Politico

Hello, and welcome to this week’s installment of The Future In Five Questions. Brendan recently spoke with Audrey Tang, a software programmer who served as Taiwan’s first Minister of Digital Affairs from August 2022 to May 2024. As a self-professed “conservative anarchist,” Tang frequently emphasizes the potential for emerging technologies to break down existing power structures and advance a radically accessible form of democracy. She’s now a senior fellow at the Project Liberty Institute, an effort by billionaire real estate developer Frank McCourt to create “a more people-centric web” (in part by purchasing TikTok, if possible).

Tang talks about her skepticism of plans to watermark AI-generated content, how governments and tech platforms can use AI to create constructive online spaces and why Taiwan’s January election was remarkably free of damaging deepfakes and polarizing attacks.