The Good Robot

In this episode, we chat with N. Katherine Hayles, Distinguished Professor of English at UCLA and James B. Duke Professor of Literature Emerita at Duke University, about feminism, embodiment, cognition, and human-AI relationships. We explore the role of feminism in science and technology, what productive conversations between engineers and humanities scholars look like, literary depictions of non-human embodiment and cognition, and the distribution of cognition across human-AI systems.

In this episode we speak to two brilliant professors here at Cambridge, Mónica Moreno Figueroa and Ella McPherson about a data project they launched at the University of Cambridge to track everyday racism in the university. We discuss using technology for social good without being obsessed with the technology itself and the importance of tracking how racism dehumanises people, confuses us about each other, and causes physical suffering, which students of colour have to deal with on top of the ordinary stress of their uni degree.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Isabella Rosner, a curator at the Royal School of Needlework and a research consultant at Witney Antiques. Isabella tells us about the evolution of embroidery as a technology, and the complex relationship between needlework and feminism. We use this history to shed light on technology and feminism today.

In this episode, we chat with Priya Goswami, anti-FGC activist, awardwinning filmmaker, and CEO and founder of the AI-driven app Mumkin, about feminist data practices and app design. We discuss designing and building apps that do good, why an app’s “users” are actually “participants”, and why you cannot compromise on the participants’ privacy and safety. Priya explains what it means to design an app as an activist, why feminism should be normalised, and the problem with running activist campaigns on social media.
Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of female genital cutting, or FGC, and gender-based violence.

In this episode, Eleanor chats to Rosi Braidotti, one of the leading philosophers of our time and a Distinguished Professor at Utrecht University. Her pioneering theory of posthumanism is a way of thinking that she believes is key to understanding the posthuman condition within which we all exist. We are releasing this conversation in two parts. In this first part, she explains how to embrace the crises and possibilities of advanced capitalism, what it means for NASA to choose Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man as one of its logos, and why colonising outer space risks repeating the worst features of terrestrial capitalism. Look out for the bonus episode for the second half of this interview, which will be released very soon.