The Sunday Show

Last year, Elon Musk's xAI set up its "Colossus" supercomputer in an old Electrolux manufacturing facility in Memphis, Tennessee. Now, the residents of nearby neighborhoods are pushing for facts and fair treatment as the company looks to expand its footprint amid questions about its environmental impact. Justin Hendrix considers the state of play with Dara Kerr, a reporter for The Guardian; Amber Sherman, a Memphis activist; and artifacts from local media reporting over the past year.

Catherine Bracy is a civic technologist and community organizer whose work focuses on the intersection of technology and political and economic inequality. Justin Hendrix spoke with her about her new book, World Eaters: How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/723091/world-eaters-by-catherine-bracy/]. In it, she suggests how the venture capital industry must be reformed to deliver true innovation that advances society rather than merely outsized returns for an increasingly monolithic set of investors.

From visions of AI paradise to the project to defeat death, many dangerous and unscientific ideas are driving Silicon Valley leaders. Justin Hendrix spoke to Adam Becker, a science journalist and author of MORE EVERYTHING FOREVER: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity [https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-becker/more-everything-forever/9781541619593/?lens=basic-books], just out from Basic Books.

For a special series of episodes that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting a series of discussions intended to help us imagine possible futures—for tech and tech policy, for democracy, and society—beyond the moment we are in. Dubbed Through to Thriving, the first episode in the series features a discussion on how to build community and solidarity with Ellen Pao, currently the co-founder of a nonprofit called Project Include [https://projectinclude.org/], which focuses on advancing diversity and inclusion in the tech sector. Previously, Pao was the interim CEO of Reddit and a venture capitalist.

Last month, a group of researchers published a letter [https://www.aibiasconsensus.org/] “Affirming the Scientific Consensus on Bias and Discrimination in AI.” The letter, published at a time when the Trump administration is rolling back policies and threatening research aimed at protecting people from bias and discrimination in AI, carries the signatures of more than 200 experts. To learn more about their goals, Justin Hendrix spoke to three of the signatories: * J. Nathan Matias, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Information Science at Cornell University. * Emma Pierson, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. * Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a Professor of Computer Science and Data Science at Brown University.