Show Notes
Klaudia Jaźwińska, Aliya Bhatia, and Yanick Kemayou come together to answer: What happens when a small collection of AI companies start colonising the truth? More like this: The Toxic Relationship Between AI & Journalism w/ Nic Dawes
This is REAL Resistance, a collection of conversations produced in collaboration with Real ML, featuring the experts and advocates who make up Real ML’s global network. In this conversation, three guests from the network share all the ways in which AI is shaping our relationship with news, language, and learning: People are increasingly using AI for search and to get their news; but Klaudia Jaźwińska’s research finds that chatbots have a huge citation problem Many LLMs claim to be ‘multi-lingual’ — but also only tested in US English? Aliya Bhatia explains that porting outputs from English into all other languages in not gonna cut it Higher education in Africa is completely disconnected from local knowledge, which is why Yanick Kemayou founded Kabakoo: an alternative learning platform that leverages and preserves local knowledge with the use of technology, and without exploitation As Yancik says in this episode, “openness without governance is extraction with extra steps”. Further reading & resources: AI Search has a Citation Problem — Klaudia Jaźwińska & Aisvarya Chandrasekar Lost in Translation: Large Language Models in Non-English Content Analysis — Gabriel Nicholas, Aliya Bhatia More on Kabakoo Academies, founded by Yanick Kemayou The SPUR Coalition — a UK org seeking to create standards and infrastructure for AI companies and news publishers to do business The State and Fate of Linguistic Diversity and Inclusion in the NLP World — by Pratik Joshi et al, 2020 The #BenderRule: On Naming the Languages We Study and Why It Matters — Emily Bender, 2019 The silicon gaze: A typology of biases and inequality in LLMs through the lens of place — Francisco W. Kerche et al, 2026 Bamako AI Festival Join The Maybe Collective to explore the politics of technology through fresh ideas that you won't hear anywhere else. Sign up for monthly insights, access to exclusive digital events, and real ways to get more involved on issues you care about. Computer Says Maybe is produced by Georgia Iacovou, Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Sarah Myles, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout
More from Computer Says Maybe
The AI industry is so unpopular that it has started paying for the support it can’t earn. So what does it take for people to turn that mistrust into power that the industry can’t just buy off? More like this: Flock Shock: How Local Fights Over Surveillance Are Reshaping American Politics w/ Sarah Hamid & Anthony Ralphs
You may have seen the viral clip of a man in a full Darth Vader costume protesting Flock at a San Diego City Council meeting. The man behind the mask was Anthony Ralphs, who spent months trying to get the city to reconsider its contract with the surveillance tech company. After repeatedly raising concerns with the council, he turned to political theater - and got national attention. His protest is part of a growing backlash against Flock, bringing people across the political spectrum together to challenge surveillance tech and demand more say in how it’s used.
Tech companies keep telling us that the answer to solving climate change lies in AI. Meanwhile, the data centers required to power AI are keeping coal plants open longer, bringing in gas turbines, and driving plans for power stations bigger than anything we’ve built before. More like this: The Colossus Crossroads: Fighting for the Future of Memphis w/ KeShaun Pearson
When a tech executive says AI will be doing your job next year, it sounds like a forecast. Dr. Carissa Véliz argues it's something else: a command, delivered in advance, that works only if enough of us obey it. If you believe the prediction, you buy the product, reorganize your company, and bet the economy on it, and the prediction comes true because you made it so. So who gets to make predictions that stick? And what would it take to stop treating them as news and start hearing them as orders? More like this: AGI is Scientifically Impossible w/ Adam Becker In this episode, Alix Dunn talks with Carissa Véliz, associate professor at Oxford's Institute for Ethics in AI and author of Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, From Ancient Oracles to AI. Carissa explains why a prediction is a command disguised as a description, how powerful people use algorithms to fulfill their own forecasts, and why the alternative just might be being relying on preparation over prediction. Further reading & resources: Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, From Ancient Oracles to AI — Carissa Véliz Beware the Power of Prediction — Carissa Véliz, TED Talk The Origins of Totalitarianism — Hannah Arendt The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk” — Émile P. Torres, Current Affairs
Almost everyone studying kids’ safety online agrees that a blanket social media ban won't work. And nearly every government moving on the issue is passing one anyway. This week, a researcher and a policy lawyer dig into why - and what could actually work instead. More like this: When Kids Can’t Consent: The Case Against Tech in the Classroom w/ Andrew Liddell