Join Dr Eleanor Drage and Dr Kerry McInerney as they ask the experts: what is good technology? Is ‘good’ technology even possible? And how can feminism help us ...
In this episode, we talked to Jill Walker Rettberg, Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen in Norway. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about machine vision's origins in polished volcanic glass, whether or not we'll actually have self-driving cars, and that famous photo-shopped Mother's Day Photo released by Kate Middleton in March, 2024.
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23:13
Art, Technology and Justice with Yasmine Boudiaf
In this episode, we talk to Yasmine Boudiaf, a researcher, artist and creative technologist who uses technology in beautiful and interesting ways to challenge and redefine what we think of as 'good'. We discuss her wide-ranging art projects, from using AI to create a library of Mediterranean hand gestures through to her project Ways of Machine Seeing, which explored how machine vision systems are being taught to 'see'. Throughout the episode, we explore how Yasmine creatively uses technology to challenge the colonial gaze and the predominance of Western European ideas and concepts in ethics. Note: this episode was recorded in Summer 2023
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31:12
Gut Feminism and Feminist Approaches to Biology with Elizabeth Wilson
In this episode we talk to Elizabeth Wilson, a professor of gender, sexuality and women's studies at Emory University, a leading scholar on the intersections between feminism and biology, and the author of Gut Feminism. We talk about everything from what feminism can learn from biology to TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists), penises, Freud and technology. Note: this episode was recorded in Spring 2023.
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35:38
Janneke Parrish on Worker Solidarity and Why Tech Unions Matter
In this episode, we speak to Janneke Parrish, who's one of the co founders of Apple Together, a solidarity union at Apple. Apple fired Parrish on the 14th of October 2021. Since she's written an incredible book, continues to be an advisor to Apple together, and is now studying law. We talk about how Apple's culture of silence underlies its aim to surprise and delight the customer, how companies should listen to their workers, and how to be diplomatic and dignified in the face of an institution that is trying to crush you at work.
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33:00
Hot Take: Does AI Know How You Feel?
In this episode, we chat about coming back from summer break, and discuss a research paper recently published by Kerry and the AI ethicist and researcher Os Keyes called "The Infopolitics of Feeling: How race and disability are configured in Emotion Recognition Technology". We discuss why AI tools that promise to be able to read our emotions from our faces are scientifically and politically suspect. We then explore the ableist foundations of what used to be the most famous Emotion AI firm in the world: Affectiva. Kerry also explains how the Stop Asian Hate and Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 inspired this research project, and why she thinks that emotion recognition technologies have no place in our societies.
Join Dr Eleanor Drage and Dr Kerry McInerney as they ask the experts: what is good technology? Is ‘good’ technology even possible? And how can feminism help us work towards it? Each week, they invite scholars, industry practitioners, activists, and more to provide their unique perspective on what feminism can bring to the tech industry and the way that we think about technology. With each conversation, The Good Robot asks how feminism can provide new perspectives on technology’s biggest problems.