Computer Says Maybe

This is the last of our series AI Lingo Bingo Series! We dig into four more co-opted concepts with four more all stars.
More like this: Last week’s episode with Meredith Whittaker, Audrey Tang, Abeba Birhane, and Usha Ramanathan

This week we’ll hear from Naomi Klein, who will discuss how ‘AI for Climate’ is very much not a thing; Nikhil Dey who shares all the ways powerful actors cosplay at having ‘accountability’; Timnit Gebru who explains that ‘frugal AI’ is something being made novel by the hype & scale of big tech business models; and finally Chinasa Okolo who will help us better understand the complexities of ‘multilateralism’.
Further reading & resources:
More on Nikhil Dey — social activist and a founding member of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)
More on Timnit Gebru — founder of the DAIR institute
More on Naomi Klein — author and professor of climate justice at the University of British Columbia
More on Chinasa Okolo — founder of Technecultura, a research institute focussing on AI governance for global majority countries
The Guardian’s profile on Nikhil — June 2013
More about MKSS involvement in the Campaign for the Right to Information in India
The Screen New Deal — by Naomi Klein, The Intercept, 2020
More on the cancellation of the Northern Gateway Pipeline
Ghana NLP
Watch this week’s interviews in full on Youtube
RSVP to **The People's Policy: Holding Big Tech Accountable [Livestreamed Conversation + Q&A]** — happening on March 2nd 5:30pm MT
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Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

Anthropic’s Claude was used in the military operation to kidnap president Maduro earlier this year. Why? Unclear. Was this legal? Absolutely not.
More like this: AI In Gaza: Live from Mexico City

Surprise, surprise: the DoD feels that they should able to use AI models however they want, as long as its lawful — but… was this lawful? They are now threatening to designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk. What does this all mean?
For this short, Alix was joined by Amos Toh, senior counsel at the Brennan Centre for Justice, to help us understand why the US defence department and an AI company are arguing about how best to us AI models for dehumanising and unjust military purposes.
Further reading & resources:
Pentagon's use of Claude during Maduro raid sparks Anthropic feud — Axios, Feb 13
Anthropic on shaky ground with Pentagon amid feud after Maduro raid — The Hill, Feb 19
US used Anthropic's Claude during the Venezuela raid, WSJ reports — Reuters, Feb 16
Pentagon Used Anthropic’s Claude in Maduro Venezuela Raid — WSJ, Feb 15
Amos’s Bluesky thread sharing more thoughts on the story
Computer Says Maybe Shorts bring in experts to give their ten-minute take on recent news. If there’s ever a news story you think we should bring in expertise on for the show, please email [email protected]
Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

It’s our second week of playing AI lingo bingo. The summit in India is underway and the air is thick with vague terms that fail to describe the big problems.
More like this: Lingo Bingo at the India AI Summit w/ Karen Hao, Joan Kinyua, Chenai Chair, and Rafael Grohmann

With us this week to discuss co-opted terms is Meredith Whittaker on how ‘open source’ cannot meaninfully be applied to AI systems; Audrey Tang on ‘democratisation’, something which is both helped and harmed by AI; Abeba Birhane on everyone’s favourite slogan ‘AI for Good’; and Usha Ramanathan to discuss ‘AI and development’ in the context of the Aadhaar project in India.
Further reading & resources:
More on Usha Ramanathan — legal researcher and human rights activist
More on Abeba Birhane — principle investigator at the AI Accountability Lab at Trinity College Dublin
More on Meredith Whittaker — President of Signal
More on Audrey Tang — Taiwan’s first Digital Minister
Distributional AGI Safety — by Nenad Tomašev et al
Watch this week’s interviews in full on Youtube
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Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou | Post Production by Sarah Myles

The AI Impact Summit in India is just a couple of days away and we are ready to drown in vague terms that kinda describe AI, and definitely obscure power. Let’s talk about how to reframe those terms…
More like this: The Vaporstate: All Hail Scale at the AI India Summit

We’ve partnered with the AI Now Institute and Aapti Institute to conduct twelve interviews based around the biggest and baddest terms we feel have been co-opted by global summits such as this one. This week we have Karen Hao discussing what it means to be ‘data rich’; Rafael Grohmann on the word ‘sovereignty’ and how it has a hundred definitions; Joan Kinyua on ‘human capital’, a key part of any AI development supply chain; and Chenai Chair, who will discuss ‘linguistic diversity’ — what it is, and what it isn’t.
These are just the best parts of the interviews — if you want to go deep and see each of these interviews in full, head to our Youtube channel now.
Further reading & resources:
More about Rafael Grohmann — Assistant Professor of Media Studies with focus on Critical Platform and Data Studies at the University of Toronto
More about Karen Hao — investigative journalist and author of Empire of AI
More about Chenai Chair — director of the Masakhane African Languages Hub
More about Joan Kinyua — president of the Data Labellers Association
More on the Due Diligence Act
More about the amendment to the Business Laws Act 2024
What does the notion of “sovereignty” mean when referring to the digital? — Stephane Couture and Sophie Toupin
Buy The Oracle for Transfeminist Technologies by Sasha Costanza-Chock, Joana Varon, and Clara Juliano
Watch this week’s interviews in full on Youtube (link to playlist of interviews)
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Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

In The Vaporstate, we have traveled to Brazil, India, and the UK. But what does this look like as a global movement of nations and companies evangelising technology as the key to solving all problems, everywhere?
More like this: Paris Post-Mortem (live)

For our final instalment of The Vaporstate, Alix is joined by Astha Kapoor and Amba Kak to reflect on the series, and discuss the upcoming AI Action Summit in India. This is the first time this summit is being hosted by a global majority country — will this create new opportunities for civil society to have a say, or is this just yet another chance for tech companies to whisper magic AI spells into the ear of government?
The end of The Vaporstate series marks the beginning of another series, made in partnership with AI Now and Aapti Institute: in the run up to the AI Summit, we want to rethink the terms that have been co-opted by government and industry. Terms like ‘sovereignty’, ‘AI for good’, and ‘human capital’. We interviewed twelve experts who unpack how these terms are framed in global summits like this one — watch this space for conversations with Naomi Klein, Meredith Whitaker, and Karen Hao, to name a few.
Further reading & resources:
Mark Carney’s speech at Davos January 2026
Watch the first batch of interviews discussing co-opted terms used in and around the upcoming summit
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou