Computer Says Maybe

Alix Dunn
  • 5.0 (12)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Technology is changing fast. And it's changing our world even faster. Host Alix Dunn interviews visionaries, researchers, and technologists working in the public interest to help you keep up. Step outside the hype and explore the possibilities, problems, and politics of technology. We publish weekly.

  1. The Vaporstate: All Hail Scale at the India AI Summit

    4H AGO

    The Vaporstate: All Hail Scale at the India AI Summit

    In The Vaporstate, we have traveled to Brazil, India, and the UK. But what does this look like as a global movement of nations and companies evangelising technology as the key to solving all problems, everywhere? More like this: Paris Post-Mortem (live) For our final instalment of The Vaporstate, Alix is joined by Astha Kapoor and Amba Kak to reflect on the series, and discuss the upcoming AI Action Summit in India. This is the first time this summit is being hosted by a global majority country — will this create new opportunities for civil society to have a say, or is this just yet another chance for tech companies to whisper magic AI spells into the ear of government? The end of The Vaporstate series marks the beginning of another series, made in partnership with AI Now and Aapti Institute: in the run up to the AI Summit, we want to rethink the terms that have been co-opted by government and industry. Terms like ‘sovereignty’, ‘AI for good’, and ‘human capital’. We interviewed twelve experts who unpack how these terms are framed in global summits like this one — watch this space for conversations with Naomi Klein, Meredith Whitaker, and Karen Hao, to name a few. Further reading & resources: Mark Carney’s speech at Davos January 2026Watch the first batch of interviews discussing co-opted terms used in and around the upcoming summit**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!** Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

    48 min
  2. The Vaporstate: Buy Blair, Sell AI

    JAN 30

    The Vaporstate: Buy Blair, Sell AI

    What does US tech billionaire Larry Ellison get when he gives the Tony Blair Institute hundreds of millions of dollars? More like this: The Vaporstate: ID in India In our third installment of The Vaporstate, we are joined by two journalists from Lighthouse Reports, who tell all about their investigation into the questionable relationship between Oracle founder Larry Ellison, the Tony Blair Institute, and the current Labour government. What is the Tony Blair Institute and why did Ellison give them millions of dollars? What does any of this have to do with national IDs and NHS data? And if you’re a government official somewhere around the world, and TBI comes knocking to sell you an AI future what you should do…? Further reading & resources: Britain must treat tech giants like nation states — The Times, 2024Backlight — Lighthouse’s monthly podcastBlair and the Billionaire — Lighthouse Reports 2025Inside The Tony Blair Institute — Lighthouse journalists Peter Geoghegan and May Bulman are interviewed by The New StatesmanDo you have a story that you think is missing from public discourse? Here’s how to get in touch with LighthouseQuestions Alix proposed for the Sundance panel — as mentioned in the intro.**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!** Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

    45 min
  3. The Vaporstate: Brazil is Banking on Apps

    JAN 23

    The Vaporstate: Brazil is Banking on Apps

    What happens when the very way you prove who you are is stolen by someone else? And what happens when a country stands up to Meta and builds their own. More like this: The Vaporstate: ID in India For episode two of The Vaporstate, Alix is joined by Rafael Zanatta and Luã Cruz. Rafa walks us through the incredible story of how his mom’s digital ID was stolen and a clever bank teller stopped someone from halfway across the country from stealing her savings. Luã ****shares the geopolitical battles that prevented a Meta takeover of Brazilian peer-to-peer payment and the roll out of a frictionless financial transaction system called PIX. Further reading & resources: Brazil Has The World’s Most Accessed Citizen Services Platform — Forbes, March 2024More about Data Privacy BrazilThe Tyranny of Convenience by Tim Wu — New York Times, 2018Works by South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul HanLula pushing back against Trump’s tariffs — AP, September 2025More about The Brazilian Institute for Consumer Protection**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!** Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

    54 min
  4. The Vaporstate: ID in India

    JAN 16

    The Vaporstate: ID in India

    Our first exploration of The Vaporstate takes us to India, home of Aadhaar: a mammoth digitisation project that charts a path from technical solution for public service delivery, through mission creep and popular opposition, to a knotty but inescapable part of Indian existence today. More like this: Is Digitisation Killing Democracy? w/ Marietje Schaake Joining Alix for part one of The Vaporstate is Mila Samdub, Astha Kapoor, and Usha Ramanathan. Together they discuss the conception of Aadhaar, India’s key piece of digital public infrastructure, and how it morphed from a simple digital ID to something that unifies payments, phone plans, and biometrics. Further reading & resources: More about Usha Ramanathan — legendary lawyer and activist who has been pushing back on the Aadhaar programme for over a decadeMore about Astha Kapoor — co-founder of the Aapti InstituteMore about Mila Samdub — designer, writer, and CyberBRICS Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society, FGV RioComputer-vision research powers surveillance technology — by Abeba Birhane et al, Nature JournalAadhaar 2.0 workshopWalmart Takes Ownership of PhonePe from Flipkart — The Times of India, 2022Walmart invests $200 million in Indian mobile payments giant PhonePe — TechCrunch, 2023Google launches India mobile payments app Tez — BBC, 2017Identity Verification Standards in Welfare Programs: Experimental Evidence from India — Karthik Muralidharan et al, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021Aadhaar: Costs of Digital Red Tape — Reetika Khera & Amod Moharil, Economic & Political Weekly, 2024Overload, Creep, Excess – An Internet from India — Nafis Hasan et al, Institute of Network Cultures, 2022Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India's 12 Digit Revolution — Shankkar Aiyar, Westland, 2017**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!** Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

    50 min
  5. The Vaporstate: A New Mini-Series

    EPISODE 99

    The Vaporstate: A New Mini-Series

    This is The Vaporstate, a new series on the worldwide government bonanza of enthusiastic digitisation: Digital IDs, digital payment systems, massive data exchange platforms. What are the every-day impacts of these digitisation projects, and why now? The Vaporstate is a deep exploration of digital public infrastructure: we will hear from the journalists, civil society groups, and lawyers from around the world who are watching these projects develop, and how this digital scaffolding shapes our lives. Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

    2 min
  6. The Age of Noise w/ Eryk Salvaggio (replay)

    JAN 9

    The Age of Noise w/ Eryk Salvaggio (replay)

    Infinite AI slop means we are moving away from our the age of information into what Eryk Salvaggio calls ‘the age of noise’. More like this: Straight to Video: From Rodney King to Sora w/ Sam Gregory We’re replaying five deep conversations over the Christmas period for you to listen to on your travels and downtime — please enjoy! What happens if you ask a generative AI image model to show you what Picasso’s work would have looked like if he lived in Japan in the 16th century? Would it produce something totally new, or just mash together stereotypical aesthetics from Picasso’s work, and 16th century Japan? Can generative AI really create anything new if it can only draw from existing imagery? Further reading: What I Read About AI in 2025 — by Eryk SalvaggioVisit Eryk’s WebsiteCybernetic Forests — Eryk’s newsletter on tech and culturePost Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

    49 min
  7. Gotcha! Enshittification w/ Cory Doctorow (replay)

    JAN 6

    Gotcha! Enshittification w/ Cory Doctorow (replay)

    Welcome to the final boss of scams in the age of technology: Enshittification More like this: Nodestar: The Eternal September w/ Mike Masnick We’re replaying five deep conversations over the Christmas period for you to listen to on your travels and downtime — please enjoy! Is platformisation essentially just an industrial level scam? We will deep-dive the enshittification playbook to understand how companies lock users into decaying platforms, and get away with it. Cory shares ideas on what we can do differently to turn tide. Listen to learn what a ‘chickenised reverse centaur’ is… Further reading & resources: Buy Enshittifcation now from Verso Books!Picks and Shovels by Cory DoctorowOn The Media series on EnshittificationPluralistic — Daily Links and essays by Cory DoctorowConservatism Considered as a Movement of Bitter Rubes — Cory on why conservatism creates a friendly environment for scamsHow I Got Scammed — Cory on his personal experiences of being scammedAll of Cory’s booksAll (Antitrust) Politics Are Local — the entry to Pluralistic that Cory wrote on the day of recording**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

    57 min
  8. Worker Power & Big Tech Bossmen w/ David Seligman (replay)

    JAN 2

    Worker Power & Big Tech Bossmen w/ David Seligman (replay)

    Litigator David Seligman describes how big tech companies act brazenly as legal bullies to extract wealth and power from the working class in the US. More like this: The Human in the Loop: The AI Supply Chain We’re replaying five deep conversations over the Christmas period for you to listen to on your travels and downtime — please enjoy! Alix and David talk about legal devices such as forced arbitration and monopolistic practices like algorithmic price fixing and wage suppression — and the cases that David’s team are bringing to fight these practices Further reading & resources Seligman for Attorney General ColoradoTowards Justice California drivers lawsuitEichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banal State of Evil by Hannah ArendtThe Dual State by Ernst FraenkelProhibiting Surveillance Prices and Wages by Towards JusticeGill VS Uber — class action led by Towards Justice**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!** Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

    47 min
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5
out of 5
12 Ratings

About

Technology is changing fast. And it's changing our world even faster. Host Alix Dunn interviews visionaries, researchers, and technologists working in the public interest to help you keep up. Step outside the hype and explore the possibilities, problems, and politics of technology. We publish weekly.

Information

  • Creator
    Alix Dunn
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    102
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2024
  • Show Website
    Computer Says Maybe

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