Aligning Big Tech with Rob Reich and Jeremy Weinstein

Denizen

On the heels of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's testimony before Congress, we are releasing this important conversation from 2021. Jenny sits down with Stanford political science professors Rob Reich, Jeremy Weinstein, and Nate Persily to interrogate big tech's role in society. How did we get to where we are today? What interventions in the near term, from creating new ethical norms to putting in place more democratic forms of corporate governance to regulation, might we pursue to bring big tech into better alignment with our collective social objectives?

Outline for the conversation:

• Rob's summary of their book System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot [4:40]
• Comments on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg's control of the company [6:40]
• Silicon Valley's influence on Stanford [8:33]
• Jeremy and Rob's intervention on campus [9:20]
• Why technology companies generate social harms with new technology [13:12]
• Drivers of the loose regulatory environment for technology [16:41]
• The regulatory environment of the US vs. the EU [18:53]
• Issues with the dominant mindsets of Silicon Valley [21:29]
• Regulating tech vs. other markets [25:07]
• Solutions: new corporate governance and ethics [30:36]
• Addressing barriers to regulatory solutions: corporate capture [32:50]
• Addressing barriers to regulatory solutions: pace of technology vs. pace of regulation [32:50]
• Need for transparency for better accountability [39:57]
• Ideas for corporate governance with public accountability [41:52]
• Addressing big tech amidst misaligned market incentives [44:46]
• Interrogating WhatApp vs. Signal re: social alignment [47:56]
• Role of competition in enabling social driven usage [50:22]
• Importance of regulatory reform to enable more competition [53:24]
• Pushing back on non-profit motives vs. more democratic forms of governance [54:01]
• The importance of spiritual and cultural pluralism [55:12]
• Integrating immediate and long term approaches [57:32]