Computer Says Maybe

When a tech executive says AI will be doing your job next year, it sounds like a forecast. Dr. Carissa Véliz argues it's something else: a command, delivered in advance, that works only if enough of us obey it. If you believe the prediction, you buy the product, reorganize your company, and bet the economy on it, and the prediction comes true because you made it so. So who gets to make predictions that stick? And what would it take to stop treating them as news and start hearing them as orders?
More like this: AGI is Scientifically Impossible w/ Adam Becker
In this episode, Alix Dunn talks with Carissa Véliz, associate professor at Oxford's Institute for Ethics in AI and author of Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, From Ancient Oracles to AI. Carissa explains why a prediction is a command disguised as a description, how powerful people use algorithms to fulfill their own forecasts, and why the alternative just might be being relying on preparation over prediction.
Further reading & resources:
Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, From Ancient Oracles to AI — Carissa Véliz 
Beware the Power of Prediction — Carissa Véliz, TED Talk
The Origins of Totalitarianism — Hannah Arendt
The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk” — Émile P. Torres, Current Affairs

Join The Maybe Collective to unpack this month's series on AI, elections, and who gets to shape the future with us. 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 Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout

Almost everyone studying kids’ safety online agrees that a blanket social media ban won't work. And nearly every government moving on the issue is passing one anyway. This week, a researcher and a policy lawyer dig into why - and what could actually work instead.
More like this: When Kids Can’t Consent: The Case Against Tech in the Classroom w/ Andrew Liddell

This is the final episode in our back-to-school series on tech and kids. Pamela Wisniewski, a principal research scientist at the International Computer Science Institute, spends the first half of the conversation dismantling the myths that are driving most kids-online safety policies: that teens are victims with no agency, that we're all "addicted" in the same way, and that “bad kids” are seeking risk rather than connection. Her research suggests that safety isn't the absence of risk; it's having the agency and support to navigate it. She also explains why age verification often strips that agency from kids and parents alike, without making anyone safer.
Cory Crider, executive director of the Future of Tech Institute, picks up where Pam leaves off. She walks us through Europe's Kids Act, the political pressure that is pushing Brussels to act, and why she'd rather fix toxic feed design than wall kids off from platforms that remain exactly the same underneath. She also gets into how easily an age-check system built for social media could creep into every corner of the internet if nobody's watching.
Further reading & resources:
Promoting Adolescent Online Safety and Privacy through Human-Centered Computing [VIDEO] — Pam Wisniewski, University of Waterloo CrySP Speaker Series on Privacy
EU KIDS Act to restrict social media platforms’ access to children in the EU — European Commission
What is in the EU's planned KIDS Act? — Reuters
Protection of persons under 18: Seven out of ten children, aged between 10 and 14, think that setting the digital age of majority at 15 is a good idea — Arcom
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 Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout

No tech that your kid uses in the classroom was designed for their benefit. Not the tablet, not the "learning app," not the AI chatbot helping with homework. It was designed to benefit the company that made it — and your kid's data, attention, privacy, and, most importantly, safety, are the price.
More like this: Meet the Mom Winning Against AI in Schools w/ Ifeoma Ozoma

This week, Andrew Liddell, co-founder of the EdTech Law Center, walks us through exactly how EdTech works, why it made its way into schools with so little oversight, who it actually serves, and the cases his firm has fought against the companies putting these devices into classrooms.
His firm has gone after student-data pipelines it flagged as hackable — and later watched get hacked — laws like FERPA and COPPA being twisted into loopholes that bypass parental consent entirely, and school-issued AI tools pulling kids into the same crises we’ve watched play out among adults.
What ties it together, Liddell says, is a business model that was never built with kids in mind, and a legal system that’s still trying to catch up.
Andrew’s looking for parents in California who are concerned about their kids’ usage of AI chatbots. If that’s you, get in touch here: https://chatgptlitigation.com/

Further reading & resources:
EdTech Law Center
Parents’ Consent at the Heart of Ed Tech Lawsuits — The 74
Google's work in schools aims to create a 'pipeline of future users,' internal documents say — NBC News
Children's Screen Time Action Network
Mothers Against Media Addiction
Phone Free Schools Movement
Fair Play
Schools Beyond Screens
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 Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout

Over the last decade, tech workers have staged walkouts, signed open letters by the tens of thousands, and built more than a dozen new unions across the industry. And yet, over that same decade, tech companies have ramped up carbon emissions, raced to militarize AI, signed contracts with the Trump administration, rolled back protections for marginalized users, and, in some ways, engineered their platforms to be protest-proof.

In Against Tech Oligarchy, authors JS Tan and Clarissa Redwine ask the question: did tech workers ever actually learn how to fight?
More like this: Meet the Mom Winning Against AI in Schools w/ Ifeoma Ozoma

JS Tan and Clarissa Redwine are both former tech workers who spent years organizing from the inside. This week, they join Alix to map the last decade of tech labor organizing: the walkout era of 2018, when public pressure and shame campaigns actually worked; the pivot toward formal unionization after Kickstarter's breakthrough; and the sharp turn after 2022, when rising interest rates gave bosses cover to stop pretending they cared what workers thought.
They get into why revenue-based leverage barely applies to an industry that runs on perceived valuation, why AI researchers and rank-and-file engineers may need very different organizing strategies, and the line that anchors the whole conversation: you can spend years organizing for power, and the moment you actually have it, realize you have no idea how to use it.
Further reading & resources:
Buy the book: Against Tech Oligarchy — JS Tan & Clarissa Redwine 
How a Tech Worker Fought Back from Being Fired as a Union Organiser — Clarissa Redwine, Branch 
Why the Balance of Power in Tech is Shifting Towards Workers — Jane Lytvynenko, MIT Technology Review
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 Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout

Imagine dropping your kid off at school, assuming they’ll spend the day being taught by… teachers, of course. But then you find out that part of their day is actually spent talking and reading out loud to a cute, cartoonish AI avatar named Amira. And while they’re reading, Amira is recording their voice, without ever receiving consent from the parent or child.
In New Mexico, this very technology is being mandated in classrooms across the state. But when one parent, with a reputation for speaking out and getting laws changed, discovered what was happening, she was ready to fight for the kids in her school district and beyond.

More like this: https://www.themaybe.org/podcast/the-digital-delusion-w-dr-jared-cooney-horvath
That parent is Ifeoma Ozoma. After Pinterest pushed her out for raising concerns about pay discrimination and health misinformation, she moved to Santa Fe, where a new fight found her.
We get into how one mom with a DIY website got fifteen school districts to opt out in six weeks flat, what digging into public records revealed about how deep this actually goes, and how she’s working to get the whole thing banned outright.

Further reading & resources:
Amira Opt-Out SFPS
Schools Beyond Screens
New York City Bans A.I. in Elementary and Middle Schools — The New York Times
Get unvetted AI out of New Mexico schools — Ifeoma Ozoma
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 Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout.