Computer Says Maybe

Anthropic’s Claude was used in the military operation to kidnap president Maduro earlier this year. Why? Unclear. Was this legal? Absolutely not. More like this: AI In Gaza: Live from Mexico City Surprise, surprise: the DoD feels that they should able to use AI models however they want, as long as its lawful — but… was this lawful? They are now threatening to designate Anthropic as a supply chain...

It’s our second week of playing AI lingo bingo. The summit in India is underway and the air is thick with vague terms that fail to describe the big problems. More like this: Lingo Bingo at the India AI Summit w/ Karen Hao, Joan Kinyua, Chenai Chair, and Rafael Grohmann With us this week to discuss co-opted terms is Meredith Whittaker on how ‘open source’ cannot meaninfully be applied to AI systems...

The AI Impact Summit in India is just a couple of days away and we are ready to drown in vague terms that kinda describe AI, and definitely obscure power. Let’s talk about how to reframe those terms… More like this: The Vaporstate: All Hail Scale at the AI India Summit We’ve partnered with the AI Now Institute and Aapti Institute to conduct twelve interviews based around the biggest and baddest te...

In The Vaporstate, we have traveled to Brazil, India, and the UK. But what does this look like as a global movement of nations and companies evangelising technology as the key to solving all problems, everywhere? More like this: Paris Post-Mortem (live) For our final instalment of The Vaporstate, Alix is joined by Astha Kapoor and Amba Kak to reflect on the series, and discuss the upcoming AI Acti...

What does US tech billionaire Larry Ellison get when he gives the Tony Blair Institute hundreds of millions of dollars? More like this: The Vaporstate: ID in India In our third installment of The Vaporstate, we are joined by two journalists from Lighthouse Reports, who tell all about their investigation into the questionable relationship between Oracle founder Larry Ellison, the Tony Blair Institu...

What happens when the very way you prove who you are is stolen by someone else? And what happens when a country stands up to Meta and builds their own. More like this: The Vaporstate: ID in India For episode two of The Vaporstate, Alix is joined by Rafael Zanatta and Luã Cruz . Rafa walks us through the incredible story of how his mom’s digital ID was stolen and a clever bank teller stopped someon...

Our first exploration of The Vaporstate takes us to India, home of Aadhaar: a mammoth digitisation project that charts a path from technical solution for public service delivery, through mission creep and popular opposition, to a knotty but inescapable part of Indian existence today. More like this: Is Digitisation Killing Democracy? w/ Marietje Schaake Joining Alix for part one of The Vaporstate...

This is The Vaporstate, a new series on the worldwide government bonanza of enthusiastic digitisation: Digital IDs, digital payment systems, massive data exchange platforms. What are the every-day impacts of these digitisation projects, and why now? The Vaporstate is a deep exploration of digital public infrastructure: we will hear from the journalists, civil society groups, and lawyers from aroun...

Infinite AI slop means we are moving away from our the age of information into what Eryk Salvaggio calls ‘the age of noise’. More like this: Straight to Video: From Rodney King to Sora w/ Sam Gregory We’re replaying five deep conversations over the Christmas period for you to listen to on your travels and downtime — please enjoy! What happens if you ask a generative AI image model to show you what...

Welcome to the final boss of scams in the age of technology: Enshittification More like this: Nodestar: The Eternal September w/ Mike Masnick We’re replaying five deep conversations over the Christmas period for you to listen to on your travels and downtime — please enjoy! Is platformisation essentially just an industrial level scam? We will deep-dive the enshittification playbook to understand ho...

Litigator David Seligman describes how big tech companies act brazenly as legal bullies to extract wealth and power from the working class in the US. More like this: The Human in the Loop: The AI Supply Chain We’re replaying five deep conversations over the Christmas period for you to listen to on your travels and downtime — please enjoy! Alix and David talk about legal devices such as forced arbi...

Reporting on the tech industry proves a huge challenge due to how opaque it all is — Empire of AI author Karen Hao talks us through her investigative methods in a conversation from November 2024. More like this: Net 0++ AI Thirst in a Water-Scarce World w/ Julie McCarthy We’re replaying five deep conversations over the Christmas period for you to listen to on your travels and downtime — please enj...

A replay of our conversation with Kate Sim, on the state of child safety online. More like this: Dogwhistles: Networked Transphobia Online We’re replaying five deep conversations over the Christmas period for you to listen to on your travels and downtime — please enjoy! Child safety is a fuzzy catch-all concept for our broader social anxieties that seems to be everywhere in our conversations about...

Before we break for the year we wanted to reflect on what the podcast brought us in 2025, and what we want to see for 2026 This week Alix is joined by two members of The Maybe team: Prathm Juneja and Georgia Iacovou. We discuss our favourite episodes from the year while making it clear we love all episodes equally. And also this is not your standard clip show. We ask ourselves what we learned, why...

The Onion CEO Ben Collins has successfully turned political satire into a sustainable business. He explains why humorous messaging is important to understand times like these — and why he’s dead serious about buying Infowars. Head to our feed for more conversations from MozFest with Abeba Birhane, Audrey Tang, and Luisa Franco Machado. Further reading & resources: Read The Onion , America’s fi...

Audrey Tang has some big ideas on how we can use collective needs to shape AI systems — and avoid a future where human life is seen as an obstacle to paper clip production. She also shares what might be the first actual good use-case for AI agents… Further reading & resources: 6-Pack of Care — a research project by Audrey Tang and Caroline Green as part of the Institute for Ethics in AI More a...

You can’t build a digital rights movement if you don’t know what you’re fighting for. Luisa says that we’re in a crisis of imagination, and that participation — the non-performative kind — is one big way out of this. Further reading & resources: Learn more about Equilabs Follow Luisa on Instagram — sorry, email is too ‘analog’ Check out her Linktree **Subscribe to our newsletter to get more st...

Earlier this year Abeba Birhane was asked to give a keynote at the AI for Good Summit for the UN — and at the eleventh hour they attempted to censor any mention of genocide in Palestine, and their Big Tech sponsors. She was invited to give her full uncensored talk at Mozfest. Further reading & resources: Abeba’s blog post on the UN censoring her talk on AI More about Abeba More about The AI Ac...

Mozilla Festival 2025. Barcelona. Three days in a bonanza of interesting people, ideas, and technology politics. These were our highlights! More like this: FAccT 2025 episodes one and two This is an extra special episode packed full of conversations and on-site impressions of the biggest Mozfest we’ve had in years. This year Alix moderated three panels, ran an AMA, and even hosted a game show — an...

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 ( HRDA...

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 joi...

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 ou...

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. Pol...

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 thei...

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 wa...