Life with Machines

Back in November 2025, I was at AfroTech reconnecting with Will Lucas of Black Tech Green Money. Our conversation had that cookout, Juneteenth “get free” energy. Jidenna had just performed and Stacey Abrams was up next. And we asked the question: do we just survive this AI transition, or do we choose how to live and change the rules of the game? And who gets to decide what happens next?

With Will, I trace my path from wanting to be a gardener in DC to becoming a storyteller, we talk about what we owe kids and teachers as AI enters classrooms, and argue these tools aren’t truly intelligent. We challenge the idea that “AI takes jobs,” stressing that human choices and profit motives drive layoffs, and we connect Black people’s high AI use to generations of survival mode while calling for bolder, system-level reinvention. The invitation is to move beyond finding the next shortcut and start building the world we actually want.

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#BlackTechGreenMoney #AIAndHumanity #BlackFuturism #AfroTech #ChangeTheGame

A few months ago, Dan Blumberg — host of Future Around and Find Out, Webby winner for Best Technology Podcast — brought me in and let me get spicy. The question we kept circling: who actually gets to decide what this technology does to us, for us and with us?

We get into why faster is not the same as better, the shell game that is AI financing, and the day I realized I was treating a prediction machine like it had thoughts and a soul. We talk about Blair, our AI co-producer on Life With Machines, and what Blair taught me about the difference between processing and thinking. We get into why strong men are actually weak little boys, why community organizing for CEOs might be the most useful job nobody's taken yet, and why comedy can help — but it won't save us. That's up to all of us.

Hosted by Dan Blumberg of Future Around and Find Out.

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#LifeWithMachines #AIForAll #FutureAroundAndFindOut #TechAndDemocracy #FromMeToWe

We throw around the phrase "digital native" like a compliment, but Big Tech uses it as a free pass to force-feed youth their latest experiments. They market convenience while masking the true human toll: young minds navigating rampant algorithmic fallout, all built on the backs of underpaid, invisible ghost labor. The individuals who will actually have to live inside this AI-driven future are the same people being blocked from the boardrooms designing it.

In the fifth and final episode of the Life With Machines x Young Futures series, Baratunde Thurston sits down with two leaders who are completely rejecting the tech industry's "inevitability narrative" and taking the reins of AI governance into their own hands.

Neha Shukla (Innovation For Everyone) is mobilizing a movement across 35 countries to teach students "sociotechnical literacy." She’s fighting to ensure the youth—especially those from the Global South—aren't just used as token photo ops, but are actively writing the ethical frameworks that will govern artificial intelligence.

Tazin Khan (Cyber Collective) is demanding systemic digital rights and shifting the burden of cybersecurity away from the end-user. By bringing tech education to adults, she is putting an end to the era of teenagers having to act as the "unpaid IT department" to protect their communities from corporate platform failures.

These are the digital architects stepping up to fix the systems they didn’t even make in the first place.

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LINKS MENTIONED

Innovation For Everyone

Cyber Collective

Young Futures

EPISODES REFERENCED: 

Dr. Avriel Epps on how to raise kids in an AI world

Episode 1 — How Will AI Impact Gen Z?

Episode 2 — How ChatGPT EXPOSED Our Education System

Episode 3 — AI Is Monetizing Our Mental Health

Episode 4 — The Rural AI Revolution No One Is Talking About

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For partnerships, speaking engagements, and other opportunities to work together: teambaratunde@palettemgmt.com

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Created and Executive Produced by: Elizabeth Stewart and Baratunde Thurston

Showrunner and Executive Producer: Alie Kilts

Producer: Roya Lotfi

Video Editor & Audio Engineer: Erik Shute

Special Thanks to Charlotte Dungan, Tesia Zientek, Katya Hancock and Dr. Kristine Gloria

Life with Machines is a Multiverses Media production

This series was made in partnership with Young Futures

#ai ##GenZLeadingAI #AIAgency #AIEthics #YoungFutures #LifeWithMachines

What happens when Silicon Valley's AI boom collides with rural America and Indigenous communities? Big Tech is pouring hundreds of billions into data centers, eyeing reopened nuclear plants like Three Mile Island, and pushing for expanded uranium mining on Native lands to feed the machine. The communities bearing the physical cost of AI are the same ones being left out of the conversation about how it gets built.

In this fourth episode of the Life With Machines x @YoungFutures series, Baratunde Thurston travels beyond the coasts to meet two leaders working with youth who refuse to let their communities be raw material for someone else's tech boom.

Charlotte Dungan (Mark Cuban Foundation) is partnering with 4-H National to bring AI agency, not just AI literacy, to rural teens. Her students are using AI for drug discovery, search and rescue, and small business optimization in towns that were supposed to lose their best minds to the coasts.

Tesia Zientek (AISES) is building the AUNTIE Tech Collective, a multi-generational initiative grounding Indigenous youth in tech leadership rooted in Seven Generations thinking, not "move fast and break things." Tribal Nations are now creating their own digital sovereignty frameworks, building Sovereign AI Factories on Native lands, and writing the rules for how their data and culture get used.

This is the AI conversation Silicon Valley doesn't want you to see.

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LINKS MENTIONED

The Mark Cuban Foundation AI Bootcamps

AISES

AUNTIE Tech Collective

Young Futures

Episodes referenced:

Michael Running Wolf on saving Indigenous languages with AI

Episode 1 — How Will AI Impact Gen Z?

Episode 2 — How ChatGPT EXPOSED Our Education System

Episode 3 — AI Is Monetizing Our Mental Health

Further reading:

Avoiding the next digital divide: Defining digital sovereignty for Tribal Nations in the AI age

AI is driving a data center boom in rural America. Locals are divided on the benefits

AI is helping these organizations to protect and restore nature

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Baratunde's socials:

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Send Questions, Comments, or Ideas: contact@lifewithmachines.media

For partnerships, speaking engagements, and other opportunities to work together: teambaratunde@palettemgmt.com

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CHAPTERS

00:00 AI Boom Hits Rural Lands

01:33 Tradeoffs and Local Power

02:11 Teaching AI Agency

03:19 Student Projects in Action

04:25 Safety Rules for AI

05:38 Indigenous Digital Sovereignty

06:44 Auntie Tech Collective

09:29 Extraction and Data Stewardship

11:45 AI for Land and Conservation

13:25 Investing in Youth Leadership

14:48 Closing Thoughts and CTA

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Created and Executive Produced by: Elizabeth Stewart and Baratunde Thurston

Showrunner and Executive Producer: Alie Kilts

Producer: Roya Lotfi

Video Editor & Audio Engineer: Erik Shute

Special Thanks to Charlotte Dungan, Tesia Zientek, Katya Hancock and Dr. Kristine Gloria

Life with Machines is a Multiverses Media production

This series was made in partnership with Young Futures

#ai #ruralamerica #indigenous #digitalsovereignty #datacenters #aiethics #youngfutures

Baratunde joins filmmakers Valerie Veach and Charlie Terrell, Mozilla's Dio Ade, and Kena's Christie Marqueese at Sundance 2026's Solidarity House to explore who gets to shape our technological future.

The panel challenges the seductive lie that technology equals progress, arguing that optimization and efficiency come at the cost of actual living. They discuss how AI consolidates power, erodes shared truth, and celebrates lonely achievement while fueling a loneliness epidemic.

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CONNECT WITH US

Subscribe to our Youtube!

Get our newsletter for deeper insights, chances to influence the show, and more experiments and calls to action!

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Work with Life With Machines: lifewithmachines@smoothmedia.co 

Send Questions, Comments, or Ideas: contact@lifewithmachines.media

Write to Blair: blair@lifewithmachines.media

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