IRL: Online Life is Real Life

Today, we’re bringing you an episode from our friends at Techish, a podcast by two tech founders and investors talking about all things tech, pop culture, and life. It's equal parts ChatGPT, equal parts Cardi B. Starring Michael Berhane and Abadesi Osunsade. In this episode of Techish, hosts Michael Berhane and Abadesi Osunsade dive into the wild story of the tech con artist who is fooling Silicon Valley startups, exposing some big cracks in how the industry hires. They also break down the rise of AI addictions, the emotional pull of chatbots, and round off with Grammarly's acquisition of Superhuman. Stay in touch with the hashtag #Techish https://www.instagram.com/techishpod/ https://www.instagram.com/abadesi/ https://www.instagram.com/michaelberhane_/ https://www.instagram.com/hustlecrewlive/ https://www.instagram.com/pocintech/

AI may be able to talk to animals, but at what cost to the planet. Who is making those decisions, and why it matters. From decoding whale language to protecting our oceans from unchecked offshore drilling, Bridget Todd talks to visionaries seeking to preserve our beautiful, fragile world. Holly Alpine left her job with Microsoft over the company’s role in providing fossil fuel companies with AI tools that could accelerate their production of oil and gas. As the AI and climate lead at Hugging Face, a platform for sharing open-source AI models, Sasha Luccioni calls for more transparency from tech companies about how much energy it takes to power AI. Aza Raskin, co-founder and president of the Earth Species Project, explains why using AI to decode animal communication could be the key to protecting our planet

AI lives in my city, and probably yours too. What does it mean for our neighborhoods, the people in them, and where data lives? Host Bridget Todd looks at how AI is changing our neighborhoods and who is behind it. She meets people bringing hidden tech systems into the full view of citizens and decision makers. Nat Palmer helped lead a campaign in Chicago to stop the city from using AI powered surveillance that brought armed police to their neighborhoods. What will data storage look like in the future? Marina Otero Verzier is an architect and researcher from Spain who examines sustainable new designs for data storage, from your living room to outer space. Linda Dounia Rebeiz is an artist in Dakar, Senegal who didn’t like what she saw when she prompted generative AI to show her what her home city looks like. So she built her own training dataset.

There are some good reasons to let AI into our brains. But how much do we know about the privacy of brain data? Host Bridget Todd explores how AI is interacting with our thoughts, memories and (dis)abilities, and what it all means for brain privacy. Ian Burkhart had an experimental brain implant that allowed him to move his hand and fingers after he was paralyzed in an accident. Now Ian leads a coalition to help others have the same opportunity. Maria Paz Canales is a digital rights advocate who argues against creating a new set of rights focused solely on the privacy of brain data. Pau Aleikum Garcia, co-founder of Domestic Data Streamers, uses generative AI to help people preserve their core memories.

Will my new AI boyfriend be a green flag? Bridget Todd explores how encounters of love and sex are secretly shaped by data and algorithms. Love is intimate. It’s private. It’s human. So naturally tech companies see it as a money-maker. Host Bridget Todd uncovers the algorithmic racism and bias built into most popular dating apps, and meets the people who are coming up with better alternatives. Apryl Williams interviewed more than 100 dating app users for her book Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating and learned a lot about race-based discrimination in dating algorithms. After he was diagnosed with Autism and ADHD early in the pandemic, Jamie Johnston founded Mattr, a dating app where neurodiversity is celebrated and people have a less addictive algorithmic dating experience. Jen Caltrider led Mozilla's Mozilla's Online Product Reviews. She reviewed the privacy policies of dozens of dating apps and love robots and concluded this is an industry of spyware for our most intimate thoughts.

Bridget Todd is on a journey to find out how AI affects us on a personal level. From her love life to her city, to the privacy of her memories, Bridget digs deep to uncover the relationship between us and AI. She talks to people who question the status quo, and pour their hearts into shaping AI that will change our lives without invading our privacy.

We’re excited to share that Mozilla's IRL podcast is a Shorty Awards finalist in the Science and Technology Podcast category! If you enjoy IRL you can show your support by voting for us. The Shorty Awards recognizes great content by brands, agencies and nonprofits. It’s really an honor to be able to feature the voices and stories of the folks who are putting people over profit in AI. A Shorty Award will help bring these stories to even more listeners. How to vote 1. Go to mzl.la/shorty 2. Click 'Vote in Science and Technology Podcast' 3. create a username and password (it's easy, we promise!) 4. Come back and vote every day until April 30th We believe putting people over profit is award-worthy. Don’t you? Thanks for your support!

From Hollywood to Hip Hop, artists are negotiating new boundaries of consent for use of AI in the creative industries. Bridget Todd speaks to artists who are pushing the boundaries. It’s not the first time artists have been squeezed, but generative AI presents new dilemmas. In this episode: a member of the AI working group of the Hollywood writers union; a singer who licenses the use of her voice to others; an emcee and professor of Black music; and an AI music company charting a different path. Van Robichaux is a comedy writer in Los Angeles who helped craft the Writers Guild of America’s proposals on managing AI in the entertainment industry. Holly Herndon is a Berlin-based artist and a computer scientist who has developed “Holly +”, a series of deep fake music tools for making music with Holly’s voice. Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo creates video games and studies the intersection between AI and Hip Hop at Brown University. Her alias as a rapper is Sammus. Rory Kenny is co-founder and CEO of Loudly, an AI music generator platform that employs musicians to train their AI instead of scraping music from the internet. *Thank you to Sammus for sharing her track ‘1080p.’ Visit Sammus’ Bandcamp page to hear the full track and check out more of her songs.*

Big tech’s power over language, means power over people. Bridget Todd talks to AI community leaders paving the way for open voice tech in their own languages and dialects. In this episode: AI builders and researchers in the US, Kenya and New Zealand who say the languages computers learn to recognize today will be the ones that survive tomorrow — as long as communities and local startups can defend their data rights from big AI companies. Halcyon Lawrence was an Associate Professor of Technical Communication and Information Design at Towson University in Maryland (via Trinidad and Tobago) who did everything Alexa told her to for a year.* Keoni Mahelona is a leader of Indigenous data rights and chief technology officer of Te Hiku Media, a Māori community media network with 21 local radio stations in New Zealand. Kathleen Siminyu is an AI grassroots community leader in Kenya and a machine learning fellow with Mozilla’s Common Voice working on Kiswahili voice projects. IRL: Online Life is Real Life is an original podcast from Mozilla, the non-profit behind Firefox. In Season 7, host Bridget Todd talks to AI builders that put people ahead of profit. *Sadly, following the recording of this episode, Dr. Halcyon Lawrence passed away. We are glad to have met her and pay tribute to her legacy as a researcher and educator. Thank you, Halcyon.

Why does it so often feel like we’re part of a mass AI experiment? What is the responsible way to test new technologies? Bridget Todd explores what it means to live with unproven AI systems that impact millions of people as they roll out across public life. In this episode: a visit to San Francisco, a major hub for automated vehicle testing; an exposé of a flawed welfare fraud prediction algorithm in a Dutch city; a look at how companies comply with regulations in practice; and how to inspire alternative values for tomorrow’s AI. Julia Friedlander is senior manager for automated driving policy at San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency who wants to see AVs regulated based on safety performance data. Justin-Casimir Braun is a data journalist at Lighthouse Reports who is investigating suspect algorithms for predicting welfare fraud across Europe. Navrina Singh is the founder and CEO of Credo AI, a platform that guides enterprises on how to ‘govern’ their AI responsibly in practice. Suresh Venkatasubramanian is the director of the Center for Technological Responsibility, Reimagination, and Redesign at Brown University and he brings joy to computer science. IRL is an original podcast from Mozilla, the non-profit behind Firefox. In Season 7, host Bridget Todd shares stories about prioritizing people over profit in the context of AI.

They’re the essential workers of AI — yet mostly invisible and exploited. Does it have to be this way? Bridget Todd talks to data workers and entrepreneurs pushing for change. Millions of people work on data used to train AI behind the scenes. Often, they are underpaid and even traumatized by what they see. In this episode: a company charting a different path; a litigator holding big tech accountable; and data workers organizing for better conditions. Thank you to Foxglove and Superrr for sharing recordings from the the Content Moderators Summit in Nairobi, Kenya in May, 2023. Richard Mathenge helped establish a union for content moderators after surviving a traumatic experience as a contractor in Kenya training Open AI’s ChatGPT. Mercy Mutemi is a litigator for digital rights in Kenya who has issued challenges to some of the biggest global tech companies on behalf of hundreds of data workers. Krista Pawloski is a full time data worker on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform and is an organizer with the worker-led advocacy group, Turkopticon. Safiya Husain is the co-founder of Karya, a company in India with an alternative business model to compensate data workers at rates that reflect the high value of the data. IRL: Online Life is Real Life is an original podcast from Mozilla, the non-profit behind Firefox. In Season 7, host Bridget Todd talks to AI builders that put people ahead of profit.

Are today’s large language models too hot to handle? Bridget Todd digs into the risks and rewards of open sourcing the tech that makes ChatGPT talk. In their competitive rush to release powerful LLMs to the world, tech companies are fueling a controversy about what should and shouldn’t be open in generative AI. In this episode, we meet open source research communities who have stepped up to develop more responsible machine learning alternatives. David Evan Harris worked at Meta to make AI more responsible and now shares his concerns about the risks of open large language models for disinformation and more. Abeba Birhane is a Mozilla advisor and cognitive scientist who calls for openness to facilitate independent audits of large datasets sourced from the internet. Sasha Luccioni is a researcher and climate lead at Hugging Face who says open source communities are key to developing ethical and sustainable machine learning. Andriy Mulyar is co-founder and CTO of Nomic, the startup behind the open source chatbot GPT4All, an offline and private alternative to ChatGPT. IRL: Online Life is Real Life is an original podcast from Mozilla, the non-profit behind Firefox. In Season 7, host Bridget Todd talks to AI builders that put people ahead of profit.

This season, IRL host Bridget Todd meets people who are balancing the upsides of artificial intelligence with the downsides that are coming into view worldwide. Stay tuned for the first of five biweekly episodes on October 10! IRL is an original podcast from the non-profit Mozilla.

Life, death and data. AI’s capacity to support research on human health is well documented. But so are the harms of biased datasets and misdiagnoses. How can AI developers build healthier systems? We take a look at a new dataset for Black skin health, a Covid chatbot in Rwanda, AI diagnostics in rural India, and elusive privacy in mental health apps. Avery Smith is a software engineer in Maryland who lost his wife to skin cancer. This inspired him to create the Black Skin Health AI Dataset and the web app, Melalogic. Remy Muhire works on open source speech recognition software in Rwanda, including a Covid-19 chatbot, Mbaza, which 2 million people have used so far. Radhika Radhakrishnan is a feminist scholar who studies how AI diagnostic systems are deployed in rural India by tech companies and hospitals, as well as the limits of consent. Jen Caltrider is the lead investigator on a special edition of Mozilla’s “Privacy Not Included” buyer’s guide that investigated the privacy and security of mental health apps. IRL is an original podcast from Mozilla, the non-profit behind Firefox. In Season 6, host Bridget Todd shares stories of people who make AI more trustworthy in real life. This season doubles as Mozilla’s 2022 Internet Health Report. Go to the report for show notes, transcripts, and more.

Murky political groups are exploiting social media systems to spread disinformation. With important elections taking place around the world this year, who is pushing back? We meet grassroots groups in Africa and beyond who are using AI to tackle disinformation in languages and countries underserved by big tech companies. Justin Arenstein is the founder of Code for Africa, an organization that works with newsrooms across 21 countries to fact check, track and combat the global disinformation industry. Tarunima Prabhakar builds tools and datasets to respond to online misinformation in India, as co-founder of the open-source technology community, Tattle. Sahar Massachi was a data engineer at Facebook and now leads the Integrity Institute, a new network for people who work on integrity teams at social media companies. Raashi Saxena in India was the global project coordinator of Hatebase, a crowdsourced repository of online hate speech in 98 languages, run by the Sentinel Project. IRL is an original podcast from Mozilla, the non-profit behind Firefox. In Season 6, host Bridget Todd shares stories of people who make AI more trustworthy in real life. This season doubles as Mozilla’s 2022 Internet Health Report. Go to the report for show notes, transcripts, and more.

An aerial picture can tell a thousand stories. But who gets to tell them? From above the clouds, our world is surveilled and datafied. Those who control the data, control the narratives. We explore the legacy of spatial apartheid in South Africa’s townships, and hear from people around the world who are reclaiming power over their own maps. Raesetje Sefala is mapping the legacy of spatial apartheid in South Africa as a computer vision researcher with Timnit Gebru’s Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). Astha Kapoor researches how communities and organizations can be ‘stewards’ of data about people and places as co-founder of the Aapti Institute in India. Michael Running Wolf is the founder of Indigenous in AI. He is working on speech recognition and immersive spatial experiences with augmented and virtual reality in Canada. Denise McKenzie is a location data expert who works with the global mapping organization PLACE to empower governments and communities to use advanced spatial data. IRL is an original podcast from Mozilla, the non-profit behind Firefox. In Season 6, host Bridget Todd shares stories of people who make AI more trustworthy in real life. This season doubles as Mozilla’s 2022 Internet Health Report. Go to the report for show notes, transcripts, and more.

Gig workers around the world report directly to algorithms in precarious jobs created by secretive corporations. We take you to the streets of Quito, Ecuador where delivery workers are protesting against artificial intelligence, and we hear solutions from people in several countries on how to audit the algorithms and reclaim rights. Eduardo Meneses is gearing up with allies to ‘audit the algorithms’ of delivery platforms in Ecuador as the Global Head of Social Change at Thoughtworks. Dan Calacci at the MIT Media Lab is developing open source tools and systems that empower workers to take control of their data. Aída Ponce Del Castillo is working on AI regulation to protect the rights of platform workers as a lawyer with the European Trade Union Institute in Brussels. Yuly Ramirez is the general secretary of a coalition of digital platform workers in Ecuador and José Gonzalez is a delivery driver in Quito, Ecuador. IRL is an original podcast from Mozilla, the non-profit behind Firefox. In Season 6, host Bridget Todd shares stories of people who make AI more trustworthy in real life. This season doubles as Mozilla’s 2022 Internet Health Report. Go to the report for show notes, transcripts, and more.

Where should tech builders draw the line on AI for military or surveillance? Just because it can be built, doesn’t mean it should be. At what point do we blow the whistle, call out the boss, and tell the world? Find out what it’s like to sound the alarm from inside a big tech company. Laura Nolan shares the story behind her decision to leave Google in 2018 over their involvement in Project Maven, a Pentagon project which used AI by Google. Yves Moreau explains why he is calling on academic journals and international publishers to retract papers that use facial recognition and DNA profiling of minority groups. Yeshimabeit Milner describes how the non-profit Data for Black Lives is pushing back against use of AI powered tools used to surveil and criminalize Black and Brown communities. Shmyla Khan, describes being on the receiving end of technologies developed by foreign superpowers as a researcher with the Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan. IRL is an original podcast from Mozilla, the non-profit behind Firefox. In Season 6, host Bridget Todd shares stories of people who make AI more trustworthy in real life. This season doubles as Mozilla’s 2022 Internet Health Report. Go to the report for show notes, transcripts, and more.

AI is everywhere now. It’s part of healthcare, social media, maps, and even killer robots. But who has power over AI? And who is shifting that power? Join IRL’s new host, Bridget Todd, as she talks to technology builders and policy folks from around the world who are developing more trustworthy AI that puts people over profits. IRL is an original podcast from the non-profit Mozilla. For more on our series, visit us here.

Every day, our data hits the market when we sign online. It’s for sale, and we’re left to wonder if tech companies will ever choose to protect our privacy rather than reap large profits with our information. But, is the choice — profit or privacy — a false dilemma? Meet the people who have built profitable tech businesses while also respecting your privacy. Fact check if Facebook and Google have really found religion in privacy. And, imagine a world where you could actually get paid to share your data. In this episode, Oli Frost recalls what happened when he auctioned his personal data on eBay. Jeremy Tillman from Ghostery reveals the scope of how much ad-tracking is really taking place online. Patrick Jackson at Disconnect.me breaks down Big Tech’s privacy pivot. DuckDuckGo’s Gabriel Weinberg explains why his private search engine has been profitable. And Dana Budzyn walks us through how her company, UBDI, hopes to give consumers the ability to sell their data for cash. IRL is an original podcast from Firefox. For more on the series, go to irlpodcast.org. Read about Patrick Jackson and Geoffrey Fowler's privacy experiment. Learn more about DuckDuckGo, an alternative to Google search, at duckduckgo.com. And, we're pleased to add a little more about Firefox's business here as well — one that puts user privacy first and is also profitable. Mozilla was founded as a community open source project in 1998, and currently consists of two organizations: the 501(c)3 Mozilla Foundation, which backs emerging leaders and mobilizes citizens to create a global movement for the health of the internet; and its wholly owned subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation, which creates Firefox products, advances public policy in support of internet user rights and explores new technologies that give people more control and privacy in their lives online. Firefox products have never — and never will never — buy or sell user data. Because of its unique structure, Mozilla stands apart from its peers in the technology field as one of the most impactful and successful social enterprises in the world. Learn more about Mozilla and Firefox at mozilla.org.