Politechs

Josh and Ray are joined by computational linguist Dr. Emily M. Bender to discuss what "AI" really is, and why the slippery nature of the term is very much intentional. We look at the eugenicist history of the quest to define and measure human intelligence and try to understand what the project of "artificial intelligence" is, then explore LLMs as synthetic text extruding machines and automation technology, as opposed to a machine god on the cusp of being born.
Mentioned in this episode:Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 - podcast by Drs. Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna [permalink]
THE AI CON - How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want - book by Drs. Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna  [permalink]
On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜 - paper by Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, et al. [permalink]
Ghost in the Machine - film by Valerie Veatch [permalink]
The TESCREAL Bundle - paper by Timnit Gebru and Émile Torres [permalink]
See the transcript footnotes for more!
We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials.
To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon!
Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social
Theme music by Xylia
Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

In order to answer the question of whether we still need libraries when we have chatbots, we're joined by Alison Macrina, founder and Executive Director of Library Freedom Project, and Kay Slater, member of LFP and library worker in Chicago. Alison and Kay dispel some myths, talk about how libraries have changed with technology, how libraries are funded, how library workers have a central role to play in resisting AI, and how members of the public like us and our listeners can support libraries.
Mentioned in this episode:Library Freedom Project Resources - Posters, bookmarks, presentations, and more resources to help with teaching and promoting information democracy, privacy, and intellectual freedom. [permalink]
Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves - paper by Fobazi Ettarh [permalink]
Libraries for the People - a leftist library project [permalink]

We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials.
To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon!
Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social
Theme music by Xylia
Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

Nate Madson Dion, a fifth grade math teacher from Aurora, Colorado, schools Josh and Ray on how technology has crept into primary schools, how the inevitability narrative manifests with teachers and administrators, and how he has found effective ways to resist, both through one on one conversations with fellow educators, but also around the bargaining table for his union's contract. Nate puts out a call for parents to contact their local school boards, find out how AI is being deployed in their children's schools, and more importantly, how to opt out of it.
Mentioned in this episode:Bullshit Jobs - book by David Graeber
Parents Fell in Love With Alpha School’s Promise. Then They Wanted Out. - article in Wired [permalink]
How to engage in pseudoscience with real data: A criticism of John Hattie’s arguments in Visible Learning from the perspective of a statistician - article in the McGill Journal of Education [permalink]
Writing vs AI - article by Cory Doctorow [permalink]
Politechs Season 1 Episode 6 - Programmers - Josh and Ray talk about how to talk to programmers about AI.
See the transcript footnotes for more!
We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials.
To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon!
Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social
Theme music by Xylia
Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

Software engineer and reluctant activist Radhika talks about epistemic violence, identity, immutability, the Enlightenment, common law, and many other things besides to illustrate just one of the ways in which trans people's lives are under attack. We discuss how AI affects trans people, and what it would take to be able to deploy machine learning technologies to improve their lives rather than oppress them, then end on a call to action for technologists.
Mentioned in this episode:The Racial Contract - book by Charles Mills
The Sexual Contract - book by Carol Pateman
Absurd Trolley Problems - a set of increasingly ridiculous trolley problems

We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials.
To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon!
Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social
Theme music by Xylia
Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence

Tech journalist Karen Hao joins us to discuss her book, "Empire of AI". Karen explains why she believes that the Silicon Valley hyper-scaled LLM flavour of AI is an imperial technology, and has become even more explicitly imperial in the 12 months since the book first came out as it is being more and more incorporated in the US military's wars. The paperback edition of the book has just been released in the US and UK, so if you live in either of those places and haven't read the book yet, be sure to pick it up!
Mentioned in this episode:Empire of AI - book by Karen Hao
Empire of AI - UK paperback
Empire of AI - US paperback
Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 - podcast by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna
Microsoft's Hypocrisy on AI - article by Karen Hao [permalink]
See the transcript footnotes for more!
We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials.
To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon!
Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social
Theme music by Xylia
Politechs is provided under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoAI licence