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Beyond AI in Medicine’s Chatbot Hype
This article draws from an email interview with Mr. Schneier and his remarks at the 2025 T-CAIREM Conference: The Evolution of Generative A.I.
This academic year, the University of Toronto has been fortunate to have Bruce Schneier as a visiting senior policy fellow with the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (SRI). Schneier is internationally renowned for his work as a public-interest technologist, cybersecurity expert, and New York Times best-selling author. We recently caught up with him to learn how he sees AI evolving, and especially how it could impact medicine in the future…
Audio: Rethinking AI for the Public Good
Listen to the Audio on OverdueingIt.org
What even is AI anyway, and how do we harness it for the good of the people? Host Emily talks technology and public power in this episode with Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders, authors of Rewiring Democracy: How AI will Transform our Politics, Government, and Citizenship. Find the book at your local library!
Audio: How is AI Shaping Democracy?
Listen to the Audio or Read the Transcript on PracticalAI.fm
As AI increasingly shapes geopolitics, elections, and civic life, its impact on democracy is becoming impossible to ignore. In this episode, Daniel and Chris are joined by security expert Bruce Schneier to explore how AI and technology are transforming democracy, governance, and citizenship. Drawing from his book Rewiring Democracy, they explore real examples of AI in elections, legislation, courts, and public AI models, the risks of concentrated power, and how these tools can both strengthen and strain democratic systems worldwide…
Video: The Promise, and Limits, of AI in Medicine
Watch the Video or Read the Transcript on TEDMED.com
Artificial intelligence is already making medical decisions—often without patients realizing it. In this episode of TEDMED Conversations, Bruce Schneier and Dr. Leana Wen unpack where AI is quietly saving lives, where it falls short, and why it may be “better than no doctor at all” in many settings. They challenge the idea of AI as a replacement for clinicians, arguing instead that the real stakes lie in how power, trust, and accountability are built into these systems. The conversation cuts through the hype to ask a harder question: how do we use AI to expand care without losing the human judgment medicine depends on?…
Rewiring Democracy: “Citizen Acceptance and Trust in AI Matters as Much as AI Capabilities”
The core message of this book is succinctly captured in one sentence on page 100: “citizen acceptance and trust in AI matters as much as AI capabilities”. There is a lot more covered in Rewiring Democracy that sits behind this statement—the fact that much of our acceptance of artificial intelligence is unwilling or unwitting, and the universal truth that trust is hard won and easily lost.
There are widely opposing views of AI across the political spectrum, and how it will be applied in Irish society. While some see it as a boost for Ireland’s competitiveness, others have concerns about …
Video: AI and the Rise of Bulk Spying
Watch the Video on YouTube.com
In the first episode of Not Dead Yet, Robert Baggs speaks with Bruce Schneier, a New York Times bestseller and security technologist.
00:00 Intro
02:43 The world since the Snowden leak
05:04 What’s worse for privacy, Big Tech or government agencies?
07:19 Surveillance capitalism and the horrors of AI
09:34 How powerful is data?
13:07 The tracking device in your pocket
15:34 The Le Monde investigation
17:10 The rise of bulk spying
19:03 The danger of AI in surveillance
21:52 Should personalized ads be illegal?
How Artificial Intelligence Is Rewiring Democracy
Excerpt
Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship by Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders (MIT Press, 2025)
Can an artificial intelligence model run for mayor? In 2024, a Cheyenne, Wyoming, mayoral candidate tried to make that case when he pledged that if he were elected, he’d outsource all decisions to an AI. He came in a distant fourth, earning only 3 percent of the vote.
But that (to my mind, rather dystopian) example explored in Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship…
Algorithmic Optimism, Democratic Reality
A review of Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders, Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship (The MIT Press, 2025).
It is telling that when admitted artificial intelligence (AI) optimists write a book about how AI can have a significant positive impact on democracy, they want their readers to know they did not use AI to help them write their book. That is exactly what Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders do in Rewiring Democracy: “While we see many useful applications of AI, we wrote this book ourselves. All the ideas and words are our own or stemming from those we have cited or acknowledged.” It’s a revealing disclaimer. If AI holds as much promise to enhance productivity, creativity, and fairness as the authors insist, why not enlist it in the act of authorship? Implicitly, Schneier and Sanders’s disclaimer suggests that despite AI’s speed and scope, there remains something distinctly human—perhaps even superior—about thought unassisted by AI…
The Best Information Security Books of 2025
Excerpt
As the year ends, here is my list of the Best Information Security Books of 2025.
Information security book of the year—Rewiring Democracy
The Gartner Hype Cycle is a graphical model that represents the maturity, adoption, and social application of specific technologies. It has five phases: innovation trigger, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment, and plateau of productivity. It is designed to help organizations assess the potential risks and benefits of new technologies.
When it comes to hype, nothing compares to AI. Yet even with all the hype, there is still immeasurable value. In …
Audio: Rewiring Democracy & Hacking Trust: Bruce Schneier on the AI Offense-Defense Balance
Listen to the Audio on Cloud.WithGoogle.com
Topics covered:
- Do you believe that AI is going to end up being a net improvement for defenders or attackers? Is short term vs long term different?
- We’re excited about the new book you have coming out with your co-author Nathan Sanders, Rewiring Democracy. We want to ask the same question, but for society: do you think AI is going to end up helping the forces of liberal democracy, or the forces of corruption, illiberalism, and authoritarianism?
- If exploitation is always cheaper than patching (and attackers don’t follow as many rules and procedures), do we have a chance here?…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.