Computer Says Maybe

In this insightful conversation, Bianca Wylie, a writer and digital governance expert, shares her journey resisting Google's plans for a smart city in Toronto. She emphasizes the importance of public consultation in digital governance and explores the complexities of tech procurement. Bianca discusses the role of local journalism in community engagement and critiques the issues of privacy in urban planning. She advocates for specificity in tech discussions, highlighting the need for transparency and genuine public dialogue when integrating technology into governance.

What if we could have a public library for compute? But is… more compute really what we want right now?This week Alix interviewed Teri Olle from the Economic Security Project, a co-sponsor of the California AI safety bill (SB 1047). The bill has been making the rounds in the news because it would force AI companies to do safety checks on their models before releasing them to the public — which is seen as uh, ‘controversial’, to those in the innovation space.But Teri had a hand in a lesser known part of the bill: the construction of CalCompute, a state owned public cloud cluster for resource-intensive AI development. This would mean public access to the compute power needed to train state of the art AI models — finally giving researchers and plucky start ups access to something otherwise locked inside a corporate walled garden.Teri Olle is the California Campaign Director for Economic Security Project Action. Beginning her career as an attorney, Teri soon moved into policy and issue advocacy, working on state and local efforts to ban toxic chemicals and pesticides, decrease food insecurity and hunger, increase gender representation in politics. She is a founding member of a political action committee dedicated to inserting parent voice into local politics and served as the president of the board of Emerge California. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two daughters.

Applications for our second cohort of Media Mastery for New AI Protagonists are now open! Join this 5-week program to level up your media impact alongside a dynamic community of emerging experts in AI politics and power—at no cost to you. In this episode, we chat with Daniel Stone, a participant from our first cohort, about his work. Apply by Sunday, September 29th!The adoption of new technologies is driven by stories. A story is a shortcut to understanding something complex. Narratives can lock us into a set of options that are…terrible. The kicker is that narratives are hard to detect and even harder to influence.But how reliable are our narrators? And how can we use story as strategy?The good news is that experts are working to unravel the narratives around AI. All so that folks with public interest in mind can change the game.This week Alix sat down with three researchers looking at three AI narrative questions. She spoke to Hanna Barakat about how the New York Times reports on AI; John Tanner, who scraped and analysed huge amounts of YouTube videos to find narrative patterns; and Daniel Stone, who studied and deconstructed metaphors that power collective understanding about AI.In this ep we ask:What are the stories we tell ourselves about AI? And why do we let industry pick them?How do these narratives change what is politically possible?What can public interest organisations and advocates do to change the narrative game?Hanna Barakat is a research analyst for Computer Says Maybe, working at the intersection of emerging technologies and complex systems design. She graduated from Brown University in 2022 with honors in International Development Studies and a focus in Digital Media Studies.Jonathan Tanner founded Rootcause after more than fifteen years working in senior communications roles for high-profile politicians, CEOs, philanthropists and public thinkers across the world. In this time he has worked across more than a dozen countries running diverse teams whilst writing keynote speeches, securing front page headlines, delivering world-first social media moments and helping to secure meaningful changes to public policy.Daniel Stone is currently undertaking research with Cambridge University’s Centre for Future Intelligence and is the Executive Director of Diffusion.Au. He is a Policy Fellow with the Chifley Research Centre and a Policy Associate at the Centre for Responsible Technology Australia.

There are oceans of research papers digging into the various harms of online platforms. Researchers are asking urgent questions such as how hate speech and misinformation has an effect on our information environment, and our democracy.But how does this research find it’s way to the media, policymakers, advocacy groups, or even tech companies themselves?To help us answer this, Alix is joined this week by Issie Lapowsky, who recently authored Bridging The Divide: Translating Research on Digital Media into Policy and Practice — a report about how research reaches these four groups, and what they do with it. This episode also features John Sands from Knight Foundation, who commissioned this report.Further reading:Bridging The Divide by Issie LapowskyKnight FoundationIssie Lapowsky is a journalist covering the intersection between tech, politics and national affairs. She has been published in WIRED, Protocol, The New York Times, and Fast Company.John Sands is Senior Director of Media and Democracy at Knight Foundation. Since joining Knight Foundation in 2019, he has led more than $100 million in grant making to support independent scholarship and policy research on information and technology in the context of our democracy.

Last week, CEO of Telegram Pavel Durov landed in France and was immediately detained. The details of his arrest are still emerging; he is being charged for being complicit in illegal activities happening on the platform, including the spread of CSAM.Durov’s lawyer has referred to these charges as “absurd” — because the head of a social media company cannot be held responsible for criminal activity on the platform. That might be true in the US but does that hold up in France?This week Alix is joined by Mallory Knodel to talk us through what happened:What are the implications of France making this move, and why now?How has Telegram positioned themselves as the most safe and secure messaging platform when they don’t even use the same encryption standards as WhatsApp?How Telegram has managed to get away with being uncooperative with various governments — or have they?Mallory Knodel is The Center for Democracy & Technology’s Chief Technology Officer. She is also a co-chair of the Human Rights and Protocol Considerations research group of the Internet Research Task Force and a chairing advisor on cybersecurity and AI to the Freedom Online Coalition.

The hosts reflect on the troubling impact of social media on mental health and exploitation of young users. They draw unsettling parallels between big tech and big tobacco, highlighting the need for accountability. Discussions emphasize the barriers to transparency in corporations and the vital role of whistleblowers. The challenges of regulating harmful speech on digital platforms are explored, along with the implications of Section 230. The conversation wraps up with the necessity for short-term tech policy improvements and a call for transparency in research.

Elizabeth Eagen, Deputy Director of the Citizens and Technology Lab at Cornell University, discusses the role of social scientists in legal contexts. She addresses the challenges they face in conveying research uncertainty and the need for collaboration with lawyers. The conversation explores the ethical implications of AI technologies, the requirement for transparency in tech regulation, and the importance of effective government communication. Eagen emphasizes how technology impacts society and highlights the urgency for legislative responses as tech evolves.

In this engaging discussion, Alexa Koenig, Co-Faculty Director at UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center, dives into the complexities of using digital evidence in courts. She explores the challenges posed by social media and the evolving nature of authenticating images and audio. Koenig also highlights the potential roles of social scientists as expert witnesses and how generative AI complicates evidence integrity. The conversation underscores the urgent need for collaboration between tech companies and the legal system in our digital era.

Meetali Jain, founder of the Tech Justice Law Project, dives deep into the intricate world of holding big tech accountable. She discusses how Section 230 shields platforms from liability and the legal chess moves required to challenge this. Jain emphasizes the critical role of whistleblowers in promoting transparency and explores the implications of the Digital Services Act. She draws parallels between tech design accountability and tobacco litigation, making a case for serious regulatory reforms to ensure safer online spaces.

Frances Haugen, a former data scientist at Meta, gained notoriety for her whistleblowing on the company's harmful practices affecting children. In her chat with Alix, she exposes the negligence behind social media design choices. The discussion delves into the consequences of her revelations, sparking crucial conversations on accountability and child safety online. Haugen raises pressing questions about age verification and the balance of encryption with user privacy, reflecting on the need for corporate responsibility in the tech industry.