Steptoe Cyberlaw Podcast

It’s been a jam-packed week of cyberlaw news, but the big debate of the episode is triggered by the White House blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. I’ve just released a long post about the campaign to end “AI bias” in general, and the blueprint in particular. In my view, the bill of rights will end up imposing racial and gender (and intersex!) quotas on a vast swath of American life. Nick Weaver argues that AI is in fact a source of secondhand racism and sexism, something that will not be fixed until we do a better job of forcing the algorithm to explain how it arrives at the outcomes it produces. We do not agree on much, but we do agree that lack of explainability is a big problem for the new technology. President Biden has issued an executive order meant to resolve the U.S.-EU spat over transatlantic data flows. At least for a few years, until the anti-American EU Court of Justice finds it wanting again. Nick and I explore some of the mechanics. I think it’s bad for the privacy of U.S. persons and for the