The Good Robot

In this episode, Aisha Sobey, a research fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, explores how anti-fat bias shapes our digital lives. She discusses its effects on health technologies, social media, and generative AI, and explains why anti-fatness must be seen as a systemic issue. The conversation also highlights how ideas from fat liberation can help create more inclusive and fair technological design.

In this episode we talk to Nassim Parvin and Neda Atanasoski, the editors of the book Technocreep. We discuss what makes a technology creepy and the rise of so-called creepy technologies during COVID-19. Neda and Nassim argue that creepiness is associated with surveillance and that privacy is posited as the solution to so-called creepy tech. However, they highlight the way that race and gender have shaped who has the right to privacy and argue that we need to go beyond the privacy/surveillanc...

In this episode, Eleanor talks to Alexander Thomas, a filmmaker and academic who leads the BA in Media Production at the University of East London. They discuss his new book about transhumanism, a philosophical movement that aims to improve human capabilities through technology and whose followers includes Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Larry Page, and also apparently the DJ Steve Aoki. Alex is himself one of the foremost commentators on transhumanism. He explores transhumanist fantasies about the fu...

In this episode we talk to Kyla Wazana Tompkins, chair of the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality studies at the University of Buffalo. She gives incredible insight into the relationship between the history of science and the history of food law and policy. We look at legislation like the 1906 Food and Drug Act to examine how food policy shaped and was shaped by American ideas about race, national identity, and the body. From $40 LA smoothies to the fermentation practices of the Appalac...

In this episode, we go shopping with artist and performer, Laura Allcorn. We enter into her practice, which is called the Institute for Comedic Inquiry, to learn how she pairs humour and entertainment with participatory public engagement methods to raise awareness about bizarre and dangerous uses of AI. Laura uses comedy to skewer all manner of ethically questionable technologies, from gait surveillance to shopping algorithms. We participate in one of Laura's performances in this episode, 'S...

In this episode, we talk to Sarah Ciston, an artist, coder, writer, and critical AI scholar. We asked Sarah to talk about this badass chatbot they created called Ladymouth, which responds to trolls and incels on hate forums. We discussed the difficult labor of content moderation and the long lasting effects of trying to do feminist work online. We also talk about the surprising things that incels and feminists have in common and whether you can use AI to change people's minds and establish co...

In this episode, we talk to Sebastián Lehuedé, a Lecturer in Ethics, AI, and Society at King's College London. We talk about data activism in Chile, how water-intensive lithium extraction affects people living in the Atacama desert, the importance of reflexive research ethics, and an accidental Sunday afternoon shot of tequila.

In this episode, we talk to Yasmine Boudiaf, a researcher, artist and creative technologist who uses technology in beautiful and interesting ways to challenge and redefine what we think of as 'good'. We discuss her wide-ranging art projects, from using AI to create a library of Mediterranean hand gestures through to her project Ways of Machine Seeing, which explored how machine vision systems are being taught to 'see'. Throughout the episode, we explore how Yasmine creatively uses technology ...