Grey Mirror #10 Rob Reich, Stanford: A Political Theory of Philanthropy + The Strategy for Stanford’s New “Center For Human-Centered AI”

This is a podcast from MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative on technology, society, and ethics called Grey Mirror (Soundcloud, Youtube, iTunes, Spotify).

In today’s episode, I interview Rob Reich, a professor of political science at Stanford University, the director of the Center for Ethics in Society and a faculty co-director at both the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and Stanford’s new center for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. (Lots of stuff!) We chat about his recent book, Just Giving, which outlines a political theory of philanthropy. We also dive into why he left GiveWell and how Effective Altruism should think about plutocracy and influencing politics. Finally, we chat about HAI, Stanford’s new AI ethics center, and how they are trying to “win back” AI developers by incorporating social science into the development of tech.

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Disclaimers: This interview is not investment advice. The views and opinions expressed in this article are my own and do not reflect my employer :). I own less than $5000 of any given cryptocurrency, so my monetary incentive is not too aligned with Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.