Big Technology Podcast - Okay, Maybe Social Media Isn’t That Bad For Us — With Brendan Nyhan

Brendan Nyhan is a presidential professor at Dartmouth College's department of government. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a discussion that pushes back on the notion that social media is destroying our society and making us stupid. With this thoughtful analysis, Nyhan adds a bunch of nuance to the discussion. This episode is effectively pt. 2 of our conversation with Prof. Jonathan Haidt a few weeks back. While Haidt believes social media is breaking our society and threatening democracy, Nyhan says hold up just a second.

By the way, here's a new thing I did: For a behind-the-scenes look into some of my research for this episode, you check out my Pocket Collection (which is filled with the links) at: getpocket.com/bigtechnology

Big Technology Podcast - Meet The Ex-Google Engineer Who Called Its AI Sentient — With Blake Lemoine

Blake Lemoine is an ex-senior software engineer at Google who was fired right before he taped this episode of Big Technology Podcast. Lemoine told his superiors at Google that he believed the company’s LaMDA chatbot technology was sentient. Then, after making little headway within Google, he went public. In this wide-ranging interview, Lemoine introduces us to LaMDA, which (or who?) he calls a friend, and explains why his belief in its sentience became too hot for Google to handle. 

Washington Post: The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life

Big Technology: Google Fires Blake Lemoine, Engineer Who Called Its AI Sentient

Big Technology Podcast - Is Social Media Making Our Society Stupid? — With Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt is a professor of ethical leadership NYU's Stern School of Business and author of a number of books, including The Coddling of the American Mind. His recent story in The Atlantic, "Why The Past 10 Years Of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid," sparked a debate about whether social media was bad for society, and how we know for sure. Haidt joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss why he thinks social media is indeed responsible for our "structural stupidity," digging through the research and answering critics' objections. Stay tuned for the second half where we actually discuss some solutions.

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You can read Haidt's article here: Why The Past 10 Years Of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

You can review the collaborative Google Doc here: Social Media and Political Dysfunction: A Collaborative Review

And here's my story on the Retweet button: The Man Who Built The Retweet: “We Handed A Loaded Weapon To 4-Year-Olds”

Please review the podcast to help us get more great guests!

Big Technology Podcast - What Happens To Twitter After All This? — With Three Ex-Twitter Employees and Two Reporters

Three former Twitter employees (Jenna Golden, Brandon Borrman, Leslie Miley) and CNBC media & tech reporter Alex Sherman join Big Technology Podcast for a breakdown of Twitter v. Musk. While at Twitter, Golden ran political ad sales, Borrman ran communications, and Miley ran an engineering team. We do our best to make sense of this wild story, looking at how far Twitter should take its lawsuit, what's happening inside the company as it goes through this episode, and how Twitter's balancing the needs of shareholders with its users. Stay tuned for the second half, where we predict the outcome of the case.

Big Technology Podcast - How Twitter, Instagram, and Planet Build Products — With Kevin Weil

Kevin Weil is the ex-head of product at Twitter and Instagram. He's currently the president of business and product at Planet. Weil joins Big Technology Podcast to share an insider's view of how Twitter and Instagram build products, what their potential is, and how each product is dealing with big, imposing, outside forces (Elon Musk and TikTok). Stay tuned for the second half, where we discuss Planet, a fascinating company whose hundreds of satellites orbiting the earth capture a new, complete picture of our world daily.

Big Technology Podcast - The Ethics Of Fintech — With Dan Dolev

Dan Dolev is managing director and senior analyst at Mizuho, where he covers fintech companies Robinhood, SoFi, Affirm, Block, and others. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss fintech's ethics and opportunity, explaining who the industry serves, whether it's actually better than the current banking system, and how big it can get. Stay tuned for the second half where we dig into Coinbase's business and its recent turbulence.

Big Technology Podcast - Anatomy Of A Market Meltdown — With Joe Weisenthal

Joe Weisenthal is co-host of Odd Lots and an editor at Bloomberg. He joins Big Technology Podcast to make sense of the cratering stock market, discussing the various factors that led to this moment and when it might turn around. Stay tuned for the second half where we go rapid-fire, analyzing a bunch of tech companies that are getting absolutely hammered, and some big-time investors as well. We end with a meditation on crypto.

Big Technology Podcast - Which Startups (And VCs) Survive a Bear Market — With Nina Achadjian

Nina Achadjian is a partner at Index Ventures. She joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how large declines in public market valuations impact startups and venture capitalists. Achadjian and I recorded with the S&P 500 down 13%. year to date. That was just last week! Now, we're in full-on bear market territory, with the S&P down more than 20%. Join us for a nuanced conversation on whether our period of oversized valuations was any good, and what to do now that it's over.

Big Technology Podcast - Meta Exit Interview — With Mike Schroepfer

Mike Schroepfer is Meta's former chief technology officer and currently a senior fellow at the company. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a look back at his time as CTO: What went well? What could've been better? What changes would he have made in retrospect? Listen for an episode about the challenges of enabling massive scale, both from a technical and societal standpoint.

Big Technology Podcast - Wait, The Robots Didn’t Take Our Jobs? — With Erik Brynjolfsson

Erik Brynjolfsson is the director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and professor at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a discussion of why our fears that artificial intelligence would take human jobs haven't yet come to fruition. We also cover how humans and AI can work together and how AI is changing work already. Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss the latest on robotic process automation and address why we're working at all in the age of machines.

Check out Prof. Brynjolfsson's paper: The Turing Trap: The Promise & Peril of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence