
The Rip Current Is AI Pessimism Feeding the Powerful? (with Rumman Chowdhury)
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, an AI ethicist and the head of Humane Intelligence, is sick of all this complaining. Not because there isn’t plenty to complain about — in this episode we unpack a host of horrors that AI and the companies who make it are foisting on all of us — but because she believes that the fatalism of AI criticism inadvertently empowers powerful corporations. Dr. Chowdhury, who has worked at Accenture, Twitter, and served as a science envoy for the Biden administration, has an unusual background for an AI builder — political science and quantitative social sciences — and her work on the inherent biases within algorithms has led her to believe that the solutions are far more complicated than just switching the whole thing off. Enjoy!
Thanks for listening to The Rip Current by Jacob Ward! Feel free to share this episode with someone you feel needs a new perspective on AI.
00:00 Introduction: The Pessimism Around AI
00:36 Meet Dr. Rumman Chowdhury: AI Ethicist
02:00 The Role of Political Science in AI
04:26 Challenges in Creating Ethical AI
06:20 The Myth of Political Neutrality in Algorithms
14:10 From Accenture to Twitter: A Journey in AI
16:17 The Twitter Experience: Ethics and Algorithms
19:07 The Impact of Social Media Algorithms
26:18 The Audacity of Modern AI Developments
33:12 The Podcast’s Initial Concept and NPC Idea
34:23 Nostalgia Culture and the Creative Class
36:09 The Loop: AI and Legal Precedents
36:58 Algorithmic Choice and User Agency
38:59 Right to Repair and Algorithmic Agency
40:23 Exit, Voice, and Loyalty in Tech
45:47 Algorithmic Amplification of Right-Wing Content
01:03:13 The Hero Narrative and Collective Movements
01:05:13 Conclusion and Call to Action
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