Podcast
The Tech Policy Press Podcast
Hosted by Tech Policy Press · EN
Tech Policy Press is a nonprofit media and community venture intended to provoke new ideas, debate and discussion at the intersection of technology and democracy.
You can find us at https://techpolicy.press/, where you can join the newsletter.
99episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Considering the Human Rights Impacts of LLM Content Moderation
Jul 6, 2025Tap to summarizeAt Tech Policy Press we’ve been tracking the emerging application of generative AI systems in content moderation. Recently, the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL) released a comprehensive report titled Algorithmic Gatekeepers: The Human Rights Impacts of LLM Content Moderation, which looks at the opportunities and challenges of using generative AI in content moderation systems at scale. Justin Hendrix spoke to its primary author, ECNL senior legal manager Marlena Wisniak.
Transcribe →Taking on the AI Con
Jun 1, 2025Tap to summarizeEmily M. Bender and Alex Hanna are the authors of a new book that The Guardian calls “refreshingly sarcastic” and Business Insider calls a “funny and irreverent deconstruction of AI.” They are also occasional contributors to Tech Policy Press. Justin Hendrix spoke to them about their new book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want, just out from Harper Collins.
Transcribe →A 10-Year Moratorium on Enforcing State AI Laws?
May 25, 2025Tap to summarizeOn Thursday, May 22, the United States House of Representatives narrowly advanced a budget bill that included the "Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology Modernization Initiative," which includes a 10-year moratorium on the enforcement of state AI laws. Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix and associate editor Cristiano Lima-Strong discussed the moratorium, the contours of the debate around it, and its prospects in the Senate.
Transcribe →Through to Thriving: Building Community with Ellen Pao
Apr 20, 2025Tap to summarizeFor a special series of episodes that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting a series of discussions intended to help us imagine possible futures—for tech and tech policy, for democracy, and society—beyond the moment we are in. Dubbed Through to Thriving, the first episode in the series features a discussion on how to build community and solidarity with Ellen Pao, currently the co-founder of a nonprofit called Project Include, which focuses on advancing diversity and inclusion in the tech sector. Previously, Pao was the interim CEO of Reddit and a venture capitalist.
Transcribe →About that Signal Chat
Mar 27, 202500:27:46Summary readyEvery now and again, a story that has a significant technology element really breaks through and drives the news cycle. This week, the Trump administration is reeling after The Atlantic magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he was on the receiving end of Yemen strike plans in a Signal group chat between US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other top US national security officials. User behavior, a common failure point, appears to be to blame in this scenario. But what are the broader contours and questions that emerge from this scandal? To learn more, Justin Hendrix spoke to:Ryan Goodman is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and co-editor-in-chief of Just Security. He served as special counsel to the general counsel of the Department of Defense (2015-16).Cooper Quintin is a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). He has worked on projects including Privacy Badger, Canary Watch, and analysis of state-sponsored malware campaigns such as Dark Caracal.
SummaryA Conversation with Alvaro Bedoya on Trump's FTC Firings
Mar 25, 202500:39:38Summary readyLast week, President Donald Trump ordered the firing of two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency that enforces federal consumer protection and competition laws and that, under former President Joe Biden, turned up its scrutiny of the tech sector's biggest companies. The two commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, plan to challenge Trump's firing, which they said will only benefit billionaire tech moguls like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.Tech Policy Press Associate Editor Cristiano Lima-Strong spoke to Bedoya on Monday, March 24.
SummaryIs an Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence Possible?
Mar 23, 202500:52:46Summary readyWhat is necessary to develop a future that is less hospitable to authoritarianism and, indeed, to fascism? How do we build collective power against authoritarian forms of corporate and state power? Is an alternative form of computing possible? Dan McQuillan is the author of Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence, published in 2022 by Bristol University Press.
SummaryA Conversation with Dr. Alondra Nelson on AI and Democracy
Mar 16, 202500:30:34Summary readyDr. Alondra Nelson holds the Harold F. Linder Chair and leads the Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study, where she has served on the faculty since 2019. From 2021 to 2023, she was deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and acting director and principal deputy director for science and society of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She was deeply involved in the Biden administration’s approach to artificial intelligence. She led the development of the White House “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights,” which informed President Biden’s Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. To say the Trump administration has taken a different approach to AI and how to think about its role in government and in society would be an understatement. President Trump rescinded President Biden’s executive order and is at work developing a new approach to AI policy. At the Paris AI Action Summit in February, Vice President JD Vance promoted a vision of American dominance and challenged other nations that would seek to regulate American AI firms. And then there is DOGE, which is at work gutting federal agencies with the stated intent of replacing key government functions with AI systems and using AI to root out supposed fraud and waste.This week, Justin Hendrix had the chance to speak with Dr. Nelson about how she’s thinking about these phenomena and the work to be done in the years ahead to secure a more just, democratic, and sustainable future.
SummaryShould AGI Really Be the Goal of Artificial Intelligence Research?
Mar 9, 202500:42:36Summary readyThe goal of achieving "artificial general intelligence," or AGI, is shared by many in the AI field. OpenAI’s charter defines AGI as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work,” and last summer, the company announced its plan to achieve AGI within five years. While other experts at companies like Meta and Anthropic quibble with the term, many AI researchers recognize AGI as either an explicit or implicit goal. Google Deepmind went so far as to set out "Levels of AGI,” identifying key principles and definitions of the term. Today’s guests are among the authors of a new paper that argues the field should stop treating AGI as the north-star goal of AI research. They include:Eryk Salvaggio, a visiting professor in the Humanities Computing and Design department at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a Tech Policy Press fellow;Borhane Blili-Hamelin, an independent AI researcher and currently a data scientist at the Canadian bank TD; andMargaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at Hugging Face.
SummaryAssessing Europe's Digital Markets Act One Year In
Mar 9, 202500:59:00Summary readyA year ago, Europe’s Digital Markets Act—the DMA—went into effect. The European Commission says the purpose of the regulation is to make “digital markets in the EU more contestable and fairer.” In particular, the DMA regulates gatekeepers, the large digital platforms whose position gives them greater leverage over the digital economy. One year in, how has the DMA performed? Do Europeans enjoy more choice and competition? And what are the new politics of the DMA as European regulations are contested by the Trump administration and its supporters in US industry? To answer these questions and more, Tech Policy Press contributing editor Dean Jackson spoke to a set of experts following a conference hosted by the Knight Georgetown Institute titled “DMA and Beyond.” His guests include:Alissa Cooper, Executive Director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute (KGI)Anu Bradford, Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law SchoolHaeyoon Kim, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Korea Economic Institute (KEI), andGunn Jiravuttipong, a JSD Candidate and Miller Fellow at Berkeley Law School.
Summary