Techtonic – Details, episodes & analysis

The Israel-Hamas war has proven to be a particularly fraught conflict on social media.

Finding out what’s happening on the ground has been complicated by a number of issues: the divisiveness of the debate on both sides, and how entrenched each viewpoint is; the ease with which alternative narratives are broadcast; and the immediate emotional responses that content can trigger. 

In this, the last episode of the series, host Chris Stokel-Walker speaks to Valerie Wirtschafter, a Fellow in Foreign Policy and the Artificial Intelligence Initiative at the Brookings Institution about the solutions to these issues and how we can verify truth in the fog of war.

Producers: Christopher Hooton and Nicola Kelly.

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The world grows ever more dominated by artificial intelligence. We’re promised huge productivity gains and streamlining benefits to make our lives easier, but there are significant drawbacks. 

The data underpinning AI is biased, the technology can amplify inequalities, and it's unclear who will set crucial standards for the sector and how they will be imposed.

In this episode, host Chris Stokel-Walker speaks to Rumman Chowdhury, Responsible AI Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center, who has long been a campaigner for equality in technology. She fears we’re giving the keys to our society to a small group of companies that have shown they can’t be fully trusted.

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In this episode, Chris Stokel-Walker talks to Eddie Perez, former Head of Election Integrity at Twitter, about the impact generative AI is likely to have on the 2024 US elections; how deepfakes, fabricated, synthesised audio and social media may be hijacked by bad actors; and what undecided and swing state voters should be looking out for.

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Techtonic is a new podcast from human rights organisation Article 19, hosted by tech reporter Chris Stokel-Walker and produced by Christopher Hooton and Nicola Kelly.

The new series looks at freedom of expression online with a focus on the human impact of Big Tech and social media. We speak to experts around the world, including the former Head of Elections at Twitter, digital rights activists and journalists and we hear from those at the sharp end of AI, deepfake technologies, internet shutdowns and more.

Subscribe to Techtonic wherever you get your podcasts to hear new episodes, released every Monday, fortnightly.
To learn more about ARTICLE 19, head to our website here: www.article19.org

In this week's episode, we look at the language biases inherent in AI technologies with guests Aliya Bhatia and Gabriel Nicholas from the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Chris, Aliya and Gabriel discuss how large language models work, the underrepresentation of non English-language nations in training data and the effects of an AI trained largely in English. They look at how this might affect communities in India and dialects such as Catalan, where translations are viewed through an anglo-centric lens and the mistakes that commonly get made. And they explore how companies might redress the balance, to ensure a diversity and quality of data which cover different cultural contexts. 

Follow the show and don’t miss an episode, published fortnightly on Mondays.

Hosted by tech reporter Chris Stokel-Walker 
Produced by Christopher Hooton and Nicola Kelly.

Find out more about ARTICLE 19's work and follow us on:
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When Eric Meyer answered the door to the home he shared with his mother on August 11, 2023, he couldn’t have expected what was waiting on the other side.

The editor and proprietor of a small Kansas newspaper was being raided by police, who were looking for evidence of supposed illegal data access by one of his reporters.

Not used to seeing the police intervene so overtly and unabashedly in the workings of the press, Americans sent letters of support to the newspaper in their tens of thousands.

In this episode, Eric tells host Chris Stokel-Walker how he believes the raid was politically motivated; this small town scuffle potentially being an augur for the future of press freedom in a world where opinion is increasingly replacing fact-based news.

Producers: Christopher Hooton and Nicola Kelly

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Generative AI is overhauling the way we work and live - and giving superpowers to ordinary individuals to create smart copy and stunning images in fractions of a second, but at whose expense? 

In this week's episode, host Chris Stokel-Walker speaks to Karla Ortiz, an artist from Puerto Rico who has drawn for Marvel, HBO, ILM, Universal and more. She has also launched a lawsuit against three large generative AI platforms, alleging mass copyright infringement of her work.

She tells Chris how she felt when she learned her artistic expression had allegedly been co-opted, and what impact it’s had on her both professionally and personally.

Producers: Christopher Hooton and Nicola Kelly

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Generative AI can do a lot of useful things: summarise text, spark inspiration and analyse patterns and data. But it can also makes things up, including entire articles from The Guardian.

In this episode, host Chris Stokel-Walker speaks to The Guardian's Head of Editorial Innovation, Chris Moran, about the day he was made aware of an article which never actually existed, though Chat GPT swore otherwise. He describes the newspaper's approach to AI and the many egregious implications the technology will have on the future of journalism.

Producers: Christopher Hooton and Nicola Kelly

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Our mobiles are a gateway to the world, holding news and entertainment, personal details and banking account information, friendships - even romances start there. Phones are a treasure trove of information, which is why governments in countries like the Philippines want to access them.

In this episode of 'Techtonic', host Chris Stokel-Walker speaks to Mong Palatino, former Filipino congressman, now activist and writer, about a new law requiring users to hand over their names and government IDs to register their SIM cards. Is this to police citizens, or is it a crack down on dissent? Mong tells Chris what it means to sign over your digital life to the authorities.

Producers: Christopher Hooton and Nicola Kelly

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Who, if anyone, controls Big Tech? 

In this episode, Chris Stokel-Walker talks to David Auerbach, a former Microsoft and Google software engineer credited for bringing the first emoji to the world.  

His new book, Meganets, warns us about the loose grip Big Tech companies have on the powerful technologies and algorithms they have created, and explores how these systems have driven us further and further into the opinions we already held and into our own little ‘narrative bunkers’.

Here he diagnoses the effects of this on society, and tries to offer solutions – which are not easy to find. 

Producers: Christopher Hooton and Nicola Kelly

Find out more about ARTICLE 19's work and follow us on:
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