September 9, 8:30 to 9:30pm
Tishman Auditorium, University Center
website
Join Microsoft’s president, one of the tech industry’s broadest
thinkers, for a frank and thoughtful discussion about how to harness the
power of today’s technology while tackling the threats of an
increasingly digitized world.
Microsoft President Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief:
When your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to
help address the world you have helped create. This might seem
uncontroversial, but it flies in the face of a tech sector long obsessed
with rapid growth and sometimes on disruption as an end in itself.
While sweeping digital transformation holds great promise, we have
reached an inflection point. The world has turned information technology
into both a powerful tool and a formidable weapon, and new approaches
are needed to manage an era defined by even more powerful inventions
like artificial intelligence. Companies that create technology must
accept greater responsibility for the future, and governments will need
to regulate technology by moving faster and catching up with the pace of
innovation.
In Tools and Weapons, Brad Smith and his coauthor Carol Ann
Browne bring us a captivating narrative from the cockpit of one of the
world’s largest and most powerful tech companies as it finds itself in
the middle of some of the thorniest emerging issues of our time. These
are challenges that come with no preexisting playbook, including
privacy, cybercrime and cyberwar, social media, the moral conundrums of
artificial intelligence, big tech’s relationship to inequality, and the
challenges for democracy, far and near. While in no way a
self-glorifying “Microsoft memoir,” the book pulls back the curtain
remarkably wide onto some of the company’s most crucial recent decision
points as it strives to protect the hopes technology offers against the
very real threats it also presents. There are huge ramifications for
communities and countries, and Brad Smith provides a thoughtful and
urgent contribution to that effort.
Join Brad Smith as he sits down in conversation with Trevor Noah, bestselling author, world-famous standup comedian, and host of the Daily Show, to discuss Tools and Weapons and how the world should navigate the vast potential and existential risks of our digital world.
A limited number of free tickets for this event is available to New School students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Click here to reserve a ticket. Please present your NewCard at the event to verify your registration.
This event is co-sponsored by Strand Books and the School of Media Studies at The New School. Opening remarks by Peter Asaro, Director of The New School’s Graduate Program in Media Studies.