The Good Robot

In this episode, we talk to Heather Zheng, who makes technologies that stop everyday surveillance. This includes bracelets that stopped devices from listening and on you, to more secure biometric technologies that can protect us by identifying us by for example, our dance moves. Most famously, Zheng is one of the computer scientists behind Nightshade, which helps artists protect their work by 'poisoning' AI training data sets.  

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In this episode we talk to Caroline Sinders, the human rights researcher, an artist, and the founder of convocation, design and research. We begin by talking  about Gamergate, when women were harassed for being gamers.  We also talk about what it's like doing high risk research about abusive misogynists online and experiences of doxing. Just to give you a heads up. We do talk about online harassment in today's episode. If you're facing online harassment and you need immediate help Caroline's organization offers pro bono support, so just email, [email protected]. And they'll get back to you. 

We’re expected to look amazing online, but also natural. We’re fighting against the gender pay gap, but also spend thousands on cosmetics. In this episode, Ellen Atlanta talks us through the paradoxes of feminism and beauty in the digital sphere.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Isabella Rosner,  a curator at the Royal School of Needlework and a research consultant at Witney Antiques. Isabella tells us about the evolution of embroidery as a technology, and the complex relationship between needlework and feminism. We use this history to shed light on technology and feminism today.

In this episode, we talked to Darren Byler, author of Terror Capitalism and In the Camps, Life in China's High Tech Penal Colony. We discussed his in depth research on Uyghur Muslims in China and the role played by technology in their persecution. If you're just listening to this on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, you can now watch us on YouTube at The Good Robot Podcast.

In this episode we talk to Thuy Linh Thu, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. We talk about how good technology disperses power, while bad technology concentrates power, the racial history of dermatology,  including the connections between the Vietnam War, medical experimentation on incarcerated men in the U. S., and retinol creams,. Please note that this episode contains references to medical experimentation and racial violence.

In this very special Good Robot hot take we talk about our new book, The Good Robot: Why Technology Needs Feminism. It's a beautiful new illustrated book where the top scholars, activists, artists, writers, technologists, all come together to respond to the prompt: good technology is... Kerry and Eleanor chat about getting its illustrations as tattoos, and you can vote for which one you think we should get tattooed. And then we have some more serious conversations about why good technology is always complicit, whether that be a blood glucose monitor, the Dyson Air Wrap, a Tangle Teezer, a water purifier or Kerry's option: knitting needles. 

The book has just launched online and in stores. So you can find it at your local bookshop. We know that it stocked in Waterstones, hers. Blackwells, Pages of Hackney... and of course this wouldn't be an episode on the complicities of good technology without saying that you can also find it on Amazon. 

In this episode we chat to Shannon Vallor, the Bailey Gifford professor in the ethics and data of AI at the University of Edinburgh and the Director for the Centre for Technomoral Futures. We talk about feminist care ethics; technologies, vices and virtues; why Aristotle believed that the people who make technology should be excluded from citizenship; and why we still don't have the kinds of robots that we imagined that we'd have in the early 2000s. We also discuss Shannon's new book, The AI Mirror, which is now available for pre-order. 

 In this episode, we talk to Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna. AI ethics legends and now the co-hosts of the Mystery AI Hype Theatre 3000 podcast which is a new podcast where they dispel the hype storm around AI. Emily is a professor of linguistics at university of Washington and the co-author of that stochastic parrots paper that you may have heard of, because two very important people in the Google AI ethics team allegedly got fired over it, and that's Timnit Gebru and Meg Mitchell. And Alex Hanna is the director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute known by its acronym, DAIR, which is now run by Timnit. In this episode, they argue that we should stop using the term AI altogether, and that the world might be better without text to image systems like DALL·E and Midjourney. They tell us how the AI hype agents are getting high on their own supply, and give some advice for young people going into tech careers.

This week we chat to Melissa Heikkilä, a senior tech reporter for MIT Tech review, about ChatGPT, image generation, porn, and the stories we tell about AI. We hope you enjoy the show.