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A special thanks to our listeners for joining us, and please enjoy the final episode of Season 2. We hope to see you again soon!
On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews Lida Maxwell on whistleblowers, queer love, and outsider truth-telling. Lida uses Chelsea Manning, a representative outside truth-teller, as a case study to understand the interplay between personal identity and political activism, exploring the nuanced differences between public engagement and privacy. Lida also discusses her upcoming work on environmental and queer political theory that focuses on Rachel Carson’s public advocacy, influenced by her private relationships, and emphasizes the role that personal experiences and identities have in shaping public truths and political actions.
Professor Lida Maxwell is a political theorist and a Professor of Political Science and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Boston University. She is the author of Public Trials: Burke, Zola, Arendt, and the Politics of Lost Causes (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Insurgent Truth: Chelsea Manning and the Politics of Outsider Truth-Telling (Oxford University Press, 2019). She is currently working in environmental and queer political theory and is in the process of publishing her next book, Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love (Stanford University Press, forthcoming).
Check out Lida's work, "Another Silent Spring?" and "Whistleblower, Traitor, Soldier, Queer?: The Truth of Chelsea Manning"
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews Samantha Cole on her book, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex. Their conversation features discussion on the origins of deepfake technology, nonconsensual pornography, the rights of sex workers, concerns regarding sexual content bans, the importance of sex and intimacy in online interactions, and more.
Samantha Cole is a technology journalist and co-founder of 404 Media, a worker-owned tech publication. She is the author of How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex.
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On today's episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews John Kaufhold on the history of image recognition and deep learning. With over 30 years of experience in the artificial intelligence and machine learning world, John shares his history starting from his early days in speech recognition in the 90s. He covers the ImageNet Big Bang in 2012, the dramatic improvement of image recognition error rates and hardware power, neural networks, the development of chatbots, terminology, and discusses challenges such as data privacy, bias reproduction, existential risk, transparency in data sets, and more!
Dr. John Kaufhold is an expert with over 30 years of experience in artificial intelligence and deep learning. He is the founder of Deep Learning Analytics, a machine learning company, and serves on the Advisory Board of the DC Data Community.
References and related works to this episode: "Munk Debate on Artificial Intelligence | Bengio & Tegmark vs. Mitchell & LeCun" and Data Science DC's "How Attention in 2017 got us Chat GPT."
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On today's episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews Salomé Viljoen on relational data, governance, and privacy. Salomé shares insights into some of the key positions and debates about legal reforms relating to digital privacy and data governance, particularly the relational nature of digital data. In this conversation, Salomé balances serious concern for the harms presented by the status quo and the dangers of surveillance with a true desire to also appreciate and improve the benefits that we in our communities can derive from digital data.
Salomé Viljoen is an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she teaches and writes about contracts, privacy, commercial surveillance and data governance. Her work includes "A Relational Theory of Data Governance," "Data Relations," "Design choices: Mechanism design and platform capitalism," and "Valuing Social Data."
References and related works to this episode: Janet Vertesi's "My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data Made Me Look Like a Criminal"
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Kristen Collins interviews Eric Schliesser on playing, liberty, and the Das Adam Smith Problem. In their conversation, they discuss the "Das Adam Smith Problem" which addresses the perceived inconsistency between Smith's works, "Wealth of Nations" and "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," as well as other topics including Smith's critique of Stoicism, how Smith's ideas still apply today in the modern era of AI technology, the invisible hand and its reinterpretation, and the division of labor and the side affects of social alienation. They converse on the role of childhood play and innovation on liberalism and building a sense of togetherness in society, and more!
Eric Schliesser is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Adam Smith: Systematic Philsopher and Public Thinker (Oxford University Press, 2017), and he received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. Eric runs a substack called "Digressions Impressions."
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Kristen Collin interviews James Goodrich on data monopolies and the neo-Brandeis movement. They begin their conversation by addressing the political nature of algorithmic bias and how we define data property rights. They discuss how certain firms have a sort of monopoly power over behavioral data gathering and converse on consumer welfare and market morality, the neo-Brandeis antitrust movement, the Sherman Act, the right to exclude, data as being nonrivalrous, concerns for privacy, cautions regarding the use of unvetted AI, and more!
James Goodrich is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of UW-Madison's interdisciplinary cluster in the ethics of computing, data, and information. He works primarily in normative ethics and the interdisciplinary field of philosophy, politics, and economics. He is an alum of the Mercatus Adam Smith Fellowship.
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References and related works to this episode: Sanjukta Paul's "Recovering the Moral Economy Foundations of the Sherman Act," Linda Khan's "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," Robert Bork's The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War with Itself, and “The Fallacy of AI Functionality” by Inioluwa Deborah Raji, I. Elizabeth Kumar, Aaron Horowitx, and Andrew D. Selbst.
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On this episode, Kristen Collins interviews Boris Litvin on spectatorship, memes, and Rousseau. Kristen and Boris delve into the relevance of Rousseau's insights on politics and the public stage, relating them to today's social media-driven democracy. They explore the concept of "audience democracy" coined by Bernard Manin, which distinguishes between those in power and the spectators of politics. They discuss the complexities of spectatorship, its passive nature, surveillance, and the role of social media in shaping political discourse and authenticity. They also examine how video technology, like body cams and bystander videos, impacts power dynamics and public scrutiny, highlighting the need for active participation alongside spectatorship for meaningful democratic change.
Boris Litvin is a Visiting Instructor, Ancient Studies and General Education at Eckerd College. His research interests include intellectual history, democracy, spectatorship, political representation, authority, rhetoric, media, and textual interpretation.
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References and related works to this episode: Bernard Manin's The Principles of Representative Government, Jeffrey Edward Green's Eyes of the People" Democracy in the Age of Spectatorship, Nadia Urbinati's Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People and Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy, Boris Litvin's "'This Hearing Should Be Flipped': Democractic Spectatorship, Social Media, and the Problem of Demagogic Candor" and "Staging Emile".
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Season 2 is here! On this episode, host Kristen Collins chats with Christopher Coyne on the history of surveillance state from the early 20th century to now and surveillance capitalism, where user data is sold or used for advertisement targeting. They also discuss foreign intervention, the interdisciplinary work on surveillance, his work on Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism, and more.
Christopher J. Coyne is associate director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and F. A. Harper Professor of Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and a Professor of Economics at George Mason University.
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Works mentioned include: Mary Dudziak's War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences, Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule's Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts, Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, and Kenneth Boulding's The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society.
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On the last episode of Season 1 of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins interviews Eileen Hunt, a Professor and Political Theorist at the University of Notre Dame, on Mary Shelley and the Ethics of AI. Hunt begins by providing historical context of Mary Shelley regarding her parents and Shelley as a child of the Enlightenment. Hunt explains the interdisciplinary nature of Mary Shelley’s work, rooted in a Grecian philosophical past and concerned with future-oriented questions about the rights of human beings, tying in Mary Shelley’s famous Gothic novel, Frankenstein, to modern considerations of the ethics and rights of artificial life. She encourages us to think of ourselves as artificial, technological creatures and to contemplate the rights of all artificial creatures, including humans and other forms of artificial intelligence. Additionally, Hunt discusses issues of genetic engineering, humanity as a built environment, Jeremy Bentham and reproductive justice.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins interviews Lucia Rafanelli on global justice and biased technology. Rafanelli is an Assistant Professor of Political Science & International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University. Rafanelli begins by describing “reform intervention,” how it encompasses any attempt to promote justice in another society, and “counter-hegemonic intervention.” She discusses the role of technology in international intervention and suggests that technology is not value neutral. Rafanelli explains how the method of using data reflects certain value systems and emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the human biases embedded in technologies.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins interviews Theodore Lechterman, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at IE University, on automating the democratic process. Lechterman begins by discussing his book on philanthropy, The Tyranny of Generosity: Why Philanthropy Corrupts Our Politics and How We Can Fix It, and its intersection with the ethics and politics of artificial intelligence. Lechterman defines "democracy" and considers what it means to have equality within an institution. He examines the tradeoffs of political automation, detailing what happens when we delegate democratic power to AI. Lechterman weighs the benefits and costs of democractic AI, explaining how AI can help people to educate themselves in their political knowledge and judgment, facilitate the public's participation, and harness AI's processing power to provide more political opinions. Additionally, Lechterman acknowledges political theories in favor of complete automation of the political process and how they fail to solve our political concerns.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins interviews Leilani Gilpin, an Assistant Professor at the University of California Santa Cruz, on self-explaining machines and autonomous cars. Gilpin begins by highlighting the limits of artificial intelligence, detailing how machine learning struggles with interpreting details with reference to a broader context. She points out that machines make decisions based on rules but struggle to make exceptions to those rules. Gilpin suggests that since humans learn through self-explanation and dialogical reflection, automonous cars could use these same methods to improve their decision making. Additionally, Gilpin emphasizes the possible role of community input in deciding machine rules.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins interviews Hans Noel, an Associate Professor in the Government Department at Georgetown University, on the increasingly polarized nature of politics in the current age. Noel begins by examining the nature of polarization and the many ways in which it manifests itself. He then points to changes in polarization since the 20th century and, while noting the effects of social media, offers a multicausal explanation for its increase, particularly among those who are most politically engaged. Additionally, Collins and Noel tackle the issue of affective polarization, which leads to stronger emotions and disliking of those with different political opinions from our own.
To learn more about the topics discussed in today's conversation, consider reading one of Hans Noel's books on Amazon.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen interviews Jennifer Forestal, the Helen Houlahan Rigali Assistant Professor of Political Science at Loyola University Chicago, on the role that digital spaces play in a democratic environment. They discuss the ways in which the design of digital spaces can incentivize or discourage certain types of speech, and how digital boundaries play a key role in shaping these incentives. Forestal also draws on the history of political thought to show how thinkers such as Alexis de Tocqueville dealt with similar types of questions relevant to digital technology before its emergence. Additionally, Collins and Forestal tackle Tocqueville's diagnosis of isolation in a democracy, and how his insights remain relevant in a digital age. Later in the episode, Forestal shares her experience in working on her book and offers encouragement to those who are in the midst of graduate school or working on projects of their own.
To learn more about the topics discussed in today's conversation, consider reading Jennifer Forestal's book: Designing for Democracy: How to Build Community in Digital Environments.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen interviews Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, on the presence of disinformation in social media. Brooking gives his definition of disinformation and highlights particular aspects of social media that frequently interact with the rapid expansion of disinformation. The two also discuss the incentives behind disinformation and how the expansion of one's audience can play into the propagation of disinformation. Brooking goes on to share his views on why disinformation is not a problem to be solved but rather a feature of communications technology to be considered when making decisions. Additionally, Brooking shares how his upbringing in rural Georgia shaped his views of communications technology and gave him insight into the role of local journalism in fostering trust among individuals.
To learn more about the topics discussed in today's conversation, consider reading Emerson Brooking's book: LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen interviews Martin Gurri, a visiting research fellow at the Mercatus Center, on the relationship between politics and media. Martin explains his concept of how communications technology evolves in great leaps, instead of incremental steps, and identifies what he considers to be the five great epochs in the evolution of communications technology. Additionally, Martin provides a historical take on the ways in which these changes have influenced the course of history. In their conversation, Martin also explains how information is sifted by people, including the differences between how written information is processed as opposed to visual information. Martin and Kristen discuss the ways in which these differences are often exploited, as well as the need for people to learn how to process visual information in a healthy manner.
To learn more about the topics discussed in today's conversation, consider reading Martin Gurri's book: The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millenium.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen interviews Weifeng Zhong of the Mercatus Center on his work with the Policy Change Index (PCI), a series of open-source machine learning projects that predict authoritarian regimes’ major policy moves by “reading” their propaganda publications. Weifeng explains how his shocking revelation about the Tianneman Square massacre inspired him to create the PCI and details the ways in which it has evolved over the years, particularly as a means of "watching the watchers." Additionally, he gives a brief overview of China's recent policy changes, specifically concerning when its liberalization began to reverse course. Later, Kristen and Weifeng discuss the problems associated with machine learning algorithms, including whether bias is an automatic part of any machine learning process, and talk about what can be done to mitigate the current problems associated with machine learning.
Learn more about the Policy Change Index here.
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Whether it is the intensification of polarization, the dissemination of disinformation, or the expansion of surveillance, today’s digital technologies seem to radically disrupt liberal democratic politics. But what if the problems we face are less new than they first appear? In this podcast series, Kristen Collins interviews scholars and practitioners grappling with the most pressing problems in political economy today with an eye to the past. What questions should we be asking about how technology, society and politics interact today? How can a historical perspective inform the future we are bringing into being?
Our first season examines Digital Democracy. Social media platforms have expanded the possibilities of global communication, giving citizens new means of expressing themselves. Challenges like disinformation, harassment, and radicalization online have punctured techno-utopian optimism regarding the internet’s democratic potential. Kristen Collins interviews people thinking about the relationship between digital technology and democracy from a myriad of perspectives to confront both the new challenges modern technology introduces and the enduring problems that social media and artificial intelligence might exacerbate or ameliorate.
