How Tech Platforms Threaten Our Future, With Former White House Advisor Tim Wu (Part One)

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Serenti. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with Tim Wu, recorded live at Conway Hall. Wu is one of America's most influential thinkers on technology, monopoly power and the public good. A professor of law at Columbia University and former special assistant to President Joe Biden for technology and competition policy, he is known for coining the term net neutrality, and for his landmark books, The Attention Merchants and The Curse of Bigness.

In this conversation, Wu joined Alex Krasodomoski, program director. of the Digital Society program, a Chatham House, to reveal the dangers of the emerging AI economy. Drawing on his new book, The Age of Extraction, Wu argued that without meaningful intervention, tech platforms will consolidate unprecedented power, and that breaking up monopolies may be the only way to unleash creativity. innovation and prosperity for society as a whole. Let's join the conversation now live at Conway Hall in London.

Thanks folks. Welcome. I'm thrilled to be here and thrilled to be joined by you and also by Professor Tim Wu, professor at Columbia Law School, former advisor to President Joe Biden on questions of tech and competition and author of many books on contemporary technology, including the one that we are here to discuss today, the age of extraction. Now before we get stuck in, we have taken the temperature of the room on this question, do you as an audience think that tech platforms threaten our future?

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