Activists Of Tech — The responsible tech podcast

Welcome back to the last episode of this special series exploring the relationship between power and technology! We now know that power and technology are intertwined and led to the rise of techno-oligarchy in the United States. Beyond structural impacts on democracy and the power structure that allowed this to happen, I wondered if democratic governance of technology was even possible considering...

Reading about TESCREAL feels like reading a bad sci-fi storyline written by a man with a god complex. Unfortunately, it’s real: a movement that allows its proponents to use the threat of human extinction to justify expensive or harmful projects and demand billions of dollars to save us from these "existential threats". Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? These are very real aspirations, and some of the t...

After Trump was elected and tech oligarchs like Elon Musk, an unelected person, started to get power in decision making at the White House, the topic of technofascism got very popular. But this political trend of leveraging technology to empower fascist ideologies is nothing new. A lot has been written about technofascism in the 21st century, but I wanted to go back to the basics: what is fascism...

Biometrics – our fingerprints, faces, irises, for instance – are increasingly used to verify identity. But what happens when this data collection is applied to vulnerable populations, like refugees and asylum seekers, in ways that can remove agency rather than offer them protection? In the humanitarian space, organizations justify biometric data collection in a way to increase efficiency, yet stor...

If cartography, the ancestor of GIS, already displayed colonial patterns and racist stereotypes back in the day, why would the digital legacy of maps be any different? Maps have an authoritative value and hold power through the representation of the world from the perspective of who creates them. However, communities are often excluded from their design leading to the misrepresentation or omission...

A few months ago, in August 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials, a rule that will allow to deter AI-generated fake reviews by prohibiting fake or false consumer reviews, consumer testimonials, and celebrity testimonials for instance. Now, if you have ever been online shopping, you know that this decision is pretty groundbreaking. Ho...

Since #KOSA, protecting kids online has continued to be a very hot topic. However, we often overlook the influence industry that also impacts kids online, for instance with the emergence of thousands of YouTube family channels. Horror stories of behind the scenes abuse have come out in recent news stories, in addition to the serious lack of protection when it comes to their privacy and their finan...

Large Language Models, or LLMs, may be the most popular type of AI systems, often seen as an alternative to search engines, even though they should not as the information they throw at users only resemble and mimic human speech and is not always factual, among many other issues that are talked about in this episode. Our guest today is Khaoula Chehbouni, she is a PhD Student in Computer Science at...

We’re all very used to being surveilled by now, especially through surveillance capitalism, or the commodification of our personal data - our age, location, mental state, shopping habits, tax bracket, are collected through various apps and websites and sold to thousands of third parties. On top of that, governments surveil their citizens, and it does not only happen in authoritarian States such as...

Queer Arabs are often portrayed as either hated by their own Arab community or as Western imports as if Queerness came along with colonialism. And online, queer voices are mostly from western countries and don’t represent Queer Arabs. However, Marwan Kaabour is challenging these narratives by researching, digitally archiving, and celebrating Queer History in the Middle East from centuries ago to t...

Technology narratives are set in the present, and all of their promises set in the near future. We’ve heard about flying cars, automated jobs, robots able to annihilate Humanity, robots able to save Humanity, and went through many hype cycles, like crypto – a time that I personally tend to block from my memory. But looking at the past, at the evolution of technology, is actually critical for its i...

An interesting thing about AI systems is that without a deliberately designed structure to promote the concept of sharing, AI systems will focus solely on maximizing their individual rewards, even if this prevents them from successfully completing a task. This is fascinating, and Dane Malenfant is working on the long term credit assignment problem at MILA and McGill University, and researching sol...

More often than not, on Activists of Tech, we talk about the problems caused by technology and the solutions or alternatives to these issues. And I kind of feel guilty because I don’t want to convey the idea that AI is inherently bad. Though the mainstream culture surrounding AI certainly is, we have agency over what we create, over the AI systems we design and on how they impact others. Today’s g...

This episode was initially scheduled to be released in mid-December, but it was actually recorded last week, specifically one day after the American elections took place and after Trump was re-elected. B and I briefly talked about the elections in this episode, but I decided to edit and release earlier because B radically tries to move us forward and their dedication and energy made me feel so muc...

Culture, the arts, or what makes humans.. Humans. Yet it is not accessible to just everyone. When you think about it, how do you make a play accessible to visually or hearing impaired people? How can we use technology to translate art into senses they were not designed for in the first place? How does tech and art relate to disability justice? More often than not, people with disabilities are not...

We produce a LOT of data, tweet for any reason, post a gazillion pictures online, and that somehow will give an idea to future generations about who we are and where we are at culturally speaking. Of course, and thankfully, not every digital content is archived, it has to have cultural or historical significance. But how do you determine that? Who should decide which stories get to be archived or...

Facing an injustice and requiring legal representation is a tedious, complex, and time-consuming process, on top of being expensive and not affordable by everyone who needs help. This hurdle greatly contributes to the prevalence of injustices, and today we are focusing on the case of a Nigerian non -profit, Citizens’ Gavel that is addressing this hurdle and leveraging AI to promote access to justi...

Growing up in the Bay area with a future drawn for her, Nidhi Sinha did everything she was supposed to do: go to a private high school, pursue a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics, and work at a Big Tech company in the Bay. Until she got into AI ethics and burst the bubble she had grown in. What happens when surveillance happens in your own backyard, and the Big Tech companies you were tol...

AI products and features are becoming ubiquitous. When the targets of AI systems are children in school, it should be common sense that the impacts of these technologies should be assessed before reaching the “market” and the privacy of kids subjected to them should be the number one priority of school boards. Of course, it’s not, and serious questions arise. How does the AI hype and the mass depl...

Sexism and oppression are tied to culture, which in turn impacts the tech industry, tech design and deployment. To talk about the relationship between the patriarchy, women in tech, and how to fight back, I talked with Mia Shah-Dand, founder of Women in AI ethics and creator of the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics. In this episode, Mia talks about her personal story and upbringing, what women have...

The Digital Services Act was recently passed in the European Union, and I wondered how did this piece of regulation related to climate change and how did it impact online activism? In this episode, Rachel Griffin, PhD candidate and lecturer in law at Sciences Po Paris, talks about the intersections between platform regulation and digital justice, the impacts of tech on the environment, shadow bann...

Did you know that encryption could save lives? In this episode, Elina Eickstaedt, spokesperson at the Chaos Computer Club, answers my questions with no BS about privacy, surveillance, German and European tech policies and their impacts, surveillance capitalism, and explains why tech solutionism is not the magical answer to all of our problems. Created, hosted and produced by Mélissa M'Raidi-Kechic...

What does it take for Big Tech to exist? Who does it take? What knowledge do we value and amplify in AI systems? In this episode, Laurence Meyer, Racial and Social Justice Lead at the Digital Freedom Fund and co-director at Weaving Liberation teaches us about the importance of decolonization, questioning the system, and how to do it. Our guest unpacks the narratives surrounding technology and AI,...

What is the relationship between content moderation, social media organizing, censorship and the online space? How is one of our fundamental human rights, free speech, protected or not in the online space? In this episode, Eliška Pírková, Senior Policy Analyst and Global freedom of expression lead at Access Now, gives us expert insight on the topic. Created, hosted and produced by Mélissa M'Raidi-...

Remember when Clearview AI got fined 20 million euros by the Hellenic Data Protection Authority for its intrusive Facial Recognition & data collection practices? Yeah, that wouldn’t have been possible without the incredible work of the non-profit Homo Digitalis. In this episode, Lamprini Gyftokosta, Director of Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights at Homo Digitalis, talks about mass survei...