Computer Says Maybe

Latest Episodes:

The Toxic Relationship Between AI & Journalism w/ Nic Dawes Nov 07, 2025

Show notes

What happens when AI models try to fill the gaping hole in the media landscape where journalists should be?

More like this: Reanimating Apartheid w/ Nic Dawes

This week Alix is joined by Nic Dawes, who until very recently ran the non-profit newsroom The City. In this conversation we explore journalism’s new found toxic relationship with AI and big tech: can journalists meaningfully use AI in their work? If a model summarises a few documents, does that add a new layer of efficiency, or inadvertently oversimplify? And what can we learn from big tech positioning itself as a helpful friend to journalism during the Search era?

Beyond the just accurate relaying of facts, journalistic organisations also represent an entire backlog of valuable training data for AI companies. If you don’t have the same resources as the NYT, suing for copyright infringement isn’t an option — so what then? Nic says we have to break out of the false binary of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them!’

Further reading & resources:

Judge allows ‘New York Times’ copyright case against OpenAI to go forward — NPR
Generative AI and news report 2025: How people think about AI’s role in journalism and society — Reuters Institute
An example of The City’s investigative reporting: private equity firms buying up property in the Bronx — 2022
The Intimacy Dividend — Shuwei Fang
Sam Altman on Twitter announcing that they’ve improved ChatGPT to be mindful of the mental health effects — “We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but…”

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Unlearning in the AI Era w/ Nabiha Syed at Mozilla Foundation Oct 31, 2025

Show notes

Mozilla Foundation wants to chart a new path in the AI era. But what is its role now and how can it help reshape the impacts and opportunities of technology for… everyone?

More like this: Defying Datafication w/ Abeba Birhane

Alix sat down with Nabiha Syed to chat through her first year as the new leader of Mozilla Foundation. How does she think about strategy in this moment? What role does she want the foundation to play? And crucially, how is she stewarding a community of human-centered technology builders in a time of hyper-scale and unchecked speculation?

As Nabiha says, “restraint is a design principle too”.

Plug: We’ll be at MozFest this year broadcasting live and connecting with all kinds of folks. If you’re feeling the FOMO, be on the look out for episodes we produce about our time there.

Further reading & resources:

Watch this episode on YouTube
Imaginative Intelligences — a programme of artist assemblies run by Mozilla Foundation
Nothing Personal — a new counterculture editorial platform from the Mozilla Foundation
More about Mozfest
Nabiha on the Computer Says Maybe live show at the 2025 AI Action Summit
Nabiha Syed remakes Mozilla Foundation in the era of Trump and AI — The Register
Nabiha on why she joined MF as executive director — MF Blog

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You Seem Lonely. Have a Robot w/ Stevie Chancellor Oct 24, 2025

Show notes

Loneliness and mental health illnesses are rising in the US, while access to care dwindles — so a lot of people are turning to chatbots. Do chatbots work for therapy?

More like this: The Collective Intelligence Project w/ Divya Siddarth and Zarinah Agnew

Why are individuals are confiding in chatbots over qualified human therapists? Stevie Chancellor explains why an LLM can’t replace a therapeutic relationship — but often there’s just no other choice. Turns out the chatbots designed specifically for therapy are even worse than general models like ChatGPT; Stevie shares her ideas on how LLMs could potentially be used — safely — for therapeutic support. This is really helpful primer on how to evaluate chatbots for specific, human-replacing tasks.

Further reading & resources:

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Local Laws for Global Technologies w/ Hillary Ronen Oct 17, 2025

Show notes

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 Ronen
More on Hillary’s work as a Supervisor for SF
Hillary Ronen on progressives, messaging, hard choices, and justice — interview in 48Hills from January 2025
More about Local Progress
Confronting Preemption — a short briefing by Local Progress
What Happens When State and Local Laws Conflict — article on state-level preemption by State Court Report

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Gotcha! Enshittification w/ Cory Doctorow Oct 10, 2025

Show notes

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 Doctorow
On The Media series on Enshittification
Pluralistic — Daily Links and essays by Cory Doctorow
Conservatism Considered as a Movement of Bitter Rubes — Cory on why conservatism creates a friendly environment for scams
How I Got Scammed — Cory on his personal experiences of being scammed
All of Cory’s books
All (Antitrust) Politics Are Local — the entry to Pluralistic that Cory wrote on the day of recording

Gotcha! ScamGPT w/ Lana Swartz & Alice Marwick Oct 03, 2025

Show notes

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 Swartz
More about Alice Marwick
New Money by Lana Swartz
Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds by Mark Bo, Ivan Franceschini, and Ling Li
Revealed: the huge growth of Myanmar scam centres that may hold 100,000 trafficked people
Al Jazeera True Crime Report on scamming farms in South East Asia
Scam Empire project by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

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NYC Live: Let Them Eat Compute Oct 02, 2025

Show notes

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 Luminaria
Tuscon to create new policies around NDAs following the councils regret around not knowing more about Project Blue — from Luminaria
How 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 300MGW
Time reports on increase in nitrogen dioxide pollution around Memphis due to xAI turbines
Keshaun and Justin Pearson on Democracy Now discussing xAI’s human rights violations
Meta’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

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Are AI Companies Cooking the Books? w/ Sarah Myers West Sep 30, 2025

Show notes

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 — CNBC
Analysts refer to deal as ‘vendor financing’ — Insider Monkey
Spending on AI is at Epic Levels. Will it Ever Pay Off? — WSJ
OpenAI, Softbank, and Oracle spending $500bn on data centre expansion in Abilene — Reuters
How Larry Ellison used the AI boom and the Tony Blair Institute to bolster his wealth
Oracle funding Open AI data centers with heaps of debt and will have to borrow at least $25bn a year — The Register

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Gotcha! How MLMs Ate the Economy w/ Bridget Read Sep 26, 2025

Show notes

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 America
Family Values by Melinda Cooper
The Missing Crypto Queen: a podcast by BBC Sounds, about a large scale crypto scam, where there wasn’t even any crypto
LuLaRoe — 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 LinkedIn
Watch our recent live show at NYC Climate Week

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!

Gotcha! The Crypto Grift w/ Mark Hays Sep 19, 2025

Show notes

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. Scott
Capital Without Borders by Brooke Harrington
The Politics of Bitcoin by David Golumbia
Learn more about Americans for Financial Reform
Check out Web3 Is Going Great by Molly White
Line Goes Up by Folding Ideas — an excellent survey of all the tactics and rug-pulls during the height of the NFT boom
The 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!**

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