PodQueue

To watch other videos from the AI and the Digital series, check out the full playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0BjGYn0j1l-cQJamqtohtjbbp2wJN2Ey&si=OxdXZ-hToZGiqIw3

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere, yet it causes damage to society in ways that can’t be fixed. Instead of helping to address our current crises, AI causes divisions that limit people’s life chances, and even suggests fascistic solutions to social problems. In this event, Dan McQuillan discusses his analysis of AI’s deep learning technology and its political effects and traces the ways that it resonates with contemporary political and social currents, from global austerity to the rise of the far right. This event invites us to resist AI as we know it and restructure it by prioritising the common good over algorithmic optimization, through an anti-fascist approach to AI that replaces exclusions with caring, proposes people’s councils as a way to restructure AI through mutual aid and outlines new mechanisms that would adapt to changing times by supporting collective freedom.

Dan McQuillan is a Senior Lecturer in Critical AI. He has a degree in Physics from Oxford and a PhD in Experimental Particle Physics from Imperial College, London. His book Resisting AI: An anti-fascist approach to artificial intelligence has been published in 2022 by Bristol University Press.

Andrés Saenz de Sicilia is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London and managing director of The Philosopher. His book Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society was published by Brill in 2024.

#philosophy #criticalthinking #ai #artificialintelligence #PoliticalPhilosophy #democracy

0:03:47 - Can we reform the damaging aspects of AI?

0:07:37 - The fascist resonances of AI

0:12:48 - (Dis)Passionate applications

0:16:01 - Ethics and dangers of AI

0:21:39 - Methods for political resistance

0:25:27 - System contamination and path dependency

0:30:53 - New realities - what has changed since writing the book?

0:35:39 - Q&A - Timesaving productivity

0:38:42 - Q&A - Does AI architecture imply certain types of social organisation?

0:41:54 - Q&A - Humanizing AI; the use of AI by students

0:49:11 - Q&A - Use of AI in the military and policing, and the logic of suspicion

0:53:42 - Q&A - AI and fascist aesthetics

0:56:37 - Q&A - How do we survive?

Join us for a conversation with Jack Cushman from the Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab about their new archive of Data.gov—more than 311,000 datasets harvested in 2024–2025, updated daily, and published on Source Cooperative.

We’ll dig into two threads:- BagIt for durability: How Library of Congress–standard packaging, checksums, and signatures support authenticity, provenance, and long-term citation.- Discovery without a server: how browser-based querying over static data makes 17.9 TB of datasets findable and fast to explore.

We’ll also talk about practical choices that matter when you’re archiving government data: what to bag, what metadata to preserve, how to track change over time, and how to make it usable for researchers, journalists, and agencies.

Jez Riley French is fascinated and passionate about the infinite detail and expanding vistas of life around us, its sights and sounds, often overlooked or hidden. His creative output focuses on elements such as audible silence, active listening and stillness. Jez has been exploring his enjoyment of detail, simplicity and emotive response to places and situations for the past three decades using field recording, photography and intuitive composition. His artistic contribution is recognised the world over and his new audio work has just been commissioned by Tate Modern for installation during 2013.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

Professeure de français, Cassandre choisit de remplacer les classiques scolaires qu’elle a l’habitude de faire étudier à ses élèves, par un livre qui décrit l’état alarmant de la planète. Lorsqu’une de ses élèves tente de se suicider, Cassandre est alors accusée de harcèlement moral et traduite en justice. Son procès occupe le centre du récit. On y croise l’enseignante, ses avocats, ceux de la partie adverse, mais aussi un scientifique désabusé qui a participé à l’écriture du livre. Les vies de ces personnages, déjà fragiles, résonnent étrangement avec le chaos écologique qui les entoure. Ce roman choral mêle critique sociale, réflexion sur l’école et méditation sur la catastrophe climatique. L’écriture, vive et parfois ironique, met en parallèle l’effondrement intime des personnages et celui du monde tout en interrogeant la possibilité de transmettre et de continuer à vivre dans un contexte de fin annoncée.

Les dernières écritures, Hélène Zimmer, P.O.L., 2025

Interviewed by David C. Brock on 2024-03-15 in The Sea Ranch, CA

© Computer History Museum

This is an oral history interview with Ken Thompson, created in partnership by the Association for Computing Machinery and the Computer History Museum, in connection with his A.M. Turing Award in 1983. The interview begins with Thompson’s family background and youth, detailing the hobbies he pursued intently from electronics and radio projects, to music, cars, and chess. He describes his experience at the University of California, Berkeley, and his deepening engagement with computers and computer programming there.

The interview then moves to his recruitment to the Bell Telephone Laboratories, and his experience of the Multics project. Thompson next describes his development of Unix and, with Dennis Ritchie, the programming language C. He describes the development of Unix and the Unix community at Bell Labs, and then details his work using Unix for the Number 5 Electronic Switching System. Thompson details his Turing Award lecture, the work on compromised compilers that led to it, and his views on computer security.

Next, he details his career in computer chess and work he did for Bell Labs artist Lillian Schwartz. Thompson describes his work on the Plan 9 operating system at Bell Labs with Rob Pike, and his efforts to create a digital music archive. He then details his post Bell Labs career at Entrisphere and then Google, including his role in Google Books and the creation of the Go programming language.

* Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information - http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102808980

Visit computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ for more information about the Computer History Museum's Oral History Collection.

Catalog number: 102808981

Acquisition number: 2024.0045

The second show in a series of radio broadcasts that examines rural technology.

Interview on Sounds Apart podcast - Kristoffer Lislegaard

A founding engineer on Google BigQuery and now at the helm of MotherDuck, Jordan Tigani challenges the decade-long dominance of Big Data and introduces a compelling alternative that could change how companies handle data.

Jordan discusses why Big Data technologies are an overkill for most companies, how MotherDuck and DuckDB offer fast analytical queries, and lessons learned as a technical founder building his first startup.

Watch the episode with Tomasz Tunguz: https://youtu.be/gU6dGmZzmvI

Website - https://motherduck.com

Twitter - https://x.com/motherduck

Jordan Tigani

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordantigani

Twitter - https://x.com/jrdntgn

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

LISTEN ON:

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7yLATDSaFvgJG80ACcRJtq

Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mad-podcast-with-matt-turck/id1686238724

00:00 - Intro

00:56 - What is the Small Data?

06:56 - Marketing strategy of MotherDuck

08:39 - Processing Small Data with Big Data stack

15:30 - DuckDB

17:21 - Creation of DuckDB

18:48 - Founding story of MotherDuck

24:08 - MotherDuck's community

25:25 - MotherDuck today ($100M raised)

33:15 - Why MotherDuck and DuckDB are so fast?

39:08 - The limitations and the future of MotherDuck's platform

39:49 - Small Models

42:37 - Small Data and the Modern Data Stack

46:47 - Making things simpler with a shift from Big Data to Small Data

50:04 - Jordan Tigani's entrepreneurial journey

58:31 - Outro

Hannes Muhleisen is the creator of DuckDB and CEO of DuckDB Labs. We finally got a chance to meet in person at the Forward Data Conference in Paris. We hit it off immediately, and at times, I felt like I was talking with my long lost brother. Hannes is a very cool guy!

While at the conference, we recorded a chat about all things DuckDB, the challenges of data lakehouses and open table formats, local-first tech, and much more. 🦆 🐥

Nick Estes, Ph.D. (Kul Wicasa/Lower Brule Sioux), is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico and a member of the Oak Lake Writers Society, a group of Dakota, Nakota and Lakota writers. In 2014, he was a co-founder of The Red Nation in Albuquerque, NM, an organization dedicated to the liberation of Native people from capitalism and colonialism. He serves on its editorial collective and writes its bi-weekly newsletter. Nick Estes is also the author of "Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline" and "The Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance".

To watch more talks and discussions from the 2022 Conference, visit http://www.bioneers.org