On Wednesday, January 15, 2025, the Global Solutions Initiative (GSI), Sciences Po Technology and Global Affairs Innovation Hub, and RadicalxChange Foundation welcomed over 131 professionals from the public, private, and civic sectors to Berlin to discuss AI’s impact on the labor force in the coming years to imagine new policy strategies to help workers weather the risks. This is an official side event for the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris on Feb 10th and 11th.

Our aim is to take seriously the possible depth and breadth of AI systems’ disruptions to livelihoods, hone in on policies that would help, and bring them to the upcoming AI Action Summit and beyond. This includes the idea of a new market structure for AI training data (featuring trusted data intermediaries as “necessary counterparties” from which AI companies would need to negotiate rights to use large datasets). Other relevant ideas include new social insurance pools and new forms of capital ownership.

Many thanks to our speakers, organizing committee, partners, and participants.

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ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS

RADICALXCHANGE: RadicalxChange Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to democratic innovation and institutional design through operational partnerships and experimental projects between academia, government, art, technology, and beyond.

GLOBAL SOLUTIONS INITIATIVE: The Global Solutions Initiative proposes policy responses to major global problems, generated through a disciplined research program, elaborated in policy dialogues, and addressed by the G20, the G7 and other global governance fora.

TECHNOLOGY AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS INNOVATION HUB AT SCIENCES PO: The Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) Technology and Global Affairs Innovation Hub’s core mission is to accelerate collaborative technology and governance to address global affairs challenges focused specifically on citizenship and tech, defence and security, and tech and prosperity.

CO-HOST

STIFTUNG MERCATOR: Stiftung Mercator is a private, independent, and non-profit foundation, committed to an open society based on solidarity and equal opportunities.

Today, in Part I of a two-episode conversation, Matt Prewitt is joined by civic entrepreneur and Founder of Project Liberty, Frank McCourt, who is on a mission to reclaim the internet and prioritize human rights in our digital landscape. Drawing parallels between the early public oversight of television and the current state of the internet, Frank highlights the commodification of our data and identities online. He advocates for new protocols and a movement inspired by historical fights against oppression to secure genuine data rights and agency online. As we look to the future, Project Liberty’s endeavors may play a crucial role. This interview is a fantastic opportunity to hear more about Frank’s thinking.

Bios:

Frank H. McCourt, Jr. is a civic entrepreneur and the executive chairman and former CEO of McCourt Global, a private family company committed to building a better future through its work across the real estate, sports, technology, media, and capital investment industries, as well as its significant philanthropic activities. Frank is proud to extend his family’s 130-year legacy of merging community and social impact with financial results, an approach that started when the original McCourt Company was launched in Boston in 1893.

He is a passionate supporter of multiple academic, civic, and cultural institutions and initiatives. He is the founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, a far-reaching, $500 million initiative to transform the internet through a new, equitable technology infrastructure and rebuild social media in a way that enables users to own and control their personal data. The project includes the development of a groundbreaking, open-source internet protocol called the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), which will be owned by the public to serve as a new web infrastructure. It also includes the creation of Project Liberty’s Institute (formerly The McCourt Institute,) launched with founding partners Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, and Sciences Po in Paris, to advance research, bring together technologists and social scientists, and develop a governance model for the internet’s next era.

Frank has served on Georgetown University’s Board of Directors for many years and, in 2013, made a $100 million founding investment to create Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. He expanded on this in 2021 with a $100 million investment to catalyze an inclusive pipeline of public policy leaders and put the school on a path to becoming tuition-free.

In 2024, Frank released his first book, OUR BIGGEST FIGHT: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age.

Frank’s Social Links:

• Project Liberty
• X- Project Liberty (@pro_jectliberty)
• Instagram- Project Liberty (@pro_jectliberty)
• X-McCourt Institute (@McCourtInst)

In this episode, Project Liberty Founder Frank McCourt joins Matt for a second round to discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by rapidly developing AI technologies. Building on their previous chat about digital infrastructure, they explore whether AI will exacerbate social media, digital advertising, and data centralization issues, or fundamentally change them. McCourt emphasizes fixing the internet’s design flaws to ensure AI benefits society, advocates for returning data ownership to individuals and stresses the need for political engagement to align AI with democratic values. Tune in for this enlightening conversation and what we can do moving forward.

Links & References: 

• RadicalxChange(s) | Frank McCourt: Founder of Project Liberty (Part I) on Reclaiming the Internet
• Khmer Empire | Wikipedia
• The Decline of the Khmer Empire | National Library of Australia
• Restrictions on TikTok in the United States | Wikipedia
• TikTok sues to block prospective US app ban | CNN Business
• How Silicon Valley gamed the world’s toughest privacy rules – POLITICO 
• European Union fines Meta $1.3 billion for violating privacy laws : NPR 
• The Dangers of the Global Spread of China’s Digital Authoritarianism | Center for a New American Security
• China’s Techno-Authoritarianism Has Gone Global | Human Rights Watch
• China trying to develop world ‘built on censorship and surveillance’ | Privacy News | Al Jazeera
• Project Liberty
• People’s Bid For TikTok – Project Liberty

Bios:

Frank H. McCourt, Jr. is a civic entrepreneur and the executive chairman and former CEO of McCourt Global, a private family company committed to building a better future through its work across the real estate, sports, technology, media, and capital investment industries, as well as its significant philanthropic activities. Frank is proud to extend his family’s 130-year legacy of merging community and social impact with financial results, an approach that started when the original McCourt Company was launched in Boston in 1893.

He is a passionate supporter of multiple academic, civic, and cultural institutions and initiatives. He is the founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, a far-reaching, $500 million initiative to transform the internet through a new, equitable technology infrastructure and rebuild social media in a way that enables users to own and control their personal data.

The project includes the development of a groundbreaking, open-source internet protocol called the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), which will be owned by the public to serve as a new web infrastructure. It also includes the creation of Project Liberty’s Institute (formerly The McCourt Institute,) launched with founding partners Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, and Sciences Po in Paris, to advance research, bring together technologists and social scientists, and develop a governance model for the internet’s next era.

Frank has served on Georgetown University’s Board of Directors for many years and, in 2013, made a $100 million founding investment to create Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. He expanded on this in 2021 with a $100 million investment to catalyze an inclusive pipeline of public policy leaders and put the school on a path to becoming tuition-free.

In 2024, Frank released his first book, OUR BIGGEST FIGHT: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age.

Frank’s Social Links:

• Project Liberty
• X- Project Liberty (@pro_jectliberty)
• Instagram- Project Liberty (@pro_jectliberty)
• X-McCourt Institute (@McCourtInst)

Speaking to Reuters at Reuters NEXT, The Atlantic’s CEO Nicholas Thompson said AI can ‘dramatically expand our abilities to tell great stories,’ but comes with serious risks.

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Karen Hao, author of EMPIRE OF AI, recently appeared on All Tech Is Human’s livestream series. She was interviewed by Rebekah Tweed (Exec Director of All Tech Is Human).

Learn more and grab your copy of EMPIRE OF AI at EmpireOfAI.com. Learn about All Tech Is Human at AllTechIsHuman.org or see our mission at bit.ly/ATIH2025.

The culmination of over 300 interviews and 7 years of wrestling with this question, EMPIRE OF AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao is a call to action that offers the inside story of OpenAI as a lens for understanding this moment: the tech elite’s extraordinary seizure of power and its threat to democracy.

Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society. She writes for publications including The Atlantic and leads the Pulitzer Center’s AI Spotlight Series, a program training thousands of journalists around the world on how to cover AI. She was formerly a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, covering American and Chinese tech companies, and a senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review. Her work is regularly taught in universities and cited by governments. She has received numerous accolades for her coverage, including an American Humanist Media Award and an American National Magazine Award for Journalists Under 30. She received her Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from MIT.

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Solving hard problems requires a better approach.

​All Tech Is Human moves at the speed of tech while tackling the world’s thorniest tech & society issues. With a network of over 50k individuals across civil society, government, industry, and academia, our organization is committed to collective understanding, involvement, and action. ​

Through our whole-of-ecosystem approach and three pillars of activities (community-building, educational resources, careers), All Tech Is Human surfaces important values, tensions, tradeoffs, and best practices to co-create a tech future aligned with the public interest. Activities include our curated gatherings (NYC, SF, DC, London), Slack community of over 12k members across 105 countries, our popular Responsible Tech Job Board, and our annual Responsible Tech Guide that has defined the field and seeded the next generation of organizations and leaders. ​

Our organization is establishing the relational infrastructure for the Responsible Tech ecosystem, provides a conducive environment for multistakeholder solution-making, and has created a distribution network to rapidly share new concepts and best practices throughout the ecosystem. ​

Learn more at alltechishuman.org.

All Tech Is Human’s Safety by Design: The Role of Civil Society panel with David Sullivan (Digital Trust & Safety Partnership), Merve Lapus (Common Sense Media), Suzi Ragheb (Integrity Institute), and Sean Killingsworth (Design It for Us).

David Sullivan is the founding Executive Director of the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership, where he leads a unique initiative focused on promoting a safer and more trustworthy internet. An experienced human rights and technology policy practitioner, he brings together unlikely allies to solve global challenges related to rights, security, and democracy in the digital age.

David is a co-chair of the World Economic Forum Global Coalition for Digital Safety, a member of the Institute for Security and Technology’s Trust & Safety Advisory Group, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Silicon Flatirons research center at the University of Colorado Law School. He has published extensively on technology, security, and human rights, with commentary appearing in Slate, Tech Policy Press, and Lawfare.

Merve Lapus is a Results-driven education strategist with a track record of expanding reach and impact in K12 learning environments. As Vice President of Outreach & Engagement at Common Sense Education, he’s led initiatives that have reached over 90,000 schools and supported 1.3 million educators. This includes overseeing a regional team driving community engagement, access, and professional development across school community stakeholders including district adoption, regional implementation, parent/family engagement, strategic marketing, and community development.

Merve has over 25 years of experience driving education technology initiatives across school programs, and building educator confidence through professional learning, and strategic implementation. Merve also sits on a number of steering committees addressing school climate and policy, and currently sits on the Marketing and Communications Board for the University of San Francisco (USF), The Alameda Health System Foundation Board, and the Executive Board for the Children’s Creativity Museum of San Francisco.

Seán Killingsworth, Organizing Director (New Member Engagement), Design It For Us.

Seán Killingsworth is the 22 year old founder of The Reconnect Movement. Reconnect is a student-led club that hosts phone-free social events at universities. Reconnect is currently established on 3 campuses and expanding. At 17, Seán began speaking about the effect of social media and phones on Gen Z. He has spoken at Virginia Tech, The Dr. Phillips Center in Orlando, Dopamind, The Suicide Prevention Center of Virginia, and guest lectured at Georgetown University. Seán launched the weekly Power Hour to organize citizens and pass the Kids Online Safety Act. Endorsed by the Anxious Generation and Accountable Tech, the Power Hour generated thousands of letters and calls to key legislators. He is an organizing director for Design It for Us where he will continue to advocate for State and Federal legislation. Seán hosts the Be The Oasis Podcast. His first book Be The Oasis will be published Spring 2026.

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All Tech Is Human moves at the speed of tech while tackling the world’s thorniest tech & society issues. With a network of over 50k individuals across civil society, government, industry, and academia, our organization is committed to collective understanding, involvement, and action. Through our whole-of-ecosystem approach and three pillars of activities (community-building, educational resources, careers), All Tech Is Human surfaces important values, tensions, trade-offs, and best practices to co-create a tech future aligned with the public interest. Noted activities include our curated gatherings (NYC, SF, DC, London), Slack community of over 12k members across 105 countries, our popular Responsible Tech Job Board, and our yearly Responsible Tech Guide that has defined the field and seeded the next generation of organizations and leaders

Our organization brings together expertise, a sandbox for solution-making, and a structure for socialization and mobilization. Learn more at AllTechIsHuman.org

The Internet Archive (archive.org) is a nonprofit library with 40+ million media objects and billions of archived web pages, so it can be daunting to navigate. This introduction video provides a quick introduction to the major collections in the library and provides pointers on how to find books, movies, music, images, and software more efficiently.

Presenter: Alexis Rossi, Director of Media and Access, Internet Archive (alexisrossi.com). Resources

• Internet Archive Help Center – https://help.archive.org/
• Internet Archive Blog – https://blog.archive.org/
• Open Library – https://openlibrary.org

This introduction to using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (archive.org/web) includes information about searching by URL or keyword, understanding the provenance of page captures, and saving your own web pages, along with other features.

Presenter: Alexis Rossi, Director of Media and Access, Internet Archive (alexisrossi.com).