Computer Says Maybe

• Worker Power & Big Tech Bossmen w/ David Seligman

  This week Alix interviewed David Seligman, Executive Director of Towards Justice, to tell us more about how big tech companies act brazenly as legal bullies to extract wealth and power from the working class in the US. He makes a compelling case for the urgent need to re-orient our thinking about political power and organise against it.We talk about legal devices like forced arbitration and monopolistic practices like algorithmic price fixing and wage suppression. And we dig into the existential issue of tech companies asserting more and more control over markets and people without taking any responsibility for the dominating role they play.Further reading & resourcesTowards Justice California drivers suitEichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banal State of Evil by Hannah ArendtThe Dual State by Ernst FraenkelProhibiting Surveillance Prices and Wages by Towards JusticeGill VS Uber — class action led by Towards Justice**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!**

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• AI Can’t Fix This: Live in London

  Last week Alix was in London to talk UK politics and broligarchy with four amazing guests:Martha Dark from Foxglove gave us the history and implications of the NHS/Palantir partnership of horrorMatt Mahmoudi outlined the UK’s push to amp up facial recognition surveillance and to outlaw protests (seems good)Seyi Akiwowo shared a retrospective of the development of the Online Safety Act — the UK’s online speech regulation meant to protect kidsTanya O’Carroll did a victory lap, sharing details of her case against Facebook’s intrusive ad-targeting business model**Subscribe to our newsletter for up-to-the-month opportunities to get involved!**

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• Technology Nationalism in India w/ Divij Joshi

  Amidst the scrambling of geopolitics, there is increasing conversation and momentum for the concept of tech sovereignty. It basically means that countries should build their own technology rather than rely on Silicon Valley. India Stack! Euro Stack! Everyone wants a stack.In this episode we explore India’s work over the last 20 years to build ‘digital public infrastructure’ or DPI. They went YOLO on a digital ID system in a country of 1 billion people — with very mixed results. Did this ‘public infrastructure’ lead to a locally-owned marketplaces? Nope! Has the fact that their PM is a Hindu nationalist limited India’s ability to tout this work on the global stage? Also nope! It’s actually allowed the government to techwash its authoritarianism.Lots to unpack here, and fortunately, we’re joined by Divij Joshi, a researcher focused on the political economy of ‘digital public infrastructure’ or DPI, to explore India’s attempts at digital ID and government-as-a-platform.Further reading & resources:Government as a Platform by Tim O’ReillyThe Global DPI AgendaRecovering the ‘Public’ in India’s Digital Public Infrastructure Strategy by IT for ChangeAadhaar’s mixing of public risk and private profit by Aria ThakerInterrogating India’s quest for data sovereignty by Divij Joshi**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!**Divij is a Research Fellow at ODI Global and a Doctoral Researcher at UCL, where his research and advocacy focuses on understanding the political economy and governance of emerging technologies to articulate a vision for a fair and just information society. His thesis examines how the emergence of 'Digital Public Infrastructures', as platform and data-based information systems are shaping notions of economic development and political subjectivity in India and globally.

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• AI Assistant or AI Boss? w/ Data & Society

  Two years ago, we were told that ‘prompt engineer’ would be a real job — well, it’s not. Is generative AI actually going to replace and transform human labour, or is this just another shallow marketing narrative?This week Alix speaks with Aiha Nguyen and Alexandra Mateescu, who recently authored Generative AI and Labor: Power, Hype, and Value at Work. They discuss how automation is now being used as a threat against workers, and how certain types of labour are being devalued by AI — especially (shocking) traditionally feminised work, such as caregiving.Further reading:Generative AI and Labor: Power, Hype, and Value at Work by Aiha Nguyen and Alexandra MateescuBlood in the Machine by Brain MerchantSubscribe 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!*Aiha Nguyen is the Program Director for the Labor Futures Initiative at Data & Society where she guides research and engagement. She brings a practitioner's perspective to this role having worked for over a decade in community and worker advocacy and organizing. Her research interests lie at the intersection of labor, technology, and urban studies. She is author of The Constant Boss: Work Under Digital Surveillance and co-author of ‘At the Digital Doorstep: How Customers Use Doorbell Cameras to Manage Delivery Workers’, and ‘Generative AI and Labor: Power, Hype and Value at Work’.**Alexandra Mateescu is a researcher on the Labor Futures team at the Data & Society Research Institute, where she investigates the impacts of digital surveillance, AI, and algorithmic power within the workplace. As an ethnographer, her past work has led her to explore the role of worker data and its commodification, the intersections of care labor and digital platforms, automation within service industries, and generative AI in creative industries. She is also a 2024-2025 Fellow at the Siegel Family Endowment.*

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• Regulating Privacy in an AI Era w/ Carly Kind

  This week Alix is speaking with her long-time friend and collaborator Carly Kind, who is now the privacy commissioner of Australia. Here’s something you may be embarrassed to ask: what does a privacy commissioner even do? We got you…Alix and Carly will discuss how privacy regs bump up against current trends in AI, how to incentivise compliance, and the limits of Australian privacy laws.**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!**Carly Kind commenced as Australia’s Privacy Commissioner in February 2024 for a 5-year term. As Privacy Commissioner, she regulates the handling of personal information by entities covered by the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and seeks to influence the development of legislation and advance privacy protections for Australians. Ms Kind joined from the UK-based Ada Lovelace Institute, where she was the inaugural director. As a human rights lawyer and leading authority on the intersection of technology policy and human rights, she has advised industry, government and non-profit organisations on digital rights, artificial intelligence, privacy and data protection, and corporate accountability in the technology sphere.

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