The Distributed AI Research Institute, or DAIR—which seeks to conduct community-rooted AI research that is independent from the technology industry—has launched a new project called the Data Workers' Inquiry to invite data workers to create their own research and recount their experiences. The project is supported by DAIR, the Weizenbaum Institute, and TU Berlin. For this episode, journalist and audio producer Rebecca Rand parsed some of the ideas and experiences discussed at a virtual launch event for the inquiry that took place earlier this month.

In the past week, multiple Silicon Valley billionaires announced endorsements of former President and 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump. To dig a bit deeper into their motivations to support Trump and his new running mate, Ohio Senator and former venture capitalist J.D. Vance, Justin Hendrix invited on three sharp observers of politics and technology, including:

• Henry Farrell, a professor of the international affairs and democracy at Johns Hopkins University and the recent co-author with Abraham Newman of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy.
• Elizabeth Spiers, a writer and digital strategist and contributing writer for the New York Times, and co-host the Slate Money Podcast.
• Dave Karpf, an associate professor at George Washington University in the School of Media and Public Affairs.

It goes without saying that privacy and the creation of laws and regulations around it are fundamental to determining how we will live and work with technology, and whether technology operates in service of democratic societies or only in service of governments and corporations. A couple of weeks ago, Justin Hendrix had a chance to speak with two leaders from the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF)-Jules Polonetsky, its CEO, and Anne J. Flanagan, the head of its new Center on AI. They discussed the recent US Supreme Court decision to overturn the Chevron doctrine and its implications for privacy legislation in the United States, the fierce battle over privacy laws in the US, and potential conflicts between Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the new AI Act. And, they talked about how the 15-year-old Future of Privacy Forum envisions its role in the age of artificial intelligence.

On June 26, the US Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling in Murthy v Missouri, a cased that considered whether the Biden administration violated the First Amendment in its efforts to address COVID-19 mis- and disinformation on social media. Tech Policy press fellow Dean Jackson, who studied the case closely, discussed the outcome and what it means for the future with three experts:

• Olga Belogolova, director of the Emerging Technologies Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS);
• Mayze Teitler, a legal fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute; and
• Nina Jankowicz, co-Founder and CEO of the American Sunlight Project.

In this episode, David Carroll, an associate professor of media design in the MFA Design and Technology graduate program at the School of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons School of Design at The New School, speaks to Ravi Naik, legal director at AWO, a consultancy with offices in London, Brussels, and Paris that works on a range of data protection and tech policy issues. Their discussion delves into the evolution of data protection from the Cambridge Analytica scandal to current questions provoked by generative AI, with a focus on a GDPR complaint against OpenAI brought by Noyb, the non-profit founded by Austrian activist Max Schrems.

In April, Google DeepMind published a paper that boasts 57 authors, including experts from a range of disciplines in different parts of Google, including DeepMind, Jigsaw, and Google Research, as well as researchers from academic institutions such as Oxford, University College London, Delft University of Technology, University of Edinburgh, and a think tank at Georgetown, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology. The paper speculates about the ethical and societal risks posed by the types of AI assistants Google and other tech firms want to build, which the authors say are “likely to have a profound impact on our individual and collective lives.”

Justin Hendrix the chance to speak to two of the papers authors about some of these issues:

• Shannon Vallor, a professor of AI and data ethics at the University of Edinburgh and director of the Center for Technomoral Futures in the Edinburgh Futures Institute; and
• Iason Gabriel, a research scientist at Google DeepMind in its ethics research team.

News and journalism organizations and dominant tech companies are in a years-long battle over content, clicks and revenue, and the tech companies are winning. What are policy options that encourage both the sustainability and quality of news content on popular online platforms? In this episode, Rebecca Rand explores perspectives on the subject, drawing on a conversation hosted by Justin Hendrix with experts Anya Schiffrin and Cory Doctorow at the Knight Foundation's INFORMED conference earlier this year.

In October 2023, during the third Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China's leader Xi Jinping signaled a shift in focus from more grandiose physical infrastructure projects to 'small yet smart' initiatives. This shift underscores the need to understand China's ambitions to reshape global digital governance, moving away from an open and free internet towards a model rooted in government control and mass surveillance.

The advocacy group Article 19 documents this shift in a recent report titled "The Digital Silk Road: China and the Rise of Digital Repression in the Indo-Pacific," examining China's influence on digital infrastructure and governance in Cambodia, Malaysia, Nepal, and Thailand. As the Indo-Pacific remains strategically significant for China in deploying next-generation technologies, the report argues that assessing China’s regional partnerships and their implications for digital repression is crucial for understanding its broader ambitions to reshape global digital norms.

To discuss these issues in more depth, Justin Hendrix is joined by:

• Michael Caster, Asia Digital Program Manager at ARTICLE 19; and
• Catherine Tai, the deputy director for Asia and the Pacific team at Center for International Enterprise (CIPE).