Скачать или смотреть Dave Karpf on how politics and technology have always shaped each other

People often say that history repeats itself—so often, in fact, that the phrase has become a cliché. Yet when it comes to technology, that sentiment holds a lot of truth. We don’t just reinvent the tools of our ancestors; we also recycle the same debates, challenges, and controversies that have surrounded earlier innovations, often without realizing it.

That is especially true with today’s artificial intelligence technologies. While AI may feel like a bold leap into the future, its foundations rest on decades-old ideas, and the controversies it stirs up—about ethics, economics, and control—echo the same fundamental arguments that once surrounded everything from the introduction of calculators in schools to the chaotic rise of the early internet.

Technology and the social debates it provokes are as old as humanity itself. And as technological development continues to accelerate, these conversations will only become more urgent. In this episode, I discuss all this with Dave Karpf, a political scientist and associate professor at George Washington University where he specializes in technology’s political history.

GUEST INFO
https://smpa.gwu.edu/david-karpf
https://bsky.app/profile/davekarpf.bs...
https://davekarpf.substack.com

TIMECODES
00:00 Audio
12:21 'Satisficing,' mediocrity, and large language models
17:42 Corporations used interns to kill jobs before they used AI
23:46 AI as a technology isn't a problem, it's how it's used
26:58 Escaping bad epistemology is the 'first singularity' for humanity
33:24 Societal elites ignored reactionism and now are shocked that it's monstrous
38:46 View of the world's complexity as the ultimate dividing line of politics
41:54 'Crypto is libertarian, AI is communist'
47:56 Is the U.S. left ignoring technology to the peril of democracy?
50:48 How to use AI responsibly as a regular person
55:59 Student AI use in assignments is a response to larger problems
57:57 The center-to-left needs to stop obsessing over policy fantasies

TRANSCRIPT
https://plus.flux.community/p/6f0910c...

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Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux Community, a new content network of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.

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