Carnegie Council Audio Podcast

Ahead of NATO's Madrid summit in June, The Washington Institute's Dr. Soner Cagaptay joins Doorstep co-hosts, Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's strategy to reset relations with the West and get what he needs out of potential NATO enlargement. With Turkey's inflation skyrocketing and Gen Z voters threatening to unseat him in next year's nationwide elections, President Erdogan is betting that demanding concessions from Sweden and Finland and staying friendly with Russia may not only strengthen Turkey's national security but also score him points at home. Will this also win him friends in Washington, DC? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In a fascinating Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen speaks with Kobi Leins about her new book New War Technologies and International Law: The Legal Limits to Weaponising Nanomaterials. How can scientists and policymakers work together to make responsible choices about the use of “nanoscale” materials? What are the implications of this emerging technology for the environment, international security, and current arms control regimes? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

As Russia's war in Ukraine deepens and China’s influence continues to grow, many observers say that the United States is entering an era of “great-power competition” with these two rivals. But, as Eurasia Group's Ali Wyne discusses with Doorstep co-hosts Nikolas Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin, this kind of framework could leave the U.S. defensive and reactive, and hinder efforts to renew itself, both at home and abroad. Can America seize its "great-power opportunity"? For more, please go to carnegieouncil.org. 

In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach sits down with Emory University's Professor Paul Root Wolpe for a thought-provoking conversation about the truth of ethical decision-making, the challenge of regulating new technologies whose impact is uncertain, the intrinsically fragmenting nature of social media and AI, and the dilemmas of neuroscience and neuromarketing.   For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Much has been said about the inability of tech and AI developers to grapple with ethical theory and inherent tension. Similarly, philosophers are often criticized by AI engineers for not understanding the technology. Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach, senior fellows and co-chairs of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative, sit down with University of Pittsburgh’sProfessor Colin Allen for a fascinating conversation. Wallach and Allen wrote Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong together more than a decade ago, and this conversation also features an assessment of how we have progressed in building AI systems capable of making moral decisions.    For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the global financial backlash was swift and unprecedented: Dozens of financial institutions cut off their exposure to the Russian market for reasons that were at least partially ethical. These moves against Russia have led many to wonder if China—which is far more integrated into the global economy—could and should be the next target. In this podcast, Isaac Stone Fish and finance expert Perth Tolle discuss these issues and more. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Ahead of a May 6 international conference in Lithuania on steps to create a tribunal to hold Russia accountable for alleged war crimes and genocide in Ukraine, NYU Law’s Professor Ryan Goodman, co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss the issues and challenges of prosecuting Putin and his top brass. With American public sentiment at an all-time high to see justice done, will this be a defining moment for the Biden/Harris administration on the global stage? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

The debate around solar radiation modification has broadened in recent years, but there has not yet been significant progress on international mechanisms to govern it, says Economist senior editor Oliver Morton in this C2GTalk. He adds: "I don't want a world with solar geoengineering come what may, but I also don't want future generations to look back and say, 'I wish they’d thought about this just a bit more thoroughly.'" Oliver Morton previously worked at Nature  and  Wired  and contributed to a range of other publications, including The New York Times and Science.  He is the author of Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination and the Birth of a World; Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet; The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World; and The Moon: A History for the Future. Asteroid 10716 Olivermorton is named in his honor. This interview was recorded on February 10, 2022 and will be available with interpretation into  中文,  Español,  and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, pl

The global pandemic and investments in mRNA COVID vaccines have accelerated worldwide interest in the field of synthetic biology—a field that unifies chemistry, biology, computer science, and engineering for the purpose of writing better biological code. In this podcast, Genesis Machine co-author Amy Webb and Senior Fellows Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin explore how these developments are leading to a new industrial revolution. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen talks with Dr. Ricardo Chavarriaga about the promise and peril of brain-machine interfaces and cognitive neural prosthetics. What are the ethical considerations and governance challenges in using computational tools to create models or enhance our brains? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Since the Russian invasion began in late February, millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes. In this Global Ethics Review podcast, Senior Fellow Michael Doyle discusses what this means on the ground in Eastern Europe, what governments are and should be doing to help, and how this refugee stream is different from ones that came before. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Global war, inflation, and a COVID-19 resurgence--the Biden/Harris team has been put on defense for first two quarters of 2022. Policies are reactive, promises made a year ago tabled. This week, "Doorstep" co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin reflect on what has happened to the vaunted Biden/Harris "foreign policy for the middle class" and how midterm elections will up-end the narratives the administration expected to put in place. Where do we go from here? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

The advent of the age of data is a formidable accelerator of history. As society faces a crisis of politics compounded by the emergence of powerful virtual communities competing with territorial communities, are we on the cusp of an earthquake in the history of humanity? In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kapsersen is joined by Professor Jean-Marie Guéhenno for a thought-provoking conversation about his new book The First XXI Century: From Globalization to Fragmentation. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Every time a new technology that collects, stores, and analyzes our data is released to the world or permitted a new role, we are promised that it will work as intended and won't cause undue harm. But writer, professor, and speaker Dr. Chris Gilliard has found that this is rarely how these stories actually end. In this discussion with Senior Fellow Arthur Holland Michel, Dr. Gilliard explains why the arc of surveillance technology and novel "artificial intelligence" bends toward failures that disproportionately hurt society’s most vulnerable groups, what this means for our notions of "responsible tech" and "AI ethics," and what we can do about it moving forward. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

A leader asking his second in command to keep him in power. A parliament dissolved. A Supreme Court deciding the fate of a nation. Echoes of the January 6 political crisis in the U.S. are reverberating in the current standoff in Pakistan, where "ousted" Prime Minister Imran Khan is blaming the U.S. for conspiring to remove him from power. Atlantic Council's Uzair Younus joins Senior Fellows Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to explain a pivotal moment of change in Pakistan and how this may impact autocrats around the world. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen and Katherine Milligan, director the Collective Change Lab, explore what we can learn from the social impact and entrepreneurship movement to govern the potential impact of AI systems. What is systems change and collective sense-making? And why is it relevant to reenvisioning ethics in the information age?  For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this riveting and wide-ranging conversation, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen is joined by HKUST's Professor Pascale Fung to discuss the symbiotic relationship between science fiction and innovation and the importance of re-envisioning ethics in AI research. We may be able to code machines to seem and act more like humans, says Professor Fung, however the ability to question our own existence to understand who we are, are fundamentally human features and cannot be easily or even responsibly encoded. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

From Super Bowl cryptocurrency advertising to Save the Children accepting bitcoin donations, the crypto conversation is now mainstream. Over $100 million so far has been raised via crypto donations to Ukraine's war effort both from official government wallets and individual NFTs.  Will this revolutionize war funding, enable oligarchs to avoid sanctions, or pave the way for broader acceptance of a digital currencies around the world? NYU Stern’s Professor David Yermack returns to discuss these issues and the future of crypto with Carnegie Council Senior Fellows Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

How do tech, AI, and global norms intersect to generate political, legal, and ethical dilemmas? In this virtual event, Carnegie New Leader Josephine Jackson leads a discussion with four experts on the future of warfare, and how changing norms shape strategic challenges and tactical decision-making for national security leaders. This podcast features:  Philip M. Breedlove - General (ret.), U.S. Air Force Anthony F. Lang, Jr. – Professor, School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews Mary Ellen O’Connell – Professor, University of Notre Dame  Arun Seraphin – Deputy Director, Emerging Technologies Institute, National Defense Industrial Association For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

It is important to see proposed solar radiation modification experiments in a wider social context, says Sheila Jasanoff, the Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, during a C2GTalk interview. People want to know who is doing the experiment, and what their intentions are—and it is important for scientists and engineers to recognize and address these concerns, and for governance to be built around that. Sheila Jasanoff is a leading expert on the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies, and her work offers fascinating insights into how society navigates emerging technologies, and how decision-makers assess evidence and expertise—which is extremely relevant to our governance conversations. She is the author or editor of more than 15 books, including The Ethics of Invention and Can Science Make Sense of Life; has held distinguished appointments at leading universities around the world; and served on the board of the Amer