Making AI Systems More Just with Arjun Subramonian

Tricia shares a bonus episode where she was invited to speak with the new show out this year:

The Benjamin Franklin International School Podcast (BFIS podcast)
This is a small school podcast with a difference. We aim to showcase our school’s future-oriented vision for learning.
Our goal: acting as agents of change in an educational world that must adapt to be ready for a fast-moving now and a fast-moving future. We’ll showcase our pillars of learning, profile leadership and excellent practices at all levels within the school, and claim our place in the wider world of educational innovation, excellence, and student-centered learning.

Follow them to catch incredible upcoming guests:
open.spotify.com/show/1FTDWtJCttU…953c3558f4a244c4

Chloé Locatelli is a PhD candidate in the Digital Humanities department at King’s College London. She completed her Gender Studies' Masters with the Erasmus+ Programme at Universidad de Granada and University of Bologna. Her doctoral research looks at constructions of femininity in sextech and their posthuman potential. She is interested in sextech, ‘sex robots’, affinity with digital characters and other places where sex, intimacy and digital technologies meet – topics she also covers as a contributor to Futureofsex.net. Chloé has also produced several academic publications. Her latest contribution for Springer’s Maschinenliebe (2021), co-authored with Dr Kate Devlin, explores the emphasis on intimacy in sex robot marketing. 

In this episode we explore what we can learn about ourselves by looking at sextech and the way it is marketed.

Dig into Locatelli's incredible research:

“Digital Femininities and the Ethics of Sextech”

‘Sex Robots’: Gender, Desire, and Embodiment in Posthuman Sextech

‘Rethinking Sex Robots

In this compelling episode we welcome the insightful Dr. Jin Lee, a scholar whose research transcends boundaries, both geographically and academically. Dr. Lee, whose life weaves through South Korea, the United States, and Australia, along with a profound presence in online spaces, brings a unique perspective to our understanding of media and cultural dynamics.

With a keen focus on marginalized communities, Dr. Lee's work sheds light on how women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals navigate and carve out spaces for themselves in the media landscape. Join us as we delve into Dr. Lee's explorations of media intimacies and the practices these communities engage in to foster connections and build lives within digital and cultural realms.

In our conversation, Dr. Lee will reveal her findings on the YouTube comment sections, not just as casual conversation spots, but as fertile ground for learning and engagement. We'll also discuss her research on dating app Tinder through the lens of Reddit discussions, probing the critical question, "What is the dominant reading of Tinder?" and its implications for social minorities seeking connection.

Moreover, we'll examine the intricate dance between social media and K-pop, as Dr. Lee unpacks the social media practices at the intersection of fandom and cultural expression. This episode is an invitation to look beyond the surface of our digital interactions and understand the deeper currents that influence them. Dr. Jin Lee's perspectives offer a nuanced look at how personal lives are constructed and understood in the age of media.

Ready to learn more about Dr. Jin Lee and the research discussed in this conversation?

https://ljin8788.wixsite.com/website/about

Explore the scholars recommended by Dr. Lee for further consideration:

https://wishcrys.com/

https://www.wired.com/author/whitney-phillips/

https://cmsw.mit.edu/podcast-andre-brock-black-twitter-cultural-informatics/?utm_content=bufferf8fa6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

In this riveting episode, we sit down with the co-host of the groundbreaking podcast, ‘Bot Love’ Anna Oakes. The show has taken the podcasting world by storm, delving deep into the intertwining realms of love, human relationships, and the influence of AI-driven chatbots. But what's the story behind 'Bot Love'? Our guest takes us on a journey back to the podcast's inception, sharing the unexpected twists and revelations they faced while hosting the show.

The conversation takes a reflective turn as we discuss the nature of human-AI connection and the profound questions the show raises. Does AI companionship truly put us more in touch with our humanity? Or does it blur the lines of genuine human connection? Our guest opens up about the lingering questions they grappled with after their deep-dive research for the show.

As a seasoned journalist, our guest sheds light on the future of AI in the media. Where should our collective curiosity about AI lead us? And what are the gaps and nuances in AI coverage that often go unnoticed? Tune in for an enlightening discussion that pushes the boundaries of technology, love, and self-reflection.

Learn more about Bot Love:

https://radiotopiapresents.fm/bot-love

Learn more about our guest:

Anna Oakes is an audio producer and journalist. She got her start in audio at Heritage Radio Network, producing English and Spanish stories on food politics, immigration, and labor in New York. Anna worked previously in Madrid, at Revista Contexto, La Marea, and the Association for the Recuperation of Historical Memory, where she reported on colonial legacies and the Franco dictatorship. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University and has an MPhil from the University of Cambridge in Spanish and Comparative Literature. She’s currently an associate editor at Hark Audio. You can find her on Twitter @a_lkoakes.

Dr Blodgett is a senior researcher in the Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics in AI (FATE) group at Microsoft Research Montréal. She's broadly interested in examining the social and ethical implications of natural language processing technologies; she developed approaches for anticipating, measuring, and mitigating harms arising from language technologies, focusing on the complexities of language and language technologies in their social contexts, and on supporting NLP practitioners in their ethical work. Dr. Blodgett has also worked on using NLP approaches to examine language variation and change (computational sociolinguistics), for example developing models to identify language variation on social media.

Dr. Blodgett completed a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst working in the Statistical Social Language Analysis Lab under the guidance of Brendan O’Connor, where they were also supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Dr. Blodgett received a B.A. in mathematics from Wellesley College. She interned at Microsoft Research New York in summer 2019, where she had the fortune of working with Solon Barocas, Hal Daumé III, and Hanna Wallach.

Ready to explore the research we discuss on this week's episode?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLlj2LZGfQc

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371924250_Taxonomizing_and_Measuring_Representational_Harms_A_Look_at_Image_Tagging

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Join Kathleen and Tricia at CEESA's conference in Malta this March

Learn more:

https://www.ceesaconference.com/2024/

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For a transcript of this episode head to 

https://unhingedcollaboration.com/

Nicole Pacent is an actress and producer, known for Westworld (2016), Criminal Minds (2005) and Call Me Kat (2021). Nicole was also on the award winning series Anyone But Me, and has been a long time advocate for the LGBTQ+ community through the podcast series The Coming Out Pod.

Fellow fans of Nicole's work can catch her soon  in Los Angeles in a new production called Castle in the Sky which is set in Prohibition Era LA, and taking place in the actual Art Deco penthouse of the late fashion connoisseur James Oviatt, on whom the show is based.

Ready to learn more?

https://www.undertheroseproductions.com/the-story

In this episode we talk about Nicole's journey as an actor on Westworld, how her thinking about AI and the arts is evolving as well as what it means to be a very public figure in today's very online culture.

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At the top of the episode we shared news about an amazing opportunity for educators
To register, you can visit the conference website at https://aieloc.org/conference. 

Arjun Subramonian is a Computer Science PhD student at UCLA with Prof. Yizhou Sun and Prof. Kai-Wei Chang. My research focuses on inclusive graph machine learning and natural language processing, including fairness, justice, and ethics.

Ready to learn more about them?

Check out more links about Arjun's work

Twitter: @arjunsubgraph

 Queer in AI paper

 Queer in AI National AI Advisory Committee briefing

Also mentioned at the beginning of the episode learn more about AIELOC's upcoming event:

https://aieloc.org/conference/

Welcome to Season Two of the Unhinged Collaboration Podcast, where we dive deep into the intersection of technology, feminism, and meaningful scholarship. In this episode, your co-hosts Tricia and Kathleen sit down with a visionary thinker and trailblazer, Dr. Ketchum, Director of The Just Feminist Tech and Scholarship Lab.

In this captivating conversation, we explore how Dr. Ketchum's perspective on designing spaces and shaping communication as we ask: Has her expertise in virtual collaboration also prompted her to rethink the dynamics of in-person engagement?

Dr. Ketchum's thinking explores diverse mediums for research communication and the role of injecting an element of fun. 

Ready to learn more about Dr. Ketchum?

Toolkits for Engaging in Public Scholarship | Dr Alex Ketchum

https://www.alexketchum.ca/

https://twitter.com/aketchum22

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-alex-alexandra-ketchum-79774656/?originalSubdomain=ca

https://www.justfeministtechandscholarshiplab.com/

For a transcript of this conversation:

www.unhingedcollaboration.com

We are coming back on September 1st, and our overarching question hopes to explore the role that technology plays in helping us reimagine collaborative processes.