The mystery that surrounds the possibilities and probabilities of AI is multilayered, and depending on your perspective and involvement with new technology, your access to reliable information and a clear picture of current progress could be obscured in several ways. On the podcast today, we welcome Alek Tarkowski, who is the Strategy Director of Open Future Foundation to talk about some of the ways we can tackle issues of security, safety, privacy, and basic human rights. Tarkowski is a sociologist, an activist, and a strategist and his engagement and insight into the current landscape are extremely helpful in understanding these complex issues and murky waters. In our chat, we get to unpack some foundational updates about what is currently going on in the space, regulations that have been deployed recently, and how activists and the industry can find themselves at odds when debating policy. Tarkowski makes a clear plea for all parties to get involved in these debates and stay involved in this powerful avenue for the molding of our future.

To hear it all from Tarkowski on this central aspect of the future of AI, be sure to join us! Full transcript.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Real life and artificial intelligence; Tarkowski comments on the effects we are seeing right now. 
• Current conversations about the regulation of automated decision-making. 
• Looking at the recent AI Act published by the European Union and its goals. 
• The three categories for regulation; impact assessment, transparency, and human oversight. 
• The two strongest forces in the regulation debate: the industry and activists. 
• Some examples of past regulations that have impacted emergent technologies.   
• New tools for the same goals, and the task of keeping the technology in the right hands. 
• Unpacking the side of regulation that is dealing with data.
• Tarkowski talks about the right to data mining and the rules that have been adopted so far.
• Comments about the role of the industry; engaging in policy debates. 
• What a healthy and open AI landscape would look like to Tarkowski ! 
• The world-building power of policy and the vital importance of debate and the process of their creation.

Links mentioned in today’s episode:

• Alek Tarkowski
• Alek Tarkowski on Twitter
• Panopticon Foundation
• AlgorithmWatch
• Automating Society study
• The AI Act
• The Digital Markets Act
• The Digital Services Act
• The EU Copyright Directive

Credits

Special thanks to volunteer producer, Nicole Martinelli. Music by Jason Shaw, Audionautix

This podcast is sponsored by GitHub, DataStax and Google.

No sponsor had any right or opportunity to approve or disapprove the content of this podcast.