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This week CIGI launched Policy Prompt, a new podcast featuring hosts Vass Bednar and Paul Samson in conversation with leading thinkers on transformative technologies.

In episode 1, Marietje Schaake joins Bednar and Samson to discuss her forthcoming book The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley. Informed by Schaake’s experience working at the forefront of tech governance, their conversation explores strategies for effective government regulation and ways citizens can counterbalance the immense power wielded by today’s tech giants, to promote a more democratic digital landscape. Listen here and subscribe to Policy Prompt to catch every episode.

Book giveaway: Enter a draw to win a copy of The Tech Coup! Follow Policy Prompt on X or Instagram for details.

Many are striving to devise ways for humanity to avoid a race toward artificial superintelligence, citing concerns that this could result in global catastrophe. Technology and policy leaders are beginning to imagine international agreements that aim to promote the safe and responsible development of advanced AI.

Drawing on research with colleagues Tom Reed, Jack William Miller and Peter Barnett, Akash Wasil asks “What would [former president Ronald] Reagan’s ‘trust, but verify’ approach look like when applied to AI development?” Wasil discusses findings from their examination of 10 techniques that nations could use to detect non-compliance with potential international agreements, and looks at possible next steps.

“On July 26, more than 80 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreed to release a “stabilized text” of the Agreement on Electronic Commerce, which they’d been negotiating since 2017. Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Paraguay, Taiwan and Türkiye didn’t sign on to the release. Neither did the United States, surprisingly.

“The agreement was hailed as ‘historic’ and as a ‘rare opportunity to celebrate negotiating success.’”

Patrick Leblond takes a look “under the hood” of this “historic” agreement, finding the agreement “reflects today’s ineffective rules of the game in governing international digital trade, nothing more.”

The UN Secretary-General is convening the Summit of the Future later this month in New York, designed to reset the international order to address the myriad challenges the world faces in the twenty-first century. The Summit is setting an ambitious agenda, whose achievement will depend on our capacity to think clearly.

But in today’s tech-driven world, our right to freedom of thought — an absolute right in international law — is under attack.

Susie Alegre writes that “if the United Nations wants to shore up our global future, it should start with protecting our freedom of thought and opinion. Every one of the priority areas set out in the agenda depends on it.”

Is freedom of thought at risk in the digital age? And exactly how far should the law go in insulating people from ideas, practices and technologies that might influence or manipulate their thinking?

Daniel Munro argues that while we have not yet reached the right balance, by focusing primarily on how to protect people, we risk diminishing the central importance of individual agency — the freedom and capacity to lead a self-directed life: “liberal democracies have long track records of adopting regulations that create space for reasonable adults to make choices about their own lives in environments not intolerably littered with snake oil and snake oil salespeople.”

Last week, CIGI celebrated the launch of Robert Gorwa’s new book, The Politics of Platform Regulation: How Governments Shape Online Content Moderation.

A recording of the event is now available: watch it here.