Best Helene Drage Podcasts (2024)

1
What on Earth Is Ethical Maths? with Maurice Chiodo 38:42

11d ago38:42

38:42

We often think that maths is neutral or can't be harmful, because after all, what could numbers do to hurt us? In this episode, we talk to Dr. Maurice Chiodo, a mathematician at the University of Cambridge, who's now based at the Center for Existential Risk. He tells us why maths can actually throw out big ethical issues. Take the atomic bomb or th…

1
Can Technology Save us from Housework? with Helen Hester 37:08

29d ago37:08

37:08

This is a special live episode because Kerry is talking to Professor Helen Hester at the tech transformed conference in London. Helen is a leading thinker of feminism technology and the future of work, and she explores the history of domestic technologies- so technology used around the house. It's really important that we understand that technologi…

1
Poisoning AI and Silencing Alexa with Heather Zheng 27:57

1M ago27:57

27:57

In this episode, we talk to Heather Zheng, who makes technologies that stop everyday surveillance. This includes bracelets that stopped devices from listening and on you, to more secure biometric technologies that can protect us by identifying us by for example, our dance moves. Most famously, Zheng is one of the computer scientists behind Nightsha…

1
Gamergate, Harassment, and Feminist Design with Caroline Sinders 35:59

2M ago35:59

35:59

In this episode we talk to Caroline Sinders, the human rights researcher, an artist, and the founder of convocation, design and research. We begin by talking about Gamergate, when women were harassed for being gamers. We also talk about what it's like doing high risk research about abusive misogynists online and experiences of doxing. Just to give …

1
The curse of online beauty culture with Ellen Atlanta 33:25

2M ago33:25

33:25

We’re expected to look amazing online, but also natural. We’re fighting against the gender pay gap, but also spend thousands on cosmetics. In this episode, Ellen Atlanta talks us through the paradoxes of feminism and beauty in the digital sphere.By Dr Kerry McInerney and Dr Eleanor Drage

1
Needlework and History's Hidden Technologies with Isabella Rosner 33:09

2M ago33:09

33:09

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Isabella Rosner, a curator at the Royal School of Needlework and a research consultant at Witney Antiques. Isabella tells us about the evolution of embroidery as a technology, and the complex relationship between needlework and feminism. We use this history to shed light on technology and feminism today.…

1
How China surveils Uyghur Muslims with Darren Byler 26:39

4M ago26:39

26:39

In this episode, we talked to Darren Byler, author of Terror Capitalism and In the Camps, Life in China's High Tech Penal Colony. We discussed his in depth research on Uyghur Muslims in China and the role played by technology in their persecution. If you're just listening to this on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, you can now watch us on…

1
The Racial History of Dermatology with Thuy Linh Tu 27:46

4M ago27:46

27:46

In this episode we talk to Thuy Linh Thu, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. We talk about how good technology disperses power, while bad technology concentrates power, the racial history of dermatology, including the connections between the Vietnam War, medical experimentation on incarcerated men in the U. S., and retinol creams,. P…

1
Hot Take: The Good Robot BOOK! 29:15

4M ago29:15

29:15

In this very special Good Robot hot take we talk about our new book, The Good Robot: Why Technology Needs Feminism. It's a beautiful new illustrated book where the top scholars, activists, artists, writers, technologists, all come together to respond to the prompt: good technology is... Kerry and Eleanor chat about getting its illustrations as tatt…

1
Feminist care ethics, techno-virtues and vices, and the 'AI Mirror' with Shannon Vallor 30:52

5M ago30:52

30:52

In this episode we chat to Shannon Vallor, the Bailey Gifford professor in the ethics and data of AI at the University of Edinburgh and the Director for the Centre for Technomoral Futures. We talk about feminist care ethics; technologies, vices and virtues; why Aristotle believed that the people who make technology should be excluded from citizensh…

1
Why You Shouldn't Believe the AI Hype with Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna 29:18

5M ago29:18

29:18

In this episode, we talk to Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna. AI ethics legends and now the co-hosts of the Mystery AI Hype Theatre 3000 podcast which is a new podcast where they dispel the hype storm around AI. Emily is a professor of linguistics at university of Washington and the co-author of that stochastic parrots paper that you may have heard o…

1
Why the Stories We Tell About AI Matter with Melissa Heikkilä 27:05

6M ago27:05

27:05

This week we chat to Melissa Heikkilä, a senior tech reporter for MIT Tech review, about ChatGPT, image generation, porn, and the stories we tell about AI. We hope you enjoy the show.By Dr Kerry McInerney and Dr Eleanor Drage

1
Large Language Models, Language and Meaning, and How Children Learn Languages with Rebecca Woods 45:15

6M ago45:15

45:15

In this episode, we talked to Rebecca Woods, a Senior Lecturer in Language and Cognition at Newcastle University. We have an amazing chat about language learning in AI, and she tells us how language is crucial to how ChatGPT functions. She's also an expert in how children learn languages, and she compares this to teaching AI how to process language…

1
Hot Take: Happy Holidays & a new book from Eleanor! 31:19

7M ago31:19

31:19

Happy holidays from your favourite jingle belles at the Good Robot podcast! In this episode we celebrate both the holidays and Eleanor's new book, The Planetary Humanism of European Women's Science Fiction: An Experience of the Impossible, which is a history of women's utopian science fiction from 1666 to 2016. We talk about the ways that women hav…

1
Rewriting Wikipedia with Jess Wade 35:05

7M ago35:05

35:05

In this episode we talk to British physicist Jess Wade about the 1923 Wikipedia pages (and counting) she’s created and edited in her aim to put more women and more people of colour onto the online encyclopaedia.By Dr Kerry McInerney and Dr Eleanor Drage

1
Hot Take: Can you own your data? 38:15

8M ago38:15

38:15

In this episode we welcome Eleanor back from Slovenia, where she was speaking at a conference on digital sovereignty. But what is digital sovereignty, and what does it mean for you and your data?By Dr Kerry McInerney and Dr Eleanor Drage

1
Digital Authoritarianism and Press Freedom with Arzu Geybulla 36:59

8M ago36:59

36:59

In this episode, we talked to Azerbaijani journalist Arzu Geybulla, a specialist on digital authoritarianism and its implications on human rights and press freedoms in Azerbaijan. She now lives in self-imposed exile in Istanbul. Aside from writing for big publications like Al Jazeera, Eurasianet, Foreign Policy Democracy Lab, she also founded Azerb…

1
Technology, psychedelics and healing with K Allado-McDowell 36:54

8M ago36:54

36:54

In this episode, we speak to K Allado-McDowell a writer, speaker, and musician. They've written three books and an opera libretto, and they've established the artists and machine intelligence program at Google AI. We talk about good technology as healing, the relationship between psychedelics and technology, utopianism and the counter-cultural move…

1
Good corporations, AI ethics and value pluralism with Giada Pistilli 36:26

9M ago36:26

36:26

In this episode, we talk to Giada Pistilli, Principal Ethicist at Hugging Face, which is the company that Meg Mitchell joined, following her departure from Google. Giada is also completing her PhD in philosophy and ethics of applied conversational AI at Sorbonne University. We talk about value pluralism and AI, which means building AI according to …

1
Facial Recognition and Surveillance in Palestine with Matt Mahmoudi 38:20

9M ago38:20

38:20

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Matt Mahmoudi, a researcher and advisor on artificial intelligence and human rights at Amnesty International, and an affiliated lecturer at the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. We discuss how AI is being used to survey Palestinians in Hebron and East Jerusalem, both in their bedrooms and in the…

1
Hot Take: Fighting Fears and Fantasies of East Asia (and AI) 31:24

10M ago31:24

31:24

In this episode, we hear all about Kerry’s trip to Japan (spoiler alert: she loved it) and explore her work on anti-Asian racism and AI. Kerry explains what the very long word ‘techno-Orientalism’ means and how fears and fantasies of East Asia or the so-called ‘Orient’ shape Western approaches to technology and AI. We chat about how US sci-fi genre…

1
Generative AI, Creativity, and what AI means for the Music Industry with Hayleigh Bosher 40:00

10M ago40:00

40:00

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Hayleigh Bosher, Associate Dean and Reader in intellectual property law at Brunel University and host of the podcast Whose Song is it Anyway?, a podcast on the intersections of IP [intellectual property] and the music industry. Hayleigh gives us some great insight into tomorrow's legal disputes over AI and music copy…

1
Why Sexism, Racism and Ableism in Tech are 'More than a Glitch' with Meredith Broussard 38:28

10M ago38:28

38:28

In this episode we talk to Meredith Broussard, data journalism professor at the Arthur L. Carter Institute at New York University. She's also the author of Artificial Unintelligence, which made waves following its release in 2018 by claiming that AI was nothing more than really fancy math. We talk about why we need to bring a little bit more fricti…

1
Indigenous Sciences, Technologies, and Science Fiction with Grace Dillon 35:37

11M ago35:37

35:37

In this episode we chat to Grace DiIlon, Professor in the Indigenous Nations Studies Department at Portland State University. Grace, an Anishinaabe cultural critic and a phenomenal storyteller in her own right, gives an overview of the fiction and science books by indigenous writers doing very cool things. We talk about apocalypse and healing, cere…

1
Unexpected History of Computing with Mar Hicks 33:25

11M ago33:25

33:25

In this episode, we talk to Mar Hicks, an Associate Professor of Data Science at the University of Virginia and author of Programmed Inequality: How Britain discarded Women Technologists and Lost its Edge in computing. Hicks talks to us about the lessons that the tech industry can learn from histories of computing, for example: how sexism is an int…

1
Hot Take: Twitter is to X as Barbie is to Ken 23:16

12M ago23:16

23:16

Welcome to this week’s Hot Take, where your hosts Kerry and Eleanor give their candid opinion on the latest in tech news. This week they discuss the rebranding of Twitter as X and how people like Elon Musk have an outsized impact on the daily technologies that we use, on the kinds of technologies that get made and created, and on the kinds of needs…

1
Buddhist Approaches to Machine Consciousness with Peter Hershock 42:25

1y ago42:25

42:25

We talk to Peter Hershock, director of the Asian Studies Development Program and coordinator of the Humane AI Initiative at the East-West Center in Honolulu. We talked to Peter about the kinds of misconceptions and red herrings that shape public interpretations of machine consciousness and what we can gain from approaching the question of machine c…

1
Hot Take: Detecting Sexuality with AI is Fake Science 35:18

1y ago35:18

35:18

In this week’s Good Robot Hot Takes, Kerry and Eleanor talk about a group of scientists in Zurich that tried to measure a correlation between brain activity and sexuality using AI. This smacks not only of previous attempts to use AI to try and ‘read’ people’s sexuality, but also of dangerous 19th and 20th century race science. We talk about how the…

1
Worker Surveillance and the US Trucking Industry with Karen Levy 29:04

1y ago29:04

29:04

In this episode we chat to Karen Levy, Associate Professor of Information Science at Cornell University and author of Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance. Karen is an expert in the changing face of long distance driving - she spent ten years doing research with truck drivers. So she’s been looking at how surveillan…

1
Hot Take: Can AI De-Bias Hiring? 34:14

1y ago34:14

34:14

Welcome to our third episode of the Good Robot Hot Takes. Every two weeks Kerry and Eleanor will be giving their hot take on some of the biggest issues in tech. If you’re a graduate or a jobseeker, this is the episode for you because this week we talk about AI that’s being used for recruitment. That’s right, AI is being used to assess your performa…

1
Art, Digital Archives and Activism with Ofri Cnaani 29:23

1y ago29:23

29:23

In this episode we chat with Ofri Cnaani, an artist and associate lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. Artists are doing amazing things in tech spaces, not just working with tech but also using art to explore how our world is infused with data. Ofri discusses some of her projects with us, including her investigation of the fire that destro…

1
Hot Take: Most AI Scientists in Films Suck 27:47

1y ago27:47

27:47

Welcome to our second episode of the Good Robot Hot Takes, where every week Kerry and Eleanor give you their spicy opinions about top issues in tech. This week we talk about science fiction films, why we love Aliens and Sigourney Weaver, how female AI scientists and professionals are represented on screen, how this contributes to the unequal gender…

1
Full Stack Feminism and the Digital Humanities with Caroline Bassett and Sharon Webb 35:18

1y ago35:18

35:18

From using computers to process the work of Thomas Aquinas to using facial recognition to compare portraits of Shakespeare, computational techniques have long been applied to humanities research. These projects are now called the digital humanities, and today we’re interviewing two major figures in this discipline. We talk to Dr Sharon Webb, Senior…

1
Hot Take: The Future of Life's Call for a Pause on 'Giant AI' - Doomsday or Distraction? 34:57

1y ago34:57

34:57

Welcome to our new format: The Good Robot Hot Takes! In these fun, lively, conversational episodes, we (Eleanor and Kerry) discuss some of the biggest issues in tech, from ChatGPT, and the sexy fembot problem in Hollywood film, to why predictive policing is a scam and why gender recognition is garbage. This week we're talking about the Future of Li…

1
Feminism, Disability, and the Politics of Technology with Laura Forlano 21:29

1y ago21:29

21:29

In this episode we chat to Laura Forlano, Associate Professor of Design at the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology. This is a special episode because Laura reads us some of her work on life as a Type 1 diabetic, or in her words, a disabled cyborg calibrated to an insulin pump. Laura’s writing gives us a different kind of insight…

1
The Good Robot LIVE! from Berlin 26:57

1y ago26:57

26:57

This special bonus episode was recorded at the AI Anarchies conference in Berlin. We held a workshop exploring with participants what good technology means for them, and why thinking in terms of ‘good technology’ actually limits us. Two amazing participants offered to be interviewed by us, Christina Lu, who at the time was a software engineer at De…

1
The Politics of Captions with Louise Hickman 29:09

1y ago29:09

29:09

In this episode we chat to Louise Hickman, an activist and scholar based at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge. Louise talks to us about stenography, the process of transcribing speech into shorthand. You may be familiar with this from having seen court reporters write a transcription of a tribunal or ca…

1
Science Fiction in Translation with Regina Kanyu Wang and Emily Jin 27:53

1+ y ago27:53

27:53

In this episode we discuss the new generation of Chinese science fiction with two of the genres most brilliant translators, editors, writers and researchers. They’ve just published The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, an anthology of science fiction written by Chinese women and non-binary writers that aims to overwrite stereotypes about who Ch…

1
AI Policy Between the UK and Africa with Bridget Boakye 30:24

1+ y ago30:24

30:24

In this episode we talk to Bridget Boakye, the artificial intelligence (AI) policy leader at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Bridget is an expert in how AI is impacting Africa and the major challenges in implementing AI use across the continent. She tells us about what good technology means in the contexts in which she works and the ben…

1
Voice Recognition Technologies and Border Control with Pedro Oliviera 31:30

1+ y ago31:30

31:30

In this episode we talk to Pedro Oliveira, a researcher and sound artist based at the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin. Pedro does amazing work investigating border control technologies that listen to asylum seekers and claim to be able to discern where they came from from the way they speak. In this episode we discuss why these kinds of technologies …

1
Big Tech's Colonial Takeover with Michael Kwet 27:52

1+ y ago27:52

27:52

We all know about Microsoft Excel and Outlook, but did you know about the kinds of tech they develop in and sell to the Global South? These include escape management system for jails, police cars inbuilt with sensor data, and software that supports facial recognition systems. To tell us more about this, we talk to Dr Michael Kwet, a visiting fellow…

1
Changing Computing Cultures with Abeba Birhane 34:02

1+ y ago34:02

34:02

In this episode we speak to Abeba Birhane, senior research fellow at Mozilla, about how cognition extends beyond the brain, why why we need to turn questions like ‘why aren't there enough black women in computing’ on their head and actually transform computing cultures, and why human behaviour is a complex adaptive system that can’t always be model…

1
Queer Approaches to AI and Computing with Arjun Subramonian 35:36

1+ y ago35:36

35:36

In this episode we talk to Arjun Subramonian, a Computer Science PhD student at UCLA conducting machine learning research and a member of the grassroots organisation Queer in AI. In this episode we discuss why they joined Queer in AI, how Queer in AI is helping build artificial intelligence directed towards better, more inclusive, and queer futures…

1
Creating Just Language Technologies with Su Lin Blodgett 32:28

1+ y ago32:28

32:28

In this episode we chat to Su Lin Blodgett, a researcher at Microsoft Research in Montreal, on whether you can use AI to measure discrimination, why AI can never be de-biased, and how AI shows us that categories like gender and race are not as clear cut as we think they are.By Dr Kerry Mackereth and Dr Eleanor Drage

1
Transhumanism and Existential Risk with Josh Schuster and Derek Woods 37:36

1+ y ago37:36

37:36

Ever worried that AI will wipe out humanity? Ever dreamed of merging with AI? Well these are the primary concerns of transhumanism and existential risk, which you may not have heard of, but whose key followers include Elon Musk and Nick Bostrom, author of Superintelligence. But Joshua Schuster and Derek Woods have pointed out that there are serious…

1
The Feedback Loop between Tech Innovation and Science Fiction with Chen Qiufan 37:06

1+ y ago37:06

37:06

Science fiction writer Chen Qiufan ( Stanley Chen), author of Waste Tide, discusses the feedback loop between science fiction and innovation, what happened when he went to live with shamans in China, how science fiction can also be a psychedelic, and why it’s significant that linear time arrived from the West and took over ideas of circular or recu…

1
The Exorcism of Emotion in Rational Science (and AI) with Lorraine Daston 38:07

1+ y ago38:07

38:07

In this episode, the historian of science Lorraine Daston explains why science has long been allergic to emotion, which is seen to be the enemy of truth. Instead, objective reason is science’s virtue. She explores moments where it’s very difficult for scientists not to get personally involved, like when you’re working on your pet hypothesis or theo…

1
Queer Data with Kevin Guyan 36:11

1+ y ago36:11

36:11

How should governments collect personal data? In this episode, we talk to Dr Kevin Guyan about the census, and the best ways of asking people to identify themselves. We discuss why surveys that you fill in by hand offer less restrictive options for self-identification than online forms, and how queer communities are not just identified but produced…

1
Data Activism Against Everyday Racism with Mónica Moreno Figueroa and Ella McPherson 37:33

2y ago37:33

37:33

In this episode we speak to two brilliant professors here at Cambridge, Mónica Moreno Figueroa and Ella McPherson about a data project they launched at the University of Cambridge to track everyday racism in the university. We discuss using technology for social good without being obsessed with the technology itself and the importance of tracking h…

1
Why Machine Learning is Political with Louise Amoore 40:56

2y ago40:56

40:56

In this episode, we talk to Louise Amoore, professor of political geography at Durham and expert in how machine learning algorithms are transforming the ethics and politics of contemporary society. Louise tells us how politics and society have shaped computer science practices. This means that when AI clusters data and creates features and attribut…

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Helene Drage Podcasts

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