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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins talks with Laura K. Field about the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and her recent book, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right. The conversation traces how Field came to chronicle the intellectual architecture behind Trumpism between 2016 and 2024. She explains that beneath the populist energy of the MAGA movement lies a smaller but highly influential network of intellectuals who built a deliberate ideological case against postwar liberal internationalism and fusionist conservatism. Together, they explore the different intellectual camps within this "New Right" and their varying and sometimes conflicting visions of the American founding.
Dr. Laura K. Field is an associate with the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, and visiting scholar in residence at American University. She is the author of Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right (Princeton University Press, 2025).
**This episode was recorded on May 29, 2026**
Show Notes:
An Introductory Overview of Furious MindsLaura K. Field, “The Intellectual Edgelords of the GOP” (The Atlantic, 2026)Laura K. Field, “The Closing of the MAGA Mind” (NYT, 2025).Thomas W. Merrill, “Wrestling With the Founding in the Culture Wars” (Law & Liberty, 2024)Lincoln, Speech at Springfield, June 26, 1857If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins speaks with Glory Liu about the 250th anniversary of both Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence. Together, they unpack the message of The Wealth of Nations as a critique of Britain's mercantile system rather than a manifesto for laissez-faire economics — illuminating Smith's careful attention to power, class, and state capture. The conversation explores what reception history reveals about the distance between an author's original intentions and what subsequent readers make of their ideas. Glory and Kristen also reflect on what it means to commemorate Smith today, how our current moment of reckoning with concentrated economic and political power is drawing readers back to Smith, and why doing so responsibly requires both historical care and honest self-awareness about what we're really asking Smith to do for us.
Dr. Glory Liu is a Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. She is the author of Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher became an Icon of American Capitalism (Princeton, 2022), which was named a Top 5 Biographies of Economists by the Wall Street Journal and received the 2024 Best Monograph Award from the European Society for the History of Economic Thought.
**This episode was recorded on January 22, 2026**
Show Notes:
Glory Liu, “How Adam Smith Inspired America’s Economic System” (WSJ, 2025)Glory Liu, Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2022)If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins speaks with Henry Farrell about AI, democracy, and political economy. Farrell argues that large language models are best understood not as emerging individual intelligences, but as “social technologies” that process and reorganize vast stores of human cultural information, much like markets, bureaucracies, and democracies process knowledge. The conversation explores deliberative democracy, civil society, Silicon Valley, AI regulation, and the risks of treating politics as an optimization problem. Farrell emphasizes the messiness of democratic life as essential to resisting authoritarianism and building a better future.
Henry Farrell is the SNF Agora Professor of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is the author of various books, including Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Henry Holt and Co., 2023) and Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Fight over Freedom and Security (Princeton University Press, 2019), both coauthored with Abraham Newman, as well as The Political Economy of Trust: Institutions, Interests, and Inter-Firm Cooperation in Italy and Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
**This episode was recorded on January 7, 2026**
Show Notes:
Virtual Sentiments | State Capture and the Meaning of Democracy with Samuel BaggHenry Farrell’s Substack, Programmable MutterHenry Farrell and Abraham Newman, The Enshittification of American Power (Wired, 2025)Henry Farrell and Hahrie Han, AI and Democratic Publics (Knight First Amendment Institute, 2025)Farrell, Gopnik, Shalizi, and Evans, Large AI models are cultural and social technologies (Science, 2025)Farrell, Mercier, and Schwartzberg, Analytical Democratic Theory: A Microfoundational Approach (APSR, 2022)Farrell, Where Trump is Vulnerable and How to Act on It (New York Times, 2025)Farrell, The Same Old Fantasies Behind AI and New Technology (Lawfare, 2025)Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (The MIT Press, 1970)F.A. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society (Liberty Fund, 2013)Cosma Shalizi, The Singularity in Our Past Light-Cone (Three-Toed Sloth, 2010)Andrew Lentini, Reimagining Democracy in the Age of AI (SNF Agora, 2024)Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory (BBS, 2011)North, Wallis, and Weingast, Violence and Social Orders (Cambridge University Press, 2009)Cory Doctorow, The Bezzle: A Martin Hench Novel (Tor Books, 2025)If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins speaks with political theorist Samuel Bagg about his recent book The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2024). Instead of understanding democracy as an idealized process of collective self-rule, Bagg argues that democracy’s core purpose is to prevent any one group from capturing the state. The conversation explores how this focus on state capture reshapes debates about populism, technocracy, and liberalism, while offering a more realistic account of how power operates in modern societies. Collins and Bagg also discuss the dangers of over-intellectualizing politics, the limits of deliberative democracy, and the role of inequality and private power in shaping political outcomes. The episode closes with a forward-looking discussion of democratic renewal, emphasizing the importance of organizing, civic infrastructure, and building countervailing power in civil society as essential to resisting authoritarianism and sustaining democratic life.
Show Notes:
Virtual Sentiments | Deva Woodly on Civil Society and the Politics of CareAlex Opera, Adam Smith on Political Judgment: Revisiting the Political Theory of the Wealth of Nations (The Journal of Politics, 2022)Paul Sagar, The real Adam Smith (Aeon, 2018)Tyler McBrien, What is ‘State Capture’? A Warning for Americans (New York Times, 2025)Samuel Bagg, Democratic Disenchantment (Boston 50 Review, 2024)Samuel Bagg, Would you sit on a jury to review government regulations? (The Conversation, 2024)Theory of Virtual Sentiments | On Adam Smith's Critique of State Capture**This episode was recorded August 29, 2025.**
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins speaks with Maria Pia Paganelli about Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations on the occasion of its 250th anniversary. Their conversation situates Smith as a sharp moral and political critic of monopoly and empire. Paganelli situates the book in the vibrant world of the Scottish Enlightenment and shows how Smith’s central concern was not wealth for its own sake, but the material conditions that make human flourishing possible. Together, Collins and Paganelli explore Smith’s views on trade, education, public debt, war, and justice, offering a rich and accessible portrait of The Wealth of Nations as both a foundational work of political economy and a deeply normative indictment of the British commercial system in Smith’s time.
Dr. Maria Pia Paganelli is a professor of economics at Trinity University in San Antonio where she teaches classes in the principles of economics, the economics of law, Smithian economics, a study abroad course on the history of Iceland, and more. She is the author of The Routledge Guidebook of Smith's Wealth of Nations (Routledge, 2020), and co-edited the books Adam Smith and Rousseau: Ethics, Politics, and Economics (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), and The Oxford Handbook on Adam Smith (Oxford university Press, 2013).
Show Notes:
Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Liberty Fund, 1982), available for free at Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty.Maria Pia Paganelli, “The Adam Smith Problem in Reverse: Self-Interest in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments”Maria Pia Paganelli, “To Intervene or Not to Intervene: This is Smith’s Problem”Maria Pia Paganelli, “Adam Smith the Dissenter”Maria Pia Paganelli, “Adam Smith and the Morality of Political Economy: A Public Choice Reading”Maria Pia Paganelli and Reinhard Schumacher, “Do not take peace for granted: Adam Smith’s warning on the relation between commerce and war.”Maria Pia Paganelli and Reinhard Schumacher, “Smith and Hume at War: The Differing Views of Adam Smith and David Hume on Commerce and International Warfare”If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins speaks with Amit Ron and Abraham Singer, co-authors of Everyone’s Business:What Companies Owe Society (The University of Chicago Press, 2024). Together, Ron and Singer argue that businesses should move beyond profit and stakeholder models to actively protect democratic practices such as inclusion, reflexivity, and public oversight. They reject corporate claims to “civil disobedience” as prone to self-interest and warn against lobbying practices that create only the appearance of public participation. Drawing on the idea of institutional pluralism, they emphasize that democracy’s role is to continually assess and revise the work of different institutions to ensure they serve the public interest.
Dr. Amit Ron is an Associate Professor in School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University, focusing on the history of political economy and democratic theory.
Dr. Abraham Singer is an Associate Professor of Management at Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago, specializing in business ethics and political theory.
Read more work from Kristen Collins.
Show Notes:
Abe and Amit's book, Everyone’s Business: What Companies Owe Society (The University of Chicago Press, 2024)Virtual Sentiments, S3E1 "Kris Rose on Deliberative Democracy and Meta's Community Forums"Virtual Sentiments, S3E5 "Alice Siu on Deliberative Polling and the Future of Democratic Dialogue"Virtual Sentiments, S1E4 "Jennifer Forestal on Designing Democratic Digital Spaces"Kevin Elliot’s Democracy for Busy PeopleMark Warren’s article, "Political Corruption as Duplicitous Exclusion"Pierre-Yves Néron's Seeing Like a Firm: Social Justice, Corporatiosn and the Conservative OrderScherer and Palazzo's 2007 article, "Toward a Political Conception of Corporate Responsibility: Business and Society Seen From a Habermasian Perspective"If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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**Content Warning** This episode includes discussions of sexual assault and attempted murder, which may be distressing for some listeners. Please listen with care.
On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins speaks with Susan Brison, author of Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self (Princeton University Press, 2002; 20th Anniversary Edition, 2023). In this conversation, Brison reflects on trauma, gendered violence, and the limits of traditional philosophy. She shares the story of her own rape, the trial that followed, and how it shaped her research and philosophy. Their conversation explores the feminist claim that “the personal is political,” emphasizing how trauma disrupts trust and identity, and how recovery requires relational support. Brison also critiques the punitive criminal justice system, advocating for restorative approaches that promote healing over retribution.
Dr. Susan Brison is Susan and James Wright Professor of Computation and Just Communities and Professor of Philosophy at Dartmouth College where she is also Director of the Susan and James Wright Center for the Study of Computation and Just Communities.
Read more work from Kristen Collins.
Show Notes:
APA Studies's special issue on Susan's work, "Feminism and Philosophy"Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political TerrorNancy Sherman's Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of Our SoldiersJonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of CharacterRobin Dembroff's "Real Men on Top"Linda Martin Alcoff's Rape and ResistanceMary Ann Franks's "Democratic Surveillance"If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins chats with Deva Woodly on her book, Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements (Oxford University Press, 2021), which draw from on-the-ground interviews with leaders in the Black Lives Matter Movement to comment on social movements and their role in democracy. In response to our current political moment, Woodly offers an alternative vision rooted in care, mutual aid, and solidarity economies, and highlights the ongoing erosion of the old order and the emergence of new democratic practices. The episode is both an urgent call to action and a hopeful reminder that democratic reconstruction begins with the small, collective acts of everyday life.
Dr. Deva Woodly is a Professor of Political Science at Brown University. Woodly's work develops the concept of radical Black feminist pragmatism, offering a political vision grounded in care, solidarity, and participatory democracy. Her research and public commentary illuminate how movements like Black Lives Matter are reshaping our political landscape from the ground up.
Read more work from Kristen Collins.
Show Notes:
Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American CommunityAlexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in AmericaErik Olin Wright's How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st CenturyBernard Harcourt's Cooperation: A Political, Economic, and Social TheoryIf you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins chats with Alice Siu on how deliberative polling fosters informed, respectful public dialogue. They discuss the method’s use in both in-person and on AI-assisted virtual forums, its role in shaping policy, and its potential to reduce polarization. Alice highlights the importance of teaching deliberative skills in schools and how real-time, structured conversations can strengthen democracy.
Dr. Alice Siu is an Associate Director at Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab and a senior research fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.
Read more work from Kristen Collins.
Show Notes:
Alice’s book chapter, “Reimagining Democracy: The Role of Technology and Deliberation”Alice's paper for the American Political Science Review, "Can Deliberation Have Lasting Effects?"Alice’s paper for the American Political Science Review, “Is Deliberation an Antidote to Extreme Partisan Polarization? Reflections on ‘America in One Room’”Results of Alice’s work with Meta, April 2024, April 2025, “Results of First Global Deliberative Poll® Announced by Stanford’s Deliberative Democracy Lab”New York Times article, “She Is in Love With ChatGPT”S1E4, Jennifer Forestal on Designing Democratic Digital SpacesS3E1, Kris Rose on Deliberative Democracy and Meta's Community ForumsIf you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins chats with Hannah Gais on the far-right rallies and social media presence on platforms like Telegram and X. Hannah explores the events of the Unite the Right rally, the storming of the capital on January 6th, the far-right in the wake of the first and second Trump presidencies, and the dangers of expanding domestic terrorism laws.
**This episode was recorded in December 2024.
Hannah Gais is a journalist and researcher focused on the radical right at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Read more work from Kristen Collins.
Show Notes:
Hannah's work with Cassie Miller, "Capitol Insurrection Shows How Trends On The Far-Right’s Fringe Have Become Mainstream"Hannah’s 2021 New Republic article, "A New 'War on Terrorism' Is the Wrong Way to Fight Domestic Extremists"Brennan Center report co-authored by Mike German, "Fighting Far-Right Violence and Hate Crimes"Hannah’s work drawing connections between more extreme figures and more mainstream figures like Tucker Carlson, "In Rural Pennsylvania, Extremists Declare ‘Victory is Ours’" and "For CPAC Attendees, ‘America Is Under Attack’"Hannah's article, "welcome to america"On Terrorgram indictments, "That's three strikes, run for your life"If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins chats with Eileen Hunt on her latest book, The First Last Man: Mary Shelley and the Postapocalyptic Imagination (2024), which focuses primarily on Mary Shelley's 1826 novel, The Last Man, the first major modern pandemic novel. Hunt explains the tragic life events that motivated Mary Shelley's darker themes*, how the novel relates to our Covid-19 experience, and more.
*This episode features conversation on topics including suicide, suicidal ideation, and death.
Eileen Hunt is a Professor of Political Science and a political theorist whose scholarly interests cover modern political thought, feminism, the family, rights, ethics of technology, and philosophy and literature. She has published five solo-authored books, including her recent trilogy on Mary Shelley and political philosophy for Penn Press.
Read more work from Kristen Collins.
Show Notes:
60 Words Podcast with Congresswoman Barbara LeeCongresswoman Barbara Lee's Speech on 9/14/01Max Weber's "Politics as a Vocation"Max Weber's The Vocation LecturesIf you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins chats with Roos Slegers on the uncanny valley, Freud, and cyborg science fiction. They explore the uncanny valley and Freud’s concept of the uncanny, connecting them to ETA Hoffmann’s “The Sandman”, Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”, and contemporary AI debates. While Mori’s uncanny valley describes discomfort with almost-human robots, Freud links the uncanny to repressed fears, particularly around gender and sexuality. Roos critiques Freud’s reading of “The Sandman”, highlighting its deeper commentary on romantic ideals and the preference for submissive, artificial women—paralleling modern AI assistants like those in the American sci-fi film, Her. Haraway’s cyborg offers an alternative, challenging rigid binaries and embracing technology’s potential for transgression and liberation. They critique how today’s AI and transhumanist movements reinforce traditional hierarchies rather than dismantling them, urging a more critical and playful engagement with technology’s role in shaping human identity.
Dr. Roos Slegers is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.
Read more work from Kristen Collins.
Notes:
Masahiro Mori, 1970, “The Uncanny Valley"Sigmund Freud, 1919, “The Uncanny"Donna Haraway, 1985, “Cyborg Manifesto”ETA Hoffman, 1817, “The Sandman” Meghan O’Gieblyn, God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning, 2021If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Season 3 is here!
On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interview Kris Rose on deliberative democracy and Meta's community forums. Kris discusses Meta’s efforts to incorporate public input into decision-making through the Oversight Board and Community Forums. The Oversight Board, an independent body with binding authority over content moderation decisions, provides external accountability, while Community Forums proactively engage users on emerging technologies and policies. In particular, they focus on Meta’s Generative AI Community Forum, held in the US, Germany, Spain, and Brazil, which aimed to gather diverse perspectives on the principles that should guide AI development and use. Kristen also raises several concerns including selection biases, lacking transparency, and the potential influence of political pressures on corporate decision-making.
**This conversation was recorded in August 2024
Kris Rose is a Governance Director at Meta, where he works across the company to drive thought on emerging trends at the intersection of technology, society, and governance. He also leads the team's community governance work, including community forums and other pilots focused on empowering user voice in the company's decision making. Prior to this role, Kris helped launch the company’s Oversight Board, served as a geopolitical analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency for a decade—to include a secondment as the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) briefer to then US Vice President Mike Pence—and most recently served as a Senior Advisor at the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) during the Biden administration. Kris holds a Master’s in Public Policy from Georgetown University and is a Term Member with the Council on Foreign Relations.
Read more work from Kristen Collins.
Notes:
Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab’s Deliberative Polling MethodologyMeta’s 2023 Community Forum on Generative AI, conducted in collaboration with Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab and the Behavioral Insights TeamMeta’s January 7, 2025 Policy AnnouncementMeta’s Transparency ReportsIf you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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A special thanks to our listeners for joining us, and please enjoy the final episode of Season 2. We hope to see you again soon!
On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews Lida Maxwell on whistleblowers, queer love, and outsider truth-telling. Lida uses Chelsea Manning, a representative outside truth-teller, as a case study to understand the interplay between personal identity and political activism, exploring the nuanced differences between public engagement and privacy. Lida also discusses her upcoming work on environmental and queer political theory that focuses on Rachel Carson’s public advocacy, influenced by her private relationships, and emphasizes the role that personal experiences and identities have in shaping public truths and political actions.
Professor Lida Maxwell is a political theorist and a Professor of Political Science and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Boston University. She is the author of Public Trials: Burke, Zola, Arendt, and the Politics of Lost Causes (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Insurgent Truth: Chelsea Manning and the Politics of Outsider Truth-Telling (Oxford University Press, 2019). She is currently working in environmental and queer political theory and is in the process of publishing her next book, Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love (Stanford University Press, forthcoming).
Check out Lida's work, "Another Silent Spring?" and "Whistleblower, Traitor, Soldier, Queer?: The Truth of Chelsea Manning"
Read more work from Kristen Collins.
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On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews Samantha Cole on her book, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex. Their conversation features discussion on the origins of deepfake technology, nonconsensual pornography, the rights of sex workers, concerns regarding sexual content bans, the importance of sex and intimacy in online interactions, and more.
Samantha Cole is a technology journalist and co-founder of 404 Media, a worker-owned tech publication. She is the author of How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex.
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On today's episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews John Kaufhold on the history of image recognition and deep learning. With over 30 years of experience in the artificial intelligence and machine learning world, John shares his history starting from his early days in speech recognition in the 90s. He covers the ImageNet Big Bang in 2012, the dramatic improvement of image recognition error rates and hardware power, neural networks, the development of chatbots, terminology, and discusses challenges such as data privacy, bias reproduction, existential risk, transparency in data sets, and more!
Dr. John Kaufhold is an expert with over 30 years of experience in artificial intelligence and deep learning. He is the founder of Deep Learning Analytics, a machine learning company, and serves on the Advisory Board of the DC Data Community.
References and related works to this episode: "Munk Debate on Artificial Intelligence | Bengio & Tegmark vs. Mitchell & LeCun" and Data Science DC's "How Attention in 2017 got us Chat GPT."
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On today's episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews Salomé Viljoen on relational data, governance, and privacy. Salomé shares insights into some of the key positions and debates about legal reforms relating to digital privacy and data governance, particularly the relational nature of digital data. In this conversation, Salomé balances serious concern for the harms presented by the status quo and the dangers of surveillance with a true desire to also appreciate and improve the benefits that we in our communities can derive from digital data.
Salomé Viljoen is an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she teaches and writes about contracts, privacy, commercial surveillance and data governance. Her work includes "A Relational Theory of Data Governance," "Data Relations," "Design choices: Mechanism design and platform capitalism," and "Valuing Social Data."
References and related works to this episode: Janet Vertesi's "My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data Made Me Look Like a Criminal"
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Kristen Collins interviews Eric Schliesser on playing, liberty, and the Das Adam Smith Problem. In their conversation, they discuss the "Das Adam Smith Problem" which addresses the perceived inconsistency between Smith's works, "Wealth of Nations" and "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," as well as other topics including Smith's critique of Stoicism, how Smith's ideas still apply today in the modern era of AI technology, the invisible hand and its reinterpretation, and the division of labor and the side affects of social alienation. They converse on the role of childhood play and innovation on liberalism and building a sense of togetherness in society, and more!
Eric Schliesser is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Adam Smith: Systematic Philsopher and Public Thinker (Oxford University Press, 2017), and he received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. Eric runs a substack called "Digressions Impressions."
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Kristen Collin interviews James Goodrich on data monopolies and the neo-Brandeis movement. They begin their conversation by addressing the political nature of algorithmic bias and how we define data property rights. They discuss how certain firms have a sort of monopoly power over behavioral data gathering and converse on consumer welfare and market morality, the neo-Brandeis antitrust movement, the Sherman Act, the right to exclude, data as being nonrivalrous, concerns for privacy, cautions regarding the use of unvetted AI, and more!
James Goodrich is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of UW-Madison's interdisciplinary cluster in the ethics of computing, data, and information. He works primarily in normative ethics and the interdisciplinary field of philosophy, politics, and economics. He is an alum of the Mercatus Adam Smith Fellowship.
Read more work from Kristen Collins.
References and related works to this episode: Sanjukta Paul's "Recovering the Moral Economy Foundations of the Sherman Act," Linda Khan's "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," Robert Bork's The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War with Itself, and “The Fallacy of AI Functionality” by Inioluwa Deborah Raji, I. Elizabeth Kumar, Aaron Horowitx, and Andrew D. Selbst.
If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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On this episode, Kristen Collins interviews Boris Litvin on spectatorship, memes, and Rousseau. Kristen and Boris delve into the relevance of Rousseau's insights on politics and the public stage, relating them to today's social media-driven democracy. They explore the concept of "audience democracy" coined by Bernard Manin, which distinguishes between those in power and the spectators of politics. They discuss the complexities of spectatorship, its passive nature, surveillance, and the role of social media in shaping political discourse and authenticity. They also examine how video technology, like body cams and bystander videos, impacts power dynamics and public scrutiny, highlighting the need for active participation alongside spectatorship for meaningful democratic change.
Boris Litvin is a Visiting Instructor, Ancient Studies and General Education at Eckerd College. His research interests include intellectual history, democracy, spectatorship, political representation, authority, rhetoric, media, and textual interpretation.
Read more work from Kristen Collins.
References and related works to this episode: Bernard Manin's The Principles of Representative Government, Jeffrey Edward Green's Eyes of the People" Democracy in the Age of Spectatorship, Nadia Urbinati's Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People and Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy, Boris Litvin's "'This Hearing Should Be Flipped': Democractic Spectatorship, Social Media, and the Problem of Demagogic Candor" and "Staging Emile".
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