Marietje Schaake's "The Tech Coup" examines the growing power of Silicon Valley and its impact on democracy. The book explores how technology companies have become increasingly influential in shaping political discourse and public policy. Schaake analyzes the challenges posed by big tech's dominance, including issues of data privacy, algorithmic bias, and the spread of misinformation. She argues that these companies have amassed too much power and influence, and that urgent action is needed to address these concerns. The book offers concrete policy recommendations for regulating big tech and protecting democratic values in the digital age. Schaake's work provides a critical analysis of the relationship between technology and democracy, offering insights into how to safeguard democratic principles in the face of technological disruption.
Most of the time we interview people who say No to AI. In this interview, Georgia and Alix talk to two people who look at AI and ask How and For What. And lots of other questions too.
Divya Siddarth and Zarinah Agnew from the Collective Intelligence Project share CIP’s work using AI systems to explore more consultative democratic governance, how to reframe the social and relational of knowledge, to pull our thinking out of the individual frame and into collective and communal applications.
In Zarinah’s words, they are interested in what happens “between brains, not within brains”. A ‘community chat bot’ might sound cringe but Divya and Zarinah are doing work to make these valuable and useful, rather than addictive and sycophantic. If you’re skeptical of the utility of engaging in these toxic corporate towers of AI at all, this is an episode for you.
Further reading & resources
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Divya Siddarth is the executive director and co-founder of CIP. Previously, she has been a political economist and social technologist in Microsoft’s Office of the CTO, the AI and Democracy lead at the U.K.’s AI Safety Institute, and held positions at the Ethics in AI Institute at Oxford, the Ostrom Workshop, and the Harvard Safra Center. She graduated from Stanford with a B.S. in Computational Decision Analysis in 2018.
Zarinah is Research Director at the Collective Intelligence Project, where they work on transforming public input into impactful change in the AI ecosystem. Previously a neuroscientist, Zarinah now focuses on the science of collectivity and emerging related technologies. Zarinah is faculty at the London College of Political Technology where they teach on Future Crafting. In their spare time, some might argue, they run too many non-profits.
Computer Says Maybe 
