Pulitzer Prize-winning tech journalist John Markoff chats with 2022-23 CASBS fellow Nathan Matias about often-overlooked public interest questions and concerns regarding the deployment of tech platform algorithms and AI models. Specifically, Matias discusses filling the two-way knowledge gaps between civil society and tech firms with an eye on governance, safety, accountability, and advancing the science — including the social science — of human-algorithm behavior.   Nathan Matias: Cornell University faculty page | CASBS bio | Personal website | Citizens & Technology Lab Coalition fo ..read more

Recorded before a live audience, Margaret Levi, Alison Gopnik, & Anne-Marie Slaughter discuss a CASBS project, "The Social Science of Caregiving," which is reimagining the philosophical, psychological, biological, political, & economic foundations of care and caregiving. The goal is a coherent empirical and theoretical account or synthesis of care that advances understandings and policy discussions. [The episode notes provide links for further exploration.] Article on CASBS's project on The Social Science of Caregiving Web page for the project on The Social Science of Caregiving Rela ..read more

Pulitzer Prize-winning tech journalist & 2017-18 CASBS fellow John Markoff chats with 2022-23 CASBS fellow Rebecca Slayton on how the field of computing expertise evolved, eventually giving rise to the niche of professionals who protect systems from cyber-attacks. Slayton's forthcoming book explores the governance & risk implications emerging from the fact that cybersecurity experts must demonstrate their skill by paradoxically revealing vulnerabilities and insecurities of that which they seek to protect. REBECCA SLAYTON Cornell University faculty page | |  CASBS page |  Sl ..read more

Two-time CASBS fellow Fred Turner engages CASBS board of directors chair Abby Smith Rumsey before a live audience to discuss her new book "Memory, Edited: Taking Liberties with History." When the erasure or distortion of collective memory through storytelling hijacks fact, truth, and history itself, what kind of information infrastructures can effectively confront those false narratives? Turner and Rumsey explore the tensions between history and storytelling and resulting implications for political beliefs, actions, and our collective sense of reality. ABBY SMITH RUMSEY CASBS website bio | P ..read more

Renowned sociologist Michèle Lamont (CASBS fellow, 2002-03) discusses her new book, Seeing Others, with former CASBS director Woody Powell. The book assembles decades of Lamont’s scholarship, engaging some of contemporary society’s most elemental challenges and advancing key building blocks toward a shared human experience marked by greater inclusion, belonging, dignity, empathy, and equality. MICHÈLE LAMONT: Harvard University faculty page | Harvard sociology page Personal website | Simon & Schuster page for Seeing Others The Successful Societies project, which held its first convening ..read more

Fully understanding and regulating our complex information ecosystems will require creating new cultures and modes of collaborating, new organizational frameworks and, yes, working with generative AI models in service of aggregating actionable scientific knowledge. Angela Aristidou (CASBS fellow, 2022-23) navigates the crucial questions and challenges with Phil Howard (CASBS fellow, 2008-09), a renowned scholar of tech innovation and public policy as well as co-founder and chair of the new International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE). PHIL HOWARD: University of Oxford page | Wik ..read more

Dan Simon, a 2022-23 CASBS fellow and USC law professor, joins in conversation with Elizabeth Loftus, a 1978-79 CASBS fellow and Distinguished Professor at UC Irvine. Loftus is known in the public sphere through her decades-long study of memory – specifically, its malleability and fallibility – as well as her application of findings as an expert witness or consultant in hundreds of legal cases. Loftus's book "Eyewitness Testimony," completed at the Center, charted the course of her career that followed and serves as this episode's launching point. ELIZABETH LOFTUS UC Irvine faculty page Wiki ..read more

While you're listening to this episode, 2016-17 CASBS fellow Jonathan Jansen likely will write another few thousand words. As a scholar of education & leader of education institutions, Jansen is South Africa's most towering figure. To call him prolific is a gross understatement. He writes a steady stream of books & more books. As a public intellectual he writes a separate steady stream of columns & essays. And he's written a family memoir too. We bring 2022-23 CASBS fellow Zimitri Erasmus, a social anthropologist who is working on a book on writing praxis, in conversation with Jans ..read more

What are the most effective collective actions that social protest movements can or should undertake in the context of deep societal conflict and polarization? CASBS fellows Eran Halperin (2022-23) & Robb Willer (2012-13, 2020-21) compare their cross-national research findings and explore Halperin's real-time applied work with the dramatic, ongoing protests in Israel. ERAN HALPERIN links: Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Reconciliation Lab (PCIL) Halperin on Google Scholar aChord: Social Psychology for Social Change ROBB WILLER links: Willer's Stanford faculty page Willer's perso ..read more

This episode is  produced in association with the CASBS project "The Social Science of Caregiving," and draws further inspiration from the CASBS project "Imagining Adaptive Societies." Learn more about both: https://casbs.stanford.edu/programs/projects/social-science-caregiving https://casbs.stanford.edu/programs/projects/imagining-adaptive-societies Ted Chiang on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang Ted Chiang in The New Yorker "Why Computers Won't Make Themselves Smarter"  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/why-computers-wont-make-themselves-smarte ..read more