The Tech Policy Press Podcast

In this episode of the podcast, we hear three perspectives on generative AI systems and the extent to which their makers may be exposed to potential liability. I spoke to three experts, each with their own views on questions such as whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act-- which has provided broad immunity to internet platforms that host third party content-- will apply to systems like ChatGPT. Guests, in order of appearance, include: Jess Miers, legal advocacy counsel at the Chamber of Progress, an industry coalition whose partners include Meta, Apple, Google, Amazon, and others;James Grimmelmann, a law professor at Cornell with appointments at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School;Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California Berkeley with a joint appointment in the computer and information science departments.

At Columbia University, data scientist Chris Wiggins and historian Matthew Jones teach a course called Data: Past, Present and Future. Out of this collaboration has come a book, How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms, to be published on Tuesday, March 21st by W.W. Norton. It should be required reading for anyone working with data of any sort to solve problems. The book promises a sweeping history of data and its technical, political, and ethical impact on people and power.

Answers on how best to regulate technology differ depending on the values and politics of any particular jurisdiction. Yet it’s worth looking for points of consensus. In general these days, we in the United States have a lot to learn from lawmakers and regulators in Europe, who are further down the path in their regulatory experiments. In this episode, Justin Hendrix speaks with one German lawmaker, Tobias Bacherle, who was elected to the Bundestag in 2021 representing Alliance 90/The Greens. The conversation touches on issues including encryption, the Digital Services Act, the US-EU Trade and Technology Council, and the relationship between tech and the environment.

In the spring, Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix teaches a course called Tech, Media and Democracy that is a partnership of faculty at NYU, Cornell Tech, CUNY’s Queens College, The New School and Columbia Journalism School. The course hosts a range of expert speakers on issues at the intersection of those topics, and graduate students in journalism, information science, computer science, media studies and design collaborate to produce prototypes and investigations of key issues. A recent guest speaker was Peter Pomerantzev, an author and researcher who is concerned with propaganda, polarization and how we come to understand the world around us. Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center at Columbia and one of the faculty on the course, led the discussion, which ranges from topics including the information component of the war in Ukraine to the tension between democracy and authoritarianism to the role of journalism and technology in shaping public discourse.

In this episode we look at questions around ethical, legal and business risks surrounding so-called generative AI and synthetic media, and the opportunity that exists if they are employed responsibly. The first segment features Matthew Ferraro, an attorney at the firm WilmerHale who counsels clients about such risks and, with his colleagues, recently wrote a piece for Tech Policy Press on the "Ten Legal and Business Risks of Chatbots and Generative AI." And the second segment features Claire Leibowicz from the Partnership on AI and Sam Gregory from the human rights organization WITNESS, who worked together with other partners to develop a set of Responsible Practices for Synthetic Media.

How will so-called "generative AI" tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT change our politics, and change the way we interact with our representatives in democratic government? This episode features three segments, with:Kadia Goba, a politics reporter at Semafor and author of a recent report on the AI Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives;Micah Sifry, an expert observer of the relationship between tech and politics and the author of The Connector, a Substack newsletter on democracy, organizing, movements and tech, where he recently wrote about ChatGPT and politics;Zach Graves, executive director of Lincoln Network, and Marci Harris, CEO and co-founder of PopVox.com, co-authors with Daniel Schuman at DemandProgress of a recent essay in Tech Policy Press on the risks and benefits of emerging AI tools in the legislative branch.

The past few years have seen a number of high profile hearings on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers expressing concern and even outrage at tech CEOs often for their failures to just satisfy their own policies. And, there have been high profile investigations by certain committees, including the investigation of competition in digital markets in the House Judiciary Committee and its Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law. But when it comes to passing laws, Congress has made little progress in the domain of tech policy. An academic and a tech policy expert, today’s guest played an active role in the investigations and legislative proposals led by Democrats over the last few years. Anna Lenhart served as a staffer on the House Judiciary Committee Antitrust Subcommittee under then Chairman David Cicilline (R-RI), where she supported tech oversight and investigations. And, she was senior technology policy Advisor to Representative Lori Trahan (D-MA), who serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee. I caught up with Anna for a kind of exit interview, as she recently left Congress to return to academia and a handful of projects focused on some of the issues she cared most about in her time on the Hill. 

Amazon is one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies. Yet one of the engines of its might is largely invisible to customers- its vast network of millions of third party sellers. In today’s episode we talk with Moira Weigel, an Assistant Professor of Communications Studies at Northeastern University and the author of a recent report for Data & Society, Amazon's Trickle Down Monopoly: Third Party Sellers and the Transformation of Small Businesses. For the report, Weigel spent a good amount of time trying to understand experience of the people operating the small businesses that power Amazon’s global expansion. 

This episode features four segments that dive into Gonzalez v. Google, a case before the Supreme Court that could have major implications on platform liability for online speech. First, we get a primer on the basics of the case itself; then, three separate perspectives on it. Asking the questions is Ben Lennett, a tech policy researcher and writer focused on understanding the impact of social media and digital platforms on democracy. He has worked in various research and advocacy roles for the past decade, including serving as the Editor in Chief of Recoding.tech and as policy director for the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation.Ben’s first interview is with two student editors at the publication Just Security, Aaron Fisher and Justin Cole, whom Tech Policy Press worked with this week to co-publish a review of key arguments in the amicus briefs filed with the Court on the Gonzalez case. Then, we’ll hear three successive interviews, with Mary McCord, Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) and a Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center; Anupam Chander, a Professor of Law and Technology at Georgetown Law; and David Brody, Managing Attorney of the Digital Justice Initiative at the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law. 

Elon Musk, the platform’s new owner, says that Twitter is both a social media company and a "crime scene." The crime he appears most concerned about is purported censorship by the tech firms, which he says has occurs at the U.S. government’s direction. Musk, who claims he is leading a “revolution” against such practices, has given a small number of people access to internal Twitter documents- the so-called Twitter Files- including emails and internal message board communications that, in their selective release, demonstrate executives at the firm engaging with politicians and federal agencies on a range of issues, from COVID-19 to election disinformation. This week, there were two hearings in the House of Representatives on this subject, including a Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing titled “Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story,” and a hearing of the new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government that was intended to “discuss the politicization of the FBI and DOJ and attacks on American civil liberties.”If we look past the conspiracy theories and legal gibberish, is there any there there? Should we pursue reforms and require greater transparency around the interaction between platforms and government? In this episode, we hear from three experts:Shoshana Weissmann, Digital Director and Fellow at the R Street InstituteDarren Linvill, Associate Professor, Clemson University Media Forensics Hub Mike Masnick, Founder of TechDirt and CEO of the Copia Institute