The Technically Human Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Instituting Greenlining: how policy can promote digital inclusion Sep 15, 2023

Show notes

In today’s episode, I sit down with Vinhcent Le, Senior Legal Counsel of Tech Equity at the Greenlining Institute, an organization that works towards a future where communities of color can build wealth, live in healthy places filled with economic opportunity, and are ready to meet the challenges posed by climate change. We talk about the possibilities and limitations of regulation to address inequities in tech, the challenges of negotiating race in tech production, and how greenlining seeks to address a history of redlining.

Vinhcent Le (he/him/his) leads Greenlining’s work to close the digital divide, to protect consumer privacy, and to ensure algorithms are fair and that technology builds economic opportunity for communities of color. In this role, Vinhcent helps develop and implement policies to increase broadband affordability and digital inclusion as well as bring transparency and accountability to automated decision systems. Vinhcent also serves on several regulatory boards including the California Privacy Protection Agency.

Vinhcent received his J.D. from the University of California, Irvine School of Law and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego. Prior to Greenlining, Vinhcent advocated for clients as a law clerk at the Public Defender’s Office, the Office of Medicare Hearing and Appeals, and the Small Business Administration.

Designing Data Governance Sep 08, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of the show, I continue my deep dive into data, human values, and governance with an interview featuring Lauren Maffeo. We talk about the future of data governance, the possibilities of, and the catastrophe that Lauren thinks our society may need to experience in order to turn the corner on an data governance and ethics.

Lauren Maffeo is an award-winning designer and analyst who currently works as a service designer at Steampunk, a human-centered design firm serving the federal government. She is also a founding editor of Springer’s AI and Ethics journal and an adjunct lecturer in Interaction Design at The George Washington University. Her first book, Designing Data Governance from the Ground Up, is available from The Pragmatic Programmers. Lauren has written for Harvard Data Science Review, Financial Times, and The Guardian, among other publications. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a former member of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Distinguished Speakers Program, and a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, where she helps judge the Webby Awards.

Behind the Data: data, human values, and society Sep 01, 2023

Show notes

We’re back, after a long and restful break, with a brand new season of Technically Human! In our first episode of the season, I am joined by a guest cohost, Dr. Morgan Ames, for a conversation with Janet Haven, Executive Director of Data and Society. We talk about the movement to root data and AI practices in human values, the future of automation, and the pressing needs—and challenges—of data governance.

Janet Haven is the executive director of Data & Society. She has worked at the intersection of technology policy, governance, and accountability for more than twenty years, both domestically and internationally. Janet is a member of the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC), which advises President Biden and the National AI Initiative Office on a range of issues related to artificial intelligence. She also acts as an advisor to the Trust and Safety Foundation, and has brought her expertise in non-profit governance to bear through varied board memberships. She writes and speaks regularly on matters related to technology and society, federal AI research and development, and AI governance and policy.

Before joining D&S, Janet spent more than a decade at the Open Society Foundations. There, she oversaw funding strategies and worldwide grant-making related to technology, human rights, and governance, and played a substantial role in shaping the emerging international field focused on technology and accountability.

Data & Society is an independent nonprofit research organization rooted in the belief that empirical evidence should directly inform the development and governance of new technologies — and that these technologies can and must be grounded in equity and human dignity. Recognizing that the concentrated, profit-driven power of corporations and tech platforms will not steer us toward a just future, our work foregrounds the power of the people and communities most impacted by technological change. Their work studies the social implications of data, automation, and AI, producing original research to ground informed public debate about emerging technology.

Dr. Morgan Ames is an adjunct professor in the School of Information and interim associate director of research for the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society (CSTMS) at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches in Data Science and administers the Designated Emphasis in Science and Technology Studies. She is also affiliated with the Algorithmic Fairness and Opacity Working Group (AFOG), the Center for Science, Technology, Society and Policy (CTSP), and the Berkeley Institute of Data Science (BIDS).

East Meets West: The place of Asia in the technological imagination Jun 16, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to the final episode of the "Technically Human" season!

We’re ending the season with an episode of the 22 lessons on ethics and technology series, with a conversation featuring Dr. John Williams about the global imagination of tech.

Dr. John Williams is a professor of English Literature at Yale University. His work is focused on international histories of technological/media innovation and the perceived difference of racial and cultural otherness. His book, The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and The Meeting of East and West (Yale University Press, 2014), examines the role of technological discourse in representations of Asian/American aesthetics in late-nineteenth and twentieth-century film and literature. The book won the 2015 Harry Levin Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association. In the conversation, we explore the diverse international histories of technological innovation and how otherness and differences have been constructed across contexts and time.

The “22 Lessons in Ethical Technology” series is co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Cal Poly Strategic Research Initiative Grant Award. The show is written, hosted, and produced by me, Deb Donig, with production support from Matthew Harsh and Elise St. John. Thanks to Jake Garner and Emma Zumbro for production coordination. Our head of research for this series is Sakina Nuruddin. Our editor is Carrie Caulfield Arick. Art by Desi Aleman.

*From the Archives*: Tech, democracy, human rights, and the urgent crisis in Sudan Jun 02, 2023

Show notes

These past few weeks, as violence and instability have escalated in Sudan, I’ve had one particular conversation on my mind, an episode of the show that I recorded a few years back with Mohamed Abubakr.

In April of this year, clashes broke out in cities, with the fighting concentrated around the capital city of Khartoum and the Darfur region. As of 27 May, at least 1,800 people had been killed and more than 5,100 others had been injured.

The conflict began with attacks by the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on government sites across Sudan. At present the conflict has killed hundreds, injured thousands, and triggered a humanitarian catastrophe with international sanctions and a global response emerging from governments, including the United States, and international groups.

In light of the conflict, I wanted to revisit the conversation I had with Mohamed, where we talked about the role that tech plays in democracy and revolution in the middle east to call attention to Sudan and those who are working passionately to help protect and restore democracy there, to recall the possibilities and optimism for a better Sudanese future, and to help remind us of our interconnectedness to others around the world.

Mohamed Abubakr is a Sudanese human rights activist and peacemaker with a decade and a half of civil society experience. Since high school, he has founded and led organizations and initiatives focused on humanitarian, human rights, youth empowerment and peace programs across the Middle East and Africa (MEA) including in Darfur, South Sudan, Sudan, Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and beyond. Mohamed has also documented, reported and mobilized against human rights abuses across MEA, and since arriving in the United States has become a sought after voice at the State Department and in Congress concerning policy and human rights issues in the region.

Mohamed Abubar is the president of the African and Middle Eastern Leadership Project (AMEL). AMEL empowers young activists from the Middle Eastern and African region, and connects them with one another and with peers, leaders and audiences in the global north, in order to advance human rights for all human beings. Using online platforms, social media networks, and technological innovation, AMEL provides training, mentoring, and advocacy to African and Middle Eastern activists, empowering them to step up their civil society activism, while at the same time building their skills and experience to ascend to top leadership positions.

Compliance and Governance in the Age of Tech May 26, 2023

Show notes

Today’s episode focuses on the growing field of compliance and regulation.

Compliance is a field that is growing in importance at both national and international level. In the EU where emerging ethical principles governing tech have led governments to pass new laws, and harms caused by the tech industry have provoked increasingly sharp public reactions, companies have realized that they now must abide by new reporting obligations, that seek to monitor and prevent environmental mismanagement, sexual harassment, questionable lobbying and tax offenses. Companies are increasingly seeking to protect themselves by introducing effective compliance systems so as to meet these new requirements.

In the episode, I speak with Ofir Shabtai, the Co-Founder & CTO at Shield, a company building compliance systems that can serve as internal watchdogs to monitor and ensure compliance. We talk about the emerging models of governance and the compliance movements mobilizing around the world, what compliance work looks like, and how technological systems intersect with compliance and governance.

Returning the Power of AI to the People May 19, 2023

Show notes

Any long-time listeners of the show know that I’m passionate about accessibility and disability technology. Technologies that support the idea that we can have an equitable world, and that creating a more accessible world makes things better not just for the group specifically considered in that technology, but for all of us, is a key idea to me. That’s why I wanted to sit down with Suman Kanuganti, the former Co-founder and CEO of Aira Tech, a high-tech startup whose work helped pioneer a way to bridge the information gap for those who are blind or low vision. At Aira, Kanuganti transformed cities, airports, and universities across the country by helping to make those spaces accessible for people who are blind or low-vision.

After founding AIRA, Suman went on to start another company, PersonalAI, which is extending the principles of accessibility and mobility to the context of memory. In founding PersonalAI, Suman sought to create an AI to support memory, and to return data ownership back to the individual at this critical moment, when the assumptions that used to rule the web, where our personal data was the property of the companies whose products we use to move throughout digital space in our daily lives—Facebook, Google, WhatsApp—are in flux. In this conversation, we talk about the concept of memory and the transformation of this concept in the context of digital technologies; we talk about the challenges of, and possibilities, for creating accessibility technologies, and Suman shares his vision of returning data ownership to the people.

Suman Kanuganti is the CEO of PersonalAI. He holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship / Entrepreneurial Studies from the UC San Diego Rady School of Management, a Master’s in Computer Engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and a Bachelor’s in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Kakatiya University, India.

Indigeneity in the Digital Age May 12, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to another episode of the "22 Lessons on Ethics and Technology" series!

In this episode, I sit down with Jason Edward Lewis to talk about how Indigenous peoples are imagining the futures while drawing upon their heritage. How can we broaden the discussions regarding technology and society to include Indigenous perspectives? How can we design and create AI that centers Indigenous concerns and accommodates a multiplicity of thought? And how can art-led technology research and the use of computational art in imagining the future?

Jason Edward Lewis is a digital media theorist, poet, and software designer. He founded Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media, where he conducts research/creation projects exploring computation as a creative and cultural material. Lewis is deeply committed to developing intriguing new forms of expression by working on conceptual, critical, creative and technical levels simultaneously. He is the University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary as well Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University. Lewis was born and raised in northern California, and currently lives in Montreal.

Lewis directs the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, and co-directs the Indigenous Futures Research Centre, the Indigenous Protocol and AI Workshops, the Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace research network, and the Skins Workshops on Aboriginal Storytelling and Video Game Design.

Lewis’ creative and production work has been featured at Ars Electronica, Mobilefest, Elektra, Urban Screens, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, FILE and the Hawaiian International Film Festival, among other venues, and has been recognized with the inaugural Robert Coover Award for Best Work of Electronic Literature, two Prix Ars Electronica Honorable Mentions, several imagineNATIVE Best New Media awards and multiple solo exhibitions. His research interests include emergent media theory and history, and methodologies for conducting art-led technology research. In addition to being lead author on the award-winning “Making Kin with the Machines” essay and editor of the groundbreaking Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper, he has contributed to chapters in collected editions covering Indigenous futures, mobile media, video game design, machinima and experimental pedagogy with Indigenous communities.

Lewis has worked in a range of industrial research settings, including Interval Research, US West's Advanced Technology Group, and the Institute for Research on Learning, and, at the turn of the century, he founded and ran a research studio for the venture capital firm Arts Alliance.

Lewis is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada as well as a former Trudeau, Carnegie, and ISO-MIT Co-Creation Lab Fellow. He received a B.S. in Symbolic Systems (Cognitive Science) and B.A. in German Studies (Philosophy) from Stanford University, and an M.Phil. in Design from the Royal College of Art.

Technology and Genocide: What the Holocaust can tell us about perils of technological utopianism May 05, 2023

Show notes

Welcome back for another episode in the "22 Lessons on Ethics and Technology Series!

In this episode of the series, I speak to Dr. Eric Katz, and we take on the common utopian mythology of technology as inherently progressive, focusing specifically on the frequent slide from utopianism into terror. We talk about the uses of technology during the Holocaust and the specific ways in which scientists, architects, medical professionals, businessmen, and engineers participated in the planning and operation of the concentration and extermination camps that were the foundation of the 'final solution'. How can we think about the claims of technological progress in light of the Nazi's use of science and technology in their killing operations? And what can we learn from the Nazi past about how our commitment to a vision of technological progress can go horrifically wrong?

Dr. Eric Katz is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy in the Department of Humanities at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He received a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale in 1974 and a Ph.D.in Philosophy from Boston Universityin 1983. His research focuses on environmental ethics, philosophy of technology, engineering ethics, Holocaust studies, and the synergistic connections among these fields. He is especially known for his criticism of the policy of ecological restoration.

Dr. Katz has published over 80 articles and essays in these fields, as well as two books: Anne Frank’s Tree: Nature’s Confrontation with Technology, Domination, and the Holocaust (White Horse Press, 2015) and Nature as Subject: Human Obligation and Natural Community (Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), winner of the CHOICE book award for “Outstanding Academic Books for 1997.” He is the editor of Death by Design: Science, Technology, and Engineering in Nazi Germany (Pearson/Longman, 2006). He has co-edited (with Andrew Light) the collection Environmental Pragmatism (London: Routledge, 1996) and (with Andrew Light and David Rothenberg) the collection Beneath the Surface: Critical Essays in the Philosophy of Deep Ecology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000). He was the Book Review Editor of the journal Environmental Ethics from 1996-2014, and he was the founding Vice-President of the International Society for Environmental Ethics in 1990. From 1991-2007 he was the Director of the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program at NJIT. His current research projects involve science, technology, and environmental policy in Nazi Germany.

Instituting Integrity: The rise of the integrity worker collective Apr 28, 2023

Show notes

Today I’m sitting down with Talha Baig to talk about a new to me organization, the Integrity Institute. On the show, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about what I see as a new workforce emerging in the tech sector, of people working in jobs in the tech sector to try and understand, assess, and mitigate some of the harms caused by technologies. That’s why I was excited to learn about the Integrity Institute, a cohort of engineers, product managers, researchers, analysts, data scientists, operations specialists, policy experts and more, who are coming together to leverage their combined experience and their understanding of the systemic causes of problems on the social internet to help mitigate these problems. They want to bring this experience and expertise directly to the people theorizing, building, and governing the social internet. So I wanted to talk to Talha, who hosts the Trust in Tech podcast out of the institute, about the concept, the function, and the future of integrity work.

Talha Baig is an expert on using machine learning to address platform integrity issues. He has spent 3 years as a Machine Learning Engineer reducing human, drugs, and weapon trafficking on Facebook Marketplace. He has insider knowledge on how platforms use AI for both good and bad, and shares his thoughts on his new podcast Trust in Tech, where he has in-depth conversations about the social internet with other platform integrity workers. They discuss the intersections between internet, society, culture, and philosophy with the goal of helping individuals, societies, and democracies to thrive.

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