Policy Prompt

What does innovation actually mean, and how should we be thinking about it?In this episode, Vass and Paul welcome Joel Blit, an expert in innovation and innovation policy. Joel is a senior fellow at CIGI, and an associate professor of economics at the University of Waterloo, where he chairs the Council for Innovation Policy and Strategy. They discuss the mix of art and science that comprises innovation, the tensions surrounding it, and the different approaches — inside and outside the academy — that Canada and other jurisdictions are experimenting with to best generate and capture commercial and societal benefits from emerging technologies, in particular artificial intelligence. In-Show Clips:00:06:26: TVO Today, “Evaluating Performance-based Funding” (YouTube, October 3, 2019)00:46:40: BBC News, “How could AI affect jobs globally and worsen inequality?” (YouTube, January 15, 2024)Mentioned:“Sigma 2” in education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problemFurther Reading: Joel Blit’s bio: https://uwaterloo.ca/scholar/jblitCredits:Policy Prompt is produced by Vass Bednar and Paul Samson. Our technical producers are Tim Lewis and Melanie DeBonte. Fact-checking and background research provided by Reanne Cayenne. Marketing by Kahlan Thomson. Brand design by Abhilasha Dewan and creative direction by Som Tsoi.Original music by Joshua Snethlage.Sound mix and mastering by François Goudreault.Special thanks to creative consultant Ken Ogasawara.Be sure to follow us on social media.X: @_policypromptIG: @_policyprompt Listen to new episodes of Policy Prompt biweekly on major podcast platforms. Questions, comments or suggestions? Reach out to CIGI’s Policy Prompt team at info@policyprompt.io.

AI is going to affect us all and everyone has opinions about it. But what does the data say?In this episode of Policy Prompt, Vass and Paul welcome Nestor Maslej from Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, where he is the research manager of the AI Index and the Global AI Vibrancy Tool. In developing tools that track the advancement of AI, Nestor hopes to make the AI space more accessible to policy makers, business leaders and the lay public. Nestor discusses the excitement and fears surrounding this fast-moving technology and the importance of quantitative data in AI myth busting. “At the Index, we really feel that to make good decisions about this tech, whether you are in a boardroom, in a Parliament, or simply sitting in your living room, you need to have access to data and you have to actually understand what is going on with this technology.”In-Show Clips:00:10:55: CNBC, “How China’s New AI Model DeepSeek Is Threatening U.S. Dominance” (YouTube, January 24, 2025)00:30:11: Yahoo Finance, “What is the CHIPS act? The semiconductor bill with bipartisan support (and criticism)” (YouTube, July 20, 2022)00:41:07: The AI Navigator, “What is Jevons Paradox and how could it apply to AI?” (YouTube, May 2, 2024)Mentioned:The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI: https://hai.stanford.edu/aboutThe Stanford AI Index: https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-indexThe Stanford Global AI Vibrancy Tool: https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/global-vibrancy-toolJevons paradox: Greg Rosalsky, “Why the AI world is suddenly obsessed with a 160-year-old economics paradox” (NPR, February 4, 2025)Further Reading:Nestor Maslej’s bio: https://profiles.stanford.edu/nestor-maslejNestor Maslej, Loredana Fattorini, Raymond Perrault, Vanessa Parli, Anka Reuel, Erik Brynjolfsson, John Etchemendy, Katrina Ligett, Terah * Lyons, James Manyika, Juan Carlos Niebles, Yoav Shoham, Russell Wald and Jack Clark, Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2024 (Stanford, CA: Institute for Human-Centered AI, Stanford University, April 2024)Credits:Policy Prompt is produced by Vass Bednar and Paul Samson. Our technical producers are Tim Lewis and Melanie DeBonte. Fact-checking and background research provided by Reanne Cayenne. Marketing by Kahlan Thomson. Brand design by Abhilasha Dewan and creative direction by Som Tsoi.Original music by Joshua Snethlage.Sound mix and mastering by François Goudreault.Special thanks to creative consultant Ken Ogasawara.Be sure to follow us on social media.X: @_policypromptIG: @_policypromptListen to new episodes of Policy Prompt biweekly on major podcast platforms. Questions, comments or suggestions? Reach out to CIGI’s Policy Prompt team at info@policyprompt.io.

In episode 12, artist and thinker Amanda Wasielewski joins hosts Vass and Paul to discuss the crossover and interplay between digital and capital-A art.Amanda, an associate senior lecturer of digital humanities and associate professor (docent) of art history in the Department of Archives, Libraries, and Museums at Uppsala University in Sweden, has exhibited her artwork internationally and recently published the monograph Computational Formalism: Art History and Machine Learning (MIT Press, 2023) and co-edited Critical Digital Art History: Interface and Data Politics in the Post-Digital Era, with Anna Näslund (University of Chicago Press, 2024). Amanda brings her art historian perspective to questions of data politics, including categorization, authentication, nuances lost in automation, the need to be able to see data sets, and both the fears and artistic potential surrounding generative technologies.In-Show Clips:00:08:12: Rakutentech, “Computer Vision — The Now & The Future — Rakuten Technology Conference 2019” (YouTube, December 25, 2019)00:11:14: SamDoesArts, “Why Artists are Fed Up with AI Art” (YouTube, December 24, 2022)00:22:48: Watchseenart, “Is Damien Hirst Sloppy or Suspicious?” (YouTube Short, March 21, 2024)00:49:56: The IT Crowd, “Series 2 — Episode 3: Piracy warning” (YouTube, March 18, 2009), parody of the original 2004 Motion Picture Association ad “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” posted by HelloImAPizza (YouTube, October 3, 2022)01:00:42: The Wall Street Journal, “OpenAI’s Sora Made Me Crazy AI Videos — Then the CTO Answered (Most of) My Questions” (YouTube, March 13, 2024)Mentioned:Artist Jack Bishop: https://jackbishop.ca/More about the Group of Seven: www.gallery.ca/whats-on/exhibitions-and-galleries/experience-the-group-of-seven-at-the-galleryOn controversy surrounding dating of works by Damien Hirst: “Dating Discrepancy in Damien Hirst’s Formaldehyde Work Rocks Art World” by Rebecca Schiffman, Art & Object, March 25, 2024On “the famous case, which is still unresolved, of the painting of Christ…said to be of Da Vinci, but then said not to be”: “Salvator Mundi, Saudi Arabia and the saga of the missing masterpiece” by Vanessa Thorpe, The Guardian, August 24, 2024On “this famous paper…which proposed a technique called StyleGAN, which was replicated on the website ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com”: “Analyzing and Improving the Image Qualityof StyleGAN” by Tero Karras, Samuli Laine, Miika Aittala, Janne Hellsten, Jaakko Lehtinen and Timo Aila, preprint, arXiv, March 23, 2020Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen, ImageNet Roulette project: https://paglen.studio/2020/04/29/imagenet-roulette/Further Reading: Amanda Wasielewski’s website: www.amandawasielewski.com/Amanda Wasielewski, Made in Brooklyn: Artists, Hipsters, Makers, Gentrifiers (Zero Books, 2018)Amanda Wasielewski, Computational Formalism: Art History and Machine Learning (MIT Press, 2023)“Next book out this fall”: Since this episode was recorded, Amanda Wasielewski and Anna Naslund’s co-edited book Critical Digital Art History: Interface and Data Politics in the Post-Digital Era has been released, published by University of Chicago Press in November 2024Credits:Policy Prompt is produced by Vass Bednar and Paul Samson. Our technical producers are Tim Lewis and Melanie DeBonte. Fact-checking and background research provided by Reanne Cayenne. Marketing by Kahlan Thomson. Brand design by Abhilasha Dewan and creative direction by Som Tsoi.Original music by Joshua Snethlage.Sound mix and mastering by François Goudreault.Special thanks to creative consultant Ken Ogasawara.Be sure to follow us on social media.X: @_policypromptIG: @_policypromptListen to new episodes of Policy Prompt biweekly on major podcast platforms. Questions, comments or suggestions? Reach out to CIGI’s Policy Prompt team at info@policyprompt.io.

Warren Buffett once said he would rather trust his money to monkeys throwing darts than financial advisers. So how do the monkeys’ chances of hitting the target stack up against those of, say, pollsters, Magic 8 Balls or star charts? Maybe the monkeys have practised.Meet Robert de Neufville, who is super at forecasting: someone whose predictions have proved far more accurate than regular forecasting and regularly outperform intelligence analysts’. Robert holds degrees in government and political science from Harvard and Berkeley, co-hosts the NonProphets: (Super)forecasting Podcast and has extensive experience in analyzing existential risk. Robert and hosts Vass and Paul discuss everything from Buffett’s monkeys and Moneyball to the importance of parking your biases, knowing what to research and the difference between hype and meaningful signal, to the value of expertise, new things to worry about and the need to stay skeptical.Mentioned:NonProphets (Super)forecasting Podcast by superforecasters Atief Heermance, Robert de Neufville and Scott Eastman: https://nonprophetspod.wordpress.com/For more on Elaine Rich and the Good Judgment Project, see Alix Spiegel on Morning Edition, “So You Think You’re Smarter Than A CIA Agent” (NPR, April 2, 2014)Philip E. Tetlock, one of the founders of Good Judgment, author of Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, 2nd ed. (Princeton University Press, 2017)Scholar Barbara Mellers: see, for example, “Human and Algorithmic Predictions in Geopolitical Forecasting: Quantifying Uncertainty in Hard-to-Quantify Domains” by Mellers, John P. McCoy, Louise Lu and Philip E. Tetlock, 2024, Perspectives on Psychological Science 19 (5), https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916231185339Swedish Defence Research Agency’s crowd forecasting site Glimt: https://glimt.nu/glimt/en/welcome.htmlBrier score: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brier_scoreFurther Reading: Robert de Neufville’s bio: https://goodjudgment.com/about/our-team/superforecaster-profiles/robert-de-neufville/Robert de Neufville’s Telling the Future Substack: https://tellingthefuture.substack.com/aboutFor more on IARPA (Intelligence Advance Research Projects Activity) and the massive supercasting tournament it launched in 2011, see: https://goodjudgment.com/common-questions-good-judgment-superforecasters/Credits:Policy Prompt is produced by Vass Bednar and Paul Samson. Our technical producers are Tim Lewis and Melanie DeBonte. Fact-checking and background research provided by Reanne Cayenne. Marketing by Kahlan Thomson. Brand design by Abhilasha Dewan and creative direction by Som Tsoi.Original music by Joshua Snethlage.Sound mix and mastering by François Goudreault.Special thanks to creative consultant Ken Ogasawara.Be sure to follow us on social media.X: @_policypromptIG: @_policypromptListen to new episodes of Policy Prompt biweekly on major podcast platforms. Questions, comments or suggestions? Reach out to CIGI’s Policy Prompt team at info@policyprompt.io.

Join hosts Vass and Paul for their fascinating conversation with Michael Richardson, associate professor of media and culture at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, about the ideas in his book Nonhuman Witnessing: War, Data, and Ecology after the End of the World (Duke University Press, 2024). Michael explores the ethical and political implications of witnessing in an age of profound instability, and how our ways of making knowledge and experiencing the world are being mediated in fundamental ways by nonhuman systems — from the embodiment of history, trauma and change in animals and natural landscapes, to the “immediately computational” witnessing by technologies such as surveillance cameras and artificial intelligence.Mentioned:Potawatomi scholar Kyle Whyte: https://seas.umich.edu/research/faculty/kyle-whyteMario Blaser and Marisol de la Cadena, editors, A World of Many Worlds (Duke University Press, 2018)Future of Life Institute: “Slaughterbots are here” (https://autonomousweapons.org/)“The infamous COMPAS [Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions] sentencing software”: see “Code is law: how COMPAS affects the way the judiciary handles the risk of recidivism,” by Christoph Engel, Lorenz Linhardt and Marcel Schubert, Artificial Intelligence and Law, February 2004, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-024-09389-8Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence on Automated Decision-Making and Society: www.admscentre.org.au/In-Show Clips:7:17: NDPVIDEO: “Jack Layton on reckless economic policies” (YouTube, December 3, 2009)14:57: Center for Puerto Rican Studies: “Bridging the Divides: Apocalypse and Indigenizing Futures” featuring Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez and Kyle Powys Whyte (YouTube, February 1, 2024)18:48: ABC News In-depth: “One year on, ABC News looks back at how Australia’s Black Summer bushfire crisis unfolded” (YouTube, January 1, 2021)21:58: Overthink Podcast, “Thinking with the pluriverse: a conversation with Mario Blaser” (YouTube, October 24, 2023)49:22: The Wall Street Journal: “Valkyrie: This Autonomous AI Drone Could Be the Military’s Next Weapon” (YouTube, October 7, 2023)51:12: Future of Life Institute: “Slaughterbots — if human: kill()” (YouTube, November 30, 2021)1:02:20: Testimony of witness Rebecca Wexler, Assistant Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law, US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterorism hearing “AI in Criminal Investigations and Prosecutions” (January 24, 2024)1:03:14: WITNESS: “WITNESS’ Sam Gregory testifies in US House hearing on how we can inclusively prepare for deepfakes” (YouTube, November 8, 2023)Further Reading: Michael Richardson, Nonhuman Witnessing: War, Data, and Ecology after the End of the World (Duke University Press, 2024)Michael Richardson, Gestures of Testimony: Torture, Trauma, and Affect in Literature (Bloomsbury, 2016)Michael Richardson, “Algorithmic Trauma,” in The Affect Theory Reader 2: Worldings, Tensions, Futures, edited by Gregory J. Seigworth, Michael Richardson and Carolyn Pedwell (Duke University Press, 2023)Credits:Policy Prompt is produced by Vass Bednar and Paul Samson. Our technical producers are Tim Lewis and Melanie DeBonte. Fact-checking and background research provided by Reanne Cayenne. Marketing by Kahlan Thomson. Brand design by Abhilasha Dewan and creative direction by Som Tsoi.Original music by Joshua Snethlage.Sound mix and mastering by François Goudreault.Special thanks to creative consultant Ken Ogasawara.Be sure to follow us on social media.X: @_policypromptIG: @_policypromptListen to new episodes of Policy Prompt biweekly on major podcast platforms. Questions, comments or suggestions? Reach out to CIGI’s Policy Prompt team at info@policyprompt.io.

In a vibrant discussion, David Bellos, a Princeton professor and translator, teams up with Alexandre Montagu, an adjunct professor and lawyer, to delve into the intricate history of copyright. They explore how copyright has transformed from protecting published works to becoming a tool for privatization. With engaging anecdotes, they discuss landmark cases and the challenges posed by generative AI, highlighting the ongoing tensions between creativity, ownership, and the power of big corporations in today's digital landscape.

Join the Policy Prompt crew for a different kind of episode: recorded with a live audience at Perfect Books in Ottawa, host Paul Samson interviews Denise Hearn (resident senior fellow at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, author, applied researcher and adviser) and Vass Bednar (CIGI senior fellow, Public Policy Forum fellow and executive director of the Master of Public Policy in Digital Society program at McMaster University) to discuss “kayfabe capitalism,” and why our nation’s competition policy leaves much to be desired. Listen to learn how Canada can promote competition, encourage citizen engagement and create a more level playing field. Denise and Vass’s book, The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians, is available now from Sutherland House Press.Mentioned:Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar, The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians (Sutherland House Press, 2024)Competition Act RSC 1985, c C-34Perfect Books, 258A Elgin St., OttawaFurther Reading: Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar, “We live in the age of kayfabe capitalism” (The Globe and Mail, October 13, 2024)Vass Bednar, “In Canada, we bank where we buy” (The Globe and Mail, May 5, 2024)Jonathan Tepper and Denise Hearn, The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition (Wiley, 2018)Show notes: Vass Bednar’s Lately podcast with The Globe and Mail, centring on trends and key actors in business and techVass Bednar’s Substack, Regs to riches, a newsletter about start-ups and public policyDenise Hearn’s newsletter, Embodied Economics, focuses on today’s economic frameworks and financial structures through a nuanced lensCredits:Policy Prompt is produced by Vass Bednar and Paul Samson. Our technical producers are Tim Lewis and Melanie DeBonte. Fact-checking and background research provided by Reanne Cayenne. Marketing by Kahlan Thomson. Brand design by Abhilasha Dewan and creative direction by Som Tsoi.Original music by Joshua Snethlage.Sound mix and mastering by François Goudreault.Special thanks to creative consultant Ken Ogasawara.Be sure to follow us on social media.X: @_policypromptIG: @_policypromptListen to new episodes of Policy Prompt biweekly on major podcast platforms. Questions, comments or suggestions? Reach out to CIGI’s Policy Prompt team at info@policyprompt.io.

Is refrigeration really that revolutionary? In this episode of Policy Prompt, the hosts are joined by Nicola Twilley, author of Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves (Penguin Press, 2024) and co-host of the award-winning Gastropod podcast. They explore the “modern marvel” of enjoying fresh foods from around the globe year-round, and the science that makes it all possible.Mentioned:Nicola Twilley, Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves (Penguin Press, 2024)“Gastropod. Food with a side of science and history”Further Reading: Nicola Twilley’s official websiteNicola Twilley, “How to Get Rich From Peeping Inside People’s Fridges” (Wired, July 1, 2024)Nicola Twilley, “How the Fridge Changed Flavor” (The New Yorker, June 8, 2024)Show notes: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located in Norway, is home to gene banks that are preserving more than one million seeds from around the world.A remedy for rampant food waste? Nicola Twilley and co-host Cynthia Graber explore “surprise bags” in an episode of Gastropod.Credits:Policy Prompt is produced by Vass Bednar and Paul Samson. Our technical producers are Tim Lewis and Melanie DeBonte. Fact-checking and background research provided by Reanne Cayenne. Marketing by Kahlan Thomson. Brand design by Abhilasha Dewan and creative direction by Som Tsoi.Original music by Joshua Snethlage.Sound mix and mastering by François Goudreault.Special thanks to creative consultant Ken Ogasawara.Be sure to follow us on social media.X: @_policypromptIG: @_policypromptListen to new episodes of Policy Prompt biweekly on major podcast platforms. Questions, comments or suggestions? Reach out to CIGI’s Policy Prompt team at info@policyprompt.io.

Before Google and Meta dominated the digital landscape, the news agencies and technologies of the early twentieth century captured unprecedented influence. Join hosts Vass Bednar and Paul Samson in conversation with Heidi Tworek, a leading expert in international history and public policy from the University of British Columbia, as she explains the historic prevalence, power and manipulation of media and wireless technology. Her latest book, News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945, is available from Harvard University Press.Mentioned:Heidi J.S. Tworek, News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945 (Harvard University Press, 2019)Matthew Goldstein, “What to Know About Trump Media Now That the Election Is Over” (The New York Times, November 13, 2024)Caitlyn Becker, “These are the major newspapers that have and haven’t endorsed Trump and Harris” (The Hill, October 26, 2024)Further Reading: Heidi Tworek’s official websiteRobert Diab, “Google’s AI Podcasts Signal a New Era in Media” (CIGI, November 14, 2024)Devin Coldewey, “Generative disinfo is real — you’re just not the target, warns deepfake tracking nonprofit” (TechCrunch, November 12, 2024)In-Show Clips:PeriscopeFilm: “LAYING OF WESTERN UNION TRANS-ATLANTIC CABLE 1928 TELEGRAPH”KTLA 5: “U.S. House passes TikTok ban”PeriscopeFilm: “‘HOW TO READ A NEWSPAPER’ 1950s EDUCATIONAL FILM”BlueLotusFilms: “1950’s Vintage Pharmaceutical Commercials”BBC News: “US journalist Evan Gershkovich jailed in Russia”Credits:Policy Prompt is produced by Vass Bednar and Paul Samson. Our technical producers are Tim Lewis and Melanie DeBonte. Fact-checking and background research provided by Reanne Cayenne. Marketing by Kahlan Thomson. Brand design by Abhilasha Dewan and creative direction by Som Tsoi.Original music by Joshua Snethlage.Sound mix and mastering by François Goudreault.Special thanks to creative consultant Ken Ogasawara.Be sure to follow us on social media.X: @_policypromptIG: @_policypromptListen to new episodes of Policy Prompt biweekly on major podcast platforms. Questions, comments or suggestions? Reach out to CIGI’s Policy Prompt team at info@policyprompt.io.  

 Amid the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War, the Chinese computer emerged. Despite the complexity of formatting tens of thousands of characters for digital use, the race for ingenuity resulted in the revolutionary computing of non-Latin script and unprecedented typing speeds — feats that continue to shape the devices we use today. Join Policy Prompt hosts for a deep dive into the history of digital technology in China with Thomas S. Mullaney, American sinologist, professor at Stanford University and author of The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age (MIT Press, 2024). Mentioned:Thomas S. Mullaney, The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age (MIT Press, 2024)Tom Mullaney, “America has a rich history of innovation by Asian immigrants” (Quartz, May 29, 2021)Thomas S. Mullaney, The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press, 2018)SILICON (Stanford Initiative on Language Inclusion and Conservation in Old and New Media)Further Reading: Your Computer Is on Fire, edited by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks and Kavita Philip (MIT Press, 2021)Tom Mullaney, “Behind the painstaking process of creating Chinese computer fonts” (MIT Technology Review, May 31, 2021)Thomas S. Mullaney, “QWERTY in China: Chinese Computing and the Radical Alphabet” (Technology and Culture 59 (4): S34–S65)Credits:Policy Prompt is produced by Vass Bednar and Paul Samson. Our technical producers are Tim Lewis and Melanie DeBonte. Fact-checking and background research provided by Reanne Cayenne. Marketing by Kahlan Thomson. Brand design by Abhilasha Dewan and creative direction by Som Tsoi.Original music by Joshua Snethlage.Sound mix and mastering by François Goudreault.Special thanks to creative consultant Ken Ogasawara.Be sure to follow us on social media.X: @_policypromptIG: @_policypromptListen to new episodes of Policy Prompt biweekly on major podcast platforms. Questions, comments or suggestions? Reach out to CIGI’s Policy Prompt team at info@policyprompt.io.