The Good Robot

Apr 30 2024 90
The Good Robot Podcast artwork

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. 

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Isabella Rosner on Needlework and History's Hidden Technologies

Apr 30 2024 33 mins  
In this episode, we talk to Dr. Isabella Rosner, a curator at the Royal School of Needlework and a research consultant at Witney Antiques. Isabella tells us about the evolution of embroidery as a technology, and the complex relationship between needlework and feminism. We use this history to shed light on technology and feminism today.This episode includes an ad for the What Next|T

Darren Byler on how China surveils Uyghur Muslims

Mar 26 2024 27 mins  
In this episode, we talked to Darren Byler, author of Terror Capitalism and In the Camps, Life in China's High Tech Penal Colony. We discussed his in depth research on Uyghur Muslims in China and the role played by technology in their persecution. If you're just listening to this on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, you can now watch us on YouTube at The Good Rob

Thuy Linh Tu on the Racial History of Dermatology

Mar 12 2024 28 mins  
In this episode we talk to Thuy Linh Thu, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. We talk about how good technology disperses power, while bad technology concentrates power, the racial history of dermatology, including the connections between the Vietnam War, medical experimentation on incarcerated men in the U. S., and retinol creams,. Please note that this episode conta

Hot Take: The Good Robot BOOK!

Mar 04 2024 29 mins  
In this very special Good Robot hot take we talk about our new book, The Good Robot: Why Technology Needs Feminism. It's a beautiful new illustrated book where the top scholars, activists, artists, writers, technologists, all come together to respond to the prompt: good technology is... Kerry and Eleanor chat about getting its illustrations as tattoos, and you can vote for whi

Shannon Vallor on feminist care ethics, techno-virtues and vices, and the 'AI Mirror'

Feb 19 2024 31 mins  
In this episode we chat to Shannon Vallor, the Bailey Gifford professor in the ethics and data of AI at the University of Edinburgh and the Director for the Centre for Technomoral Futures. We talk about feminist care ethics; technologies, vices and virtues; why Aristotle believed that the people who make technology should be excluded from citizenship; and why we still don't ha

Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna on Why You Shouldn't Believe the AI Hype

Feb 06 2024 29 mins  
In this episode, we talk to Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna. AI ethics legends and now the co-hosts of the Mystery AI Hype Theatre 3000 podcast which is a new podcast where they dispel the hype storm around AI. Emily is a professor of linguistics at university of Washington and the co-author of that stochastic parrots paper that you may have heard of, because two very important peo

Melissa Heikkilä on Why the Stories We Tell About AI Matter

Jan 22 2024 27 mins  
This week we chat to Melissa Heikkilä, a senior tech reporter for MIT Tech review, about ChatGPT, image generation, porn, and the stories we tell about AI. We hope you enjoy the show.This episode includes an ad for the What Next|TBD podcast. 

Rebecca Woods on Large Language Models, Language and Meaning, and How Children Learn Languages

Jan 09 2024 45 mins  
In this episode, we talked to Rebecca Woods, a Senior Lecturer in Language and Cognition at Newcastle University. We have an amazing chat about language learning in AI, and she tells us how language is crucial to how ChatGPT functions. She's also an expert in how children learn languages, and she compares this to teaching AI how to process languages. This episode includes an a

Hot Take: Happy Holidays & a new book from Eleanor!

Dec 26 2023 31 mins  
Happy holidays from your favourite jingle belles at the Good Robot podcast! In this episode we celebrate both the holidays and Eleanor's new book, The Planetary Humanism of European Women's Science Fiction: An Experience of the Impossible, which is a history of women's utopian science fiction from 1666 to 2016. We talk about the ways that women have imagined better p

Jess Wade on Rewriting Wikipedia

Dec 11 2023 35 mins  
In this episode we talk to British physicist Jess Wade about the 1923 Wikipedia pages (and counting) she’s created and edited in her aim to put more women and more people of colour onto the online encyclopaedia. This episode includes an ad for the What Next|TBD podcast.