In this episode, Shobita and Jack discuss the United Auto Worker strike, facial recognition technology in schools, and the recent biographies of Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried. And, they interview Ashley Shew, author of Against Technoableism and Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech.

Links

- Ashley Shew (2023). Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement. W.W. Norton.

- Virdi, J. (2022). Hearing happiness: Deafness cures in history. The University of Chicago Press.

- Nario-Redmond, M. R. (2020). Ableism: The causes and consequences of disability prejudice. Wiley Blackwell.

- Ashley Shew (2020). Let COVID-19 expand awareness of disability tech. Nature. May 5.

- Weise, J. (n.d.). The Cyborg Jillian Weise. 
Wheelchair Sports Camp. (2015). Wheelchair Sports Camp. 

- New York State Education Department (2023). "State Education Department Statement on Release of the Use of Biometric Identifying Technology in Schools Report." August 7.

Study Questions and full transcript available at thereceivedwisdom.org.

Jack and Shobita are back after a summer hiatus! We return talking about--of course--ChatGPT and other generative AI, the problem at Fukushima, and India's Chandrayaan Rover. Then we chat with Richard A.L. Jones, professor of material physics and innovation policy . He is also the Vice President for Regional Innovation and Civic Engagement at Manchester University.

- Richard A.L. Jones (2022). "Science and innovation policy for hard times: an overview of the UK’s Research and Development landscape."The Productivity Institute.

- Tom Forth and Richard A.L. Jones (2020). "The Missing £4 Billion." Nesta.

- Richard A.L. Jones (2019). "A Resurgence of the Regions: rebuilding innovation capacity across the whole UK."

- Richard A.L. Jones and James WIlsdon (2018). "The Biomedical Bubble."Nesta.
Richard A.L. Jones.Soft Machines. Blog.

- Jack Stilgoe (2023). "We need a Weizenbaum test for AI." Science. August 11.

- Gil Scott-Heron, (1970) "Whitey on the Moon."

Transcript and study questions available at thereceivedwisdom.org.

Jack and Shobita discuss the decline in humanities majors as the number of computer and data science majors rise, and why this is will have very bad consequences. Then they chat about emerging efforts to regulate both in vitro gametogenesis (creation of eggs and sperm using pluripotent stem cells) and generative AI. Finally, they talk to Cassidy Sugimoto, Professor and Tom and Marie Patton School Chair in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology, about her new book, Equity for Women in Science: Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Advancement.

- Nick Anderson (2023). "College is remade as tech majors surge and humanities dwindle." The Washington Post. May 20.

- Center for Genetics and Society (2023). "Whether or How to Use Artificial Gametes." April 12.

- Cassidy Sugimoto (2023). Equity for Women in Science: Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Advancement. Harvard University Press.

- Cassidy Sugimoto (2022). "Narrow hiring practices at US universities revealed." Nature. September 29.

- Cassidy Sugimoto (2021). "Scientific success by numbers." Nature. May 3.

- Cassidy Sugimoto (2019). "Rethinking impact factors: Better ways to judge a journal." Nature. May 28.

- Hoppe, Travis A. et al. (2019). “Topic choice contributes to the lower rate of NIH awards to African-American/black scientists.” Science Advances. 5: eaaw7238.

Transcript and discussion questions available at thereceivedwisdom.org.

What makes an emergency? This month, Jack and Shobita talk to Elizabeth Ellcessor, Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies at University of Virginia, who studies how emergency alert systems shape our understanding of crisis, how this has changed with the rise of new consumer technologies, and the implications especially for communities who are marginalized. They also wrestle with the politics of science in US court decisions about abortion drugs, and recent calls for a moratorium on certain types of artificial intelligence.

- Future of Life Institute (2023). Policymaking in the Pause: What can Policymakers Do Now to Combat Risks from Advanced AI Systems?

- Future of Life Institute et al. (2023). Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter.

 - (2023). "In Support of FDA's Authority to Regulate Vaccines."

- Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (April 7, 2023).

- Elizabeth Ellcessor (2022). In Case of Emergency: How Technologies Mediate Crisis and Automate Inequality. NYU Press.

- Elizabeth Ellcessor (2021). “COVID messages make emergency alerts just another text in the crowd on your home screen.” The Conversation. June 9.

- Elizabeth Ellcessor (2018). "Academic Accessibility, a Flashback." April 16.

- Matt Richtel (2023). "My Watch Thinks I'm Dead." The New York Times. February 3.

Transcript and study questions available at thereceivedwisdom.org.

This month, Jack and Shobita talk about the challenges of ensuring that AI and gene editing reflect human values, and reflect on what the recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio tells us about the politics of knowledge. And they chat with Amy Moran-Thomas, Associate Professor of Anthropology at MIT, about her clarion call to address the racial biases embedded in the pulse oximeter, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in August 2020.

- Amy Moran-Thomas (2020). "How a Popular Medical Device Encodes Racial Bias." Boston Review. August 5.

- Amy Moran-Thomas (2021). "Oximeters used to be designed for equity. What happened?" WIRED. June 4.

- Amy Moran-Thomas (2019). Traveling with Sugar: Chronicles of a Global Epidemic. University of California Press.

- Kadija Ferryman (n.d.) "Framing Inequity in Health Technology: The Digital Divide, Data Bias, and Racialization." SSRC: JustTech.

- Andrea Ballestero and Yesmar Oyarzun (2022). "Devices: A location for feminist analytics and praxis." Feminist Anthropology. 3(2):  227-233.

- Yesmar Oyarzun, Juliann Bi, Eddie Jackson (n.d.) Undertones.

Study questions and transcript available at thereceivedwisdom.org.

Happy New Year!! In this episode, Jack and Shobita discuss Alondra Nelson's departure from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the meaning for the position she created, Deputy Director for Science and Society. We also try to get beyond ChatGPT's hype to talk about some of the long-term implications. And we chat with Kelly Bronson, Canada Research Chair in Science and Society at the University of Ottawa, about her book The Immaculate Conception of Data: Agribusiness, Activists, and Their Shared Politics of the Future.

- Kelly Bronson (2022). The Immaculate Conception of Data: Agribusiness, Activists, and Their Shared Politics of the Future. McGill-Queen's University Press.

- Kelly Bronson (2022). "The dangers of big data extend to farming." The Conversation. June 27.

- Kelly Bronson (2022). "Four reasons we should think twice about a data-driven approach to agricultural sustainability." September 26.

- Kelly Bronson (2017). "Look twice at the digital agricultural revolution." September 7.

- Billy Perrigo (2023). "Exclusive: OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic." Time. January 18.

- Jill (2022). "ChatGPT is multilingual but monocultural, and it’s learning your values." December 6.

Transcript available at thereceivedwisdom.org

This month, Shobita and Jack talk about the recent concerns about academic culture in the science and technology studies community, how to understand FTX's recent implosion, and the bizarre logics of effective altruism. And we chat with Boston University law professor Aziza Ahmed about how the politics of knowledge are shaping abortion politics in the United States.

- Darren Tseng, Stephen Diehl, Jan Akalin (2022). Popping the Crypto Bubble: Market Manias, Phony Populism, Techno-Solutionism. Consilience Publishing.

- Concerned.Tech (2022). "Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy." 

- Aziza Ahmed (2022). "These are the gray areas for women’s privacy now in a post-Roe world." CNN Opinion. August 4.

- Aziza Ahmed (2021). "The Future of Facts: The Politics of Public Health and Medicine in Abortion Law." University of Colorado Law Review. 92: 1151-1162.

- Aziza Ahmed (2020). "Weaponizing Objectivity: The Politics of the CDC." Ms. Magazine. October 28. 

- Aziza Ahmed (2020). "Will the Supreme Court legitimate pretext?" SCOTUSblog. January 31.

- Aziza Ahmed (2017). "Abortion in a Post-Truth Moment: A Response to Erwin Chemerinsky and Michele Goodwin." Texas Law Review. 95: 198-203.

Transcript available at thereceivedwisdom.org.

Jack and Shobita chat about the disasters in British politics, the CHIPS and Science Act, and how to determine whether self-driving cars are safe. Plus we chat with anthropologist Glenn Davis Stone, Professor at Sweet Briar College and author of the recent book The Agricultural Dilemma: How Not to Feed the World. Stone argues that we've been learning the story of the Green Revolution all wrong, and this has huge implications for how we think about more recent agricultural technologies like fertilizer and genetically modified organisms.

Links related to the episode:Dan Reed and Darío Gil (2022). "Insufficient NSF funding could doom the Chips and Science Act." The Hill. October 13.Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (2022). "Responsible Innovation in Self-Driving Vehicles."
Glenn Davis Stone (2022). The Agricultural Dilemma: How Not to Feed the World. Routledge.Glenn Davis Stone (2022). "Surveillance Agriculture and Peasant Autonomy." Journal of Agrarian Change.
Glenn Davis Stone (2020). "A Long-term Analysis of a Controversial GMO Crop." Nature Plants. March 13.Glenn Davis Stone (2020). "The Philippines has rated ‘Golden Rice’ safe, but farmers might not plant it." The Conversation. February 7.

Study Questions:

How is the CHIPS and Science Act being framed in the United States?

What are the problems with the conventional tale of the Green Revolution?

Why has the myth of the Green Revolution been so persistent?

What is the problem with GMOs, and specifically BT crops, in India?

How have publics gotten more involved in the decisions of the agricultural system? What are the impacts?

It's a new season of The Received Wisdom!! After their partial summer hiatus, Shobita and Jack discuss the fraud allegations that are rocking the foundations of what we know about Alzheimer's Disease, and the Biden Administration's directive to make freely available all publications based on federally funded research. And, they chat with Macarthur Fellow Mary Gray about the "ghost workers" behind digital technologies and supposedly artificial intelligence. Gray is Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Faculty Associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and faculty in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering with affiliations in Anthropology and Gender Studies at Indiana University.

Relevant Links

- Charles Piller (2022). "Blots on a Field?" Science. July 21.

- The White House (2022). "Breakthroughs for All: Delivering Equitable Access to America’s Research." OSTP Blog. August 25.

- Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri (2019). Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a Global Underclass. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

- National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (2022). Fostering Responsible Computing Research: Foundations and Practices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

- Mary L. Gray with Catherine Powell (2021). "The Emerging Technology Underclass." Council on Foreign Relations’ Women and Foreign Policy Roundtable Series and Roundtable Series on Cybersecurity and Cyberconflict.

- Margaret Bourdeaux, Mary L. Gray, and Barbara Grosz (2020). "How human-centered tech can beat COVID-19 through contact tracing." The Hill. April 20.

Study questions and full transcript available at thereceivedwisdom.org

This episode is the second of Jack’s investigations into self-driving cars. Last time, he was interested in Phoenix, Arizona. This time, he’s back home in London, an old, complicated, messy city with an extensive public transport system. 

The episode was presented and written by Jack Stilgoe and edited by Gemma Milne, with research assistance from Nuzhah Miah.

Relevant links

- Joe Moran, (2006). Crossing the road in Britain, 1931–1976. The Historical Journal, 49 (2), 477-496.

- Joe Moran (2010). On roads: a hidden history. Profile Books.

- Lucy Suchman (1987). Plans and situated actions: The problem of human-machine communication. Cambridge university press.

- Peter Norton (2011). Fighting traffic: the dawn of the motor age in the American city. MIT Press.

- Peter Norton (2021). Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-tech Driving. Island Press.

- https://www.wayve.ai/ (and the company’s published papers, e.g.: Hawke, J., Badrinarayanan, V., & Kendall, A. (2021). Reimagining an autonomous vehicle. arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.05805).

- Chris Tennant, & Jack Stilgoe, (2021). The attachments of ‘autonomous’ vehicles. Social Studies of Science, 51(6), 846-870. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03063127211038752

- Tennant, C., Neels, C., Parkhurst, G., Jones, P., Mirza, S., & Stilgoe, J. (2021). Code, culture and concrete: Self-Driving Vehicles and the Rules of the Road. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 122.

Transcript and study questions available at thereceivedwisdom.org.