In our Tech Society

The EU's outsized influence on tech regulation beyond its borders raises a lot of political issues: e.g. the UK having little ability to effectively regulate AI. Besides this, we also discuss how China approaches AI ethics and regulation differently. I'm joined by Oxford University researcher Huw Roberts.

• 8.50: EU priorities in AI regulation
• 13.50: The effect of EU policy outside its borders
• 25.40: How China thinks differently about AI
• 34.30: "The Beijing Effect"

AI Regulation and the Climate Crisis are both huge, seemingly different challenges, but they're both underpinned by the same question: how can we tackle them without resorting to authoritarianism? My guest today, tech philosopher Mark Coeckelbergh, offers a new, more constructive way of thinking about these challenges.

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Without support from political representatives, legislation on issues like privacy just doesn't happen. Today I'm joined by legislative activist and former journalist Hayley Tsukayama to talk about how, in the gridlock of American democracy, progress on privacy legislation can still be made.

1.18: Hayley's background as a tech journalist in DC

5.10: Why does privacy matter?

8.45: Privacy data and abortion rights

13.05: What do Utah, California and Connecticut all have in common?

23.50: Why is the US the world leader on tech but so slow on privacy legislation?

26.30: Attempts at federal privacy legislation

Is work just a way to pay the bills, or is it fundamental to what it means to be human? And with technological change, do we need a new kind of work ethic?

Today I'm joined by philosopher of work Jean-Philippe Deranty to reflect on our cultural, societal and philosophical attitudes to work.

4.48: Neoliberalism's Paradoxical Relationship with Work

23.30: Cultural attitudes to work: UK vs France

26.20: A New Kind of Work Ethic

33.40: Neoliberal attitudes to current changes in the labour market

41.30: What is the centrality of the work?

52.20: Psychological and social centrality of work

57.40: What the pandemic taught us about the significance of work

The Work Repository: https://onwork.edu.au/

Trade unions are not the force they once were in Australia. But in the struggle for protections and rights for gig workers, could unionisation be the solution? 

Joining me to discuss how to reform trade unions to face declining membership and the gig economy is Professor Anthony Forsyth, author of The Future of Unions and Worker Representation: The Digital Picket Line.

5.25: Neoliberalism and trade unions

9.59: How has the gig economy changed the game?

26.20: Can unions succeed in the platform economy?

29.30: How to improve wage bargaining

36.40: The future of trade unions

With the gig economy, algorithmic management, and the internet, trade unions are having to adapt. In this episode on labour relations in China, I chat to Kevin Lin about how internet memes are affecting labour relations, what an effective trade union should look like, and China's tech crackdown.

5.15: What should a trade union look like?

9.40: Attempts at trade union reform

18.10: Workers' views on their trade union

23.05: 996 working practices in China and the tech crackdown

30.40: Internet Memes and work culture

Quantification and algorithmic management of workers gives employers a huge amount of data, but it isn't properly protected. Joining me to talk about changing that is Aiha Nguyen, Labor Futures Director at Data and Society.

5:00 Why focus on algorithmic management not automation?

9:05 What makes it easier to shift risks onto workers?

11:30 Employee data privacy 

17:05 What we get wrong in privacy policy

What does evermore tracking and surveillance mean for workers? 

I'm joined by Dr Phoebe V. Moore, a Senior Policy Adviser at the International Labour Organisation and Professor of Management at the University of Essex.

2.15: Origins of quantification

7.22: Algorithms and responsibility in management

13.15: Is productivity (especially in ideas-generating and teamwork-based work) actually measurable?

20:10: Who are AI Trainers?

27.45: Automation and content moderation

What is gig work like in Africa, and how does it exacerbate existing gender and socioeconomic inequalities?

To discuss this, I am joined by Dr Anwar, Lecturer in African Studies and International Development at Edinburgh University. He's also the author of a new book, 'The Digital Continent'.

1.17: Sketch of the Gig Economy in Africa

4.51: Why there's a huge gender divide in Platform Work

6.33: What's new about Gig Work compared to traditional informal work

11:40: How accurate is the narrative of freedom and flexibility?

16.32: How the gig economy shifts risks onto workers

25.09: Possibilities for planetary labour organisation

Has the gig economy helped or worsened conditions for domestic workers, who are disproportionately women?

Domestic workers lack some of the legal protections that other workers have. Given the legal status of gig workers as self-employed contractors, does this give them more flexibility or just even fewer employment rights? I am joined by Dr Natalie Sedacca, soon to be Assistant Professor in Employment Law at Durham University.

3:30: How legally protected are gig economy workers?

9.15: Protections for domestic workers

13:40: Is platform-based work better or worse for domestic workers?

16.28: Why the gig economy is much less flexible for these workers than other kinds of work

21.30: How some workers have tried to organise

23:20: Self-employed contractors vs competition law

How do we make sure that innovation is used to benefit workers, and not just increase surveillance of them?

To talk about their book 'Your Boss is an Algorithm', I am joined by Antonio Aloisi, Assistant Professor at IE Law School, and Valerio de Stefano, Associate Professor at Osgoode Law School. In this wide-ranging episode, we chat about politics, law, algorithmic management, and the gig economy. 

3:00 Why aren't more jobs already automated?

10:32: Will the gig economy be the new normal?

14:24: Politics and regulation of the gig economy

22:30: How can innovation be made to benefit workers?

32:40: What is a Future Proof Labour Law?

What is it like for workers in the platform economy, and how does this differ across the world? In this episode, I am joined by Sarrah Kassem, Lecturer in Political Economy at Tuebingen University.

2.45: What is it like working for Amazon Mechanical Turk?

7.08: Remote work and outsourcing

9.50: How the platform economy organises workers

19.38: How workers reclaim their agency 

32:50: How workers rate the companies themselves

How is technology changing work across the world? And what impact will it have on inequality? I chat to Dr Jiwei Qian and Professor Imraan Valodia about automation and its widespread social impacts in these two very different contexts.

3:54: Automation in China

9:17: Why local governments are encouraging automation

13.51: Impact on inequality

27:53: How framing of automation overlooks the Global South

44:33: Gender inequality and automation in Southern Africa

Our first episode will be out next weekend! Make sure to share it with anyone you think might be interested

Image by Danomyte, via Shutterstock

Given how important tech is to so much economics, politics, and social change, should we even have a separate tech section in newspapers? The danger is that tech sections just get filled with hype: with self-narratives originating from the companies developing those technologies. And that hype can lead to negative consequences we don't often think about: it distracts us from bigger problems facing humanity, and from debate about whether that technology is itself desirable or important. 

In this episode, I chat to freelance tech journalist and author Gemma Milne.

Music, as ever, by Joystock

Image credit: Francis Augusto

In this episode, we discuss the challenges of AI in an African context. With our guest, Nigerian researcher Favour Borokini, we discuss automation, facial recognition, and gender-based violence, such as stalking and Deep Fakes.

Music from Joystock

What would a world without death look like? In this episode, we are joined by Seth Villegas, who researches the quasi-religious structure of the secular transhumanist movement trying to evade death. We discuss the meaning of religion, the growing array of companies working to create digital versions of ourselves after we die, and the profoundly unsettling consequences of doing so. 

Music by Joystock - https://www.joystock.org

Have you ever seen a robot from a film and found it adorable? 

For the second part in our mini-series on what it means to be human as robots become more sophisticated, I chat to philosopher Dr Joanna Malinowska about the benefits, and dangers, of robots designed to be cute. That's especially in the context of sex robots, and the treatment of women.

We think of humans as the most intelligent species, so what does it mean to be human if we develop robots that are, by some definition, more intelligent than ourselves? For this episode, I'm joined by renowned anthropologist Dr Beth Singler from the University of Cambridge. In this first of a two-part mini-series about humans and robots, we discuss the issues with treating humans as robots, why it's happening, and its profound consequences. We also delve deep into what it means to be human and how we can counter the existential despair that comes as our perception of ourselves as the most intelligent being is undermined. Oh, and also we talk about Star Wars. Because of course.

Music by Joystock - https://www.joystock.org

At what point does technology move from comfortable and convenient to just plain creepy? Where do we draw that line, and who gets to draw it? This week, I’m joined by the insightful Dr Stephanie Hare, author of Technology is not Neutral, to discuss everything from facial recognition and the breakup of social media companies to whether AI Ethics really has started to ‘grow up’.

Hope you enjoy the show, and be sure to leave a review and share it with anyone who might be interested!

Music by Joystock - https://www.joystock.org

A realistic AI Ethics has to engage with the corporate world and have engagement from it. But how do we ensure that AI Ethics is not seen as an afterthought by the companies that both make and use AI? What kinds of businesses are so far excelling in this space, and what mechanisms have made them do so? And what should the role of regulators be? This week, I'm joined by Ethics Consultant Dr Dorothea Baur to discuss these issues. In the wake of scandals surrounding Facebook and revelations from Frances Haugen, we also discuss whether the social media giant's issue is one of company ethics, or whether there is a deeper issue at play (it's both).

Hope you enjoy it, and be sure to share the episode with anyone who might be interested!

Algorithmic decision-making systems (ADMS) have been used in India for a couple of years now to improve access to welfare, especially with the biometric system Aadhar. That, though, has come at a cost in terms of transparency and rights in India, as the courts weigh these up against a pure utilitarian concern for the welfare of the greatest number. Meanwhile, laws requiring social media companies to use algorithms to moderate their content seems to imply an understanding of the complexities of the meaning of speech which algorithms are not capable of.

This week, we are really excited to be joined by Divij Joshi, the creator of the AI Observatory India, to discuss how algorithms have been deployed in India, and the tools available for resisting their use in seriously problematic cases. 

Music by Joystock - https://www.joystock.org

The metaverse has become a buzzword in recent months, but its implications when applied to healthcare are profound. Who owns the data if you use Facebook's platform for a doctor's appointment? And what would happen if Facebook tried to play such a role in an already-concentrated American healthcare market?

In this episode, we talk to the very insightful Dr Darshan Kulkarni, a trained pharmacist and lawyer focusing on the health and life sciences industry in the US. Hope you enjoy it!

Music by Joystock - https://www.joystock.org

Being fired is bad enough, but how can we ensure that algorithms used in management, which could have such power, are fair and respect workers' rights? This week, we are really excited to be joined by Aislynn Kelly-Lyth, a researcher at the University of Oxford, to discuss the EU's attempts to grapple with both this problem and the gig economy.

Music by Joystock - https://www.joystock.org

With applications from healthcare to policing, how do we apply facial recognition software and other biometric technology to society without damaging either democracy or the social solidarity that underpins healthcare? And how can we make sure that companies are using biometric data in ways which respect individual agency. In this episode, we talk to Ada Lovelace Researcher Harry Farmer about his own work and fears surrounding biometric technology, and how we as a society can work to mitigate those concerns.

Music by Joystock - https://www.joystock.org

When we express our concerns about Big Tech's control of our data, it is usually in terms of a right to privacy and our data which clashes with our supposed choice to surrender it. But how can alternative ethical systems help to reframe this problem? In this episode, Middle Eastern Political Economy Professor Mehmet Asutay argues that rights-based understandings are at the root of our destructive global economy. We discuss how debates about climate change, privacy, and social credit systems look instead from an Islamic ethics perspective, and what, if anything, we should learn from it.

"Sometimes you have to stand up and say: is this leading us where we want to go?"

Facebook's recent attempt at cosmetics popularized a concept that had been bouncing around Silicon Valley for a while. But what does it actually mean for us as people to live parts of our lives in the Metaverse? How does it differ in that regard from the virtual world of social media that already exists? And, most crucially, would such lives be genuinely meaningful?

Our guest this week is the insightful and entertaining Dr Vittorio Buffachi, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at University College Cork. Stay tuned for our debates and musings on this hot topic.