Can Democracy Survive Big Tech?

Alexis Crews on elections, misinformation, and holding tech companies accountable

Artificial intelligence is creeping into every aspect of our lives and many conversations about geopolitics and governance. The big tech companies which control AI, our communications platforms, and more, have emerged as powerful global actors unto themselves. The stakes couldn’t be higher—we are facing highly polarized information environments, and democracy itself is at risk. 

In this episode, the Institute for Global Affairs’ Jonathan Guyer is joined by Alexis Crews, a tech policy expert working on trust and safety. Alexis has more than a decade of experience spanning government and tech companies like Meta and Google. They discuss election integrity, tech regulatory frameworks the US can learn from, the difference in approach to AI between the US and China, and much more.

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Alexis Crews is a technology policy expert with more than a decade of experience spanning US politics, foreign policy, and technology governance. She is the founding customer success manager at Cinder, a responsible AI company focused on trust and safety. She previously worked in the Global Responsible AI Practice at Accenture and was a senior fellow at the nonprofit All Tech Is Human. Alexis has also led election and information integrity projects at Meta and Google.

Watch Alexis’s recent TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZMYN7mXzV8

This post is part of Independent America, a research program led out by Jonathan Guyer, which seeks to explore how US foreign policy could better be tailored to new global realities and to the preferences of American voters.

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