westen & Frank Luntz

What is Humane Technology?

Down the Rabbit Hole by Design with Guillaume Chaslot
 

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It’s easy to tell ourselves we’re living in the world we want – one where Darwinian evolution drives competing technology platforms and capitalism pushes nations to maximize GDP regardless of externalities like carbon emissions. It can feel like evolution and competition are all there is.

If that’s a complete description of what’s driving the world and our collective destiny, that can feel pretty hopeless. But what if that’s not the whole story of evolution? 

This is where evolutionary theorist, author, and professor David Sloan Wilson comes in. He has documented where an enlightened game, one of cooperation, rather than competition, is possible. His work shows that humans can and have chosen values like cooperation, altruism and group success – versus individual competition and selfishness – at key moments in our evolution, proving that evolution isn’t just genetic. It’s cultural, and it’s a choice. 

In a world where our trajectory isn’t tracking in the direction we want, it's time to slow down and ask: is a different kind of conscious evolution possible? 

On Your Undivided Attention, we’re going to update the Darwinian principles of evolution using a critical scientific lens that can help upgrade our ability to cooperate – ranging from the small community-level, all the way to entire technology companies that can cooperate in ways that allow everyone to succeed. 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution by David Sloan Wilson

Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups by David Sloan Wilson

Atlas Hugged: The Autobiography of John Galt III by David Sloan Wilson

Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action by Elinor Ostrom

Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella

WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us by Tim O’Reilly

Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace & Jim Erickson
 

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES 

An Alternative to Silicon Valley Unicorns with Mara Zepeda & Kate “Sassy” Sassoon

A Problem Well-Stated is Half-Solved with Daniel Schmachtenberger 

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

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