If you're on the internet, you've made a Faustian pact - you have unlimited access to knowledge and information, and the ability to make connections in exchange for your data. With AI, the subject of data privacy has renewed significance. Tech companies freely and without permission use the vast amounts of data available online to train AI models. But do we care? Does it matter that we have little control over our images and words that are being used by companies for a profit if the payoff is the opportunity to use AI tools? Surveys have shown that data privacy is a minor concern among ordinary folk, who believe that their data is a small price to pay for the convenience of tools like ChatGPT.

But we should be concerned as tech companies wield an enormous amount of power using our data. There are other questions worth thinking about: the biases inherent in the data that AI is trained on reflect in outcomes. How do we tackle this? How do we regulate tech companies and make them accountable to people? How do we improve the working conditions of people who annotate data for low wages?

This is one facet of the issue. The other is the undeniable fact that AI has immense benefits. It improves productivity, it can deliver education to remote, underserved communities and it can enhance healthcare in economically challenged communities. While we raise important questions about the ethics of AI, perhaps we should also keep in mind that AI is an evolving technology and that it will in time overcome its current faults.

South Asia is home to some of the most polluted cities in the world: with alarming death tolls, widespread respiratory illness, and growing concerns around equity, access, and resilience. Yet, despite the scale of the problem, responses across the region often lean toward adaptive fixes rather than long-term, preventive action.  

In this episode, we explore how the clean air movement is being shaped by public pressure, new technologies, and a growing recognition that clean air must be treated as a public good. Our discussion challenges conventional narratives: Is air pollution simply a consequence of how countries develop? Should clean air be a political, technological, and equity issue? And can we design solutions that are preventive, affordable, and fair, before the public can no longer breathe?  

In an ideal scenario, a child’s educational journey begins in a classroom and culminates in an office. In school, the child acquires a solid foundational education, which equips her years later for a good job. That is the popular picture of success. 

In an ideal world, this journey should be a pipeline delivering workforce-ready students. However in reality, the collective journey suffers pitfalls such as drop-offs in middle-school, poor foundational education that leaves students ill equipped for the workforce. How is this gap between education and employability to be bridged?

At the foundational level, the course of this journey can be corrected by introducing socio-emotional learning, which imparts skills that are handy in real-life situations and in one's career such as relationship building and decision-making. At the career stage, ed-tech organisations offer specific skills that equip people to adapt to the evolving demands of the workplace. This is particularly empowering for women keen to join the workforce remotely as Harappa demonstrates and for graduates from low-economic backgrounds as shown by HCL's TechBee programme. 

Welcome to Re:Orient, a podcast by Asia Society India and Dalberg that covers the most pressing issues in South Asia, from AI and education to air pollution and the changing geopolitical order. Over six episodes, we speak to educationists, policymakers, thinkers and experts to gather meaningful – and often surprising – insights.