Computer Says Maybe

Alix Dunn
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  • 科技
  • 一周一更

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. Local Laws for Global Technologies w/ Hillary Ronen

    3天前

    Local Laws for Global Technologies w/ Hillary Ronen

    What’s it like working as a local representative when you live next door to Silicon Valley? More like this: Chasing Away Sidewalk Labs w/ Bianca Wylie When Hilary Ronen was on the board of supervisors for San Francisco, she had to make lots of decisions about technology. She felt unprepared. Now she sees local policymakers on the frontlines of a battle of resources and governance in an AI era, and is working to upskill them to make better decisions for their constituents. No degree in computer science required. Further reading & resources: Local Leadership in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and the Tech Oligarchy by Hillary RonenMore on Hillary’s work as a Supervisor for SFHillary Ronen on progressives, messaging, hard choices, and justice — interview in 48Hills from January 2025More about Local ProgressConfronting Preemption — a short briefing by Local ProgressWhat Happens When State and Local Laws Conflict — article on state-level preemption by State Court Report**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!**

    59 分钟
  2. Gotcha! Enshittification w/ Cory Doctorow

    10月10日

    Gotcha! Enshittification w/ Cory Doctorow

    Welcome to the final boss of scams in the age of technology: Enshittification  More like this: Nodestar: The Eternal September w/ Mike Masnick This is our final episode of Gotcha! — our series on scams, how they work, and how technology both amplifies and obscures them. For this final instalment we have Cory Doctorow on to chat about his new book Enshittification. 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

    56 分钟
  3. Gotcha! ScamGPT w/ Lana Swartz & Alice Marwick

    10月3日

    Gotcha! ScamGPT w/ Lana Swartz & Alice Marwick

    Thought we were at peak scam? Well, ScamGPT just entered the chat. More like this: Gotcha! The Crypto Grift w/ Mark Hays This is part three of Gotcha! — our series on scams, how they work, and how technology is supercharging them. This week Lana Swartz and Alice Marwick join Alix to discuss their primer on how generative AI is automating fraud. We dig into the very human, very dark world of the scam industry, where the scammers are often being exploited in highly sophisticated human trafficking operations — and are now using generative AI to scale up and speed up. We talk about how you probably aren’t going to get a deepfake call from a family member to demand a ransom, but the threats are still evolving in ways that are scary and until now largely unregulated. And as ever even though the problems are made worse by technology, we explore the limitations of technology and laws to stem the tide. Further reading & resources: Read the primer here!More about Lana SwartzMore about Alice MarwickNew Money by Lana SwartzScam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds by Mark Bo, Ivan Franceschini, and Ling LiRevealed: the huge growth of Myanmar scam centres that may hold 100,000 trafficked peopleAl Jazeera True Crime Report on scamming farms in South East AsiaScam Empire project by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project**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!**

    55 分钟
  4. NYC Live: Let Them Eat Compute

    10月2日

    NYC Live: Let Them Eat Compute

    This just in with data centers: Energy grids are strained, water is scarce, utility costs are through the roof — ah well, let them eat compute, I guess! More like this: AI Thirst in a Water-Scarce World w/ Julie McCarthy It was just climate week in NYC and we did a live show on data centers with four amazing guests from around the US… Thank you to the Luminate Foundation for sponsoring this live show and for all of our NY-based friends, and network from around the world that made it to Brooklyn for a magical evening. You can also watch the live recording on Youtube. KeShaun Pearson (Memphis Community Against Pollution) will break down how Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer is polluting the air of historically Black neighborhoods in Memphis, and how organizers are fighting back against yet another chapter of corporate extraction in their communities.KD Minor (Alliance for Affordable Energy) will demystify the energy impacts of data centers in Louisiana and share organizing strategies to mobilize community opposition to Big Tech and Big Oil infrastructure.Marisol (No Desert Data Center) will talk about their grassroots coalition’s recent win in Tucson to stop Amazon’s Project Blue data center proposal, which threatened the city’s scarce water supply, and how they’re organizing for future protections.Amba Kak (AI Now Institute) will talk us through the bigger picture: what’s behind Big Tech’s AI data center expansion, who stands to benefit from this boom, and what we sacrifice in return.Further reading & resources: Amazon Web Services is company behind Tucson’s Project Blue, according to 2023 county memo — from LuminariaTuscon to create new policies around NDAs following the councils regret around not knowing more about Project Blue — from LuminariaHow Marana, also in the Tuscon area, employed an ordinance to regulate water usage after learning about data center interest in the area.xAI has requested an additional 150MGW of power for Colossus in Memphis, bring it to a total of 300MGWTime reports on increase in nitrogen dioxide pollution around Memphis due to xAI turbinesKeshaun and Justin Pearson on Democracy Now discussing xAI’s human rights violationsMeta’s Mega Data Center Could Strain Louisiana’s Grid — and Entergy Isn’t Prepared — report by the Alliance for Affordable Energy'A Black Hole of Energy Use': Meta's Massive AI Data Center Is Stressing Out a Louisiana Community — 404 Media**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!**

    53 分钟
  5. Are AI Companies Cooking the Books? w/ Sarah Myers West

    9月30日

    Are AI Companies Cooking the Books? w/ Sarah Myers West

    OpenAI just secured a bizarre financial deal with Nvidia — but the math is not mathing. Is the AI sector an actual market, or a series of high-profile announcements of circular relationships between a tiny number of companies? More like this: Making Myths to Make Money w/ AI Now Alix sat down with Sarah Myers-West to go through the particulars of this deal, and other similar deals that are propping up AI’s industry of vapour. This is not your traditional bubble that’s about to burst — there is no bubble, it’s just that The New Normal is to pour debt into an industry that cannot promise any returns… Further reading & resources: More on the Nvidia OpenAI deal — CNBCAnalysts refer to deal as ‘vendor financing’ — Insider MonkeySpending on AI is at Epic Levels. Will it Ever Pay Off? — WSJOpenAI, Softbank, and Oracle spending $500bn on data centre expansion in Abilene — ReutersHow Larry Ellison used the AI boom and the Tony Blair Institute to bolster his wealthOracle funding Open AI data centers with heaps of debt and will have to borrow at least $25bn a year — The Register**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!**

    40 分钟
  6. Gotcha! How MLMs Ate the Economy w/ Bridget Read

    9月26日

    Gotcha! How MLMs Ate the Economy w/ Bridget Read

    Multi-level marketing schemes have built an empire by enticing people with promises of self-realisation and economic freedom. The cost is simple: exploit and be exploited. More like this: Worker Power & Big Tech Bossmen w/ David Seligman This is part two of Gotcha! Our series on scams, how they work, and how technology is super-charging them. This week Bridget Read came to Alix with a very exciting business opportunity. Bridget authored Little Bosses Everywhere — a book on the history of MLM. We explore how door-to-door sales in the mid 20th century US took on the business model of a ponzi scheme, and transformed the sweaty salesman into an entrepreneurial recruiter with a downline. MLM originators were part of a coordinated plan to challenge the new deal in lieu of radical free enterprise, where the only thing holding you back is yourself, and the economy consists solely of consumers selling to each other in a market of speculation. The secret is, no one is selling a product — they’re selling a way of life. Further reading & resources: Buy Bridget’s book: Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped AmericaFamily Values by Melinda CooperThe Missing Crypto Queen: a podcast by BBC Sounds, about a large scale crypto scam, where there wasn’t even any cryptoLuLaRoe — the pyramid scheme that tricked American mums into selling cheap clothes to their friends and family with the promise of financial independence.My Experience of Being in a Pyramid Scheme (Amway) — a personal account by Darren Mudd on LinkedInWatch our recent live show at NYC Climate WeekSubscribe 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!

    50 分钟
  7. Gotcha! The Crypto Grift w/ Mark Hays

    9月19日

    Gotcha! The Crypto Grift w/ Mark Hays

    Hey you! Do you want some free internet money? If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is! More like this: Making Myths to Make Money w/ AI Now This is Gotcha! A four-part series on scams, how they work, and how technology is supercharging them. We start with Mark Hays from Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), and get into one of the biggest tech-fuelled financial scams out there: cryptocurrencies. Like many things that require mass-buy in, crypto started with an ideology (libertarianism, people hating on Wall Street post 2008). But where does that leave us now? What has crypto morphed into since then, and how does it deceive both consumers and regulators into thinking it’s something that it’s not? Further reading & resources: Seeing Like a State by James C. ScottCapital Without Borders by Brooke HarringtonThe Politics of Bitcoin by David GolumbiaLearn more about Americans for Financial ReformCheck out Web3 Is Going Great by Molly WhiteLine Goes Up by Folding Ideas — an excellent survey of all the tactics and rug-pulls during the height of the NFT boomThe Missing Crypto Queen: a podcast by BBC Sounds, about a large scale crypto scam, where there wasn’t even any crypto**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!**

    56 分钟
  8. Gotcha!

    第 73 集

    Gotcha!

    Gotcha! is a four-part series on scams, how they work, and how technology is supercharging them — running through to October 10. In the series we look at: Crypto: Mark Hays on how a thing touting financial freedom ended up being a kind of fin-cult, rife with scammingMulti-Level Marketing : Bridget Read on the history of the biggest and most successful type of scam that still plagues us todayGenerative AI: Data & Society’s primer on how generative AI is juicing the scam industrial complexEnshittification: Cory Doctorow on his upcoming book, and how the process of Enchittification represents user-hostile practices that scam people into paying more, and ecosystem lock-in

    1 分钟
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关于

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.

信息

  • 创作者
    Alix Dunn
  • 活跃年份
    2024年 - 2025年
  • 单集
    79
  • 分级
    儿童不宜
  • 版权
    © 2024
  • 节目网站
    Computer Says Maybe

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