Engage in critical dialogue with legal minds and tech experts on AI’s legal and societal impacts in Responsible AI, a podcast from the AI Forum. Our episodes feature experts in cybersecurity, law, and technology, offering deep dives into public policy and best practices. Tune in for a meeting of minds that shapes the future of AI governance.
Responsible AI is hosted by Alex Alben, Director of The AI Forum. Learn more at our website, theaiforum.org.
Antitrust Gets Its Close-Up: Jennifer Dixton on Hollywood Mergers, Big Tech, and AI Safety
Antitrust has gone from sleepy specialty to front-page news, and Jennifer Dixton, antitrust law professor at UCLA and a veteran Justice Department enforcer, explains why. She and host Alex Alben work through the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger challenge led by California and twelve other states, the novel independent editorial board in the proposed settlement, and what the 1940s Hollywood consent decrees can teach us about today’s streaming deals.
We look at Big Tech breakups and how they rarely actually happen, free products and the quality they quietly lose, shared pricing algorithms, and the question of whether AI companies can collaborate on safety without inviting an antitrust suit.
Can frontier AI companies collaborate on safety protocols without running afoul of antitrust law? Jennifer’s answer draws on DOJ business reviews of COVID-era collaborations and on open, industry-led standard setting.
The episode closes in the classroom, where she is swapping take-home papers for think-on-your-feet exercises, and where she notes that despite AI’s abilities, “you still have to know the basics as a lawyer.”
22 Sept 2026
Julia Powles on How Safety Theater Makes Us Less Safe
Who gets to decide what counts as safety? Why have we normalized an ecosystem of surveillance? And when does convenience become dangerous indulgence?
Julia Powles, executive director of UCLA’s Institute for Technology, Law and Policy, talks with host Alex Alben about the underlying harms of “safety theater,” including mass surveillance, invasive data collection, and attention-driven business models—largely untouched.
In this episode of Responsible AI, you’ll discover:
Why AI in entertainment is really a battle over labor, copyright, and the value of human craft.
How sports technology collects enormous volumes of biometric data with little protection for athletes.
Why sports betting and predictive markets are creating a new layer of risk for young people.
What “safety theater” means and why compliance checks often miss the real harm.
Why age-verification systems can be invasive, inaccurate, and privacy-invasive by design.
How mass surveillance becomes normalized through the language of safety and convenience.
We also dig into the limits of surveillance-based policy, the failure to measure actual outcomes in child safety, and why courts and regulators keep gravitating toward superficial fixes instead of root causes like business models built on attention extraction.
Julia makes the case that if we do not track real-world impact, we will keep optimizing for appearances while communities absorb the costs.
Chapters
02:20 Building an interdisciplinary AI policy institute
04:58 Labor, creative work, and automation
12:53 Athlete surveillance and biometric data
17:52 Sports betting, gambling, and public harm
22:36 Safety theatre and the limits of surveillance
27:50 Child online safety and measuring real outcomes
30:39 Why age-gating can create new privacy risks
35:21 Meta’s youth-safety settlement and platform incentives
40:04 Delivery drones and the “indulgence economy”
44:49 Community power and choosing our tech future
8 Sept 2026
Rick Hasen on the Fragility of the U.S. Voting System
AI is colliding with the next election in ways most people are not prepared for. Professor Richard Hasen breaks down the legal and democratic fault lines that could shape who counts the votes, who controls the rules, and how much damage disinformation can do before anyone realizes it. We unpack ballot seizures, executive power over mail-in voting, election litigation, and the structural vulnerabilities that make American elections uniquely exposed.
Hasen also explains how AI-generated video, watermarking, and the “liar’s dividend” could make it harder for voters to know what is real. The conversation explores voting rights, the Electoral College, local journalism, and practical ways to strengthen public trust without giving government a censorship weapon. If you care about democracy, elections, disinformation, or AI’s role in all of them, this episode offers a clear-eyed view—and a reason to stay optimistic.
Chapters
01:50 The Safeguarding Democracy Project
02:19 Incidents of Ballot Seizures and Threats to Elections
03:23 Risks of Ballot Seizures and Judicial Involvement
04:45 Potential Impact of Narrow Election Wins
07:41 Mail-in Ballots and Partisan Strategies
10:38 Decentralized Election System and Federal Laws
15:14 Need for a Constitutional Right to Vote
17:26 Challenges in Amending the Constitution for Voting Rights
19:55 Potential Court Packing and Judicial Politics
20:55 Reforming the Electoral College and Voting System
24:37 Disinformation, Cheap Speech, and Media Challenges
29:30 AI, Deep Fakes, and Election Misinformation
36:33 Media's Role in Democracy and Public Trust
37:58 Optimism and Future Directions for Democracy
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
4,708
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
3 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 50 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
49
Social presence
0
YouTube
68
Engagement
60
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