Show Notes
Maria Pilar Llorens, Divij Joshi, Gabriel Geiger, and Purity Mukami reveal how digitised welfare is not welfare — it’s just efficiency theatre. More like this: REAL Resistance: The AI Information Warp
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 explore the rapid digitisation of public and judicial services around the world: Courts in LatAm countries are using ChatGPT to power through the case backlog. Maria Pilar Llorens explains that speed is not a virtue in judicial settings Kenya has adopted algorithmic proxy means-testing for healthcare — Gabriel Geiger & Purity Mukami reverse-engineered it to reveal its inequities Digitised public services kind of have a formula now: Divij Joshi’s work takes an aerial view of digitised payments, IDs, and consolidated data sets that govern the efficiency playbook Further reading & resources: Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights Courts — Maria Pilar Llorens Hiding Behind AI — Gabriel & Purity’s report on the new Kenyan healthcare system Suspicion Machines — Gabriel Geiger et al, Lighthouse Reports March 2023 How an algorithm denied food to thousands of poor in India’s Telangana — Divij Joshi, Tapasya, Kumar Sambhav, Al Jazeera January 2024 AI governance in India – law, policy and political economy — Divij Joshi, 2024 Use of Entity Resolution in India: Shining a light on how new forms of automation can deny people access to welfare — Amnesty International 2024 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