Everything is happening so fast. And a lot of it’s bad. What can research and science organizations do when issues are complex, fast-moving, and super important?
More like this: Independent Researchers in a Platform Era w/ Brandi Guerkink
Building knowledge is more important than ever in times like these. This week, we have three guests. Megan Price from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) shares how statistics and data science can be used to get justice. Janet Haven and Charlton McIlwan from Data & Society explore the role that research institutions can offer to bridge research knowledge and policy prescription.
Further reading & resources:
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou
Imagine doing tech research… but from outside the tech industry? What an idea…
More like this: Nodestar: Turning Networks into Knowledge w/ Andrew Trask
So much of tech research happens within the tech industry itself, because it requires data access, funding, and compute. But what the tech industry has in resources, it lacks in independence, scruples, and a public interest imperative. Alix is joined by Brandi Guerkink from The Coalition of Independent Tech Research to discuss her work at a time where platforms have never been so opaque, and funding has never been so sparse
Further Reading & Resources:
Disclosure: This guest is a PR client of our consultancy team. As always, the conversation reflects our genuine interest in their work and ideas.
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
Governments around the world are using predictive systems to manage engagement with even the most vulnerable. Results are mixed.
More like this: Algorithmically Cutting Benefits w/ Kevin De Liban
Luckily people like Soizic Pénicaud are working to prevent the modern welfare state from becoming a web of punishment of the most marginalised. Soizic has worked on algorithmic transparency both in and outside of a government context, and this week will share her journey from working on incrementally improving these systems (boring, ineffective, hard) — to escaping the slow pace of government and looking at the bigger picture of algorithmic governance, and how it can build better public benefit in France (fun, transformative, and a good challenge).
Soizic is working to shift political debates about opaque decision-making algorithms to focus on what they’re really about: the marginalised communities who’s lives are most effected by these systems.
Further reading & resources:
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we host live shows and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
Seeing is believing. Right? But what happens when we lose trust in the reproductive media put in front of us?
More like this: The Toxic Relationship Between AI and Journalism w/ Nic Dawes
We talked to a global expert and leading voice on this issue for the past 20 years, Sam Gregory to get his take. We started way back in 1992 when Rodney King was assaulted by 4 police officers in Los Angeles. Police brutality was (and is) commonplace, but something different happened in this case. Someone used a camcorder and caught it on video. It changed our understanding about the role video could play in accountability. And in the past 30 years, we’ve gone from seeking video as evidence and advocacy, to AI slop threatening to seismically reshape our shared realities.
Now apps like Sora provide impersonation-as-entertainment. How did we get here?
Further reading & resources:
Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!
Post Production by Sarah Myles
What happens when AI models try to fill the gaping hole in the media landscape where journalists should be?
More like this: Reanimating Apartheid w/ Nic Dawes
This week Alix is joined by Nic Dawes, who until very recently ran the non-profit newsroom The City. In this conversation we explore journalism’s new found toxic relationship with AI and big tech: can journalists meaningfully use AI in their work? If a model summarises a few documents, does that add a new layer of efficiency, or inadvertently oversimplify? And what can we learn from big tech positioning itself as a helpful friend to journalism during the Search era?
Beyond the just accurate relaying of facts, journalistic organisations also represent an entire backlog of valuable training data for AI companies. If you don’t have the same resources as the NYT, suing for copyright infringement isn’t an option — so what then? Nic says we have to break out of the false binary of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them!’
Further reading & resources:
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
Mozilla Foundation wants to chart a new path in the AI era. But what is its role now and how can it help reshape the impacts and opportunities of technology for… everyone?
More like this: Defying Datafication w/ Abeba Birhane
Alix sat down with Nabiha Syed to chat through her first year as the new leader of Mozilla Foundation. How does she think about strategy in this moment? What role does she want the foundation to play? And crucially, how is she stewarding a community of human-centered technology builders in a time of hyper-scale and unchecked speculation?
As Nabiha says, “restraint is a design principle too”.
Plug: We’ll be at MozFest this year broadcasting live and connecting with all kinds of folks. If you’re feeling the FOMO, be on the look out for episodes we produce about our time there.
Further reading & resources:
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
Loneliness and mental health illnesses are rising in the US, while access to care dwindles — so a lot of people are turning to chatbots. Do chatbots work for therapy?
More like this: The Collective Intelligence Project w/ Divya Siddarth and Zarinah Agnew
Why are individuals are confiding in chatbots over qualified human therapists? Stevie Chancellor explains why an LLM can’t replace a therapeutic relationship — but often there’s just no other choice. Turns out the chatbots designed specifically for therapy are even worse than general models like ChatGPT; Stevie shares her ideas on how LLMs could potentially be used — safely — for therapeutic support. This is really helpful primer on how to evaluate chatbots for specific, human-replacing tasks.
Further reading & resources:
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
What’s it like working as a local representative when you live next door to Silicon Valley?
More like this: Chasing Away Sidewalk Labs w/ Bianca Wylie
When Hilary Ronen was on the board of supervisors for San Francisco, she had to make lots of decisions about technology. She felt unprepared. Now she sees local policymakers on the frontlines of a battle of resources and governance in an AI era, and is working to upskill them to make better decisions for their constituents. No degree in computer science required.
Further reading & resources:
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
Welcome to the final boss of scams in the age of technology: Enshittification
More like this: Nodestar: The Eternal September w/ Mike Masnick
This is our final episode of Gotcha! — our series on scams, how they work, and how technology both amplifies and obscures them. For this final instalment we have Cory Doctorow on to chat about his new book Enshittification.
Is platformisation essentially just an industrial level scam? We will deep-dive the enshittification playbook to understand how companies lock users into decaying platforms, and get away with it. Cory shares ideas on what we can do differently to turn tide. Listen to learn what a ‘chickenised reverse centaur’ is…
Further reading & resources:
Thought we were at peak scam? Well, ScamGPT just entered the chat.
More like this: Gotcha! The Crypto Grift w/ Mark Hays
This is part three of Gotcha! — our series on scams, how they work, and how technology is supercharging them. This week Lana Swartz and Alice Marwick join Alix to discuss their primer on how generative AI is automating fraud.
We dig into the very human, very dark world of the scam industry, where the scammers are often being exploited in highly sophisticated human trafficking operations — and are now using generative AI to scale up and speed up.
We talk about how you probably aren’t going to get a deepfake call from a family member to demand a ransom, but the threats are still evolving in ways that are scary and until now largely unregulated. And as ever even though the problems are made worse by technology, we explore the limitations of technology and laws to stem the tide.
Further reading & resources:
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
This just in with data centers: Energy grids are strained, water is scarce, utility costs are through the roof — ah well, let them eat compute, I guess!
More like this: AI Thirst in a Water-Scarce World w/ Julie McCarthy
It was just climate week in NYC and we did a live show on data centers with four amazing guests from around the US…
Thank you to the Luminate Foundation for sponsoring this live show and for all of our NY-based friends, and network from around the world that made it to Brooklyn for a magical evening. You can also watch the live recording on Youtube.
Further reading & resources:
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
OpenAI just secured a bizarre financial deal with Nvidia — but the math is not mathing. Is the AI sector an actual market, or a series of high-profile announcements of circular relationships between a tiny number of companies?
More like this: Making Myths to Make Money w/ AI Now
Alix sat down with Sarah Myers-West to go through the particulars of this deal, and other similar deals that are propping up AI’s industry of vapour. This is not your traditional bubble that’s about to burst — there is no bubble, it’s just that The New Normal is to pour debt into an industry that cannot promise any returns…
Further reading & resources:
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
Multi-level marketing schemes have built an empire by enticing people with promises of self-realisation and economic freedom. The cost is simple: exploit and be exploited.
More like this: Worker Power & Big Tech Bossmen w/ David Seligman
This is part two of Gotcha! Our series on scams, how they work, and how technology is super-charging them. This week Bridget Read came to Alix with a very exciting business opportunity. Bridget authored Little Bosses Everywhere — a book on the history of MLM.
We explore how door-to-door sales in the mid 20th century US took on the business model of a ponzi scheme, and transformed the sweaty salesman into an entrepreneurial recruiter with a downline.
MLM originators were part of a coordinated plan to challenge the new deal in lieu of radical free enterprise, where the only thing holding you back is yourself, and the economy consists solely of consumers selling to each other in a market of speculation. The secret is, no one is selling a product — they’re selling a way of life.
Further reading & resources:
Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!
Hey you! Do you want some free internet money? If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is!
More like this: Making Myths to Make Money w/ AI Now
This is Gotcha! A four-part series on scams, how they work, and how technology is supercharging them. We start with Mark Hays from Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), and get into one of the biggest tech-fuelled financial scams out there: cryptocurrencies.
Like many things that require mass-buy in, crypto started with an ideology (libertarianism, people hating on Wall Street post 2008). But where does that leave us now? What has crypto morphed into since then, and how does it deceive both consumers and regulators into thinking it’s something that it’s not?
Further reading & resources:
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
Gotcha! is a four-part series on scams, how they work, and how technology is supercharging them — running through to October 10.
In the series we look at:
What if you could listen to multiple people at once, and actually understand them?
More like this: **The Age of Noise w/ Eryk Salvaggio**
In our final instalment (for now!) of Nodestar, Andrew Trask shares his vision for a world where we can assembly understanding from data everywhere. But not in a way that requires corporate control of our world.
If broadcasting is the act of talking to multiple people at once — what about broad listening? Where you listen to multiple sources of information, and actually learn something, without trampling over the control that individuals have over who sees what, when.
Andrew says that broad listening is difficult to achieve because of three huge problems: information overload, privacy, and veracity — and we are outsourcing these problems to central authorities, who abuse their power in deciding how to relay information to the public. What is Andrew doing at OpenMined to remedy this? Building protocols that decentralise access to training data for model development, obviously.
Further Reading & Resources
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
Social media isn’t really social anymore. But that might be changing. Rudy Fraser over at Blacksky Algorithms has built something new. He has built the infrastructure to provide a safe online space for the black community, and in the process challenges the ideas of hierarchical, centralised networks. His work — even outside the very cool development of Blacksky — is an amazing, concrete example of how the abstract ambitions of decentralisation can provide real value for people, and sets us up for a new kind of tech politics.
More like this: How to (actually) Keep Kids Safe Online w/ Kate Sim
This is part two of Nodestar, our three-part series on decentralisation. Blacksky is a community built using the AT Protocol by Rudy Fraser. Rudy built this both out of a creative drive to make something new using protocol thinking, and out of frustration over a lack of safe community spaces for black folks where they could be themselves, and not have to experience anti-black racism or misogynoir as a price of entry.
Rudy and Alix discuss curation as moderation, the future of community stewardship, freeing ourselves from centralised content decision-making, how technology might connect with mutual aid, and the beauty of what he refers to as ‘dotted-line communities’.
Further reading:
Rudy is a technologist, community organizer, and founder of Blacksky Algorithms, where he builds decentralized social media infrastructure that prioritizes community-driven safety, data ownership, and interoperability. As a Fellow at the Applied Social Media Lab at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, he advances research and development on technology that empowers marginalized communities, particularly Black users
How did the internet become three companies in a trenchcoat? It wasn’t always that way! It used to be fun, and weird, and full of opportunity. To set the scene for the series, we spoke to a stalwart advocate of decentratilsation, Mike Masnick.
More like this: Big Tech’s Bogus Vision for the Future w/ Paris Marx
This is part one of Nodestar, a three-part series on decentralisation: how the internet started as a wild west of decentralised exploration, got centralised into the hands of a small number of companies, and how the pendulum has begun it’s swing in the other direction.
In this episode Mike Masnick gives us a history of the early internet — starting with what was called the Eternal September, when millions of AOL users flooded the scene, creating a messy, unpredictable, exciting ecosystem of open protocols and terrible UIs.
Further reading & resources:
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
What’s the deal with Silicon Valley selling imagined futures and never delivering on them. What are the consequences of an industry all-in on AI? What if we thought more deeply than just ‘more compute’?
More like this: Big Dirty Data Centres with Boxi Wu and Jenna Ruddock
This week, Paris Marx (host of Tech Won’t Save Us) joined Alix to chat about his recent work on hyperscale data centres, and his upcoming book on the subject
We discuss everything from the US shooting itself in the foot with it’s lack of meaningful industrial policy and how decades of lackluster political vision from governments created a vacuum that has now been filled with Silicon Valley's garbage ideas. And of course, how the US’s outsourcing of manufacturing to China has catalysed China’s domestic technological progress.
Further reading & resources:
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
Foxglove and Global Action Plan have just sued the UK government over their YOLO hyperscale data center plans.
More like this: Net0++: Data Centre Sprawl
Local government rejected the data center. But Starmer’s administration overruled them. They want to force the development of a water-guzzling, energy draining data center on a local community who has said no. And all of this is on the green belt. The lawsuit filed this week might put a stop to those plans.
Alix sat down Ollie Hayes from Global Action Plan and Martha Dark from Foxglove to discuss the legal challenge filed this week. Why now? Aren’t the UK aiming for Net 0? And how does this relate to the UK government’s wider approach to AI?
Further reading & resources:
Computer Says Maybe Shorts bring in experts to give their ten-minute take on recent news. If there’s ever a news story you think we should bring in expertise on for the show, please email pod@themaybe.org