What’s one underrated big idea? There's really two big ideas: One is that tech has become more of a religion than an industry. It is taking on a role in our lives and in our society that is beyond what we ever could have imagined it would. And then the other big idea is that because of that, it's not that we need to eliminate all tech, but that we need to fight for our humanity. We need to reassert our humanity. And we need to relegate tech to the role of tool rather than god. What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? The whole essence of what AI is doing and being in our society right now is hype and overhype. That's the point, in fact. And that is, in many ways, how bad religions work. I'm not saying all religions are bad. But everybody has got religions that they don't believe in, even the most faithful, fervent religious believers do. And the way that those bad religions work is that they hype up a god, they hype up a temple or a church or an altar or a ritual, and they say, ‘You can't get by without this thing. We have to devote all of our resources to it.’ And everybody else that doesn't agree is left behind. And that's what the danger of today's version of tech is. What book most shaped your conception of the future? I was really moved when my students recommended a book, “Winners Take All” by Anand Giridharadas . Because I realized that here I had been a chaplain at Harvard and MIT, working with people at Harvard and MIT, and we were all the winners of history and we were very proud of ourselves for that. And what Anand did for me, and I think has done for others, is make us realize that we're doing so much winning that it is, in fact, a big problem. We're taking advantage of forces in society that perhaps we shouldn't be and taking advantage of others in a way that we like to tell ourselves we don't. Most people don't walk around saying, ‘Look at me, I'm a big winner and I'm also a great person.’ But that's essentially the narrative that we like to tell ourselves. And we certainly don't like to walk around saying, ‘Look at me, I'm a big winner and I like to take advantage of people.’ But that is, in fact, what a lot of the winners of the tech world are doing and we need to become more self-critical of that faith. What could the government be doing regarding technology that it isn’t? I'm a Lina Khan guy myself. I think that there's going to be a big policy debate about whether the Harris administration that I hope we'll be seeing soon should keep her in her role [as chair of the Federal Trade Commission]. Why is it that these companies need to be so big? We're told that it's because the United States has to win the AI race. But winning at what cost? And really, do we need to be winning? I mean, did we need to win the nuclear race so badly that we created this terrible century, this nuclear age, that terrified so many people? What are we going to do in the tech and AI space that's going to be just like that, an arms race that goes on and on forever and leaves people feeling very deeply insecure? That would be the concern for me and the policy debate that we need to have. What has surprised you the most this year? Democracy is both working really well and it also isn't. If you look at the rise of somebody like a [Vice President] Kamala Harris and her background, from my perspective as a white kid growing up in New York City, where I was the only white, male, American-born kid in most of my elementary school classes, somebody like Harris shouldn't be able to get maybe the most votes in history as she hopefully is. That was just something we couldn't have predicted in the ‘80s and ‘90s, that our society would become so inclusive as to affirm somebody like her. But here we are and it's great and I hope she wins. But on the other hand, you see somebody like Donald Trump, who is more Teflon than Ronald Reagan, that no matter what he does or says it does seem like it's going to be a coin-flip election. And that's scary. Subscribe to POLITICO Tech on Apple, Spotify, Audible or your preferred podcast player.
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