Season 6

  • Trailer: Introducing Season 6 of IRL: AI in Real Life

    Meet IRL’s new host, Bridget Todd, who is on a journey to meet people around the world who are making AI more trustworthy, in real life. 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. To read more about Season 6, visit our blog.

    Published: July 5, 2022

  • 1: The Tech We Won't Build

    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. Show Notes

    Published: July 18, 2022

    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 at 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.

    Episode transcript

  • 2: When an Algorithm is Your Boss

    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. Show Notes

    Published: August 1, 2022

    Eduardo Meneses is gearing up with allies to ‘audit the algorithms’ of delivery platforms in Ecuador as the global head of social change for Thoughtworks.

    Dan Calacci at the MIT Media Lab is developing open source tools and systems that empower workers to take control of their data.

    Aida 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.

    Episode transcript

  • 3: AI from Above

    From above the clouds, our world is surveilled and datafied. Power over that data means power over what stories get told about people and places: whose needs are counted, whose needs are erased. How can people reclaim power over their own maps and stories using AI? Show Notes

    Published: August 15, 2022

    Raesetje Sefala is mapping the legacy of spatial apartheid in South Africa as a research fellow with the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) founded by Timnit Gebru.

    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 working on speech recognition and immersive spatial experiences with augmented and virtual reality in Canada.

    Denise McKensie 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.

    Episode transcript

  • 4: The Truth is Out There

    How can platforms stop disinformation that spreads like wildfire during elections? A record number of elections are taking place around the world in 2022. Voters’ social media feeds will be flooded with political, AI driven disinformation campaigns. Grassroots organizations are tackling the problem head on, aggressively tracking disinformation and hate speech and fighting AI with AI. Show Notes

    Published: August 29, 2022

    Justin Arenstein is an investigative journalist based in Tbilisi, Georgia. He’s the founder of Code for Africa, an organization that works with newsrooms in 22 countries to track and combat the global disinformation industry.

    Tarunima Prabhakar is based in Rishikesh, India. She’s the research lead and co-founder of an open-source project called Tattle, where technologists and researchers build machine learning tools and datasets to understand and respond to misinformation.

    Sahar Massachi was a data engineer at Facebook in the US working with their civic integrity team to protect elections from interference. He’s now the co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit Integrity Institute, an organization for people who work on integrity teams at social media platforms.

    Raashi Saxena is in Bangalore, India. She coordinates global contributions to a crowdsourced dataset of online hate speech called Hatebase, through an initiative called the Citizen Linguist Lab run by the Sentinel Project in Canada.

    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.

    Episode transcript

  • 5: The AI Medicine Cabinet

    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. Show Notes

    Published: September 12, 2022

    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 and 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.

    Episode transcript