Happy New Year!
Talha and I recorded a Holiday Special episode of the Trust in Tech Podcast. It was a ton of fun to record, and makes me think we should do more “mailbag” type episodes (but maybe with actual experts on some of the trickier topics). What do you think?
I also posted a podcast with Numa Dhamani and Maggie Engler, who recently co-authored a book about the power and limitations of AI tools and their impact on society, the economy, and the law. In this conversation, they deep dive into some of the topics in the book, and discuss what writing a book was like, as well as what the process was to get to publication.
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I look forward to Mike Masnick’s essay on optimism at the end of every year. It’s what I need to keep going for another 365 days.
“Let’s celebrate actual tech optimism in the belief that through innovation we can actually seek to minimize the downsides and risks, rather than ignore them. That we can create wonderful new things in a manner that doesn’t lead many in the world to fear their impact, but to celebrate the benefits they bring. The enemies of techno optimism are not things like “trust and safety,” but rather the naive view that if we ignore trust and safety, the world will magically work out just fine.”
- I LOVE going down a good internet rabbit hole, and this one is great. "Facebook Is Being Overrun With Stolen, AI-Generated Images That People Think Are Real."
- (Love this title): "the X Files – how Elon Musk’s new rules allow hate to flourish"
- Substack defends doing business with Nazis.
- A generative AI model is found to have been trained on known CSAM.
- Lucia Stacey wrote a T&S framework on her birthday. Of course she did!
- Dr. Rumman Chowdhury is "the AI whisperer”: "Taking control of technological change versus being fearful of it is how we create inclusive futures."
- I haven't seen a lot of talk about this recently, but this is a fascinating case study on how a defamation suit in Australia (where section 230 isn't a thing) can have far-reaching consequences for who is responsible for speech online.
And this is what a year of posting on LinkedIn looked like for me:
