What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence. Sign up now to listen and support our work.Google has spent the last decade trying to find a foothold in the health care industry. Now they’re partnering with the federal government to build a website that will seek to address the crisis.Can Google be trusted with our medical data?Guest: Mason Marks, law professor at Gonzaga University School of Law and an affiliated fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week, the superintendent of the Northshore school district near Seattle made a difficult decision. With the coronavirus spreading rapidly in the area, she closed all 34 schools in her district and moved all classes online. But for many schools, remote learning at this scale simply isn’t an option. With new cases appearing around the country, how will schools respond? And what happens when you send millions of students home for weeks on end? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence. Sign up now to listen and support our work.For pregnant women in the U.S., there are plenty of reasons to mistrust the medical establishment. Mortality rates are high compared to other western countries, and one-third of women in the U.S. give birth by C-section. It’s no wonder that many women turn to the internet for alternatives.This week, the story of one woman who was drawn into a network of private Facebook groups dedicated to the idea of ‘freebirth,’ or unassisted birth. And what happens when the misinformation shared in these private groups has real-life consequences.Guest: Brandy Zadrozny, reporter for NBC News. You can read her reporting on ‘freebirth’ here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 with a billion dollars and an idealistic mission: Create artificial intelligence that could address humanity’s biggest problems, and do it out in the open. Then came the money problems.Guest: Karen Hao, senior A.I. reporter at MIT Tech Review HostLizzie O’Leary Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After years of controversial content moderation decisions, from deepfakes to deplatforming, Facebook is trying something new. In January, the social network announced that its new Oversight Board, which will act as a sort of supreme court for controversial content, will begin hearing cases this summer.Could this independent board change the way we govern speech online?Guest: Kate Klonick, assistant professor at St. John’s University School of Law, and fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last month, as coronavirus spread across China, Xi Jinping’s vast surveillance and censorship infrastructure went into high gear. But with outrage growing over the death of a beloved doctor, and surveillance technology under strain, the virus is exposing the limits of the Chinese Communist Party’s techno-authoritarian network.Guest: Josh Chin, Wall Street Journal reporter covering Chinese politics and tech Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Monday, the Iowa caucuses went off the rails. As the hours stretched into days, and still the results remained unclear, a new piece of election technology was identified as a central cause of the delay.An app designed to make the election process speedier and more secure had the opposite effect. And its failure is symptomatic of deep-rooted issues in the way the Democratic Party develops and deploys election technology.So, what exactly went wrong on Monday? And what does it say about the party’s effort to regain its digital edge in 2020? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recently a special delegation of senior Trump administration officials arrived in the U.K. Their mission? To convince prime minister Boris Johnson to bar Huawei from their new 5G network.Why is the U.S. so keen to influence Britain’s decision on 5G? And now that the U.K is officially withdrawing from the European Union, how will they manage competing pressures from the U.S. and China?Guest: Dan Sabbagh, defense and security editor at the Guardian.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week, Slate published The Evil List, an expansive attempt to document the most concerning tech companies around the world, according to the experts. Some you’ve heard of, some you probably haven’t, and some you almost certainly use every day. Which of these deserve our attention? And why?Guests:Mutale Nkonde, public interest technologist and fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & SocietyFelix Salmon, chief financial correspondent at Axios and host of Slate MoneyLindsey Barrett, staff attorney and teaching fellow at the Institute for Public Representation Communications & Technology Clinic.  HostLizzie O’Leary Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2013, Anna Wiener moved from New York to San Francisco to join the city’s booming tech scene. Over the course of four years, she worked at three companies: an e-book startup, a data analytics company, and an open-source software platform. Then, her infatuation with the tech industry took a turn.On this week’s show, an insider’s perspective on the intoxicating promise and disappointment of Silicon Valley during the mid-decade boom.Guest: Anna Wiener: author of Uncanny Valley and contributing writer for the New Yorker.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.