Episode 17

The Next Big Science Policy and the Material Realities of AI ft. Kate Crawford

June 13, 2021

TRANSCRIPT

Shobita and Jack discuss the Innovation and Competition Act making its way through the US Congress as well as the most up-to-date geopolitics of COVID, including the TRIPS waiver and the "lab leak" theory. And we interview Kate Crawford, a leading scholar on the social and political implications of artificial intelligence.

Study Questions:

1. What are the social and political implications of focusing on "competitiveness" as the main goal of science and technology policy? What does it value (and what doesn't it value)?

2. Why do so many AI analysts focus on it as a mathematical and abstract object, and how is Kate Crawford trying to analyze it differently?

3. What does a political economy analysis of AI reveal about the technology?

4. What explains the desire of many tech and AI leaders to go to space?

Related links:

• Kate Crawford (2021). Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, Yale University Press.

• Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler (2018). Anatomy of an AI System.

• Alex Campolo and Kate Crawford (2020). "Enchanted Determinism: Power without Responsibility in Artificial Intelligence". Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. 6: 1-19.