Technoprogressive Hub Podcast
The Technoprogressive Hub is fighting for a high-tech and radically democratic future. Sponsored by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and hosted by J. Hughes. technoprogressives.substack.com
Episodes
Fresh from the Technoprogressive Opportunity conference in London, J. Hughes and Matteo McDermant ask what a summer of rogue AI should do to left futurism. Matteo describes a round of self-critique prompted by PauseAI’s Laiba Rehman: he went looking for a point-by-point rebuttal of the existential risk case and found mostly dismissal by association. Jam…
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Robert Chapman Brooking writes Cosmopolity, a Substack devoted to what he calls cosmopolitan patriotism. He is an advocate of “ultrahumanism” a synthesis of futurism, transhumanism, spirituality and politics, with contributions from Teilhard de Chardin, Zoltan Istvan and Marianne Williamson. We talk about his recent essay on AI socialism and I press him on his intellectual genealogy and whether a politics of inner trans...
This summer Matteo MacDermant is teaching a course on Technoprogressive Worldbuilding for the IEET. We discuss the themes of the course, and some philosophical reflections about the technoprogressive project.
* James Hughes and Matteo McDermant discuss their IEET “Technoprogressive Worldbuilding” summer course, tracing its intellectual roots from Enlightenment progress theory through Bogdanov’s proto-transhumanist ...
OpenAI is offering 5% equity to the US government. Trump has ordered the creation of a US sovereign wealth fund, received 10% government equity in Intel, and a “golden share” in US Steel. Now Bernie Sanders has proposed 50% nationalization of AI stocks, to be held in a sovereign wealth fund that will finance a UBI. Why is there a sudden convergence by Right and Left on nationalizing AI?
Notes
J Hughes, Sarah Shahed, Matteo MacDermant discuss Sarah’s editorial on age verification laws. We all want to protect children from harm, and age-gating social media websites has broad support. But mandating age-verification means identifying everyone, giving platforms much more information about consumers and putting the anonymity of journalists, activists and whistleblowers at risk. They also oblige defining what kinds of co...
Thomas Baudinette is Senior Lecturer in Global Cultures at Macquarie University in Australia, a cultural anthropologist whose work maps the role popular culture plays in shaping gender and sexuality across East and Southeast Asia. His first book, Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media, and Masculinity in Tokyo (University of Michigan Press, 2021), examined how commercial gay media and the bar culture of Shinjuku shapes gay male id...
Today on Technoprogressive Hub I’m speaking with Dr. Evie Kendal, a bioethicist and public health scientist at Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology. She is the author of the provocative and influential monograph, Equal Opportunity and the Case for State Sponsored Ectogenesis, in which she argued that artificial wombs are a potential requirement for genuine social and gender equality. In her latest volume, Scie...
As anxiety about data centers, AI-driven precarity, and tech oligarch authoritarianism mount, progressives have mostly responded with proposals to slow down AI. Bernie in particular has been channeling some of the existential risk concerns of Eliezer Yudkowsky, Geoffrey Hinton and Max Tegmark, and with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, promoting regulation of data center construction.
On the other hand, California Congressman and US Preside...
Today on Technoprogressive Hub we’re speaking with Aleksandra Przegalińska, a philosopher and social scientist of AI. Dr. Przegalińska is Vice Rector and the head of the Human-Machine Interaction Research Center at Kozminski University in Poland. Currently she is Senior Research Associate at the Center for Labour and Just Economy at Harvard University. She works on the future of work, humanoid and social robots, and wearable...
This week on Technoprogressive Hub, Eli, Matteo and J discuss the legislation proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders to restrict the building of AI data centers. “Opposing AI’ is Luddite, not technoprogressive, but the sentiment against oligarchs, AI and data centers is so strong now that we may need to accept some Luddite positioning to get the Left to promote desirable AI safety and regulation.
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ProWorker AI?
This week on Technoprogressive Hub, Eli, Matteo and J are discussing proposals for pro-worker artificial intelligence laws. Recently David Autor, Daron Acemoglu, and Simon Johnson and the UK Trades Union Council have proposed a set of regulatory and legal reforms to protect workers from automation and enhance human expertise. Arguably technoprogressive, will they only work briefly until AI surpasses human labor?
L...
On Technoprogressive Hub, Dr. J. spoke with philosopher Mark Walker about moral enhancement, universal basic income, theology and technoprogressivism. Mark Walker holds the Richard L. Hedden Endowed Chair in Advanced Philosophical Studies at New Mexico State University.
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Happy-People-Pills For All by Mark Walker
Free Money for All by Mark Walker
This is a public episode. If you would like to disc...
The Pro-Human AI Declaration
On Technoprogressive Hub, Matteo and J react to the Pro-Human AI Declaration. Co-signed by major progressive and conservative organizations and leaders, does it finally represent a tenuous alliance of the populist Right with the progressive Left, united by anti-AI Luddism? Or is the Declaration actually a technoprogressive project dressed as Luddism?
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Post-Labor Economics With David Shapiro
David Shapiro is a futurist, author, social media producer, and one of the most prolific popularizers of post-labor economics — the argument that accelerating automation isn't a bug to be managed but a civilizational transition to be designed. Drawing on ideas ranging from universal basic income and sovereign wealth funds to the radical deflationary potential of AI-driven productio...
David Wood is a prominent British futurist, author, and pioneer of the smartphone industry as a co-founder of Symbian, the world’s first successful smartphone operating system. David serves as the Chair of London Futurists, one of the world’s largest foresight communities, as the Executive Director of the Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation, and as a member of the IEET Board of Directors.
We critique both the "bio...
Join James Hughes and George Dvorsky for a timely discussion on the Technoprogressive Hub podcast, at the intersection of technology and progressive politics. They explore the Left's identity crisis in Canada, the politics of universal access to GLP-1 drugs, and the evolving landscape of AI regulation.
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“What Ever Happened to the Transhumanists?” by George Dvorsky
...Today on Technoprogressive Hub, Matteo and J unpack Cory Doctorow’s enshittification thesis, the emerging concept of technofascism, and the connection between them.
“The Age of Enshittification” by Kyle Chayka.
“The Enshittifcation of Government” by Christian Sarkar
“Technofascism comes to America” by Kyle Chayka
“Technofascism: AI, Big Tech, and the new authoritarianism...
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a journalist and policy consultant, and host of The Zero Hour, a nationally syndicated radio and television program. He has served as a Senior Fellow with Social Security Works and the Campaign for America’s Future, and is a member of the IEET Board of Directors.
We talk about the challenge of promoting technoprogressive solutions to progressives who associate the technologies with billionaires and ...
The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies is working to create a technoprogressive policy agenda. This Technoprogressive Hub podcast will be hosted by IEET Executive Director J. Hughes, a sociologist and ethicist, interviewing people about technoprogressive ideas. For this initial podcast Dr. J. is joined by Eli Zupnick, a Washington DC-based political operative, and Matteo McDermant who teaches in Albuquerque, New Mexico ...
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