Schneier on Security

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!

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…

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On this episode of the Plutopia News Network podcast, security technologist and author Bruce Schneier joins the hosts to discuss his new book Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship. Schneier frames democracy as an information-processing system that aggregates citizens’ preferences into policy, and defines AI broadly as computer systems doing tasks once done by humans. He argues that AI is fundamentally a power-amplifying tool: in the hands of small-d democrats it can strengthen participation, transparency, and decision-making, but in the hands of authoritarians or monopolistic tech corporations it can just as easily supercharge surveillance, manipulation, and control. Throughout the conversation, he emphasizes that many fears attributed to “AI itself” are really fears about capitalism, corporate power, and concentrated ownership of technology, and he offers real-world examples where AI is already helping journalism, courts, voters, and legislatures. Rather than utopian hype or doom, Schneier advocates a clear-eyed, politics-first view: AI’s impact on democracy will depend less on the technology and more on who controls it and how we choose to govern its use…

Listen to Part 1 on AIandYou.net

How should AI change democracy? That’s the topic of Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship, and I am talking today with its authors.

We talk about this fascinating and scary intersection of AI and government, of AI being used in making legislation, the concept of democracy as an information system, ways AI can transform how citizens engage their governments, regulatory responses to AI from the US and around the world, and how the judicial branch can use AI.

Listen to Part 2 on AIandYou.net…

Listen to the Audio on Future Hindsight

We discuss how AI can both serve the public interest and advance the goals of our democracy, despite the misgivings about the current state of AI.

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This episode features an OG in the world of internet security, the Godfather of Cybersecurity, Bruce Schneier. Bruce describes himself as a public interest technologist, and has done many things under that banner—run companies, lectured at Harvard, testified before Congress, authored over a dozen books, and written a blog for over 20 years that has more than 250k regular readers—to name just a few.

Key topics:

• The need for better technical minds in policy making
• The implications of AI for democracy (not as bleak as you might expect…