Tech Prom Tech Talk - Episode 3
Recorded on the night of the greatest party the on tech policy calendar -- Tech Prom!
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Transcript
Welcome to a special edition of CDT's Tech Talks. I'm Jamal Magdi, and it's time to talk tech.
Welcome to Tech Talk. Bye.
CT. Tea. In this very special episode, we're taking you inside one of the most anticipated nights in tech policy, Tech Prom. Each year, Tech Prom brings together leaders from government, civil society, industry, and academia to celebrate progress, exchange ideas, and chart the future of technology in service of democracy and human rights. In this episode, you'll hear short interviews from the event floor, conversations with some of the most brilliant minds currently shaping the technology and policy landscape. We ask them about their work, what opportunities and challenges they see on the horizon, and what gives them hope for the future of tech. So grab your headphones and join us as we step into the energy, insights, and optimism of Tech Prom twenty twenty five.
Welcome to CDT's Tech Talks. I'm here with Chris Lewis. Jennifer Polka. Stephen Balkan. Sarah Rosen Wartell. Tell us a little bit about how you were connected with CDT. The first time I found out about CDT was way back when Leslie was the CEO. I was a young staffer at the Federal Communications Commission, and I was trying to find my way in my career. And, someone was kind enough to introduce me to a few civil society leaders because they knew that's what I wanted to do and be. So I met Leslie. I met the great Gigi Sohn at public knowledge. I was fortunate to get a job there, but, but that's how I got introduced. I care very much about the role of technology
in how government works. I'm concerned with the effectiveness of government operating in sort of an industrial era model and the ways in which we failed to update it for the Internet era, and now we really need to update it for the AI era. And CDT is, I think, you know, part of the community trying to make that happen. I actually went to the very first gathering that Jerry Berman put together
in 1995, I wanna say. I was running the Recreational Software Advisory Council, a rating system for computer games, basically, which morphed onto the Internet. And so the whole question of, content that we wanted to keep our kids away from became the number one issue for CDT, and the Communications Decency Act. And so we got swept up in that. And Jerry and I actually were on the same senate judiciary hearing panel,
on this issue thirty years ago. Going back a few years, in 2002, I was co teaching a technology policy law class at Georgetown Law School with, former White House chief of staff John Podesta, and we invited Jim Dempsey, who famous, CDT expert to teach in our class, and I learned so much from him. He was brilliant, and I came to understand what an important role CDT plays in tech policy. From your perspective, what are some of the biggest opportunities you are seeing in the tech policy space right now? There's great opportunity
because of how quickly innovation is happening, especially around artificial intelligence. There's great opportunity to build structures, to build systems that protect people. You know, it's easy to be excited about technology because it's fun. Everyone's excited about what they see and what it can do. But the hard part that gets me excited is how we build structures to protect people, how we tell people, hey, we can have nice things if only we also infuse them with important public interest values.
Colleagues of mine and I just started a pooled philanthropic fund called the Recoding America Fund, and it is dedicated to exactly what I just said, updating government's operating model for the twenty first century. And we're really excited about the really diverse community that's come together and said, yeah. This needs to happen in this day and age. It's especially now that AI is changing our society so profoundly. If our government is isn't able to meet the needs of our country in an AI era, we are going to be, in real trouble. And so a lot of people from various ideological backgrounds, various perspectives, various issue areas
have all really come together and are gonna make this happen. Needless to say, there are extraordinary numbers of challenges and always with challenges, there's opportunities. So but first you have to deal with the adversity. First you have to deal with the headwinds and, and you have to deal with, you know, dysfunctional government and, an administration that is not just tearing down policies, but actual physical structures right now. So that's hard. But within that, there is always opportunities, always, folks on the hill, good people in The States. The international focus becomes stronger because we look to Australia, we look to Brussels, we look to Britain for guidance in some cases on, Internet regulation. So plenty of opportunities, but boy, it feels like there's a lot of struggle right now. We have an opportunity
not only to ensure that some of our new technologies, particularly generative AI, is used responsibly fairly, but also to make sure that it is used to help achieve social impact purposes that we've struggled to achieve in other ways before. And so we're very focused at Urban on obviously protecting against the risk, but also seizing those opportunities.
What makes you the most optimistic about the future of technology and its role in supporting democracy and human rights?
Well, it it starts with those words, democracy and human rights. You know, technology is a tool, and it can be used for bad and it can be used for good. And so what makes me optimistic is when democracy is strong, when democratic institutions are strong, when the people are empowered to demand that technology is used for good, for society's benefit. I think we're struggling with that right now, so it's hard to be optimistic. But you're asking me to be optimistic. I'm optimistic when we envision and make those sorts of things happen with technology. You know, democratic power, public interest values, and living it out for those people who are voting and and, yes, in the marketplace as consumers, but trust that policymakers and governments are going to protect them and and create technologies that that benefit them, but also work well with their values. I think that we have a system that
has become extremely and it needs to operate much faster because our world is operating faster. Whatever that challenge is, we can't wait months and years to go through a very long process when needs are urgent. So one of of the things I'm excited about is that large language models can actually help with the accretion of policy and procedure that have accumulated over the years. There's so many words in the regulatory frameworks that govern much of the country as it's run today that it's gotten beyond the ability of people to actually understand it. And LLMs end up being a fantastic tool to help us understand that that those complex regulatory frameworks and simplify them to make them streamlined for the AI era so that we can respond to whatever it is crisis in a time frame that is relevant to the crisis at hand. I think we have somehow always in the three phases,
the phase one in 1995 of the World Wide Web, phase two in 2005 with social media and cell phone well, smartphones, and now phase three, which is the AI age that we're entering. Every time we went through a new phase, we were like, oh my god, how on earth are we gonna deal with this? And somehow we figure things out, we adapt. I think this phase is probably gonna be the most challenging, because it's not just content and it's not just behavioral issues like cyberbullying or sexting or whatever, but this is actually changing the way we think. And this also has the potential for changing the way we relate, particularly with kids and chatbots. Very concerned about that. And I'm concerned about the lack of development of critical thinking skills if kids are just using GenAI to do their homework. I think there is great opportunity
to find ways to leverage this technology to help people. So I'll give you an example. We are working to try to make a huge array of resources that communities, community foundations, local government leaders, nonprofit leaders, in theory have access to, but it is too much for them to begin to navigate through it, to try to help improve the economic opportunity and mobility for low income residents in their communities. And if we can give them tools you can use, quick insights, and how to navigate across all that information, I think you can find their scarce dollars will go further. And so we're hopeful that that can be part of the future even while we make sure that some, who are otherwise motivated may want to try to use it for less salutary purposes.
Thank you for listening to Tech Talks presented by the Center for Democracy and Technology. I've been your host, Jamal Magdi. Tech Talks is edited by Jacob Kaufman and produced by Drew Courtney. Check out more of CDT's work by visiting us online at cdt.org and on various social media at sendem tech. That's c e n d e m tech. Thanks for talking tech.
