Show Notes
How might this administration and future administrations approach the critical issue of AI and energy demands? This is the question the second of TRG Media and MIT Technology Review’s AI Scenario Exercises tries to answer. Leading experts come together to role play as key actors in government, private industry, and more to simulate how public policy might take shape in the coming years. This first episode contains the first phase of the game and an introduction from the editor in chief of MIT Technology Review Mat Honan, as well as an overview of the game by designer Ed McGrady.
The Players:
US Federal
POTUS - Merici Vinton, Former Senior Advisor to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel
Security (DoD, DHS, DOS) - Mark Dalton, Senior director of technology and innovation at R Street
Energy (DOE, EPA, Interior) - Wayne Brough, Former President of the Innovation Defense Foundation and senior fellow on R Street’s Technology and Innovation team
Red State Leadership- Soren Dayton, Director of Governance at the Niskanen Center
Power generation industry
Fossil - David Sandalow, Inaugural Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) at Columbia University
Solar - Enock Ebban, host of “Sustainability Transformations Podcast”
Nuclear [1] - Ashley Finan, Jay and Jill Bernstein Global Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University
Investors in Al
Domestic- Josiah Neeley, R Street Institute’s Energy team advisor
International - Josh Felser, CO Founder and Managing Partner at Climatic
International (Middle East, EU, Russia, China, etc.) - Shaolei Ren, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California
International (Middle East, EU, Russia, China, etc.) - Rachel Ziemba, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Blue State Leadership
POTUS Adam Zurofsky - former Director of State Policy and Agency Management for the State of New York
Ari Peskoe - Director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program
Beth Garza - senior fellow with R Street’s Energy & Environmental Policy Team
Public interest
Environmental - Brent Eubanks, founder of Eubanks Engineering Research
Domestic political - Meiyi Li, Ph.D. candidate at The University of Texas at Austin
Media - Jen Sidorova, policy analyst at Reason Foundation
Al and other Digital Industries
AI - Valerie Taylor, division director of Mathematics and Computer Science at Argonne National Laboratory
Blockchain -Erica Schoder, Executive Director and co-founder of the R Street Institute
Erica Schroder - Elliot David, Head of Climate Strategy at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol
Other digital systems (chips, data center operations, online gaming, streaming, etc.) [1] - Ken Briggs, Faculty Assistant at Harvard University
This material is distributed by TRG Advisory Services, LLC on behalf of the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in the U.S.. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from DSR's Siliconsciousness
The midterms are only a few weeks away and, with any luck, Democrats will ride a blue wave back into power. While there are a great many issues to grapple with, none are more pressing or existential than artificial intelligence. So what exactly is the Democrats’ plan to effectively legislate AI? Congressman Don Beyer, co-chair of Congress’s bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Caucus, joins David Rothkopf to examine what Democrats in Congress must do to rein in the far-reaching effects of the AI revolution.
There is a lot to question when it comes to the future of AI. But what does the AI boom mean for the future of our democracy? David Rothkopf and political scientist Dave Karpf of George Washington University examine how AI, billionaire media ownership, and campaign finance are concentrating power and weakening democracy. They explore the collapse of shared information, the influence of algorithms and personalized news, why political messaging increasingly fails to reach the public, and what some possible solutions might be to all of this.
As AI systems become more autonomous and are delegated more and more power across industries, we have to ask ourselves: are we walking the dog, or is the dog walking us? Is voluntary self-regulation really enough, or is it high time for legislators to get serious about reigning things in before the problem becomes too big to solve? CEO of CAS Strategies Camille Stewart Gloster joins us to discuss her new book The Insider You Built and explore why sensible regulation is sorely needed and more.
AI dread has spread. Even CEOs of major AI companies are forecasting doom and gloom, including the potential end of mankind. But how much of what they say is an honest appraisal, and how much is driven by ulterior motives? NYU’s Paul Barrett joins David Rothkopf to discuss his recent piece for Tech Policy Press and explain why we can’t let doomer CEOs or competition with China distract from sensible AI regulation.
Top AI researchers seem to be increasingly convinced that AI is about to kill us all, so why isn’t our President more concerned? After an Anthropic researcher quit the company warning that continued AI development could end the world, Trump brushed off worries over AI attributing concerns to a “sick conspiracy.” Alondra Nelson of the Institute of Advanced Study joins David Rothkopf to analyze where the truth really lies and how concerned we should all really be about an AI armageddon.