Politechs
A podcast exploring the inherently political nature of technology
23 episodes
latest
fortnightly cadence
English language
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A podcast exploring the inherently political nature of technology
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Since the invention of the wheel, automation has both substituted and complemented labour; machines replaced humans at some lower-paying jobs, but this was compensated by the creation of new, higher-paying jobs; in other words: tech workers. In recent years, there has been a desire from certain high-profile tech companies for an "apolitical workplace". This in itself is a political act; an act designed to suppress the power of tech workers and reinforce the status quo. They know that politics is inextricable from tech. And now so do you. Welcome to Politechs. In Season 1 of Politechs, it's tim
AI is everywhere these days, and the problem with it is not what people think. It's not Skynet we should fear; it's the actually existing harms that are being done to the environment, workers around the world, and the human mind itself. Join Josh and Ray for the inaugural episode of the inaugural season of Politechs as they lay down a Luddite argument against AI from the perspective of software engineers and talk about how to have good faith discussions with people who might not see or be willing to acknowledge the dangers of the technologies under the AI umbrella. Mentioned in this episode:Po
Our societies are necessarily based on trust, but how do we decide what institutions, people, and technologies to place our trust in? And why have we collectively decided that since "computers don't make mistakes", they are always worthy of our trust? Mentioned in this episode:British Post Office scandalDutch welfare algorithm [permalink]Enshittification - Cory Doctorow's theory of how platforms move inexorably towards abusing users and partners alikeFlint water crisisData labelling in Kenya [permalink]We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules
Whilst everyone has an opinion about AI, there are certain top-level narratives driving the hype bubble. We look at the doomer / booster divide (which turns out to be not so divided) and peek behind the curtain to see which corporations and people are pushing these narratives and what they have to gain. Mentioned in this episode:Dystopia Now - TESCREAL Overview with Kath Barbadoro and Alex PtakWhy does this billionaire have 100 kids in 12 countries?, by Arwa Mahdawi [PERMALINK]Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartless - AI AGENTS EMERGENCY DEBATE We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with somet
We're joined this week by Dr. Chris Gilliard, Co-Director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute to talk about what generative AI means for surveillance, and how this technology disproportionately harms marginalised groups. Dr. Gilliard is a writer, professor, and speaker whose scholarship examines digital privacy, surveillance, and the intersections of race, class, and technology. His book "Luxury Surveillance" is forthcoming from MIT Press in 2026. Mentioned in this episode:The Critical Internet Studies Institute develops cutting-edge research and educational programs to advance public k
To quote Sarah Connor, "There is no fate", so why do so many people buy into the narrative that AI is inevitable so we might as well get on board (or throw up our hands in despair)? Josh and Ray get to the bottom of this, realise that Skynet might happen after all, and channel the great Lina Khan: "Where we are is not just the inevitable outcome of market forces or technological development. It's a result of choices we've made, and policies we've enacted or not enacted. And we can change that. We can. We must." Mentioned in this episode:Noam Chomsky on The Big Idea with Andrew Marr, 1996-02-14
When you're trying to convince somebody of something (for example, to examine whether AI is a good thing), you need to know your audience. This episode is all about looking at programmers as a whole and identifying different groups, then thinking through how to talk to members of those groups and use arguments that resonate with them. Mentioned in this episode:senior developer agents, by Zach Tellman [PERMALINK]Pascal's WagerPascal's Mugging"Are we the baddies?" meme [PERMALINK]Empire of AI, by Karen Hao [PERMALINK] We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please r
Automation is usually presented to us as an unalloyed good, a way to remove tedium from our lives so we can spend our time on the things that truely matter. But is this really the case? In this episode, we take a closer look at automation: what it is, who wants it, and the harm it wreaks on the environment and society. We'd love to hear from you if you disagree with something we've said. Please read our rules of engagement for good faith discussions, and then send an email to podcast@politechs.dev or hit us up on socials. To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode
We've talked about a lot on Politechs this season, and now it's time to pull it all together and think about how we can resist AI. And who better to talk to about resistance than Brian Merchant, author of "Blood in the Machine", a fascinating book about the original Luddites, a group of tech workers in early 19th century England who took up the hammer and smashed the machines that were being used to emiserate them. We talk about the parallels between the time of the Luddites and our current moment, how capital and the state teamed up to crush the Luddites, and how we can avoid their fate. Ment
Josh and Ray talk about the real risks of AI with Anna Colom, a social science researcher working at the intersection of democratic processes and digital technologies. We are going through unprecedented times in the pace and scale of technological development driven by data and AI systems. Yet, these developments and their applications are being led and decided by a few in a regulatory vacuum, supported by narratives driven by hype and power asymmetries. There is however a large and more diverse community of technology developers across the globe who can claim back the authority if it refuses
Much to their chagrin, Josh and Ray discover that Season 1 of Politechs wasn't sufficient to destroy AI. They conclude that the only thing to do is assemble a Luddite army and launch a new assault on HELLISH AI. Welcome to Season 2 of Politechs! Mentioned in this episode:Tu Nube Seca Mi Río - Spanish organisation opposing datacentresAI Killed My Job, by Brian MerchantEmpire of AI, by Karen Hao [PERMALINK]I Am An AI Hater, by Anothony MoserThe Kirby Frame, by Anthony MoserAgainst AI, by Foz MeadowsA Butlerian Hauntology, by Dr. Syed Mustafa AliTech Won't Save Us - a critical tech podcast We'd l
Josh and Ray sit down with Anthony Moser and discuss the impetus for him to write "I Am An AI Hater". We talk about the role of politeness in maintaining the status quo, Anthony's views on copyright as a musician, the importance of collective action, how the law is not a source of power but rather an expression of power, and lots more. Mentioned in this episode:I Am An AI Hater - Anthony's essayPolitechs season 1 episode 4 - Surveillance - our interview with Chris GilliardAs of 27 Jan, 2026, NVIDIA, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are worth a combined $20.077 trillion. The total mar
Datacentres might seem boring, but Aurora Gómez Delgado of Tu Nube Seca Mi Río, a Spanish organisation working to combat the ecosocial impact of datacentres, would like you to sit up and take notice of the resources they are stealing from the people who live in the surrounding region. Aurora educates us on the increase in number and size of datacentres, accelerated even further by the AI project, and the corresponding impact on water and power usage, and what that means for farmers trying to grow their crops, people trying to pay their electricity bills, and the availability of clean drinking
Foz Meadows joins us to discuss his "Against AI" polemic, written in response to Erin Underwood's open letter to SFWA and the SFF community in the wake of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association's announcement that works written by LLM tools and works for which LLM tools were used at any point in the writing process would not be eligible for consideration. The conversation touches on not only Foz's piece, but also the sheer stupidity of thinking we can outsource the act of thinking to machines that do not think, what the introduction of LLMs is doing to education, and the role that
Josh and Ray sit down with Dr. Syed Mustafa Ali, author of a recent paper entitled "A Butlerian Hauntology" to unpack the dense payload of insight contained within the paper. Dr. Ali grabs threads from Dune, critical race theory and world-systems theory, political economy, political ecology, and political theology, actually existing fascism, computer science, classic Luddism, literature, film and television, labour power, and anticolonial jihad and masterfully weaves them together in a critical computing tapestry of extraordinary beauty. Gaze upon it, ye tech bros, and despair! Mentioned in th
We welcome our favourite political scientist, Dr. Anna Colom, back on the show to dive into democracy: what is it really, how does AI threaten it, and how can it be built for real? Anna is a researcher with The Data Tank, a "think and do tank"; they work with people, organisations and institutions around the world to unlock data's potential: gathering, accessing, and reusing it responsibly, so we’re all better equipped to tackle the pressing issues of our time. Mentioned in this episode:The Sciences of the Democracies - book by Jean-Paul Gagnon and Benjamin Abrams [permalink]The Tech Coup - bo
Tech journalist Karen Hao joins us to discuss her book, "Empire of AI". Karen explains why she believes that the Silicon Valley hyper-scaled LLM flavour of AI is an imperial technology, and has become even more explicitly imperial in the 12 months since the book first came out as it is being more and more incorporated in the US military's wars. The paperback edition of the book has just been released in the US and UK, so if you live in either of those places and haven't read the book yet, be sure to pick it up! Mentioned in this episode:Empire of AI - book by Karen HaoEmpire of AI - UK paperba
Software engineer and reluctant activist Radhika talks about epistemic violence, identity, immutability, the Enlightenment, common law, and many other things besides to illustrate just one of the ways in which trans people's lives are under attack. We discuss how AI affects trans people, and what it would take to be able to deploy machine learning technologies to improve their lives rather than oppress them, then end on a call to action for technologists. Mentioned in this episode:The Racial Contract - book by Charles MillsThe Sexual Contract - book by Carol PatemanAbsurd Trolley Problems - a
Nate Madson Dion, a fifth grade math teacher from Aurora, Colorado, schools Josh and Ray on how technology has crept into primary schools, how the inevitability narrative manifests with teachers and administrators, and how he has found effective ways to resist, both through one on one conversations with fellow educators, but also around the bargaining table for his union's contract. Nate puts out a call for parents to contact their local school boards, find out how AI is being deployed in their children's schools, and more importantly, how to opt out of it. Mentioned in this episode:Bullshit J
In order to answer the question of whether we still need libraries when we have chatbots, we're joined by Alison Macrina, founder and Executive Director of Library Freedom Project, and Kay Slater, member of LFP and library worker in Chicago. Alison and Kay dispel some myths, talk about how libraries have changed with technology, how libraries are funded, how library workers have a central role to play in resisting AI, and how members of the public like us and our listeners can support libraries. Mentioned in this episode:Library Freedom Project Resources - Posters, bookmarks, presentations, an
Josh and Ray are joined by computational linguist Dr. Emily M. Bender to discuss what "AI" really is, and why the slippery nature of the term is very much intentional. We look at the eugenicist history of the quest to define and measure human intelligence and try to understand what the project of "artificial intelligence" is, then explore LLMs as synthetic text extruding machines and automation technology, as opposed to a machine god on the cusp of being born. Mentioned in this episode:Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 - podcast by Drs. Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna [permalink]THE AI CON - How to
Dr. Dan McQuillan, Senior Lecturer in Critical AI at Goldsmiths, University of London, defines Decomputing as "a 50:50 hybrid of decolonial and degrowth approaches." He joins us to unpack that further and pick up on some of the themes from his prescient book from June of 2022, "Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence", which came out a mere four and a half months before OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT on the world. Mentioned in this episode:Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence - book by Dan McQuillan [permalink]Tools for Conviviality - book by Iv
Friend of the show Dr. Chris Gilliard returns to catch us up on what's been happening in the world of surveillance since last time we talked. From Ring-powered "pet finder" systems to Meta/Rayban-wearing Glassholes to Anthropic's performative handwringing over their Department of War contract, it's not very encouraging out there. You might be able to guess what Chris thinks about the question of whether any of this technology can be redeemed. Mentioned in this episode:On the Impossibility of Ethical Surveillance - essay by Torin MonahanFacial Recognition is the Plutonium of AI - paper by Luke
