Bruce Schneier on AI and the Future of Democracy

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Castbox | PocketCasts | Overcast

Mike talks with Bruce Schneier, an internationally renowned security technologist, a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and the New York Times bestselling author of 14 books. They focus on his latest book, co-authored with Nathan Sanders: Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship.

Topics Mike & Bruce discuss include:

  • Democracy as an information system and what that means for governance.
  • How AI differs from past technologies in shaping politics.
  • Government adoption of AI worldwide, from pilots to legislation drafting.
  • The risks of hallucinations, deepfakes, and overconfidence in AI systems.
  • Transparency, explainability, and legitimacy concerns around AI use.
  • The promise of public AI versus corporate-controlled systems.
  • AI’s role in legislation, lobbying, and citizen participation.
  • Potential for AI to make bureaucracies more efficient without replacing humans.
  • The dangers and opportunities of AI for authoritarian regimes.
  • Why regulation of human use of AI—not just AI itself—is essential.

Bruce Schneier on X

The Politics Guys on Facebook | X

Check out the excellent Sustainable Planet podcast.

Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo, we’re @PoliticsGuys.

The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Leave a Reply