Interdependence 7 : Glen Weyl (RadicalxChange)

that is really appreciated Alec! Thanks for the support - we only mostly see listener numbers and its nice to hear when people take a liking to it. We are still really feeling this out! We are actually close to getting some pretty notable sci-fi authors on to debate exactly that topic, so hold tight :)

Mat

this episode was quite the ride! so many different threads i want to hear more about, especially on how dystopian scifis limit public imaginations! first time commenting, but have been an avid listener since day 1 and this has become an essential part of my week. love the format, and extra appreciate the strong editorial direction and recurring themes you bring. this has got teeth in the way no other podcast does.

That's a really cool dynamic to have in a podcast. Thanks for the explaination.

its a worthwhile point, my (Mat) feeling about this is that it is important to remember that Microsoft has over 150k employees - and as with any org of this scale and influence there are often conflicting messages coming out. Many private universities also contain such tensions etc.. Asides from Glen, Microsoft pay very critical thinkers such as Jaron Lanier and Kate Crawford, and I feel that the impact of some of those people are very present, for example, in the recent news that the company will abstain from selling facial recognition tech until there are policy changes in place, and there is also no evidence to suggest that the research of such individuals is in any way compromised by their being supported by that money (AI Now, for example, has played a role in supporting tech worker walkouts on ethical grounds). Given the predicament that these transnational orgs wield so much power and influence, I think there is a net positive to staying with the trouble, which requires balancing necessary criticality with a degree of pragmatism. My position is that one role of culture (or opportunity inherent to it) is to seed progressive ideas and configurations, and the more people within such orgs that are earnestly advocating for ideas such as stakeholder democracy, ethical protocols for machine learning, the better - even though of course in our position we have to also keep enough critical distance to maintain pressure from the outside. Leaning too much in either direction can be perilous. It's a fine line that we are attempting to walk with this podcast project. We are planning to have discussions with people who are in decision making positions, understanding that despite the valid tensions that you raise these are some of the rooms in which real change is made, however do so committed to representing progressive perspectives that perhaps might never make it into those rooms. That is why we will speak to as many critics and scholars as we will practitioners within organisations. I can say, for example, that our critique of the OpenAI jukebox project has since been metabolised by the organization, which I think represents some degree of validation for this approach. The other benefit of this approach is that even if we also differ in our opinions on some issues to some of our guests (the Spotify AI conversation comes to mind), sharing these discussions also affords listeners perhaps a greater understanding of exactly those points of dispute, and also to be fair, often refreshing points of agreement. I feel this is a constructive contribution when such information is quite hard to come by otherwise. It was really nice I think to hear Guy Standing say something similar - it is pretty wild to watch him advocating for such progressive positions unflinchingly at Davos, for example. Getting these perspectives in the room matters. I trust that Glen feels he can make a difference in his capacity within that organisation, and feel he was refreshingly candid in this discussion. I suspect that projects like RadicalxChange intend to cultivate interesting projects outside of such large orgs, and serve the dual purpose of demonstrating to larger orgs that different configurations are feasible and, better still, a preferable way to conduct themselves. My personal position is that without sufficient progressive change in such organisations, there are far more pernicious authoritarian approaches elsewhere that stand to outcompete them, but that is a discussion for later. Really happy for your perspective Justin, cheers!

Mat