Timnit Gebru, PhD, AI expert, advocate, and founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and Émile P. Torres, PhD, a philosopher, discuss how eugenic ideologies are influencing Silicon Valley and driving the push for artificial general intelligence. They talk about how eugenic thinking pervades American culture, including Big Tech and medicine, and is foundational to the worldviews of some of the powerful people in the United States today.

KEY TOPICS

• Introduction to main idea of TESCREAL paper: the cultural push to develop artificial general intelligence is undergirded by eugenic thinking

• Dr. Timnit Gebru discusses her intellectual journey of tackling bias and discrimination in technology and becoming a vocal critic of Big Tech

• Review of the core ideas of the philosophies in the TESCREAL bundle (Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism)

• Concrete examples of how TESCREALism is playing out in the United States today

• Why is it important to interrogate “the why” in our efforts to build artificial general intelligence?

• How does the TESCREAL framework serve as a jumping off point for taking a critical eye towards genetics and genomics research?

• Dr. Timnit Gebru & Dr. Émile P. Torres discuss their greatest fears about the future of eugenic thinking in American culture

• Thought experiment: how could knowing our likely date of death and cause of death from birth change our relationship to mortality?
  

A conversation with an award-winning science journalist and author, Angela Saini, about the alluring but dangerous pursuit of “improving” the human species through genetics and how it's driving American politics and policy today.

TOPICS

• The ideology of eugenics is fundamentally driven by a pursuit that can seem deceptively desirable: the “improvement of the human species.” What does it really mean to “improve” people?

• How does the pursuit of perfection drive eugenic thinking?

• How are you thinking about efforts today to scrub scientific research of engagement with gender and race?

• Across human history how have people thought about biological sex gender and social roles?

• What did DNA testing bring to the conversation about how patriarchy spread?

• What do you think medical and genetics professionals should really be paying attention to in terms of how science, in particular genetics, is being discussed today culturally and politically?

• How does taking a long view of human history inform how you're thinking about the political moment we're living through right now?

• Do you think the left / progressives have a cohesive story that people want to hear?

For episode show notes and resources go to: https://www.geneticfrontiers.org/episode9-angela-saini

In this episode, Chelsey Carter, PhD, and Brett Maricque, PhD, founders of the Black Genome Project (https://www.blackgenomeproject.org/) talk about their work to understand how Black communities value their genomes and genetic data, how genetic research is impacting Black communities in St. Louis, and whether genomic sequencing is valuable for everyone.

TOPICS

• Introduction to the Chelsey Carter, PhD; Brett Marique, PhD, and the Black Genome Project

• Discussion of how the Black Genome Project is collaborating with the Black community in St. Louis, its local nature, and how the team is collecting data

• Discussion of how the Black Genome Project is using storytelling, focus groups, structured surveys and why they chose this approach

• What has been the most powerful part of what have you heard from the Black community in St. Louis?

• How do you approach people as an expert in their own lived experience within healthcare and genetics?

• How can the Black community exercise agency over their genetic information?

• Discussion about understandings about nature v. nature and genetic literacy

• How do you talk about ideas like rejecting race as biology, race as a social construct, racism underlying health disparities and the need to diversify genomic data sets?

• Where the Black Genome Project is headed in the future