Tagged: democracy
13 results
EMAD MOSTAQUE: AI Will RUN Our Countries Soon! We Aren't Ready!
In a wide-ranging interview on the Beyond Tomorrow podcast, Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque argues that within 30-40 years every country will be run by AI, that democracy is in its final decade or two, and that most digital jobs will be economically irrelevant within roughly a thousand days. He puts his personal probability of catastrophe (P-doom) at 50%, warns of intelligence being rationed by a duopoly of powerful labs, and lays out a counter-vision: sovereign, collectively owned 'national champion' AI utilities that give every citizen access to intelligence and a share of the robot fleet. Along the way he explores AI personhood, brain-computer interfaces, longevity escape velocity, quantum computing, and whether we should push a button to eliminate all human suffering.
Generation Citizen
Generation Citizen is a national nonprofit that brings action-oriented civics education into middle and high school classrooms. Founded as a 2008 student project at Brown University, it partners with schools and districts to run a project-based curriculum in which students identify a local issue, research it, and take real civic action - then present their work at community 'Civics Day' showcases. The organization also advocates for state and federal policy that funds equitable civic learning. It has reached more than 250,000 students and, in recent years, serves roughly 25,000 students annually across 150+ schools in eight states.
Elizabeth Roy
Elizabeth Clay Roy is the CEO of Generation Citizen, a national nonprofit that partners with schools to teach 6th-12th graders Action Civics - hands-on, project-based democracy. A Columbia-trained urban studies graduate who campaigned door to door in Boston before she could vote, she has built a career across grassroots organizing, government, and economic-mobility work, from co-authoring an urban planning guidebook in Bangalore to co-creating the Opportunity Index and leading TakeRoot Justice in New York. She frames her work through 'critical patriotism' and insists young people are 'partners and problem-solvers, not citizens in waiting.'
Alex Niemczewski
Alex Niemczewski is the co-founder and CEO of BallotReady, the nonpartisan online voter guide that covers every race and referendum on the ballot across all 50 states. She built the first version for herself before the 2014 midterms because she didn't know how to vote for the down-ballot offices nobody talks about - water reclamation commissioner, judges, mosquito abatement boards. A University of Chicago philosophy graduate who taught coding and ran a research-design consultancy, she turned a personal frustration into a civic engagement platform that informs millions of voters and powers tools for campaigns and advocacy groups.
BallotReady
BallotReady is a Chicago-based civic technology company behind the nonpartisan online voter guide at ballotready.org - the place you go before you vote. It gives Americans tailored, trustworthy information on every candidate and referendum on their ballot, all the way down to school boards and water reclamation districts, plus tools to register, find a polling place, and make a plan to vote. Through its CivicEngine platform and API, BallotReady also powers voter registration, candidate recruitment, and turnout campaigns for organizations, brands, and nonprofits. Founded in 2015 out of the University of Chicago, it has helped tens of millions of voters and was acquired by Civitech in May 2025.
David Frum
David Frum is a Canadian-American staff writer at The Atlantic and host of The David Frum Show, the podcast where he turns four decades of conservative argument on the movement that produced him. He coined the phrase 'axis of evil' as a speechwriter for George W. Bush, wrote ten books, and became one of the most quoted voices of the Never Trump right. The son of legendary Canadian broadcaster Barbara Frum, he left the Republican Party in November 2024 after a lifetime inside it.
Jennifer Rubin
Jennifer Rubin is a political commentator, author, and editor-in-chief of The Contrarian, the Substack publication she co-founded with attorney Norm Eisen in January 2025 after resigning from The Washington Post. A former labor lawyer who graduated first in her class at UC Berkeley Law, she spent years as the Post's resident conservative voice writing the 'Right Turn' column before breaking sharply with the Republican Party over Donald Trump and registering as a Democrat in 2020. Today she writes daily commentary in defense of democracy and is an MSNBC contributor.
Tom Nichols
Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic, professor emeritus of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, and author of The Death of Expertise. A Cold War scholar who spent decades teaching strategy to military officers, he became one of America's most-read voices on the collapse of trust in experts and the fragility of democracy. He is also, improbably, a five-time undefeated Jeopardy! champion and a curmudgeonly New England cat guy who once played a fictional pundit on HBO's Succession.
Will Wilkinson
Will Wilkinson is a political analyst, essayist, and policy intellectual who spent two decades navigating the intellectual terrain between libertarianism and liberalism before landing somewhere more interesting than either. A former research fellow at the Cato Institute and vice president at the Niskanen Center, he has written for The New York Times, The Economist, The Atlantic, and dozens of other outlets. Currently working in government affairs at Persona, a digital identity company, he continues to publish the 'Model Citizen' newsletter on Substack, where his blend of philosophy, political science, and sharp commentary finds its most faithful audience.
Heather Cox Richardson
Heather Cox Richardson is a Boston College historian who turned American history into a daily newsletter phenomenon. Her Substack 'Letters from an American' has nearly 3 million subscribers, making it one of the most-read independent newsletters in the world. She connects current political events to historical patterns with a clarity that has made her one of America's most influential public intellectuals - all from coastal Maine, where she lives with her lobsterman husband.
Katie Harbath
Katie Harbath is the founder and CEO of Anchor Change and Chief Global Affairs Officer at Duco Experts, widely known as the 'election whisperer to the tech industry' (Foreign Policy). After a decade at Facebook building the global elections policy team from scratch - eventually managing 60 people across 40+ countries - she left in 2021 to launch her own consulting firm and newsletter. Her weekly Substack 'Anchor Change' and podcast help readers and clients navigate the chaos at the intersection of technology, politics, and democracy, guided by her signature philosophy: panic responsibly.
Zeynep Tufekci
Zeynep Tufekci is a Turkish-born sociologist, professor at Princeton University, and New York Times opinion columnist who has become one of the world's foremost voices on the intersection of technology and society. Known for being consistently ahead of the curve — predicting Facebook's role in ethnic violence, YouTube's radicalization pipeline, and COVID-19's severity before mainstream institutions caught on — she bridges computer science and humanistic inquiry with a rare clarity. Her 2017 book 'Twitter and Tear Gas' is a landmark study of networked protest, and her Substack newsletter 'Insight' offers rigorous, genuinely open-minded analysis of the hardest puzzles at the edge of science, technology, and democracy.
Abdul Ahad
Abdul Ahad is a data consultant and TEDx speaker based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, with over seven years of experience building data infrastructures for small and medium organisations across e-commerce, insurance, energy, and finance. He is the founder behind KYD Analytics and holds the philosophy of 'Bringing Data and Humans Together' - believing the human element matters more than the tool. In November 2024, he delivered a TEDxEindhoven talk titled 'Why aren't people voting anymore?' exploring how community bonds and incentivisation could revitalise democratic participation. A lifelong learner who codes, consults, and speaks on the stage.