Computer Says Maybe

Anna Bacciarelli and Shazeda Ahmed know more than anyone that there are only a handful of tech companies asserting dominance around the world by talking in high-level abstractions about what the future looks like. At REAL ML, they want to change that.
More like this: REAL Resistance: Who's Behind Big Brother?

This is REAL Resistance, a collection of conversations produced in collaboration with Real ML, featuring the experts and advocates who make up Real ML’s global network.
In this final conversation, Real ML executive director Anna Bacciarelli and researcher Shazeda Ahmed discuss what it takes to knit together a global community that is working to resist the material harms of big tech: the powers that be want to keep any discussion about the future of AI as vague as possible — which is why the experts that attend Real ML workshops take the time to get specific about the issues.
Further reading & resources:
More about Real ML
Field-building and the epistemic culture of AI safety by Shazeda Ahmed et al
A 2024 profile on Frantz Fanon — The Guardian
Computer-vision research powers surveillance technology, by Abeba Birhane, Ria Kalluri, et al — Nature Magazine June 2025
**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!**
Computer Says Maybe is produced by Georgia Iacovou, Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Sarah Myles, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout

Mariel Garcia-Montes and Crofton Black share their stories and investigations that uncover the backdoor deals that allow the surveillance industry to thrive under the guise of ‘security’. If you have nothing to hide, you won’t mind if we spy, right?
More like this: REAL Resistance: The Global Fight Against Technocolonialism

This is REAL Resistance, a collection of conversations produced in collaboration with Real ML, featuring the experts and advocates who make up Real ML’s global network.
In this conversation, two guests from the network take us on a guided tour of the global underground surveillance tech market:
Mexico is the world’s biggest importer of surveillance tech, and has a rich history of spying on citizens. Mariel Garcia-Montes briefs us on that history and what it means for Mexico now
Surveillance technology represents a global industry that is mediated by exclusive conferences and backdoor deals; Crofton Black has spent years investigating this industry, the players, and the vulnerabilities they exploit
Further reading & resources:
More about Mariel’s work
Surveillance Secrets — Lighthouse Reports, 2025
Ghost in the Network — Lighthouse Reports, 2023
More on the Mexican Student Movement of 1968 — Eugenia Allier-Montano, 2022
The Tierra Común Network, which Mariel invites any scholars and practitioners to join
Join The Maybe Collective to explore the politics of technology through fresh ideas that you won't hear anywhere else. Sign up for monthly insights, access to exclusive digital events, and real ways to get more involved on issues you care about.
Computer Says Maybe is produced by Georgia Iacovou, Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Sarah Myles, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout

Paola Ricaurte Quijano, Fernanda Rodriguez, Angela Chukunzira, and Kauna Love Malgwi make it clear that colonial powers have never gone away. The people and technology powering them have just changed, and one of them is AI…
More Like This: REAL Resistance: Against Automated Governments

This is REAL Resistance, a collection of conversations produced in collaboration with Real ML, featuring the experts and advocates who make up Real ML’s global network.
In this conversation, four guests from the network discuss how the business of AI continues legacies of colonialism in Brazil, Mexico, and Kenya:
AI companies are taking land in Querétaro for data center expansion, and they’re doing it without asking first. Paola Ricaurte Quijano explains that these are the mechanisms of dispossession at play — and it’s nothing new.
The government in Brazil are adopting a risk-based approach for AI regulation; Fernanda Rodriguez demonstrates the problems with this approach, and how they disproportionately harm Black people.
African data workers suffer the worst mental health harms when compared to other localities. Angela Chukunzira and Kauna Love Malgwi have worked to build a resistance movement for oppressed workers, and a framework for decolonising mental health.
Further reading & resources:
A Mental Health Intervention for Data Workers — Kauna Ibrahim Malgwi
"It's not drought, it's plunder" Querétaro, the valley of data centers — By Paola Ricaurte Quijano and Teresa Roldán Soria, July 2025
Facial recognition surveillance in São Paulo could worsen racism — Al Jazeera, 2023
The Feminist AI Research Network
More about the African Content Moderators Union
Iris — The Institute for Research on Internet and Society
Siasa Place — a youth organisation that helped tech workers who had been dismissed
**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!**
Computer Says Maybe is produced by Georgia Iacovou, Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Sarah Myles, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout

Maria Pilar Llorens, Divij Joshi, Gabriel Geiger, and Purity Mukami reveal how digitised welfare is not welfare — it’s just efficiency theatre.
More like this: REAL Resistance: The AI Information Warp

This is REAL Resistance, a collection of conversations produced in collaboration with Real ML, featuring the experts and advocates who make up Real ML’s global network.
In this conversation, three guests from the network explore the rapid digitisation of public and judicial services around the world:
Courts in LatAm countries are using ChatGPT to power through the case backlog. Maria Pilar Llorens explains that speed is not a virtue in judicial settings
Kenya has adopted algorithmic proxy means-testing for healthcare — Gabriel Geiger & Purity Mukami reverse-engineered it to reveal its inequities
Digitised public services kind of have a formula now: Divij Joshi’s work takes an aerial view of digitised payments, IDs, and consolidated data sets that govern the efficiency playbook
Further reading & resources:
Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights Courts — Maria Pilar Llorens
Hiding Behind AI — Gabriel & Purity’s report on the new Kenyan healthcare system
Suspicion Machines — Gabriel Geiger et al, Lighthouse Reports March 2023
How an algorithm denied food to thousands of poor in India’s Telangana — Divij Joshi, Tapasya, Kumar Sambhav, Al Jazeera January 2024
AI governance in India – law, policy and political economy — Divij Joshi, 2024
Use of Entity Resolution in India: Shining a light on how new forms of automation can deny people access to welfare — Amnesty International 2024
Join The Maybe Collective to explore the politics of technology through fresh ideas that you won't hear anywhere else. Sign up for monthly insights, access to exclusive digital events, and real ways to get more involved on issues you care about.
Computer Says Maybe is produced by Georgia Iacovou, Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Sarah Myles, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout

Klaudia Jaźwińska, Aliya Bhatia, and Yanick Kemayou come together to answer: What happens when a small collection of AI companies start colonising the truth?
More like this: The Toxic Relationship Between AI & Journalism w/ Nic Dawes

This is REAL Resistance, a collection of conversations produced in collaboration with Real ML, featuring the experts and advocates who make up Real ML’s global network.
In this conversation, three guests from the network share all the ways in which AI is shaping our relationship with news, language, and learning:
People are increasingly using AI for search and to get their news; but Klaudia Jaźwińska’s research finds that chatbots have a huge citation problem
Many LLMs claim to be ‘multi-lingual’ — but also only tested in US English? Aliya Bhatia explains that porting outputs from English into all other languages in not gonna cut it
Higher education in Africa is completely disconnected from local knowledge, which is why Yanick Kemayou founded Kabakoo: an alternative learning platform that leverages and preserves local knowledge with the use of technology, and without exploitation
As Yancik says in this episode, “openness without governance is extraction with extra steps”.
Further reading & resources:
AI Search has a Citation Problem — Klaudia Jaźwińska & Aisvarya Chandrasekar
Lost in Translation: Large Language Models in Non-English Content Analysis — Gabriel Nicholas, Aliya Bhatia
More on Kabakoo Academies, founded by Yanick Kemayou
The SPUR Coalition — a UK org seeking to create standards and infrastructure for AI companies and news publishers to do business
The State and Fate of Linguistic Diversity and Inclusion in the NLP World — by Pratik Joshi et al, 2020
The #BenderRule: On Naming the Languages We Study and Why It Matters — Emily Bender, 2019
The silicon gaze: A typology of biases and inequality in LLMs through the lens of place — Francisco W. Kerche et al, 2026
Bamako AI Festival
Join The Maybe Collective to explore the politics of technology through fresh ideas that you won't hear anywhere else. Sign up for monthly insights, access to exclusive digital events, and real ways to get more involved on issues you care about.
Computer Says Maybe is produced by Georgia Iacovou, Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Sarah Myles, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout