AI for the Rest of Us

Live with Kara Swisher

Episode Summary

Kara Swisher, the one-of-a-kind tech reporter, podcaster and book author, dropped by The University of Texas at Austin’s Cactus Café for a spirited conversation with a live audience about her concerns over the concentration of power in a few big tech companies, the capacity of tech to be used as both a tool and a weapon, her embrace of self-driving cars and her belief that AI will never replace human creativity.

Episode Notes

Kara Swisher, the one-of-a-kind tech reporter, podcaster and book author, dropped by The University of Texas at Austin’s Cactus Café for a spirited conversation with a live audience about her concerns over the concentration of power in a few big tech companies, the capacity of tech to be used as both a tool and a weapon, her embrace of self-driving cars and her belief that AI will never replace human creativity. 

Swisher is the host of the podcast On with Kara Swisher and the cohost of the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway, both distributed by New York magazine. Her latest best-seller is Burn Book, a memoir of her many years covering Silicon Valley.

Dig Deeper

The Hammer of Witches, Wikipedia

Is it Time to Regulate AI?, AI for the Rest of Us (Sep. 12, 2024)

Episode Credits

Our co-hosts are Marc Airhart, science writer and podcaster in the College of Natural Sciences and Casey Boyle, associate professor of rhetoric and director of UT’s Digital Writing & Research Lab.

Executive producers are Christine Sinatra and Dan Oppenheimer. 

Sound design and audio editing by Robert Scaramuccia. Theme music is by Aiolos Rue. Interviews are recorded at the Liberal Arts ITS recording studio.

The cover photo for this episode is © Philip Montgomery / New York Magazine.