Episode 4

Paolo Carozza of The Oversight Board on Innovating with Integrity in an AI-Powered Future

How do we, as business leaders and innovators, govern emerging technology with a moral compass? In this powerful and deeply thoughtful episode, Conor Gaughan sits down with Paolo Carozza—legal scholar, human rights advocate, Notre Dame professor, and co-chair of the Oversight Board—to explore what responsibility looks like in a time of rapid AI transformation.

Together, they unpack:

  • The radical promise (and challenge) of the Oversight Board as a new model of tech governance 
  • What AI means for labor, human dignity, and democracy
  • How to find consensus across cultures in the face of global complexity
  • Why we must develop new institutions for an interconnected world
  • And how we can each foster deeper dialogue to find hope in uncertain times

If you're a business leader, innovator, policymaker, or just a curious mind wondering how we build a better future with this fast-emerging technology, this episode is for you.

For more great interviews, follow Consensus in Conversation subscribe to ‪@ConsensusDigitalMedia‬ and follow us Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your favorite podcast platform. 

Connect with Conor Gaughan on LinkedIn and Threads @ckgone 

Connect with Paolo Carozza on Linkedin 

Learn more about The Oversight Board at OversightBoard.com and follow them on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube.

Consensus in Conversation is hosted and executive produced by Conor Gaughan. This episode was produced by Kate Tucker for Consensus Media.

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Consensus in Conversation is a podcast by Consensus Media.

Transcript

Paolo Carozza: We need to be completely open and attentive to the realities of human experience. Reality has never betrayed me and I, uh, I, I, so I love really deeply, as much as possible without preconceptions, we can never be without preconceptions completely in life, but as much as possible, just stepping back from those and listening to people and watching what's happening and absorbing and asking what, what is it like to live that life in these circumstances? I don't think we can do the work of law and human rights without that kind of immersion in, in the, the, the concreteness of human experience.

Conor Gaughan: Hey folks, I'm Conor Gaughan and that was Paolo Carozza. I'm so excited to bring you this conversation with him. He's a legal scholar, a beloved professor at Notre Dame, a lifelong human rights advocate and co-chair of the Oversight Board, and if that weren't enough, he's also advised the Vatican on all things emerging technology and AI.

In fact, right now he's in Rome hosting a global conference, uniting folks from industry technology, regulatory worlds, academia, social and natural sciences to explore in his own words what can be harnessed from these rapidly evolving models to advance human flourishing, to enhance human labor rather than destroy it, to build on education rather than replace it. And to recognize our responsibility across industries and institutions, across borders and cultures to mitigate inherent risks and uphold human dignity. Paolo left me with so much to think about on how we ethically govern technology in a world that's changing faster than I can finish this sentence, and I know you're gonna love hearing from him.

We've been on a bit of a hiatus over at the pod, but we're still committed to bringing you insightful conversations with some of the best innovators, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders, building successful businesses, while also helping us build a better world, and Paolo is a perfect example. So without further ado, welcome Paolo Carozza to Consensus in Conversation.

Conor Gaughan: Awesome. Alright. Thanks for doing this. I'm very excited. Why don't we start with letting you introduce yourself and maybe, uh, a list or litany of your many titles and roles.

Paolo Carozza: Sure. So my name is Paolo Carozza. I'm a professor of law at University of Notre Dame. Over the last 30 years that I've been there, I've done a lot of work outside of the academy too, in particular in international human rights. So I’ve had the privilege of serving in a variety of international bodies, and leading them, the organization of States and the Americas, uh, within sort of Europe and the European space, including Eastern Europe into Central Asia, with the US government, the State Department, and now in the private sector with the Meta Oversight Board, of which I'm one of the co-chairs.

Conor Gaughan: They always say you can only connect the dots looking backwards. If we were to kind of, um, reflect on everything from your childhood and parents through, education, early career trajectory, what are the moments or memories that you think stand out as, as pivotal towards doing what you do now in this vocation?

Paolo Carozza: So I am, I'm the son of Italian immigrants, uh, to the United States, and that's, always been really important dimension of my identity in life. My parents were both educators as well. My father was so deeply convinced that that literature had this great historical role to play in educating human hearts and minds to care deeply about important things and to, and to teach us. Uh, my father, a professor of comparative literature, speciality was Dante. So we grew up, you know, with, other kids grew up with Disney, I grew up with Dante. and, and, um, and, and my mother a a teacher of, uh, Italian and French language. So languages, cultures were always important to us. I came from a public high school in the Midwest. I grew up in Milwaukee and when I went to college, I found myself surrounded by people whose backgrounds, points of view, formation, intellectual capacities were so exciting in a certain way, right? I mean, stimulating this, this sense that there's an endless world out there. So I grew up going back and forth between Italy and the United States and elsewhere in Europe, I lived in South America. I've lived in the Pacific, I've worked in Africa and um, and in Eastern Europe. So, the sort of global perspective is something I inherited from my parents and is really central to everything I do.

I would say when I first began to be interested in human rights, I was in the university in the early half of the nineteen eighties. It was a period of proxy cold war going on in a variety of places, many of them in Latin America. I became intensely interested in Latin America, learned the language, the culture, the studied, the religion, I mean, all sorts of things. And, I was so both concerned, but, but you know, just intrigued by what was happening, the way that the US was involved, uh, sometimes for the good and sometimes not, uh, the way that the Catholic church was involved sometimes for the good and sometimes not, that really set me on a trajectory of long-term interest in human rights and international affairs and then, throughout the years of my academic life, the possibilities that I've had to work in international institutions have always come as a surprise.

In other words, they, I just thought I was destined to be a researcher and a teacher. But to be put into situations where you couldn't just live in abstractions anymore, um, where the decisions I was making, they, they really mattered for people in front of me. I, I saw their faces, I heard their testimonies. I knew their stories. I had to talk to the woman whose son was disappeared by the security forces. Those things mark you in a way that, um, typically in the professoriate, we don't really get the privilege. And it really is a privilege to interact with those kinds of, you know, deeply human needs. Um, so ever since, you know, I've, I've tried to sort of keep a foot in the intellectual sphere, but also very deeply in practice and in the reality of human experience.

Conor Gaughan: Have you found a singular framework with which you approach all legal scholarship? Is, is there some kind of universal approach that's come out of that?

Paolo Carozza: I could point to two things. I think, I mean, at a theoretical level I was not educated in law school or in my prior studies, um, a lot of which were philosophically oriented, not educated in what would classically be, uh, thought of as the natural law tradition. As I came to discover that in particular during the early years of my time at Notre Dame, um, it, it really struck me how powerfully capable of, um, giving insights in a, in a universal way to the diversity of human experience around the world. The pointing to universal values that transcend time and the way that it's really rooted in a deep rational reflection on a human person, but on human communities and how they vary from one another. So that's really structured, uh, a lot of it.

But the second thing goes back to what I was saying about my encounter with practical human rights work is how much we need to be completely open and attentive to the realities of human experience. Um, reality has never betrayed me and I love really deeply, as much as possible without preconceptions, we can never be without preconceptions completely in life, but as much as possible, just stepping back from those and listening to people and watching what's happening and absorbing and asking what, what is it like to live that life in these circumstances? Um, I don't think we can do the work of law and human rights without that kind of immersion in, in the, the, the concreteness of human experience. And when you really sort of push down to those level of, of human motivations that they always prove to be the same, even though they're inflected in different ways.

Conor Gaughan: If we were to take some of those same motivations and look at the moment we're in now, just thinking about those baseline human emotions and values, what would you think are current kind of global norms emerging, um, from those universal truths around dignity, privacy and free expression in the moment we live in right now with technology, um, with, you know, institutions, uh, globally where they are? How would you apply some of those same, um, beliefs or understandings about what's deep down in all of us to the world we're living in and kinda the challenge we’re facing?

Paolo Carozza: It's an extremely difficult and very urgent question, Conor. Very, very urgent question. The temptation I think is to be reductive in one of, of two ways, right? On, on the one hand, there's the temptation to simply say, well, human dignity’s universal. We all have value, we all have worth, we have international treaties and long traditions that say that freedom of expression is important. We all care about privacy and therefore we have to arrive at, impose, maybe, uh, very consistent uniform standards everywhere because they're universal values. There is a, an underlying truth to that, right? Uh, because of what I was saying about these elementary human needs that we all share. But it's not enough.

Now, the other temptation at the other end is to say, well, there's not really any there. Those are just words. They're covers, they're excuses for people to, uh, be imperialistic, and not to, uh, value. the, the diversity of the human family. And there’s a truth to that too, right?

We're not all the same. We live in different times and places and languages and, and cultures and foods. I love different foods. You know, I wouldn't want them all to be the same, but the truth is you put those two things together. That's what makes it so hard and so urgent.

Conor Gaughan: Right.

Paolo Carozza: And I think that is the underlying ideal of the International Human Rights Movement that was born after World War Two starting in nineteen forty-eight really with the Universal Declaration, it’s this ideal that there are universal values. We can all have a certain kind of tendency toward them, and we all should sort of look at them, but they need to be instantiated in different ways in every and every time. And we need to take seriously those differences.

And so there's sort of this, this dialectic that has to go back and forth between that, that, you know, um consciousness and, and appreciation of the universal value. And at the same time to be really attentive to the realities that, that people live in very different places.

So, you know, dignity is not gonna be understood in the same way, even though we can

all agree that, that the human being has an irreducible value, that we should all champion, um, freedom of expression even more. It's gonna be very different.

Notions of privacy even across the Atlantic are profoundly different between the US and Europe, let alone when you get to, um, uh, other parts of the global south, you know, the challenge is not ignoring either end of that.

Conor Gaughan: Yeah. Yet, and this kind of is a perfect segue to the, the next chapter of our conversation. There are certain movements that are so global in nature that it's hard to imagine how to square that circle, one of which is technology.

Paolo Carozza: Yep.

Conor Gaughan: Technology has no borders, is moving faster than, any individual society, let alone global social norms can, can move, moving faster than regulation and policy in any one, country, let alone a global policy or, or a regulatory framework can move. So what does moral responsibility look like, for business and technology leaders in that kind of complex environment?

Paolo Carozza: The environment is so big and moves so fast that it’s very easy for people to get lost in it, right? Social responsibility for any company, but especially for companies that are dealing at that scale, that speed, that sort of distance from human individuals. The, the danger is to think of good only in aggregates, right? Well, uh, this is, is gonna do more good than harm. It's, you know, net progress on a global scale. When you start thinking in that way, real people become the victims, right? Because they're ignored. Um, there's always the ones who are less powerful or less convenient or more vulnerable, and then they're overlooked in the name of progress, right?

And so social responsibility for those companies seems me to require, in a certain sense, stepping back from the scale, from the speed. That's not to say don't, don't innovate, don't progress, don't keep moving the technology forward. But there needs to b capacity to reflect on how it's actually impacting real people in real time. Now, individuals and communities in far distant areas that the decisions that are made in Silicon Valley or in Washington DC are now having an impact on, and we need to take that into account.

Conor Gaughan: Um, are there frameworks where we're not just reliant on government regulation, we're not just reliant on self-regulation, um, but there are other potential powers or forces that can act as guardrails. Um, are there third ways to incentivize moral responsibility?

Paolo Carozza: I, I, I deeply believe in the preeminence of culture. so, I'm very much an institutionalist. I deeply believe in the need for strong institutions and defend institutions, the institutions of the rule of law in particular, but no institution is gonna substitute for the basic cultural conditions that, that generate them and sustain them. Right. So we need to foster at the level of basic civic discourse at the level of education in families, uh, the capacity to take account to these values. And they can't just be, um, imposed by regulation.

So, I wouldn't be someone who for 30 years produces new lawyers every year if I didn't believe wholeheartedly, in the need for law and the good of law. But I'm gonna be the first one to say, law can't be the first solution, right? it's gotta follow or law's not gonna work at all. We have too many examples historically where it hasn't worked, where there's a culture, uh, underneath it that is unwilling to abide by it or sustain it, or to keep it healthy. And so, um, regulation is necessary. I don't think anyone would say in the environment that we're in, that we can simply forgo any kind of public intervention and regulation, but law's not, it's gotta come from below.

Now, the, the sort of third way, that you're referring to, to me means also that coming from below isn't just a question of from the companies and industries themselves. Um, there need to be mediating institutions, the institutions that, that are between the individual and power, whether that's the power of state or the power of a major tech company. Uh, ones that are meaningfully independent of both of those other powers, um, but have important roles to play. And that, that's why I accepted to take the job at the Oversight Board, uh, when I was offered it. That's why I was excited about it. I didn't have a background in tech at all, up to that point. It was only in human rights and international law. but I, I immediately saw the promise, that it held out as a model for thinking creatively about how we can generate new kinds of institutions that are connected to the powers that are being exercised enough to be meaningful and realistic. Um, and yet independent of them enough to be voices of important values and responsibility in those environments.

Conor Gaughan: Yeah. I love the idea of cultural growth, and organically built guardrails. So I wanna come back to that, but this is actually a great, I think, chance to, to learn a little bit more about, your work on the Oversight Board and the Oversight Board in general. For folks that haven’t heard of it, just let's start with a quick description of what it is, and, you know, for folks maybe have a little bit of an inkling, what do you think folks that think they know about it get wrong? Or what's kind of some misconceptions around it?

Paolo Carozza: The Oversight Board was established by Meta five years ago as, um, an independent body charged with making difficult and significant, uh, decisions about content moderation on Meta’s platforms. So we receive appeals from people whose content has been removed or who object to content that's found on the platforms that they think it should be removed. and we can decide those particular cases and make decisions that are binding on Meta contractually about content that should be removed or that should stay up. And then in connection with that, uh, the Oversight Board makes policy recommendations. We've made over 250 at this point about how Meta should, change its content, policy rules or its enforcement practices or the way that it uses automation and so forth. Many of them have been accepted and implemented by Meta. And even the ones they haven't, they respond publicly. So it's pretty powerful force for um, helping to direct and shape in, in certain ways Meta's content, policies and practices. It's a very diverse and global Board. There are 21 members, six from the United States, the rest from all different parts of the world. Uh, very, uh, diverse in every other respect too. Professional background, ideological background, religious beliefs, language, and, uh, and experience. It's a real privilege to be a part of a body like that.

I think that the two principal misconceptions about the Oversight Board, fall on two poles of a spectrum. One dominant, especially in the early part, early years of Board, but to some extent still present today, is to think that we're just part of Meta. Right, right. The independence of the Board is key. It was set up to be independent, guaranteed in large part by Meta, Meta putting a very, very large amount of money in an irrevocable independent trust with independent trustees that they can't control. Right? so they can't, uh, uh, if they object to our decisions, simply say, well, the spigot is off, so to speak, we're gonna remove you from the Board. They can't remove any of us. Once we're appointed and the Board appoints its own future members, right? So Meta doesn't even control that, and that's critical for it being, uh, a meaningful source of accountability.

The other end of the spectrum though, I, I think are, are those who think that as an Oversight Board, we, do, and we ought to have oversight over every single of Meta's business, right? That we’re general oversight into every form of activity that Meta is engaged in. I mean, I wish, you know, our mandate were wider and we're always pushing to widen it. Um, but the reality is that relative to the massive size and scope of what Meta does, you know, we have a relatively small slice of it that we oversee and that we try to ensure some sort of accountability for.

Conor Gaughan: You talk about 21 diverse global members of the, of the Board. What's it like deliberating with a group like that who come with such diverse ideological cultural, professional backgrounds? Put us in the room. What's it like?

Paolo Carozza: Well, uh, I mean, it's fascinating. It's a privilege just to listen. It's also extremely difficult sometimes you get very, very contentious, controversial cases in which we're very divided. And, uh, the opinions that publish, which are all public and available on the website for anybody, um, often have expressions of opinions within them, right? Minority views as well as majority views. And you can tell that we've fought, uh, a lot over it. What, what makes it possible to do it without turning acrimonious, uh, or becoming stalled at an impasse is, first of all, that all of us were very deliberately chosen with a view towards creating a body that is capable of dialogue, reason, persuasion, across these lines. In other words, every time we're interviewing someone for a new position or an opening on Board, one of the fundamental questions we all have is how? How do you work with people you disagree with? Talk to us about times when you've had to accept something you didn't agree with, or when you, uh, were trying to persuade someone who had a view that was radically different from yours and it was very difficult. And how did you handle that? What track record do you have of working in institutions that entail compromise and dialogue and reason and persuasion?

So the Board is, you know, uniquely composed in that sense. It is, um, something that one has to be very intentional about in the formation of the institution and the preservation of the institution. and then after that you know, it's not just a job, it has to be a set of relationships. You have to, you have to understand people not simply in the argument that arises in this case involving, uh, you know, allegedly genocidal, you know, um, statements. But, um, you have to understand that there are people who have family members they love and countries they love and concerns and, uh, temperaments that are different.

And I, I'm gonna say this cautiously because I don't want it to be interpreted in the wrong way, but you have to love them. Right? And, the reason I say cautiously is that I, I wouldn't want that to be understood in a, as a sentimental thing, right? I don't have, you know, warm and fuzzy feelings for all of my other 20 members of the Board. And some of them can be really prickly, I'm sure they find me to be so. But I want their good. And I want to understand what they see as that good. And I want to do that before I argue with them.

Conor Gaughan: Yeah. The humanity. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, what about examples of where, um. there was a, a either a deep disagreement or simply a deep, um, difference of, of culture and background where you found a surprising, you find surprising. Are there examples of kind of that, um, those global norms that we talked about earlier, um, coming to life in unexpected ways among the Board itself on, on cases?

Paolo Carozza: Sure, sure. Uh, I can give you one example that we, you know, that we really struggled with a lot how to formulate, uh, the opinion at a very delicate time. Um, there was, it seemed like, a very simple and innocuous question, and you'll see quite quickly that it's not. The question before us was how Meta should moderate the use of the Arabic word “shahid” on the platforms? Shahid is usually translated into English with the word martyr. And it is sometimes used in order to celebrate people who have engaged in, uh, extreme forms of violent conduct against other people, but have died in the process. And so they're hailed as martyrs for having engaged but perished in the commission of terrorist acts.

Because of that use Meta was prohibiting the use of the word shahid in any context on their platforms. So much so that it, uh, by Meta's own admission, was, in their words, probably the most moderated word on Meta on, on Meta's platforms at all. Okay. And, uh, the problem was that it, it was arguably also that, moderation was also arguably resulting in the take down of sorts of content that had nothing to do with terrorist violence.

Conor Gaughan: Right.

Paolo Carozza: Um, it's used in all sorts of other ways. Language is a very subtle thing, and it's, and even Arabic is not used in the same way in Arabic societies, let alone the way that is translated in other things. It has religious inflections to it. It's used to, uh, refer to people who die in shipwrecks, for example. Um, it is sometimes given as a, as a first name to children, um, in, uh, um, on, in photographs of, of city scenes in some Arabic speaking societies. Um, the word shahid is included on street signs as a title certain names when streets are named after people as an honorific. Right? And so, um, the question was before us that Meta put us is, you know, should we, should we loosen these rules prohibiting this word, um, in order to accommodate, uh, these relatively innocuous uses of and to avoid moderation, but at the risk then that there will be errors in the other direction and there will be some content on the platform which celebrates terrorist violence? It's an extremely difficult question, right, because there are always trade offs, but it's even more difficult in the context of, uh, the discussions that we would have when, you know, my colleagues come from Arabic speaking and Muslim societies, but also know, include someone who, uh, was a long time member of the Israeli government and the Ministry of Justice there. And in many other parts of the world where that geographic content is, is, is, is different from us we have very strong views about terrorism, um, or simply about freedom of expression and a much more libertarian approach to it. We arrived in the end at, I, I think, a nuanced position that did recommend opening it up, but also was quite, uh, sort of firm about the Meta's affirmative responsibility to not legitimate or glorify terrorist violence.

You asked how it was surprising, and, and, and what was surprising was not simply the outcome we, we, the outcome we reached, that had been reached during, in the form of a compromise. Okay, we're gonna horse trade. I don't like it. You don't like it, but this is the best we can do. So that's not surprising. We reach compromises all the time. The surprising part was that we all learned something from one another. And we all, we all grew in the process of that dialogue. Uh, you know, we came in with strong views and said, but maybe I have to rethink that, or maybe I, maybe I didn't take that all into account. Um, maybe I came in with a certain, um, sort of bias that I wasn't quite aware of, uh, going into it because I don't really understand the cultural context. We may have ended up in the same substantive position at the end that we started out with. I'm sure many of us changed as well, but in the way that we got there, there was a, a process of education of one another. That's what was surprising.

Conor Gaughan: Again, I don't know if this is the perfect word, but it does feel like an innovative approach, the Oversight Board in general. This is an innovation, a cultural innovation to borrow the framework that we have kind of started with, um, to working alongside or beyond, um, the regulatory regimes that may exist in places. The rules of, of the corporate Board of directors imposing on, on the company.

I'm curious, to take this and extend it now, you know, I am knee deep thinking about AI., like I know a lot of folks, who live and work in media and technology are. I just finished Mustafa Suleyman's book, The Coming Wave, which was a really interesting critique of the opportunities, but also the risks of, um, the emerging technology and, and AI. I finished the book and I was left with this, feeling there was a gap, there was a lack in, in his, framework for, for success, which was, you know, I, I think he pretty clearly believes that government regulation is not sufficient, but needs to be part of it, that technology itself and technologists have a role to play, that companies have a role to play. But it does feel like there's this other need to, to be met from institutions that are cultural, be they, philanthropically aligned with, you know, certain players or parties, be they extra governmental or, or beyond the scope of, of a country. And I'm curious how you are beginning to think about this, with AI and emerging technologies, using what you've learned and seen from the Oversight Board. Where are the opportunities or, or even, necessities for us to begin inventing and innovating new cultural frameworks, new cultural institutions, new ways of figuring out how to handle these complex questions that are coming our way very, very quickly.

Paolo Carozza: You, you said earlier in our conversation, Conor, you referred to the problem that new technologies are necessarily global, right? They spill over, uh, borders and, to say they spill over borders is an understatement, right? They're a tsunami over our borders and over the boundaries that have typically divided people in the past. And for exactly that reason. The mechanisms that have been developed over the last 500 years of regulating problems, which are fundamentally organized around states and legal systems and constitutional systems, are just not sufficient. Yeah. Right. They're not fit for purpose anymore. in the same way that if, uh, you know, the extent that we have to, uh, address, um, certain problems of climate change, the transcend borders or problems of the coordination of outer space. I mean, the problem is we don't have the institutions for doing that. Yeah. The institutions of international law are woefully insufficient for it. And again, I teach international law. I don't mean that just to reject the idea that there is or should be value in international institutions. Again, I've served in them, for a reason, but exactly from serving them, I see they're not enough and they can't be enough.

And so we need to create new kinds of institutions. I, I don't think it's a fantasy say that. The state itself was a new kind of institution that emerged in the early modern period in Europe, right? And everything that we think today about state sovereignty and state borders and so forth is a historically contingent fact that emerged to address new kinds of human needs. So it's not a fantasy to say, we need to develop new kinds of institutions. We need to be creative. The question for me is where are they gonna come from, right? Who's going to generate them? Where is the generativity and the human creativity in it? So we need to find new forms of collaboration, and really, it's urgent and I don't know where it's gonna come from.

I do think that one fertile source are exactly those sorts of movements and human realities that themselves by nature, transcend borders. Right. So I've done a lot of work with the Church, and the Vatican over the years in inter-religious dialogue and peace and justice issues on social science questions. In fact we're, uh, on the cusp of having a major conference, uh, in Rome at the, at the Vatican, thinking about, how universal religious precepts and communities can help generate the kinds of ideals and social relations that might give birth to new creative kinds of institutions of responsibility and solidarity. So we're having, assisting this major conference AI in October there that's going to unite people from industry, uh, from the technology world, from the regulatory world in different parts of the world, academics from different disciplines across the social sciences and natural sciences, with the open question of what is the good in these that can be harnessed for human flourishing? How can it help to, to advance social justice to, help, enhance human labor rather than destroy it, to build on human education rather than replace it and simultaneously with that, what kinds of institutions in the broadest sense of governance responsibility from the industry level to these new kinds of intermediary institutions, to state international ones are necessary in order to help direct technology towards those goods and away from what we realistically have to recognize are the risks inherent to them too?

Conor Gaughan: I wanna get back to this, but something that caught my attention, which is this notion of the nation state as we know it isn't the end all be all. It's not historically, you know, anchored in perpetuity. It's a relatively, in historical frameworks, relatively new, um, body. One of the things that I'm struck by right now is the fact that there are a handful of, not even a handful, meaningful number of, of corporate entities whose size and scale, and power dwarfs that of nation states. They've got more capital or than the GDP of many countries, or they've got, you know, more human capital than many countries, more intellectual property, value. In many cases, they do cross cultures. I'm curious, like if we need to be thinking about a new framework for the corporate citizen that's not state-based, but that's global and what does that look like and how do we do that? How, what is the process by which we would begin to invent a new notion of, corporate citizenship, such that, you know, companies themselves that have this scale and this power, can enjoy that opportunity and that potential. But with the, the correct, um, responsibility and accountability assigned to them. I mean, have you thought about or are people talking about this? Or how do you think about this? Cause it's, I think it's a fascinating, like moment in history to think to, um, grapple with these realities.

Paolo Carozza: Yeah, Yeah, it, it certainly is. I think about it a lot. We think about it a lot collectively at the Oversight Board. I say, um, I don't have answers, but, I'll just start with a couple observations. I mean, so consider that, Meta, Meta’s platforms, although, you know, it's a US company obviously founded in the US, US innovation behind it, US engineering behind it, 95% of its users are outside the United States.

Conor Gaughan: Yeah.

Paolo Carozza: Okay. I mean, that, that's a pretty striking number. Most people don't know just how global it is and how little the base is in the United States. On the other hand, though, I don't know the percentage, but a vast percentage vastly disproportionate to that 5% of users of Meta's revenues are from advertisers who are in the United States, or maybe United States and Europe. Yeah. Right. So the disproportion between the economic base of the company and the users who are affected by the company is, there's a mis, a terrible mismatch there. And the question is, how, how do you align those?

Now, in my experience at the Board, it's really interesting that the advertisers who have talked to us and who are interested in the Board are in fact very interested in the Board. They, they love us because they see the Board as helping to ensure that the platforms remain, a space, the kind of space where they would want to advertise. Right. It's important for their brand. Yeah. They understand that that has global dimensions, but in order to help educate them as to what that means, there are whole processes, stakeholder input and participation that need to be put in place and deployed. Right? Because even in the abstract, if they say, oh yeah, really 95% outside the United States, that's a pretty big number. Maybe we should take that into account. The next question is, how do you take that into account? Right. So in our decisions, we try very hard to seek stakeholder input, you know, from the local places where the, the cases arise and, and where things are happening. But I think that's, you know, our capacity to do it is, is only in some sense a, a small symbolic gesture towards what needs to be done in stakeholder participation and input, on a global scale that helps to transform and align the economic interests with the human consequences.

Conor Gaughan: Yeah, it actually raises an interesting question. You know, as we think back to the conversation on emerging technology and AI, a lot of your work is centered on this notion of human right and human dignity. As you think about the moment we're in, on the precipice of a major technological chapter, and, and with unknowns, a lot of unknowns coming our way, how are you thinking about, personally, but also, at the Oversight Board? Are you thinking about the interplay between human dignity and the role of labor and the AI transition and like all the things that we don't know are coming with emerging technology and its potential to disrupt any number of, uh, somewhat stake relationships between, um, humans and the state, humans and the company, humans and cultural institutions, like, what is that dialogue like for you?

Paolo Carozza: Well, as, as, as, as you referred to, I mean, I've been, you know, writing about the idea of human dignity for, for, oh, you know 25 years at least. I've always been writing about it and, and following what in it, precisely because it's been such a powerful vehicle for fostering cross-cultural global dialogues about what is good for people, right? And therefore how economics and politics and so forth should be directed. For all the, for all the problems and polemics over different disagreements of how it's used at the core, I think that's true, itt remains true.

But in the world of AI, I've become increasingly convinced in recent years that the way we've been talking about dignity, especially in of western advanced, economically advanced countries, is too reductive. It's too limited. We've allowed the idea of dignity to be focused more and more just on protecting the individual's capacity to make important choices. Now, don't get me wrong, I mean, the, the individual choice is important, right? Being able to, to pursue with a meaningful degree of self-determination, the goods that they, we value in life is a really important achievement of modernity. And I don't mean to disdain that or set it aside, but if that's all we're focused on, when we ask about what's, what's needed to protect human dignity, then, we won't see. We won't actually be able to perceive adequately the risks that AI poses because it's not just a question of protecting the human capacity to choose or to choose freely or to choose well, it changes our relationships, it changes the way that we relate to our, as you said, our work and what it means. And so we have to ask like, how does work relate to human dignity?

Conor Gaughan: Right

Paolo Carozza: How, what does it mean, to live a flourishing human life in relationship to my labor? If I were just freed from labor, would I live a more dignified life? I mean, I personally, I don't think so. But in any case, that's an important question to ask. Yep. Right. When technology begins as we are seeing with alarming frequency and consequences to replace human relationships with artificial ones, when chatbots become romantic partners and kids start committing suicide because they're cut off from the world and immersing themselves in a world of unreality, then we have to start asking, how do real human relationships relate to human dignity, and how do we have to be attentive to those? Choice is not enough.

And so, what I'm trying to do, it’s very hard in these days, is exactly like force the reflection and dialogue about what it means. What is valuable about human beings? dignity at the end of the day just means value. It comes from the Latin word worth. Value, right? Dignitas. Um, and so it, you know, the idea is there's something distinctively valuable about human beings and human life that doesn't apply to other non-human animals, doesn't apply to trees and nature. And I am all for protecting creation and being responsible for it, but we need to ask, what is it about human beings? And, and, and if we don't ask that question, we don't know what to protect from AI.

Conor Gaughan: Yep. The amount of downstream effects are truly alarming. I mean, you, you point to a couple immediately urgent conversations we need to have, around kids and self-isolation around, partnerships, uh, work as the obvious one. It feels like every thinker, you know, every philosopher, every legal scholar, every policy maker, every technologist, in my opinion, should be spending the vast majority of their waking time talking about this and trying to figure this out because it's, potentially the existential conversation of, of our lifetime. Um, uh, yet, you know, we spend so much time, um, talking about other things like market moves and, and, you know, implications of interest rates tariffs or, any number of other conversations that occupy the, the, the current discourse. Do you have a thought on how we enlist our best thinkers have these conversations, in real meaningful ways and immediately? Like this should be the conversation we're all endeavoring to have as often as possible because I do think it, it potentially has such downstream impacts on everything we do. How do we get folks to dialogue on this?

Paolo Carozza: On, on the one hand, these are dialogues we need to be having, like at the micro level, right? I love having this dialogue in this room with you, and facing these questions. I have to have it around my dinner table with my kids, right? Uh, with my friends, not just the ones who are technologists or policy geeks or whatever. They need to be with our neighbors, right? But at the same time, there are people in privileged positions economically, politically, who have a deep personal responsibility to foster the discussion.

I, you know, I don't wanna put it all on them, but, um, but those who are developing the technology, who have economic control over vast portions of it, have a greater responsibility, uh, to foster a public discussion about how to use this. Now we've seen some extraordinary examples of that, right? Someone like Yoshua Bengio I mean, you know, key in the formation of the technology and is now sort of working daily, far as I can tell all over the world, to foster a conversation about responsibility. That's the model I see at, at that… It, it doesn't take away from the being in the capillaries talking about it in our neighborhoods as well. But I think that the people in those privileged positions, the entrepreneurs, the investors, politicians who work in that and, and have capacity to do something about it, have, have a responsibility. And, it's sometimes distressing how little that responsibility is exercised. Yeah. Frankly, right?

Conor Gaughan: I mean, and it is hard, right? These are not, these are hard questions, especially in the public policy arena. The technology moves so fast. I can't expect many of our policy makers to be on the front lines of some of these thought leadership conversations. Although I wish they were. I mean, I have to hope that we will continue to move in that direction. It's just, it does feel like there's an urgency that I wish were more present everywhere.

Paolo Carozza: Well, it's, it, it does require crossing lines. Yeah. All the time. All the time. Right. Um, so the more that we maintain lines, lines of right lines of, I even you know, not the ideological lines, lines of like, you know, in, in working on the Oversight Board, one of the first things that struck me very powerfully is how hard it is to have conversations that are meaningfully informed by an understanding of the technology and an understanding of sort of law and policy and basic principles at the same time. They're two worlds that talk past each other constantly. It's not an exaggeration to say that sometimes the tech world and the world of law and policy are mutually unintelligible to each other.

Conor Gaughan: Yeah.

Paolo Carozza: And so even just like building the spaces and persons capable of crossing those lines is a step in the right direction, because, when you have technology that disrupts every dimension of human life the way that we're seeing now from the most intimate, the way that I think, I mean literally my cognitive freedom and integrity is at stake as well as the large scale things like structure democracy is at stake. When everything is disrupted like that, every line that is maintained, whether it's technical technical or ideological or religious or whatever else, is an obstacle to actually addressing the breadth of the human problem that's in front of us.

Conor Gaughan: It's a brilliant way of thinking about it, mean, it's blowing my mind right now. We just we spent, I spent a lot of time, over the last year thinking about the imperative to rehabilitate the democratic institutions here, and ways that media and communications and storytelling and narratives help break down those lines and cultivate inclusive conversations and bring communities or people together. And when you do think about it in terms of all the various ways that we are divided, not just politically to your point, but all the ways that we're divided, the different languages we speak culturally, it really is, um, important I think that we reflect on our own personal opportunities to try to break down each of those every single time. 'Cause that's the only way it's gonna happen. Yeah.

Well, I want to kind of spend the last few minutes with some optimism and some hope because I, I, I, I think that's also part of what's incumbent on us in, um, advancing the conversation. You're in an incredibly privileged position. What you see, what you get to think about your scholarship, that really does open the door to making lives better for people every day, whether it's the cases that, that arise from the Oversight Board, whether it's the scholarship on human rights internationally. If you would, um, give a singular nugget of advice to business leaders who are trying to advance human dignity alongside their business objectives, what advice do you think aligns those two things?

Paolo Carozza: I had a very interesting, uh, exchange recently with a long time mentor of mine who was reflecting on the state of democracy in our country and in the world, but in particular in the United States. And she has a long and sort of deep appreciation for American history and takes a long view of things. And she said in a summary way, she said, she said, I've become convinced that the thing that sustained American democracy so long was Protestant rectitude. And she meant it half as a joke, right? Um, but, but there was a very deeply valuable point in it too, which is, that all of the laws and institutions, habits and so forth that we have aren't separate from the personal virtues that we bring into the spaces that we have as well. I'm not a business person. I've never created a company. I have enormous admiration for people who are innovators and entrepreneurs who have, uh, created things out of nothing and built them. It's one of the great gifts our country has, has been blessed to, to have that spirit of entrepreneurship and, and innovation and creation. But I think what she said about politics must apply to business as well.

Conor Gaughan: Mm-hmm.

Paolo Carozza: Right? In other words, if you're gonna be in that world and you're gonna, you're gonna display all of that extraordinary creativity, it can't be separate from the kinds of personal virtues that make you oriented towards other people. And, make you sort of pause and ask the question of what impact am I having on other people? And it’s not gonna happen at the macro scale unless it’s at the micro scale. If you're not doing it with your own and your own family and your own office workers and your neighbors, you're not doing it with the people who are halfway across the world impacted by the technology that you just developed. Right.

She used old fashioned Protestant rectitude, because she's thinking of Tocqueville right? Or whatever. Um, but, uh, but I think, you know, in, in modern terms, we could translate the insight, in a way that that would be quite powerfully true. And say we have be concerned for other people and not just self-regarding in all of our human relationships. It starts intimately. And it's not present there, then we have no capacity to, to scale it into the businesses that we build, and the world that we share.

Conor Gaughan: I am tested thinking back to Weber, my second year of college and the Protestant ethic and spirit of capital and capitalism. Trying to think about how Weber would interpret that. But I think it, it makes a lot of sense. Um, if you could wave a magic wand and deploy a universal framework or principle when it comes to emerging technology and where we are today, what would that look like?

Paolo Carozza: It's almost like a Rorschach test where you put something in front of me and say, you know, what's the first word that comes to mind? Uh, but, but the first word that is coming to mind, that keeps, keeps persisting as you were talking, is the word collaborative. Division is our enemy here. We have to collaborate in creative ways, internationally, we need to collaborate industry-wide. You know, I I understand competition is the essence of capitalism and that's also often what drives innovation and all the rest of it. So, you know, I'm not saying we do away with that, but we have to create space for collaboration too, because none of us can do this by ourselves. Isolation is lethal for the human race. Literally, I don't think I'm exaggerating in saying that.

Conor Gaughan: Yeah.

Paolo Carozza: If we isolate peoples one another, if we isolate individuals from one another, then the only thing that will follow is damnation in a very tangible sense.

Conor Gaughan: Yeah.

Paolo Carozza: And so collaborate, we have to collaborate more. We have to find new forms of collaboration, in new kinds of spaces. And, by extension, all of us need to be working to draw people together in conversation, in creation, you know, I see that in my students. Uh, it's an incredible privilege to be a professor and for all the work I've done outside the academy, you at the end of the day, every time I do something else that's in politics and law and institutions and the private sector, much as I love it, I always think, yeah, but it's great to a professor. And the best reason is because then every year I see a new crop of students who give me that hope because that's what they're interested in. They're, they come, they want to talk to each other, they want to create new things. They're open to new ways of thinking. And that, that's what we have to sort of harness and build on. Because we've never faced a problem like this before.

Conor Gaughan: Yeah.

Paolo Carozza: I mean, it just, it's, the scale is mind boggling of what's in front of us.

Conor Gaughan: Yeah. My last question you might have just answered, which is, where do you find hope these days? Like where do you look for hope,

Paolo Carozza: Well, yes,my students, that's an important part of the answer. I mean, there's a certain kind of resistance in them to the reduction of their desires for the future, right, that is really very beautiful. This sense that I desire something greater for myself and for my world. And we have to build on that. But the thing I would say is I'm becoming increasingly convinced that there's a lot of wisdom from the past that needs to inform our future.

Conor Gaughan: Sure.

Paolo Carozza: Um, that we need to look back in order to look forward. In a world that's so dominated by speed and innovation, it's so easy to think that everything's in front of us and everything that came before is obsolete and no longer relevant. I just think that couldn't be more, more false. The great wisdom of religious traditions, of philosophical and ethical traditions, of the whole world of civilizations need to be renewed and appreciated and brought into the discussion. It still matters what Plato and Aristotle said about what makes a good human life. It matters even more when the contours of human life are being threatened in ways that we've never experienced before.

Conor Gaughan: Yeah, I do find it hopeful that there's a renaissance in stoicism. I think it's an interesting, like, trend in, in modern public discourse that, that got that kind of resurgence, I mean, a simple example, but it is interesting to, to watch. Um, thank you so much for taking time today. What a, what a powerful intellectually stimulating conversation. I think. Um, there's no easy answers, but I think inherent in listening to you, um, is the importance in understanding the nuance and listening for it, and being open to thinking about it. Um, and certainly I think, you know, a really eloquent reflection of the urgency of kind of having these really important conversations and these big, know, um, thoughtful, deep, um, conversations wherever we are in whatever way we can in, in our, our lives. So thank you so much.

Paolo Carozza: Thank you for having me, Conor. It's been wonderful. I've really enjoyed it and I admire what you're doing with Consensus. So, uh, that's, that's just one example of the many ways in which we need to, to work together.

Conor Gaughan: Thanks so much to Paolo for this incredible conversation on what it means to be human in an age increasingly governed by technology. I know this will inspire many more conversations and I'd love to hear from you. You can comment on our YouTube or send me a message on LinkedIn. Let's keep the conversation going.

To learn more about Paolo's work or about the work of the Oversight Board, check out the link in our show notes. If you'd like this episode, please make sure you're following the pod on your favorite platform and leave us a review. It makes a big difference. Consensus in Conversation is hosted and executive produced by me Conor Gaugan. You can find me on LinkedIn at CKGone. This episode is recorded at Switch and Board in Washington, DC and produced by Kate Tucker for Consensus Media. Consensus in conversation can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

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Conor Gaughan

CONOR GAUGHAN
Conor founded Consensus Digital Media to
tell uplifting stories about topics that inspire. He
spent the last decade building a digital strategy
firm, and the ten years before that in media
investment banking. Conor graduated with honors
from Harvard University with a
degree in Economics, but his
(super cute) dog, Ace, makes
up for it. Most importantly– he’s
passionate about creators,
innovators, and entrepreneurs
who are making a difference
while making good money.