Synthetic Society

Synthetic Society explores our future technological society, with each episode featuring interviews with leading experts, political figures, and entrepreneurs, discussing and teaching us about complex issues. Hosted by disinformation researcher Tom Ascott. With a focus on AI, technology and the internet, the show gives insight into many of the legal, social and regulatory problems that we are all facing together. Synthetic Society is part of the #Ai2021 campaign, a public engagement campaign to get the general public learning, thinking, and talking about AI. Contact us at www.ai2021.org. Produced by AI expert Marcus Storm on behalf of the #Ai2021 campaign.

The Open Internet Closes 07/01/2022

The Open Internet Closes This week Tom Ascott talks to Max Beverton-Palmer, Director at the Internet Policy Unit at Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. The pair discuss the idea of an open internet and how cooperation can secure its future as well as how tech companies should regulate hostile governments and organisations online and finally end up discussing is Twitter should be subsidised! /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/23607749

Toxic Femininity 06/24/2022

Toxic Femininity Welcome back to Season Two of Synthetic Society! To kick us off host Tom Ascott speaks with Nona Willis Aronowitz about femcels. FemCels, short for female incels, are women unable or unwilling to have relationships due to a mix of societal pressures and misogyny. The conversation draws on Nona's article 'The Femcel Revolution'. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/23530292

Colonialism, Connected 10/22/2021

Colonialism, Connected Kerryn Gammie and Tom Ascott discuss how archaic, colonial power structures have survived and turned into neo-colonialism, and how those structures continue to be pervasive online. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/20909480

Instagram Insurrection 10/08/2021

Instagram Insurrection Ben Decker, Founder and CEO of Memetica, talks to host Tom Ascott about the perils of misinformation on social media, if the Taliban should be allowed to have a Twitter account, and what the future of content moderation looks like. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/20757908

Diversity Equals Resilience For NATO 10/01/2021

Diversity Equals Resilience For NATO Tom Ascott speaks to Giedrimas Jeglinskas, NATO Assistant Secretary General, and former Vice-Minister of Defence of Lithuania. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/20657162

India's Innovative Data Unions 09/17/2021

India's Innovative Data Unions Can we make our data stronger, safer, and more secure by pooling it together? This week Tom Ascott speaks to Astha Kapoor, Co-Founder and Director of the AAPTI Institute in India. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/20507003

Time For The Timeline 09/10/2021

Time For The Timeline What is time? This week Tom talks to Emily Thomas, a philosopher of time and travel, about how time and technology interact. They discuss how the timeline affects how we perceive time, if going on Twitter is like going on holiday, and the different ways technology might let us have experiences outside of time. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/20430428

Robot-Tinted Glasses 09/03/2021

Robot-Tinted Glasses This week Tom explores how robotics and AI is changing our moral beliefs and practices with John Danaher. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/20364989

For the Needs of Society 08/13/2021

For the Needs of Society This episode Tom speaks to Areeq Chowdhury, the founder and director of WebRoots Democracy. WebRoots was a think tank focused on progressive and inclusive technology policy which ran for almost seven years. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/20139044

Behave Yourself! 08/06/2021

Behave Yourself! As the ways in which we can interact virtually increase, so do the ways that we can become victims of harassment. In video games, we need to design systems that help fight problematic and toxic behavior while still supporting a competitive atmosphere. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/20058413

Press X For Ethics 07/30/2021

Press X For Ethics Should we treat characters in games the same way we treat real people? Is it ethical to run over someone over in Grand Theft Auto? And what about us, does it say something about our moral character if we spend all day in our underwear playing games? /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/19982405

If AI Designed Your World 07/23/2021

If AI Designed Your World What would a world look like if it was made by AI? /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/19908557

The Topology of AI 07/16/2021

The Topology of AI This week Tom Ascott speaks to Jacob Williamson about the business of AI. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/19833830

Designed For Your Pleasure 07/02/2021

Designed For Your Pleasure This week Tom Ascott talks with Kate Devlin a Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Artificial Intelligence at King's College London and author of Turned On. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/19687472

Purpose Beyond Profit 06/25/2021

Purpose Beyond Profit Platforms could replace their metrics based on engagement and growth with metrics based on happiness, community strength and wellbeing. In this episode, Tom Ascott talks to Christine Jakobson, a tech ethics researcher, and consultant, about how platforms can respond to the growing issues of disinformation and online hate to create a more friendly timeline. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/19606160

Monetising Islamophobia 06/18/2021

Monetising Islamophobia Islamophobia has been wielded as a weapon to draw support from right wing actors as well as to disenfranchise Muslim populations. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/19526864

The Trustless Currency 06/11/2021

The Trustless Currency It’s taken us ten weeks but it’s finally time to address the elephant in the room: cryptocurrency! /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/19444565

Automated Misogyny 06/04/2021

Automated Misogyny The internet has been a platform for creating new tools and engaging platforms. But these innovations are also being used by those who would seek to perpetrate violence against women. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/19354430

Breaking The Anger Cycle 05/28/2021

Breaking The Anger Cycle Dr. Greenstein’s Memory, Affect, Decision-making (MAD) lab examines how emotions affect memory and decision-making, and this week he walks Tom Ascott through how anger online can increase our susceptibility to misinformation. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/19276070

Giving Digital Policy A Facelift 05/21/2021

Giving Digital Policy A Facelift In a future where it is increasingly difficult to tell authentic from synthetic, Anna Bulakh, Policy Advisor at Reface, gives a thoughtful roadmap to upcoming digital policy. She highlights the importance of baking safety and security into apps to future proof against any malicious use. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/19194806

The Agile Government 05/15/2021

The Agile Government This week host Tom Ascott talks to Walter Pasquarelli, AI Readiness & Data Policy Lead at Oxford Insights. Walter is the lead author for the ‘Government AI Readiness Index’, and the two of them discuss what it takes for a government to be AI ready, whether AI is levelling the playing field for less developed countries and if we governments should behave more like tech companies. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/19115687

What Can We Learn From Conspiracy Theories? 05/07/2021

What Can We Learn From Conspiracy Theories? Lockdown has seen a surge in conspiracy theories, and as the world starts to emerge from another lockdown Katy Murray talks to Tom Ascott about what we can learn from conspiracy theories. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/19021034

Human In The Loophole 04/23/2021

Human In The Loophole In technology we trust, or do we? This week Dr Allison Gardner, co-founder of Women Leading in AI and lecturer at Keele University, talks to Tom Ascott about the problems inherent in technology and the pair try to establish where the line is between tech solutionism and real ways that technology can benefit our lives. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/18838376

Your Code Is Only As Good As Your Moral Code 04/16/2021

Your Code Is Only As Good As Your Moral Code This week host Tom Ascott speaks with Olivia Gambelin, AI ethicist and Founder of Ethical Intelligence. As a philosopher by trade, Olivia walks us through what it means to apply ethics to the problems that AI has thrown up. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/18752816

The Future Will Be Synthesised 04/09/2021

The Future Will Be Synthesised Deepfakes, images in which a person has their face replaced with someone else’s, pose a unique set of problems to society. In this interview host Tom Ascott talks with deepfake expert Henry Ajder about where deepfakes are causing the most philosophical and policy problems right now as well as the creative, emotional and artistic benefits this technology confers. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/18657050

The Future Of Voting 04/02/2021

The Future Of Voting Since the US election electronic voting has come under more scrutiny than it ever has before, despite not being as recent as is sometimes thought. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/18565838

Regulating The Internet 03/26/2021

Regulating The Internet As technology, AI and the internet weave themselves deep into our societies, Synthetic Society is here to help you untangle and understand the mess. /episode/index/show/syntheticsociety/id/18478061

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