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Politechs

Politechs

A podcast exploring the inherently political nature of technology

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  • 20 episodes
  • fortnightly
  • Avg 1 hr 3 min
  • English

Episodes 20

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  • S2 · E13
    August 17 · 58 min

    Redemption? - Dr. Chris Gilliard

    Friend of the show Dr. Chris Gilliard returns to catch us up on what's been happening in the world of surveillance since last time we talked. From Ring-powered "pet finder" systems to Meta/Rayban-wearing Glassholes to Anthropic's performative handwringing over their Department of War contract, it's not very encouraging out there. You might be able to guess what Chris thinks about the question of whether any of this technology can be redeemed. Mentioned in this episode: On the Impossibility of Ethical Surveillance - essay by Torin Monahan Facial Recognition is the Plutonium of AI - paper by Luke Stark [PDF] Cute videos, but little evidence: Police say Amazon Ring isn't much of a crime fighter - article by Cyrus Farivar [permalink] Careless People - book by Sarah Wynne-Williams The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence - paper by Timnit Gebru and Emile P. Torres [permalink] See the transcript footnotes for more! We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S2 · E12
    August 3 · 1 hr 8 min

    Decomputing - Dan McQuillan

    Dr. Dan McQuillan, Senior Lecturer in Critical AI at Goldsmiths, University of London, defines Decomputing as "a 50:50 hybrid of decolonial and degrowth approaches." He joins us to unpack that further and pick up on some of the themes from his prescient book from June of 2022, "Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence", which came out a mere four and a half months before OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT on the world. Mentioned in this episode: Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence - book by Dan McQuillan [permalink] Tools for Conviviality - book by Ivan Illich danmcquillan.org - Dan McQuillan's blog [permalink] We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S2 · E11
    July 20 · 42 min

    Rhetorical Technology - Emily M. Bender

    Josh and Ray are joined by computational linguist Dr. Emily M. Bender to discuss what "AI" really is, and why the slippery nature of the term is very much intentional. We look at the eugenicist history of the quest to define and measure human intelligence and try to understand what the project of "artificial intelligence" is, then explore LLMs as synthetic text extruding machines and automation technology, as opposed to a machine god on the cusp of being born. Mentioned in this episode: Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 - podcast by Drs. Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna [permalink] THE AI CON - How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want - book by Drs. Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna [permalink] On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜 - paper by Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, et al. [permalink] Ghost in the Machine - film by Valerie Veatch [permalink] The TESCREAL Bundle - paper by Timnit Gebru and Émile Torres [permalink] See the transcript footnotes for more! We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S2 · E10
    July 6 · 1 hr 11 min

    Libraries - Alison Macrina and Kay Slater

    In order to answer the question of whether we still need libraries when we have chatbots, we're joined by Alison Macrina, founder and Executive Director of Library Freedom Project, and Kay Slater, member of LFP and library worker in Chicago. Alison and Kay dispel some myths, talk about how libraries have changed with technology, how libraries are funded, how library workers have a central role to play in resisting AI, and how members of the public like us and our listeners can support libraries. Mentioned in this episode: Library Freedom Project Resources - Posters, bookmarks, presentations, and more resources to help with teaching and promoting information democracy, privacy, and intellectual freedom. [permalink] Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves - paper by Fobazi Ettarh [permalink] Libraries for the People - a leftist library project [permalink] We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S2 · E9
    June 22 · 57 min

    Educators - Nate Madson Dion

    Nate Madson Dion, a fifth grade math teacher from Aurora, Colorado, schools Josh and Ray on how technology has crept into primary schools, how the inevitability narrative manifests with teachers and administrators, and how he has found effective ways to resist, both through one on one conversations with fellow educators, but also around the bargaining table for his union's contract. Nate puts out a call for parents to contact their local school boards, find out how AI is being deployed in their children's schools, and more importantly, how to opt out of it. Mentioned in this episode: Bullshit Jobs - book by David Graeber Parents Fell in Love With Alpha School’s Promise. Then They Wanted Out. - article in Wired [permalink] How to engage in pseudoscience with real data: A criticism of John Hattie’s arguments in Visible Learning from the perspective of a statistician - article in the McGill Journal of Education [permalink] Writing vs AI - article by Cory Doctorow [permalink] Politechs Season 1 Episode 6 - Programmers - Josh and Ray talk about how to talk to programmers about AI. See the transcript footnotes for more! We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S2 · E8
    June 8 · 1 hr 37 min

    Trans Rights - Radhika

    Software engineer and reluctant activist Radhika talks about epistemic violence, identity, immutability, the Enlightenment, common law, and many other things besides to illustrate just one of the ways in which trans people's lives are under attack. We discuss how AI affects trans people, and what it would take to be able to deploy machine learning technologies to improve their lives rather than oppress them, then end on a call to action for technologists. Mentioned in this episode: The Racial Contract - book by Charles Mills The Sexual Contract - book by Carol Pateman Absurd Trolley Problems - a set of increasingly ridiculous trolley problems We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S2 · E7
    May 25 · 33 min

    Empire - Karen Hao

    Tech journalist Karen Hao joins us to discuss her book, "Empire of AI". Karen explains why she believes that the Silicon Valley hyper-scaled LLM flavour of AI is an imperial technology, and has become even more explicitly imperial in the 12 months since the book first came out as it is being more and more incorporated in the US military's wars. The paperback edition of the book has just been released in the US and UK, so if you live in either of those places and haven't read the book yet, be sure to pick it up! Mentioned in this episode: Empire of AI - book by Karen Hao Empire of AI - UK paperback Empire of AI - US paperback Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 - podcast by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna Microsoft's Hypocrisy on AI - article by Karen Hao [permalink] See the transcript footnotes for more! We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S2 · E6
    May 11 · 57 min

    Democracy - Anna Colom

    We welcome our favourite political scientist, Dr. Anna Colom, back on the show to dive into democracy: what is it really, how does AI threaten it, and how can it be built for real? Anna is a researcher with The Data Tank, a "think and do tank"; they work with people, organisations and institutions around the world to unlock data's potential: gathering, accessing, and reusing it responsibly, so we’re all better equipped to tackle the pressing issues of our time. Mentioned in this episode: The Sciences of the Democracies - book by Jean-Paul Gagnon and Benjamin Abrams [permalink] The Tech Coup - book by Marietje Schaake [permalink] Polis - an open-source platform that helps entire cities, states, or even countries find common ground on complex issues [permalink] We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S2 · E5
    April 27 · 1 hr 25 min

    Sci-fi - Syed Mustafa Ali

    Josh and Ray sit down with Dr. Syed Mustafa Ali, author of a recent paper entitled "A Butlerian Hauntology" to unpack the dense payload of insight contained within the paper. Dr. Ali grabs threads from Dune, critical race theory and world-systems theory, political economy, political ecology, and political theology, actually existing fascism, computer science, classic Luddism, literature, film and television, labour power, and anticolonial jihad and masterfully weaves them together in a critical computing tapestry of extraordinary beauty. Gaze upon it, ye tech bros, and despair! Mentioned in this episode: Imaginary Futures from Thinking Machines to the Global Village - book by Richard Barbrook [permalink] Empire of AI - book by Karen Hao Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema - book edited by Ziauddin Sardar and Sean Cubitt [permalink] A Cyborg Manifesto - essay by Donna Haraway [permalink] Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity - paper by Drew McDermott See the transcript footnotes for more! We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S2 · E4
    April 13 · 1 hr 6 min

    Writers - Foz Meadows

    Foz Meadows joins us to discuss his "Against AI" polemic, written in response to Erin Underwood's open letter to SFWA and the SFF community in the wake of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association's announcement that works written by LLM tools and works for which LLM tools were used at any point in the writing process would not be eligible for consideration. The conversation touches on not only Foz's piece, but also the sheer stupidity of thinking we can outsource the act of thinking to machines that do not think, what the introduction of LLMs is doing to education, and the role that writers—especially science fiction and fantasy writers—have to play in resisting the inevitability narrative. Mentioned in this episode: Against AI - Foz's response to Erin Underwood's open letter to SFWA and the SFF community [permalink] Nebula Awards Rules - section 9.11 deals with LLM tools [permalink] Open Letter to the Science Fiction Writers Association and Community - by Erin Underwood [permalink] xkcd: Duty Calls - someone is wrong on the internet Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. - case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than for the benefit of his employees or customers No Take, Only Throw - a webcomic strip in which a dog wants to play fetch with its owner [permalink] We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S2 · E3
    March 30 · 56 min

    Datacentres - Aurora Gómez Delgado

    Datacentres might seem boring, but Aurora Gómez Delgado of Tu Nube Seca Mi Río, a Spanish organisation working to combat the ecosocial impact of datacentres, would like you to sit up and take notice of the resources they are stealing from the people who live in the surrounding region. Aurora educates us on the increase in number and size of datacentres, accelerated even further by the AI project, and the corresponding impact on water and power usage, and what that means for farmers trying to grow their crops, people trying to pay their electricity bills, and the availability of clean drinking water. Mentioned in this episode: Tu Nube Seca Mi Río - Spanish organisation focused on the ecosocial impact of datacentres SYSTEM OVERLOAD: How new data centres could throw Europe’s energy transition off course - by Jill McArdle and Pierre Terras El Escarabajo Verde - Spanish TV show about the environment ChatGPT Turned Into a Studio Ghibli Machine. How Is That Legal? - by Alex Reisner in The Atlantic [permalink] Hayao Miyazaki's thoughts on an artificial intelligence The supply chain capitalism of AI: a call to (re)think algorithmic harms and resistance through environmental lens - , by Ana Valdivia Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back - , by Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry 2024 CrowdStrike-related IT outages We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S2 · E2
    March 16 · 1 hr 24 min

    Hate - Anthony Moser

    Josh and Ray sit down with Anthony Moser and discuss the impetus for him to write "I Am An AI Hater". We talk about the role of politeness in maintaining the status quo, Anthony's views on copyright as a musician, the importance of collective action, how the law is not a source of power but rather an expression of power, and lots more. Mentioned in this episode: I Am An AI Hater - Anthony's essay Politechs season 1 episode 4 - Surveillance - our interview with Chris Gilliard As of 27 Jan, 2026, NVIDIA, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are worth a combined $20.077 trillion. The total market cap of the US stock market is $140.182 trillion, meaning six US tech companies account for 14% of the value of the market (data from companiesmarketcap.com). Josh's statement that the top 7 tech companies were worth half of the US stock market was incorrect. Blood in the Machine - a book my Brian Merchant on the origins of the rebellion against big tech in the Luddite movement in early 19th century England Empire of AI, by Karen Hao [PERMALINK] The Coloniality of the Algorithm, a talk by Flavia Dzodan Anthony's template for emailing teachers Lauren Woolsey's recording of "I Am An AI Hater" Adolfo Neto's recording of the Portuguese translation of "I Am An AI Hater" "Eu Odeio IA", Portuguese translation of "I Am An AI Hater" We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S2 · E1
    March 2 · 59 min

    Still AI?

    Much to their chagrin, Josh and Ray discover that Season 1 of Politechs wasn't sufficient to destroy AI. They conclude that the only thing to do is assemble a Luddite army and launch a new assault on HELLISH AI. Welcome to Season 2 of Politechs! Mentioned in this episode: Tu Nube Seca Mi Río - Spanish organisation opposing datacentres AI Killed My Job, by Brian Merchant Empire of AI, by Karen Hao [PERMALINK] I Am An AI Hater, by Anothony Moser The Kirby Frame, by Anthony Moser Against AI, by Foz Meadows A Butlerian Hauntology, by Dr. Syed Mustafa Ali Tech Won't Save Us - a critical tech podcast We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • Dec 15, 2025 · 49 min

    Risks

    Josh and Ray talk about the real risks of AI with Anna Colom, a social science researcher working at the intersection of democratic processes and digital technologies. We are going through unprecedented times in the pace and scale of technological development driven by data and AI systems. Yet, these developments and their applications are being led and decided by a few in a regulatory vacuum, supported by narratives driven by hype and power asymmetries. There is however a large and more diverse community of technology developers across the globe who can claim back the authority if it refuses to be blinded by hype; if it questions decisions made by a few; if it favours evidence and ethics over magic; and if it works collaborative with the rest of society to answer some of the most pressing questions of out times on how data and AI can be responsibly used to help people make this world a better place. Mentioned in this episode: From hype to responsibility: what works & matters for whom in data and AI? - Anna Colom's keynote at Heart of Clojure 2024 [talk description] Isabelle Ferreras - Professor UC at Louvain University who has done work on the democratisation of companies and organisations Organising Tech in Sweden: The Union Perspective - Per Holfve, an advisor with the Swedish Association of Professional Scientists, talks about how scientists fit into labour organising in tech [PERMALINK] Dr. Joy Buolamwini - founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, an award-winning researcher, and poet of code AI, Ain't I A Woman? - a spoken word piece that highlights the ways in which artificial intelligence can misinterpret the images of iconic black women, by Dr. Joy Buolamwini We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S1 · E8
    Sep 29, 2025 · 58 min

    Resistance

    We've talked about a lot on Politechs this season, and now it's time to pull it all together and think about how we can resist AI. And who better to talk to about resistance than Brian Merchant, author of "Blood in the Machine", a fascinating book about the original Luddites, a group of tech workers in early 19th century England who took up the hammer and smashed the machines that were being used to emiserate them. We talk about the parallels between the time of the Luddites and our current moment, how capital and the state teamed up to crush the Luddites, and how we can avoid their fate. Mentioned in this episode: Empire of AI, by Karen Hao [PERMALINK] Blood in the Machine, by Brian Merchant [PERMALINK] Blood in the Machine newsletter, by Brian Merchant AI Killed My Job: Translators [PERMALINK] Getting off US tech: a guide, by Paris Marx [PERMALINK] We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S1 · E7
    Sep 1, 2025 · 1 hr 1 min

    Automation

    Automation is usually presented to us as an unalloyed good, a way to remove tedium from our lives so we can spend our time on the things that truely matter. But is this really the case? In this episode, we take a closer look at automation: what it is, who wants it, and the harm it wreaks on the environment and society. We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S1 · E6
    Aug 18, 2025 · 1 hr 13 min

    Programmers

    When you're trying to convince somebody of something (for example, to examine whether AI is a good thing), you need to know your audience. This episode is all about looking at programmers as a whole and identifying different groups, then thinking through how to talk to members of those groups and use arguments that resonate with them. Mentioned in this episode: senior developer agents, by Zach Tellman [PERMALINK] Pascal's Wager Pascal's Mugging "Are we the baddies?" meme [PERMALINK] Empire of AI, by Karen Hao [PERMALINK] We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S1 · E5
    Aug 11, 2025 · 55 min

    Inevitability

    To quote Sarah Connor, "There is no fate", so why do so many people buy into the narrative that AI is inevitable so we might as well get on board (or throw up our hands in despair)? Josh and Ray get to the bottom of this, realise that Skynet might happen after all, and channel the great Lina Khan: "Where we are is not just the inevitable outcome of market forces or technological development. It's a result of choices we've made, and policies we've enacted or not enacted. And we can change that. We can. We must." Mentioned in this episode: Noam Chomsky on The Big Idea with Andrew Marr, 1996-02-14: Chomsky explains that Marr wouldn't be in the position he is unless he was predisposed to stay in the mainstream understanding of neoliberal politics. Half of young people want to grow up in a world without internet, New research, published by British Standards Institution, shows that half (47%) of young people aged 16 to 21 would prefer to be young in a world without the internet. [PERMALINK] The fallacy of the "human-in-the-loop" as a safety net for Generative-AI applications in healthcare, by Jeff Clark. See the references in the article for studies. [PERMALINK] US airport screenings fail to detect mock weapons in 95% of tests, 2015 study. [PERMALINK] TSA Misses 70% Of Fake Weapons But That's An Improvement, 2017 study showing improvement. [PERMALINK] We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S1 · E4
    Aug 4, 2025 · 1 hr 12 min

    Surveillance

    We're joined this week by Dr. Chris Gilliard, Co-Director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute to talk about what generative AI means for surveillance, and how this technology disproportionately harms marginalised groups. Dr. Gilliard is a writer, professor, and speaker whose scholarship examines digital privacy, surveillance, and the intersections of race, class, and technology. His book "Luxury Surveillance" is forthcoming from MIT Press in 2026. Mentioned in this episode: The Critical Internet Studies Institute develops cutting-edge research and educational programs to advance public knowledge of emerging technologies and the paradoxes of innovation. Don't Give Surveillance for Christmas: Chris appears on the Tech Won't Save Us podcast How Companies Learn Your Secrets, by Charles Duhigg [PERMALINK] The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence, by Timnit Gebru and Emile P. Torres [PERMALINK] ChatGPT Should Not Exist, by David Golumbia [PERMALINK] Defining AI, by Ali Alkhatib [PERMALINK] Practico-inertia, by Rob Horning [PERMALINK] We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

  • S1 · E3
    Jul 28, 2025 · 1 hr 1 min

    Narratives and Narrators

    Whilst everyone has an opinion about AI, there are certain top-level narratives driving the hype bubble. We look at the doomer / booster divide (which turns out to be not so divided) and peek behind the curtain to see which corporations and people are pushing these narratives and what they have to gain. Mentioned in this episode: Dystopia Now - TESCREAL Overview with Kath Barbadoro and Alex Ptak Why does this billionaire have 100 kids in 12 countries?, by Arwa Mahdawi [PERMALINK] Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartless - AI AGENTS EMERGENCY DEBATE We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon! Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social Theme music by Xylia Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

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