Podcast Lifeboats: Kim Polese

Not all AI is democracy ending AI. Some can support democracy and make it better. In this episode, I talk to Kim Polese, whose career launching transformative technologies (beginning with Java) has landed with a democracy enhancing AI, CrowdSmart. We talk about its potential, as well as the open source alternative, pol.is.

“This is Larry Lessig. I met my guest today first in 1998, when she spoke at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Kim Polese had been an early employee at Sun Microsystems, where she was the founding product manager for Java.

She then left Sun Microsystems and co-founded Marimba, where she served as CEO until 2000 and chairman of the board until the company was sold to BMC Software. She then served as CEO of Spike Source, a company that sold software to automate open source application management. But the startup that we're talking about today, or maybe better, celebrating today, is AI-driven technology for understanding and surfacing common understanding within a community.

That idea, me celebrating AI, might strike you as odd, at least recognizing what I've said earlier in this series, because so much of this season has been doomsplaining AI. But the key to recognize is that AI is good at what it's told to do. And if what it's told to do is good or valuable or edifying for society, it can be very good at doing useful or valuable or edifying things for society.

And the edifying thing that the technology behind[…]”

From Another Way, by Lawrence Lessig: S5E22: Lifeboats: Kim Polese, Jan 19, 2024

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s5e22-lifeboats-kim-polese/id1436210825?i=1000642246665

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