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Episode 29

AI: Policy, Bias, and Imperfections w/ Mutale Nkonde

Welcome to Works In Process w/ George Garrastegui, Jr. / Ep 29

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Rewriting the system: "All artificial intelligence (AI) is doing is highlighting the imperfections of our past. The only way to make these systems better is that we have to have a multi-pronged strategy to improve these ills of society so that we can have the machines that we want rather than the machines that we deserve.”

—Mutale Nkonde , / AI Policy Analyst, CEO/Founder AI for the People

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That’s my guest Mutale Nkonde. Mutale is the founder of AI for the People, and we discuss the importance of addressing bias in AI algorithms and the need for diverse representation in AI development. She highlights the impact of biased algorithms on marginalized communities and emphasizes the role of policy advisors in shaping AI regulations. Mutale shares her experiences and calls for AI to be a tool that benefits everyone, rather than replacing human creativity. We also discuss the need for content creators to have control and ownership over AI technology.

Enjoy!

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Takeaways:

  • Algorithms and AI systems can perpetuate bias and discrimination if not properly regulated.
  • The lack of diversity in the tech industry contributes to biased algorithms and products.
  • It is important to understand the power of storytelling and the impact of representation in the media.
  • Policies and regulations are necessary to ensure accountability and prevent the exploitation of marginalized communities.

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Follow Mutale Nkonde via:

Mutale's Website / LinkedIn

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Credits

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Like what you just heard? Support the process and rate us on Apple Podcast and Spotify!

About the Works in Process Podcast:

A podcast series by George Garrastegui, Jr. — designer, educator, and curator. Works In Process is a collection of discussions that explore the creative process. I interview individuals to gain more insight into the ways they work and the projects they produce.

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This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
Transcript
Mutale Nkonde:

I remember, a couple of years ago, somebody

Mutale Nkonde:

was asking me about black lives matter in an interview, and I

Mutale Nkonde:

just happen to say, but they don't own the hashtag. And they

Mutale Nkonde:

were like, they don't own the hashtag. And I was like, there

Mutale Nkonde:

is no rule to IP hashtags. It was created on a public site,

Mutale Nkonde:

everything on that site belongs to the company. Now, if Facebook

Mutale Nkonde:

decides that they're gonna sell advertising space against the

Mutale Nkonde:

BLM hashtag which they definitely did, and say if you

Mutale Nkonde:

want to target this type of consumer is going to cost you $2

Mutale Nkonde:

million. That money goes to Facebook. We are the product

Mutale Nkonde:

because we're on social media. The hashtag get some clout.

Mutale Nkonde:

People don't understand that.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

What's up everyone? Welcome to Works in

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Process. The podcast about uncovering creative

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

methodologies from people doing inspiring work. I'm excited to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

announce that for the next three episodes Works in Process will

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

be in collaboration with tech circus as a media partner for

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

the what if summit this October? What if design could change

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

tomorrow? What if organizations put dei first these are some of

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

the things will be discussed at this virtual Summit, which

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

brings together dei experts who aim to create breakthroughs and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

promote inclusive futures for everyone. During the lead up to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

the Web Summit Works in Process will talk to summer presenters

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

and explore the methods behind their creative decisions, and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

ways to prioritize the principles of diversity, equity,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

and inclusion with the organization's teams and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

professional practices. I'm your host designer and educator

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

George Garrastegui Jr. Join me as I continue to elevate the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

creative process by shifting the focus to how we work over what

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

we produce. On today's episode I want to welcome matale And Conde

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

I'm Talia is an artificial intelligence policy adviser who

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

launched AI for the people. A strategic communications firm by

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

leading the advocacy for the introduction of the algorithmic

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Accountability Act for the House of Representatives and its

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

language around integrating impact assessments into the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

product design process was integrated section 207 C of the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

American data privacy act of 2022. Ai for the people launched

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

by leading the advocacy for the introduction of algorithmic

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

accountability in the House of Representatives. In 2022 in

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Conde testified to the House Energy commerce committee in

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

support of the algorithmic Accountability Act that's like a

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

tongue twister, and started to develop across partnerships

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

across the HBCU system as a way to diversify the fields in AI

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

ethics. And in 2023, and Conde was invited to become the Policy

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Fellow at Oxford Internet Institute in the United Kingdom.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Where should we be building out her work with the UN Business

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

and Technology Project? Also, she has been named woman who

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

code top 100 technologists to watch in March of 2023. And as a

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

content moderator advisor for Tiktok Haven, Tali, how're you

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

doing?

Mutale Nkonde:

I'm doing fine. I always, whenever somebody

Mutale Nkonde:

reads my bio, I'm always like, really? I did all of that.

Mutale Nkonde:

Right? And so I'm a little embarrassed but good.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Don't be embarrassed. That's it. I was

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

embarrassed by all the tongue twisters roll the A's in the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

algorithmic Accountability Act.

Mutale Nkonde:

Listen, I write it better than I say it. So hats

Mutale Nkonde:

off to you.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Oh, I say it better than I write it.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

And that's not even saying much. So. Well, thank you so much for

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

being on here. I really want to get into learning about your

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

journey, obviously in policymaking and also AI bias.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

But before we do that, and when I clear our minds, I begin every

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

episode with a simple set of icebreakers to get a

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

conversation started. Are You Ready? Ready? All right, coffee

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

or tea? Neither. Ooh, well, what we had to pick one, tea, toast

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

or bagel, Bagel, analog or digital analog AI, or artificial

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

intelligence and privacy or accountability, accountability,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

and then some quick word associations, right? So the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

first thing you think of when you hear these words,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

creativity, I should deter determination. Pursuit,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

business,

Unknown:

fun, failure. Never. Community. Love. Education.

Unknown:

Curiosity. Mistakes, resilience, skills, build history. Wow.

Unknown:

Vital opportunity. Always accessibility difficult

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

future. Right. And last but not least,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

process. Continue. Nice. Nice. Thank you. You know, I always

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

love to hear what people say. It always goes from really funny to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

really serious to, you know a lot of it in between. So it just

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

gets our brains working on a different synapse. And I just

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

want to thank you for that. So now when we start our my

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

conversation, I want to give my listeners a glimpse and see how

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

you were introduced and design and creativity. And I call this

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

section origin story. So you're ready. I'm ready. Where did you

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

grow up, and were you creative as a kid,

Mutale Nkonde:

I grew up in the United Kingdom. I was born in

Mutale Nkonde:

Zambia, which is a country in southern Africa, and went to the

Mutale Nkonde:

UK as a three year old, with my parents who are both medical

Mutale Nkonde:

doctors. And we were supposed to be there for three years. And

Mutale Nkonde:

they have been there nearly 50. And every year, they always talk

Mutale Nkonde:

about how much they hate the snow. And they hate the cold. So

Mutale Nkonde:

I didn't come to the United States until my late 20s,

Mutale Nkonde:

actually, and I came straight to New York City, where I've been

Mutale Nkonde:

ever since. And I spent my childhood in the world of story,

Mutale Nkonde:

whether it was being a princess, or whether it was being a

Mutale Nkonde:

ballerina, or whether it was dreaming about what I would do

Mutale Nkonde:

after like, after middle school after high school, to

Mutale Nkonde:

university, I spent probably the majority of my time in between

Mutale Nkonde:

the dream and the execution. When I was about 16, I watched

Mutale Nkonde:

an Oprah Winfrey Show she was showing in the UK. And she was

Mutale Nkonde:

in conversation with Maya Angelou. She said, luck is when

Mutale Nkonde:

preparation meets opportunity. And I then dedicated my life to

Mutale Nkonde:

being the luckiest person I knew. And so I've been preparing

Mutale Nkonde:

for my opportunities ever since nice.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Right? I also think like, I think

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Chance favors the prepared mind, right? Like, you know, if you're

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

ready for it, something will happen. So who, if any, were the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

biggest supporters of your creative career,

Mutale Nkonde:

my children, because they have no choice. I

Mutale Nkonde:

grew up in an extremely conservative environment, where

Mutale Nkonde:

you could be a doctor, or you could be an engineer, or you

Mutale Nkonde:

could be a lawyer, or you could be a bum on the street, there

Mutale Nkonde:

really wasn't anything else to do. So to have somebody that was

Mutale Nkonde:

creative. And prior to getting into tech, I had worked as a

Mutale Nkonde:

journalist. And so to have somebody that was thinking that

Mutale Nkonde:

they want to write, and they want to interpret events for

Mutale Nkonde:

others and bear witness, which is why the history thing was

Mutale Nkonde:

really interesting to me, because I really want to

Mutale Nkonde:

document history. That was one of the roles I saw journalists

Mutale Nkonde:

play, there wasn't a great deal of support, but there didn't

Mutale Nkonde:

need to be a great deal of support. Because when you're in

Mutale Nkonde:

the act of preparation, you're actually a huge support to

Mutale Nkonde:

yourself.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

So when was your first creative job and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

kind of how did you stumble into it?

Mutale Nkonde:

My first grade of Job was a freelance column in

Mutale Nkonde:

a paper called The Voice newspaper, which still is

Mutale Nkonde:

running in the UK today. And it was the only newspaper that was

Mutale Nkonde:

printed from the black British experience. I wrote one article,

Mutale Nkonde:

and it took a year to get published. But I advocated for

Mutale Nkonde:

myself. And that was really the beginning of seeing myself as

Mutale Nkonde:

important in a field that didn't see me as important. And staying

Mutale Nkonde:

very true to that.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Wow, I mean, being dedicated that much

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

for a year to get that article published. They hunt me. So when

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

did you consider yourself a creative was it at that point,

Mutale Nkonde:

probably in the last few weeks. And what's

Mutale Nkonde:

really weird about it is I've made films, I've exhibited in

Mutale Nkonde:

film festivals, I've exhibited to actually the Smithsonian, a

Mutale Nkonde:

very short kind of film that I never create, considered myself

Mutale Nkonde:

as a creative until I was recently in a meeting in San

Mutale Nkonde:

Francisco with the UN Business and Technology Project, and we

Mutale Nkonde:

were speaking about women online and some work that they're doing

Mutale Nkonde:

along those lines. And I was the last person to speak, and I was

Mutale Nkonde:

the first person to pose the question around And the way

Mutale Nkonde:

different types of women are treated women who are black

Mutale Nkonde:

women, from a trans experience, you know, women who are non

Mutale Nkonde:

English speaking, and how that showed up in online rhetoric,

Mutale Nkonde:

and to just watch the room kind of just light and go, we hadn't

Mutale Nkonde:

thought of that. Tell us more. And I was presenting some data.

Mutale Nkonde:

And just watching that change in the conversation, a change in

Mutale Nkonde:

the room, that invitation for other voices to come forward was

Mutale Nkonde:

when I was like, I am a creative person.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

It goes back to this when you talk about

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

the ideas of stories, right, and this idea that to be able to say

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that, and then to have the room kind of all follow you. Right.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Right.

Mutale Nkonde:

Right. And and to do it in a way that is in

Mutale Nkonde:

kind of getting up and saying, we have been speaking for so

Mutale Nkonde:

long. And nobody has said this as opposed to asking questions

Mutale Nkonde:

and asking, Are we here to discuss human rights, I think

Mutale Nkonde:

was my opening. And they said, Yeah, this is a UN meeting. And

Mutale Nkonde:

I said, Well, what happens to people who are traditionally

Mutale Nkonde:

dehumanized, and then speaking about how that was the

Mutale Nkonde:

experience of many people in this country, many who are

Mutale Nkonde:

gendered identify as women. And can we include those people too.

Mutale Nkonde:

And I think that very, isn't just the story. But the way that

Mutale Nkonde:

you tell the story, I often, I've picked up a bunch of

Mutale Nkonde:

mentees along the way. One of the things they tell me about

Mutale Nkonde:

their careers, I'm often saying things like, it is so much

Mutale Nkonde:

easier to catch, um, bees with honey than it is with vinegar.

Mutale Nkonde:

So where's the honey here? Where's the fun? Where's the

Mutale Nkonde:

thing? That's good, you know, as police if you're around my age,

Mutale Nkonde:

you'll know the police's milkshake brings all the boys to

Mutale Nkonde:

the where's the milkshake? You know, how can we do that? How

Mutale Nkonde:

can we do that part?

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Right? Right? How can we connect with

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

something everybody kind of universally understands, instead

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

of trying to scream and yell at them and get them to pay

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

attention when it's a lot easier for us to connect on human

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

similarities?

Mutale Nkonde:

Right? Right. Oh,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that's amazing. And I'm also I love to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

hear that you just said like a few weeks ago. And because I

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

think it's a moment when the moments come. It's nice to have

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that right when, like you said, you see the room come with you.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

And realize that it's all kind of coming together, you know, at

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

this Apex point,

Mutale Nkonde:

that you've honed this skill, because for

Mutale Nkonde:

me, I've been storytelling for 35 years, that I've been honing

Mutale Nkonde:

that skill I've been working towards the moment that

Mutale Nkonde:

happened. When was the meeting, middle of June, were at the

Mutale Nkonde:

beginning of July. So it's taken me 35 years of getting to that

Mutale Nkonde:

moment, and trying. So that's 35 years of failing, that's 35

Mutale Nkonde:

years of experimenting. That's 35 years of being really like we

Mutale Nkonde:

got to do this and realizing that no one's got to do

Mutale Nkonde:

anything. Number one, and my ways one of the many number of

Mutale Nkonde:

ways. So how do we use story? How do we use connection? How do

Mutale Nkonde:

we use humanity to bring us to this point.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

And just knowing that you said, it's

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

taken you about 35 years of failing of this of all of these

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

things is I think why I even have a podcast that talks about

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

process because it is about those moments, right? It's about

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that you've been working on this and honing this for that long to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

get to this point, to feel that way. A lot of people think you

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

get to that point early on. Like you've said, it also takes a

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

person to understand how long it may take to get to the place

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

they need to be. But the fact that you're you know that that's

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

where you're at now, I think is amazing. And the fact that you

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

understand that it takes this journey of storytelling and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

honing to be able to say that right now that only a couple of

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

weeks ago, you feel this, right, this thing,

Mutale Nkonde:

and you may not get there. And that's okay,

Mutale Nkonde:

because the winds come along the journey.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Also, you may not even understand

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

where you're at. Right? So sometimes you you may not get

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

there because you have a preconceived notion of what

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

you're supposed to be doing versus just living in the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

moment. Right. So, I mean, that was beautiful. So I like doing

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

this kind of condensed version of finding out who you are.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Because really, we want to get to the heart of conversation.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Right. And we started talking a little bit about you know where

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

you've been, but now I want to talk about where you're at now.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Right. So at the top of the show, we mentioned that you're a

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

policy advisor and AI for the people. Right, so here's a two

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

part question. That's probably a biggie. One, what is AI for

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

other people? And also, can you give us an insight on to what a

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

policy advice Heiser does.

Mutale Nkonde:

Yeah. So I'm going to start with the second

Mutale Nkonde:

question first. Sure. A policy advisor tells people what to do.

Mutale Nkonde:

And one of the things that I realized very early on, was that

Mutale Nkonde:

I loved bossing people around, I loved being able to decide who

Mutale Nkonde:

speaks when and how, which is why I made a great like film

Mutale Nkonde:

director, and I made a great film producer, I also really

Mutale Nkonde:

liked using, like, structurally changing how people lived. We

Mutale Nkonde:

live in a world that is governed by policies, practices,

Mutale Nkonde:

procedures, right, we live with roles. So who gets to shape

Mutale Nkonde:

those roles, gets to decide how we live. And, you know, we're

Mutale Nkonde:

speaking to each other a couple of days after the US Supreme

Mutale Nkonde:

Court has made a number of rulings that will change the way

Mutale Nkonde:

different people will live, whether it's people that can be

Mutale Nkonde:

refused goods and services based on somebody else's beliefs,

Mutale Nkonde:

whether it's applying for higher education, and knowing that, you

Mutale Nkonde:

know, structural, racial bias is not going to be counted in when

Mutale Nkonde:

you look at some of the applications of kids that

Mutale Nkonde:

honestly have all the talent and need more support, because of

Mutale Nkonde:

the way structural biases played out in their lives. These are

Mutale Nkonde:

roles. And so I think once I had left my career in journalism,

Mutale Nkonde:

and I'd had success there, and it was great, and I moved to the

Mutale Nkonde:

US. And I was doing similar work. But journalism in the US

Mutale Nkonde:

is so different to the type of work I was doing in the UK, I

Mutale Nkonde:

didn't really like it. I'm kind of stumbling my way into the

Mutale Nkonde:

tech industry, it was really clear to me that as we were

Mutale Nkonde:

building products, we would use check sheets, we would use

Mutale Nkonde:

worksheets, there would be these rules that we had to follow to

Mutale Nkonde:

create the product. And I really liked the idea of being one of

Mutale Nkonde:

the people that helps shape those rules. So the AI piece

Mutale Nkonde:

just came in because I had been working in and around the tech

Mutale Nkonde:

industry. I had at one point, done some contract work for

Mutale Nkonde:

Black Girls Code, which is a nonprofit from like the 2000 and

Mutale Nkonde:

10s. And their idea, which was really groundbreaking at the

Mutale Nkonde:

time, was one of the ways that we could achieve economic

Mutale Nkonde:

justice in this country is if more people were involved within

Mutale Nkonde:

the tech industry, and they chose coding as an entry point.

Mutale Nkonde:

In hindsight, was it the best entry point that's probably a

Mutale Nkonde:

different podcast. But it was an entry point, right? It was

Mutale Nkonde:

somebody who had done the brave work of putting that forward.

Mutale Nkonde:

And even within that environment, coming up against

Mutale Nkonde:

rules that just were not going to help this field, get talent

Mutale Nkonde:

from across the population was rolls. And so that's kind of how

Mutale Nkonde:

I fell into it. And under guarding that was the book

Mutale Nkonde:

emergent strategies by Adrian Marie Brown, where she talks

Mutale Nkonde:

about anything that you're really supposed to do in life

Mutale Nkonde:

will reveal itself to you by a series of yeses and noes. And

Mutale Nkonde:

those yeses and noes will move you organically into where

Mutale Nkonde:

you're meant to be in the policy space. I was not getting jobs

Mutale Nkonde:

here, I was being thrown off teams there I was being welcomed

Mutale Nkonde:

in this store. I wasn't being welcomed, and kind of got there.

Mutale Nkonde:

And then the first part of the question, AI for the people is a

Mutale Nkonde:

platform for that. So we're a communications firm, we really

Mutale Nkonde:

want to work with global leading opinion formers who are thinking

Mutale Nkonde:

about how they are integrating advanced technology into their

Mutale Nkonde:

processes. So that tends to be tech companies. It could be

Mutale Nkonde:

other folk, but we start out with tech companies. And then we

Mutale Nkonde:

will work with them to provide them with research, the research

Mutale Nkonde:

that they'll need to move on policies that we would like to

Mutale Nkonde:

see and those are any of the policies that reduce algorithmic

Mutale Nkonde:

bias. So algorithmic bias is just when a technology expresses

Mutale Nkonde:

the same levels of racial bias or gender bias or ableism as

Mutale Nkonde:

people would face outside. A really good example of that is

Mutale Nkonde:

if you ever go through TSA, airport checkout and we have to

Mutale Nkonde:

do the body scan, when you come out of the body scan, you will

Mutale Nkonde:

be directed to either a male TSA agent or a female TSA agent for

Mutale Nkonde:

further checks. That designation is based on how the scan has

Mutale Nkonde:

identified you by gender If you are somebody who's trans or

Mutale Nkonde:

intersex and visibly has both sexual organs, they don't know

Mutale Nkonde:

how to, they don't know who to send you to the way the machine

Mutale Nkonde:

is engineered, is on a binary people are either male or

Mutale Nkonde:

female. That's not true. That actually leaves out gender

Mutale Nkonde:

nonconforming people, it leaves out trans people. So that's just

Mutale Nkonde:

one example of the ways that our technologies Express bias, and

Mutale Nkonde:

they do racial bias and all the others we can talk about. And

Mutale Nkonde:

yeah,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

I mean, definitely going into the idea

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

of the biases and bring it down, I think into the simple form of

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that scanner, at the airport, right? Where it definitely leads

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

us to a zero or one, right, it there's no in between, there is

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

no flexibility. And I think what a lot of people know, in their

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

hearts is there's many shades, you know, there is no one or the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

other. And a lot of people feel threatened by the idea of that

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

there isn't one or the other. And like you mentioned, all the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

different rulings that have been happening are people trying to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

hold on to that belief that you only can have things a certain

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

way,

Mutale Nkonde:

right? And power, and it really comes down

Mutale Nkonde:

to? And this is a lot of my academic work, it comes down to

Mutale Nkonde:

power, who has power and who doesn't have power? And then how

Mutale Nkonde:

do we systematize that how do we create rules that make that

Mutale Nkonde:

true, and I'm someone who absolutely rejects that. Genius,

Mutale Nkonde:

creativity, looks sounds a certain way. And for anyone that

Mutale Nkonde:

knows me, I'm famous for changing my I changed my hair

Mutale Nkonde:

every eight weeks. So if you are listening to this podcast, and

Mutale Nkonde:

you're not a black woman, then you might be like every eight

Mutale Nkonde:

weeks and I'm like girl, that's when I go get my hair did. And I

Mutale Nkonde:

might feel like a platinum blonde one day, I may feel like

Mutale Nkonde:

black hair the next day, I may feel like an afro the next. But

Mutale Nkonde:

these are all me, that does not change the fact that I am a

Mutale Nkonde:

leader in an emerging field it doesn't. Whereas I think that

Mutale Nkonde:

there are people who would very much like to push me and people

Mutale Nkonde:

like me out of the marketplace. And I don't want to see that

Mutale Nkonde:

happen. No,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

no, definitely not. And I love how

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

you keep on going back to this idea of rules, right? Because

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

rules apparently mean structure and ways of doing things and the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

idea of one, not necessarily abiding by the rules, but

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

understanding that there are systems in place, there's ways

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

of doing things. And Tech has rules. Design has rules, right?

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

But also rules are meant to be broken rules are meant to be

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

adjusted rules are meant to be circumvented. So the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

understanding that you're like, I like playing within the rules,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

gives me this understanding that you like using the system to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

break down the system?

Mutale Nkonde:

I do. And I think I look at roles

Mutale Nkonde:

critically. And my question is always, why not? You are telling

Mutale Nkonde:

me, the only way that we can integrate AI systems into the

Mutale Nkonde:

economy is if we give up our privacy. My question is why? Why

Mutale Nkonde:

not? Why do we have to give up privacy? Why can't this be

Mutale Nkonde:

something that's additive, right? Why can't when the wheel

Mutale Nkonde:

was developed, we did not kill every single horse in the world?

Mutale Nkonde:

Because we had reels and cars. No, we integrated the wheel into

Mutale Nkonde:

our transportation system. Why not? We can also develop

Mutale Nkonde:

technologies and decide that they're not good for humanity.

Mutale Nkonde:

We have the technology of the nuclear bomb, which we didn't

Mutale Nkonde:

use after the Second World War because of what it did to those

Mutale Nkonde:

people in Hiroshima. Why not? Why can't we do this now, right?

Mutale Nkonde:

We are just coming out of the submarine disaster, which was

Mutale Nkonde:

terrible, terrible. Those people lost their lives in that way.

Mutale Nkonde:

But as somebody who is a technical designer, as somebody

Mutale Nkonde:

who is interested in rules, I was like, Where were the

Mutale Nkonde:

regulations for that, who is accountable for this? Come to

Mutale Nkonde:

find out that the designers decided that they did not want

Mutale Nkonde:

rules, because they wanted to get to the bottom of the ocean.

Mutale Nkonde:

And they did get to the bottom of their ocean, but not in the

Mutale Nkonde:

way that they had thought. So rules can play. You can break

Mutale Nkonde:

them to make them better, but they can also safeguard all of

Mutale Nkonde:

us, which is what we want. am ultimately

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Right. Right. Exactly. And I think that

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

is part of the point understanding where things lie

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

so that you can work to best navigate them, right. I love the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

fact that you're talking about You know, there's your bomb and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

how we've chosen to go away from that, because we understand the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

implications of it doesn't mean people don't stop working on it.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Because as we know, everybody's trying to get to that nuclear

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

kind of thing. So it's still a progression. But it's like a

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

universal understanding. And I think when something is so brand

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

new, like what we're dealing with right now, the new and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

shiny, it's always this uncharted territory, where we

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

see how far we can push it, and then maybe we push it too far.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

And now we're dealing with the ramifications of not

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

understanding what we put out there in the world, we just put,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

and then they were like, Oh, crap, the matrix is about to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

happen. And we're about to become batteries.

Mutale Nkonde:

And I think that that really happened for us in

Mutale Nkonde:

2016, not just in the United States with our election and the

Mutale Nkonde:

way that AI systems were being able to be manipulated to

Mutale Nkonde:

interfere with our democracy. But across the world, right, we

Mutale Nkonde:

saw Bolsonaro, we were seeing LePen in France come like across

Mutale Nkonde:

the world, because we were all using social media, in elections

Mutale Nkonde:

and competitive elections, we were able to see the

Mutale Nkonde:

manipulation of that and realize that rather than people choosing

Mutale Nkonde:

their governments, platforms, like Facebook, or Twitter, or

Mutale Nkonde:

these other AI mediated spaces, were able to kind of change our

Mutale Nkonde:

reality. And I think it's just gone on since then, certainly

Mutale Nkonde:

2016 for people within the research community was a big

Mutale Nkonde:

Flashpoint. But it wasn't until 100 million people downloaded

Mutale Nkonde:

chat GTP, that we then started to get this bigger public

Mutale Nkonde:

conversation, because all of a sudden, we saw that there was

Mutale Nkonde:

going to be another mass adoption. And we want to make

Mutale Nkonde:

sure that this time, it didn't break our societies, but it

Mutale Nkonde:

actually made our societies better. And that's where I

Mutale Nkonde:

really see the work of AI for the people being important. And

Mutale Nkonde:

that's really where I think that we can intervene, we can provide

Mutale Nkonde:

intervention.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

And I mean, when you think about it,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

right, and you think about, like you mentioned, the introduction

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

of just how much influence social media platforms had in

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

2016, with the algorithms. And it's almost really interesting

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that I think not enough people think that algorithms are AI,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

they just think they're not right, they think they think

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

they're a computer program, which AI is but you know, that

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

organizes and outputs mathematical data, you know,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

we'd ever use the term, but we use algorithmic interest. That

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

one thing looked at it one way, and now we're looking at it,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

because now AI is the hot word, right? But it's still dealing

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

with algorithmic things. And I wanted to ask you, right, when

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

we're talking about this idea of bias, right, I know we think

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

about bias as a very binary thing to like race. And I think

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

your example of gender bias or things like that start to come

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

up and you realize, obviously bias, the term is a broader

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

word. But with this social media, do you think the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

algorithms are really social media driven? Bias? Or like, are

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

we thinking about biases in the chat DVTs, dollies mid journeys?

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

You know, all these other outputs of AI, like you said,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that people are now starting to get into? Are they different?

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Are they the same?

Mutale Nkonde:

It's exactly the same. All algorithms work the

Mutale Nkonde:

same across the system, whether it's in a search engine, whether

Mutale Nkonde:

it's in a a tool, that you're deciding how long should someone

Mutale Nkonde:

be in jail, or whether they should get housing, or what

Mutale Nkonde:

content they should get on there. I'm gonna say for you

Mutale Nkonde:

page, because I'm in Tiktok clan, but it could be I think,

Mutale Nkonde:

therefore, you pages on all socials. Now, I'm not sure.

Mutale Nkonde:

These are algorithmically mediated decisions. And I think

Mutale Nkonde:

one of the ways that we've done ourselves a disservice,

Mutale Nkonde:

certainly in the research community is not introducing

Mutale Nkonde:

people to the language earlier and helping people bring along.

Mutale Nkonde:

So when I first got into the tech industry, everybody was

Mutale Nkonde:

talking about big data. Now we talk about data, bits, exactly

Mutale Nkonde:

the same as big data. When I first got in people were talking

Mutale Nkonde:

about machine learning. We still talk about machine learning, but

Mutale Nkonde:

we don't link it to AI. When we start to talk about algorithms,

Mutale Nkonde:

we did not add in the next part of the sentence, which are

Mutale Nkonde:

algorithms drive AI technologies. And now we're

Mutale Nkonde:

talking about AI. And each point, people think it's this

Mutale Nkonde:

new thing. I was just in a conversation prior to you. And

Mutale Nkonde:

somebody asked me a question about quantum computing. And I

Mutale Nkonde:

think that they were just like, expecting me to just like, Oh,

Mutale Nkonde:

my God, what's that fallback and die? And I was like, No, quantum

Mutale Nkonde:

is just a faster processing speed. All quantum computing is

Mutale Nkonde:

going to do is make that thing go faster. Do I think that's a

Mutale Nkonde:

good thing? And I'm like how now Oh, that's a terrible thing. We

Mutale Nkonde:

can't even get the stuff that we're doing now. Right? And now

Mutale Nkonde:

you want to make it faster? No, we need to actually start to

Mutale Nkonde:

understand what's happening at base. And I'm hoping that now

Mutale Nkonde:

that people are like, chat GTP crazy, they will start to lean

Mutale Nkonde:

into understand a little bit more that if you have a

Mutale Nkonde:

smartphone, you've been using AI for as long as you've had that

Mutale Nkonde:

phone,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

right? That's why it's smart. That's

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

why it's smart. When you look at what biases in something like

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

open AI with chat TBT or algorithmic biases. What are the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

big things that you're noticing that we as maybe consumers and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

drivers of this need to be most concerned about?

Mutale Nkonde:

I'm going to talk about Chechi TP three

Mutale Nkonde:

specifically, because honestly, I have been too busy talking

Mutale Nkonde:

about chat GTP to use it very much. So I haven't used for yet.

Mutale Nkonde:

One of the things that chat GTP three did was it could not talk

Mutale Nkonde:

about the influence black women had had in society, it could

Mutale Nkonde:

talk about black women, it could give you like the Wikipedia, so

Mutale Nkonde:

and so with so and so. And they did this but very specifically,

Mutale Nkonde:

I was in a conversation where somebody had asked chat GTP

Mutale Nkonde:

three, how was My Hayley Jackson, who is a famous gospel

Mutale Nkonde:

singer, influenced by Bessie Smith, and chat GTP could not

Mutale Nkonde:

answer that. Now. Bessie Smith is the first pop star that we

Mutale Nkonde:

ever had in the United States. She lived African American woman

Mutale Nkonde:

who lived in the 1920s. She was the first person ever to be

Mutale Nkonde:

signed to Columbia Records. And she has influenced over 100

Mutale Nkonde:

people, including but not limited to Elvis Presley, Janis

Mutale Nkonde:

Joplin, the late great Tina Turner, and on and on and on.

Mutale Nkonde:

But because I was asking a question about power, so I'm

Mutale Nkonde:

asking about influence, chat, GTP did not have that

Mutale Nkonde:

information. What that let me know was the way chat GTP is

Mutale Nkonde:

being trained, like the corpus, the underlying data, there

Mutale Nkonde:

probably aren't a lot of stories in that data about how people

Mutale Nkonde:

who are not male people who are not white people who don't speak

Mutale Nkonde:

English, have influenced human history and culture. And that's

Mutale Nkonde:

not chat GTP three's fault. There's really nothing the

Mutale Nkonde:

engineers can do about that. The great thing about chat GTP three

Mutale Nkonde:

is that it is the first large language model to have 175

Mutale Nkonde:

billion inputs. And what that means is that they have 175

Mutale Nkonde:

million unique pieces of data. But as they are processing that

Mutale Nkonde:

data, how black women are powerful, influential and add to

Mutale Nkonde:

the culture, those patents were missing. And that, to me is a

Mutale Nkonde:

form of bias as well. So it's not as obvious as misgendering

Mutale Nkonde:

people, I think that's really obvious. Or there are other

Mutale Nkonde:

there's a, there was a bail instrument that was being used

Mutale Nkonde:

in Florida a couple of years ago with a compass algorithm that

Mutale Nkonde:

was giving black men longer prison sentences than their

Mutale Nkonde:

white counterparts. That's really obvious, I guess also

Mutale Nkonde:

exists in the way that we decide who's influential, who isn't

Mutale Nkonde:

influential, who's great, who's not great. And in that same

Mutale Nkonde:

article, I was saying that, if we were training that same model

Mutale Nkonde:

to identify people who won Record of the Year as the best

Mutale Nkonde:

artists of our time, Beyonce would not show up in that

Mutale Nkonde:

dataset, because she's never won Record of the Year. And the

Mutale Nkonde:

interesting thing about her never winning Record of the Year

Mutale Nkonde:

at the Grammys is when they asked Grammy voters why they

Mutale Nkonde:

never voted for her to win it. A large number came back and just

Mutale Nkonde:

said we think she wins too much. Her work is excellent. We think

Mutale Nkonde:

she wins too much. Not if that is not their own bias speaking

Mutale Nkonde:

because that would never be said of Mick Jagger. That would never

Mutale Nkonde:

be said if the Beatles that would never be said of you know,

Mutale Nkonde:

pick your great white rock star.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

So, you know when you're talking about

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

right the underlying nature of of AI are algorithms and the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

training and the 170 5 million inputs of data is that because

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

something like chatty BT is scrubbing, what already exists

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

and kind of pulling that so isn't the larger folk of society

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

is that we don't have enough information. Like there's not

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

contextual information in the way that somebody can say, this

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

is what the influence of Bessie Smith to Mahalia Jackson is. So

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that chat TBT can read that and be like, Oh, understand that, or

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

it's supposed to make its own leaps.

Mutale Nkonde:

So is artificial. So it's not going to

Mutale Nkonde:

be able to make its own leaps. And we have to, I think, right

Mutale Nkonde:

sizing, what we even expect from something that is artificial,

Mutale Nkonde:

has to be the first thing that we do. I also think it's not

Mutale Nkonde:

even necessarily more data for me, because we curate data in

Mutale Nkonde:

particular ways, right. So if you are looking at data from a

Mutale Nkonde:

lens in which women are not valuable, then they're not going

Mutale Nkonde:

to show up in your data set. And we see this a lot in the

Mutale Nkonde:

scholarship around civil rights, where I'm in a graduate program

Mutale Nkonde:

at the moment, and one of my professors had to say there were

Mutale Nkonde:

women in the civil rights movement, who were more

Mutale Nkonde:

powerful, more prolific, more important than Martin Luther

Mutale Nkonde:

King, but because of sexism within that movement, they're

Mutale Nkonde:

not in the archive. So we can't reference them. But I as your

Mutale Nkonde:

professor, as your teacher, I want you to know, I don't want

Mutale Nkonde:

you to leave my classroom, assuming that they weren't

Mutale Nkonde:

there. And that data chat GTP isn't going to be able to make

Mutale Nkonde:

that primary data, in the same way that the way that we program

Mutale Nkonde:

is with existing information that is crafted in a very, very

Mutale Nkonde:

particular way. So one of the things I was I'm starting a new

Mutale Nkonde:

research project, it's looking at white supremacy on the

Mutale Nkonde:

internet, and I'm writing about it. And one of the things I've

Mutale Nkonde:

written very recently is white supremacists have been on the

Mutale Nkonde:

internet since the early 80s. That means when we are scraping

Mutale Nkonde:

the internet for anything in the bedrock is kk k literature is

Mutale Nkonde:

the Aryan knights literature is. So we have to assume that when

Mutale Nkonde:

we're creating patterns and associations using AI, there has

Mutale Nkonde:

to be some type of human moderator, to fact check that.

Mutale Nkonde:

But even in the humans, we choose, it's not clear to me in

Mutale Nkonde:

the open AI team, that there would have been anybody on that

Mutale Nkonde:

team who would have known who Mahalia Jackson or Bessie Smith

Mutale Nkonde:

draw. And since they're still slipped through the cracks,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

right? So obviously, you know, there's

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

always going to be the conversation of who's involved,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

right, like, if they don't even have the right people, or the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

proper amount of people to just kind of say, let's look at this

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

base level to include a lot of different datasets and who were

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

looking at, than we know, they're not even going to be

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

bringing up Mahalia Jackson or Bessie Smith.

Unknown:

But when to

Mutale Nkonde:

their to them, chat GTP did exactly what they

Mutale Nkonde:

were supposed to do. They released the product in the wild

Mutale Nkonde:

to see how it would actually be used. And then they can come

Mutale Nkonde:

back with that data and say, Guess what, we didn't know 100

Mutale Nkonde:

million people were going to download they did, we need to

Mutale Nkonde:

have a much more expansive view of how we're going to be using

Mutale Nkonde:

this technology.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Right. And I think that's where I think

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

it becomes very interesting, because the the way you talked

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

about the professor, kind of giving you this insight, right

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

of there are more influential females part of the civil rights

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

movement that we don't know about. Now, when your teachers

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

gone, or if that teacher doesn't write something about those

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

people to help teach us that information has gone with that

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

person. Right? So how do we then start to get people to share

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that content? Right? Is it that teachers responsibility to teach

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

you and then you expand the content or? Right, because

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

otherwise, we know without all these things, and we're cultures

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that oral history is kind of what we tend to do, right? But

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

it's never written down? Right? So it's, it's something that we

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

share, and we pass along, but it's a story. And it's things

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

like that, but then we if it's not written how does an

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

algorithm or AI start to scrub and learn from it? If it's

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

something that's inherently within us, right? So how do we

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

start to teach this stuff which is so embedded in personal

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

history and personal culture? That like you said, it's almost

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

counteractive to what in white supremacy, you know, it's

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

embedded, right? We're going to share this information. We're

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

going to make sure we just get everything out like that. That

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

to me is an interesting thing that we have to learn how to do

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

to embed some of these stories.

Mutale Nkonde:

I have so Many thoughts about it. And one of

Mutale Nkonde:

them has actually led me down the path of going to get a PhD

Mutale Nkonde:

so I can publish my dissertation. I think, number

Mutale Nkonde:

one, books have to be written books have to be written

Mutale Nkonde:

articles have to be written podcasts have to be made. So I

Mutale Nkonde:

am like many graduate students in New York City, I commute to

Mutale Nkonde:

school. I live in Brooklyn, my school is in Harlem. And one of

Mutale Nkonde:

the things that he said to us that really stood out to me was,

Mutale Nkonde:

he was so frustrated with Spike Lee's Malcolm X movie, and I

Mutale Nkonde:

live downtown Brooklyn near those production offices, I see

Mutale Nkonde:

spike often and had been to a community screening of the 35th

Mutale Nkonde:

anniversary of the X movie. And he pointed out that Yuri

Mutale Nkonde:

Kageyama, a Japanese American woman who's very close to

Mutale Nkonde:

Malcolm, is actually the last person that ever held him. So

Mutale Nkonde:

when he was shot at the ultimate ballroom, she was there, she

Mutale Nkonde:

doesn't appear in the movie at all. And not only does she not

Mutale Nkonde:

appear in the movie, a large part of that movie is is when he

Mutale Nkonde:

was a hustler. And there isn't as much of that movie of when he

Mutale Nkonde:

became a minister when he fell out of favor with the nation. As

Mutale Nkonde:

he was moving towards King, there was no meeting between him

Mutale Nkonde:

and Kane, as he was moving out of the nation. And his complaint

Mutale Nkonde:

was, as we're developing this content that is going to feed

Mutale Nkonde:

future generations, if we look at the writers strike right now,

Mutale Nkonde:

a big part of that is that they don't want their scripts fed

Mutale Nkonde:

into AI systems that will then generate scripts for Hollywood,

Mutale Nkonde:

they don't want their movies that will go into Dali, that

Mutale Nkonde:

will show the iconic shots that were made and then recreated by

Mutale Nkonde:

AI systems. But if we do not correct the record, then we're

Mutale Nkonde:

going to have the systems that we deserve. And I wrote an

Mutale Nkonde:

article about this for Harvard Business Review, excuse me in

Mutale Nkonde:

2019. And one of the things that I said was all AI is doing is

Mutale Nkonde:

highlighting the imperfections of our past. And the only way to

Mutale Nkonde:

make these systems better is that we have to have a multi

Mutale Nkonde:

pronged strategy to improve these ills of society so that we

Mutale Nkonde:

can have the machines that we want rather than the machines

Mutale Nkonde:

that we deserve. And I hold true to that.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

I love the fact of that we have to be

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

responsible to correct the record. Right. And I think this

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

idea of doesn't mean it doesn't take the artistic license out of

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

the ability of Spike Lee's, you know, Malcolm X, but it also

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

needs to say that there needs to be we know, obviously, movie

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

making is storytelling. And it's not always totally accurate,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

right? Because there's there's all these things, but how do we

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

have conversations and fill in the blanks? Right? So to expand

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that, so nobody look, because it's not a documentary? It's a

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

movie. Right? Right. So it's from my perspective, like you

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

said, it's talking about the hustler, you know, movement

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

versus his transition, which would be an almost a secondary

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

story. I remember cutting school to in 1992, to go see that

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

movie. I mean, it was

Mutale Nkonde:

Malcolm X and not last, that

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that whole last scene were all the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

people are just saying, I am Malcolm X,

Mutale Nkonde:

X, and it's the next person and the next. And

Mutale Nkonde:

then you learn these were the people that helped that movie

Mutale Nkonde:

get finished. And I'm somebody who all my work, I work through

Mutale Nkonde:

the lens of popular culture. And specifically, I always say it's

Mutale Nkonde:

black popular culture, but I've been living in New York, nearly

Mutale Nkonde:

20 years now. And I'm telling you, my friends from the

Mutale Nkonde:

Caribbean, my afro Latinos, from the Caribbean, they be doing

Mutale Nkonde:

stuff too. They be doing stuff too. And so it's like these

Mutale Nkonde:

black and brown poor people that have created these cultures that

Mutale Nkonde:

have brought the world alive, as I look at AI as a space, as we

Mutale Nkonde:

do our policy making work, particularly because my

Mutale Nkonde:

particular interest is the creative industries. And what

Mutale Nkonde:

does it mean for IP? What does it mean for creative culture,

Mutale Nkonde:

that's what I'm really kind of interested in. And that's where

Mutale Nkonde:

a lot of AI for the peoples doing their work. It's because

Mutale Nkonde:

we don't want to lose that into these. I'm just going to call

Mutale Nkonde:

them whack formulas, where it is like this word over here and

Mutale Nkonde:

this word, and it's like, yeah, but hip hop was created in the

Mutale Nkonde:

Bronx because people didn't have electricity. So they tapped into

Mutale Nkonde:

the line. When mixing came in. The reason that hip hop was even

Mutale Nkonde:

allowed in my house was that my mother and father had the beats

Mutale Nkonde:

and the melodies from the 70s. And then I had the person

Mutale Nkonde:

speaking over it from the 90s. And so we could connect it we

Mutale Nkonde:

could connect if everything becomes standardized for through

Mutale Nkonde:

these formulas, that's not going to happen again. But I'm looking

Mutale Nkonde:

at these, the Supreme Court affirmative action decisions.

Mutale Nkonde:

And I'm like, we are about to enter a black Renee songs like

Mutale Nkonde:

we have never seen black and brown kids in the streets that

Mutale Nkonde:

don't have access are going to create things that we have never

Mutale Nkonde:

imagined and never seen. And if the tools are right, AI is going

Mutale Nkonde:

to really just help us through that. And I, you know, I'm

Mutale Nkonde:

getting to be an old head, I want to be able to help people

Mutale Nkonde:

do that in a way that is safe for them. They can maintain

Mutale Nkonde:

their privacy, and they can maintain the IP and make their

Mutale Nkonde:

money.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

I mean, when we look at design and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

creativity, it's always born out of limitation, right, we are

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

able as creatives to work around the limitations. And that

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

limitation is what allows us to advance, right, because like you

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

said, there wasn't electricity. So we steal it from the light

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

post, we didn't have rhymes, we didn't have music. So we were

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

able to take a break, beat and extend it for four minutes. So

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

all of these things are the ability for us to learn how to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

make do with what we have. And now that a lot of creative tools

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

are being so much more democratized. Right? Like you

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

said, when they start creating things, it is the Black and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Brown creatives who two prong part of this is they create the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

culture. But also unfortunately, don't get credit for the culture

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

because somebody else coops it and then makes it more popular.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

We look at tick tock dances, right, and all the people who

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

you don't see who created these dances, you know, are the ones

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

who are the ones that are getting money off of this when

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

the dancers or even fortnight like a video game, putting

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

dances into their video game and not actually acknowledging the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

original person who created the work thinking that it's actually

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

just free rein, I love the fact that we need to kind of as

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

researchers counteract this, this movement, right not stifle

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

it, but also bring in the other lens, bring in the other aspects

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

to bring a broader picture. Because I think that's where

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

it's going to be, in my opinion, and just listening to you talk

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

about it. That's where it's going to adapt, because it's no

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

longer just, oh, it's fed into this system. And like you said,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

jet TBT is doing exactly what it's meant to do. If there's

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

nothing there, it can't make something.

Mutale Nkonde:

And I think as well as I'm Generation X, so I'm

Mutale Nkonde:

the person that we are the best. There's not many of us. But we

Mutale Nkonde:

know how to live out here in the street with these younger people

Mutale Nkonde:

that they're all stressed out. We're like, our parents didn't

Mutale Nkonde:

even feed us and we're fine. You will be by so I'm the generation

Mutale Nkonde:

who I will never forget watching my first mace video. And I saw

Mutale Nkonde:

mace. I saw shiny suits. I saw Diddy, and I just knew I was in

Mutale Nkonde:

the UK. But I knew I was going to go to New York City and

Mutale Nkonde:

people who don't know that video because you are young. I am not.

Mutale Nkonde:

It's shot in Time Square. So if you are from New York City,

Mutale Nkonde:

you're trying to find that shooter and Alicia Keys, like

Mutale Nkonde:

did it a generation later people have recreated that scene. I am

Mutale Nkonde:

also old enough to know that people from that generation who

Mutale Nkonde:

I really liked, died poor and they died poor because of the

Mutale Nkonde:

contracts that they signed. So a couple of years ago if you don't

Mutale Nkonde:

know DMX New York rapper, loved DMX. Unfortunately, life didn't

Mutale Nkonde:

happen but died poor Craig muck died poor. These people that

Mutale Nkonde:

were kind of my generation when I was young died poor because of

Mutale Nkonde:

IP. I'm now in a position where those videos aren't being made

Mutale Nkonde:

anymore, but I'm seeing them every day on Tik Tok. I'm seeing

Mutale Nkonde:

them on Instagram, I'm seeing versions of them. And I want to

Mutale Nkonde:

through AI for the people and through our focus on policy,

Mutale Nkonde:

make sure that the people that are creating now not only own

Mutale Nkonde:

that, they can market it, that they don't lose it

Mutale Nkonde:

algorithmically. The big thing. I remember, a couple of years

Mutale Nkonde:

ago, somebody was asking me about black lives matter in an

Mutale Nkonde:

interview. And I just happen to say but they don't own the

Mutale Nkonde:

hashtag. And they were like they don't own the hashtag. And I was

Mutale Nkonde:

like, No, you there is no rule to IP hashtags. It was created

Mutale Nkonde:

on a public site. Everything on that site belongs to the

Mutale Nkonde:

company. Now if Facebook decides that they're going to sell

Mutale Nkonde:

advertising space against the BLM hashtag which they

Mutale Nkonde:

definitely did. And say if you want to target this type of

Mutale Nkonde:

consumer is going to cost you $2 million. That money goes to

Mutale Nkonde:

Facebook, we are the product because we're on social media,

Mutale Nkonde:

the hashtag get some clout. People don't understand that.

Mutale Nkonde:

And I think I definitely would like them to understand that.

Mutale Nkonde:

And I'm only using one example. Right, I'd like them to

Mutale Nkonde:

understand that I really like that the writers union has

Mutale Nkonde:

understood that and made that one of their demands. I really

Mutale Nkonde:

hope that any of us that are in creative industries, I, like I

Mutale Nkonde:

said, I'm going to be I'm pursuing a PhD because I want to

Mutale Nkonde:

turn my dissertation into a book, long story was I was

Mutale Nkonde:

approached to write a book, I was like, okay, I can write a

Mutale Nkonde:

book, then I was like, How can I make the most of this moment?

Mutale Nkonde:

And I was like, Well, if I apply for a PhD program, I not only

Mutale Nkonde:

get to draft the book, and I get fancy people to tell me that I'm

Mutale Nkonde:

very smart. But I can mark it that because a PhD, which is

Mutale Nkonde:

different as marketing, that book is a girl that's been on

Mutale Nkonde:

the internet, even if it's the same thing. And so I'm writing

Mutale Nkonde:

that book, because I want it to be in the corpus. But within my

Mutale Nkonde:

contract, I'm gonna make sure that there's stipulations around

Mutale Nkonde:

how this book can be repurposed by a I

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

mean, there's so many things. But what

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

I love the most right is just hearing how we as content

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

creators, and even the hashtag, right, like we don't own those

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

things, and what AI for the people is trying to identify

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

what those things are, and how to build policies that because

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

we're making the company's money, but we're not as the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

originators of content, like you said, we are the products

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

versus, like, how do we start to get people to advocate for that

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

type of understanding? Like you mentioned, right? DMX Craig

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Mack, all these people who passed away, you know,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

unfortunately, had bad contracts didn't make all the money that

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

they deserve. When you think of flavor in your air. It is like

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

it's the soundtrack to a summer in like 93, nine before that,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

I'm just like, is amazing.

Mutale Nkonde:

As soon as we get off this podcast, I'm going

Mutale Nkonde:

to listen to flavor in your air. I'm going to listen to the

Mutale Nkonde:

Roughriders Anathan.

Unknown:

Don't, don't do.

Mutale Nkonde:

And I live by the and I live by Barclays and I

Mutale Nkonde:

live by Barclays when that funeral was going on. And I

Mutale Nkonde:

mean, it was it's new Kanye, but he was like old Kanye for that

Mutale Nkonde:

moment.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

I mean, it is it is so disheartening to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

learn that the things that we I mean, it's in my blood, it's in

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

our I mean, it's definitely the things that we we connect to end

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

to find out that these people don't really get the props they

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

deserved, or at least live as comfortably as the videos

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

looked, and all of that. So how do we start to one maybe

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

advocate for this stuff, learn more about this. So we can be a

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

little bit more prepared? Obviously, we know education,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

schooling and really rules, right understanding where the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

things come in to. But as content creators or people who

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

start to create this stuff that people start to resonate with,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

what's one of the steps we should take to gain some

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

autonomy with this content we create? I always

Mutale Nkonde:

think about advice for creative people in

Mutale Nkonde:

three ways. Number one, what is your purpose? I think one of the

Mutale Nkonde:

things I've really loved about this conversation, and the will

Mutale Nkonde:

resonate with me, is how much you are pushing me to tell you

Mutale Nkonde:

why. Right? You're not being aggressive with it. You're not

Mutale Nkonde:

when I say that you're pushing me. But just the way that your

Mutale Nkonde:

phraseology is always like so how did that happen? Why did

Mutale Nkonde:

that. And I think that we have so much content creation that

Mutale Nkonde:

just goes on because people want to feel loved by lots of people

Mutale Nkonde:

they don't know. And we need to kind of get away from that.

Mutale Nkonde:

Because the like, isn't going to help you long term, the clout

Mutale Nkonde:

that you build. There is no real market for cloud. And I'm not

Mutale Nkonde:

saying that we should create for capitalistic name. But if you

Mutale Nkonde:

know that you're creating because you have this bigger

Mutale Nkonde:

vision, for example, I launched AI for the people and the reason

Mutale Nkonde:

I say I launched that is that I really wanted to stop

Mutale Nkonde:

exploitation of black people and brown people via technology. GE.

Mutale Nkonde:

And the reason I wanted to stop that is that I found out so

Mutale Nkonde:

early in my own personal career, that technologies can express

Mutale Nkonde:

racism. And the way I found that out was a friend of mine had

Mutale Nkonde:

been using Google pictures. This is Google picture, I think it

Mutale Nkonde:

was before it was called Google image. It was in beta. And it

Mutale Nkonde:

was a picture of two black people. And they were labeled as

Mutale Nkonde:

apes. And that was in 2015. Artificial Intelligence isn't

Mutale Nkonde:

going to be able to know that people of color are dehumanized

Mutale Nkonde:

by being compared to animals. It's not going to know that. It

Mutale Nkonde:

isn't sentient, it doesn't have memory, it doesn't have history.

Mutale Nkonde:

Therefore, there was something in the engineering process that

Mutale Nkonde:

was bringing this idea of eugenics to bear. So for me, I

Mutale Nkonde:

knew that I wanted to interrupt that, that made it really easy

Mutale Nkonde:

for me to work for AI for the people for free back in the day,

Mutale Nkonde:

it made it very easy for me to have sleepless nights, it made

Mutale Nkonde:

it very easy for me to push through. Because even in my own

Mutale Nkonde:

personal story, I build AI for the people while being the

Mutale Nkonde:

single mother to two kids, and us not really having it like

Mutale Nkonde:

that, when we needed it. But because I was like the people of

Mutale Nkonde:

the Bronx with hip hop, this is going to happen one way or

Mutale Nkonde:

another. And then the research community caught up to me, and

Mutale Nkonde:

the people that caught up to me with a Harvard's, the Stanford's

Mutale Nkonde:

that, and they gave me the credibility that I needed to go

Mutale Nkonde:

forward. And I eventually, I'm a writer, so I was very prolific.

Mutale Nkonde:

I eventually got funding, shout out MacArthur Foundation, your

Mutale Nkonde:

real ones. And that's kind of what got me going. But I had

Mutale Nkonde:

this bigger vision. So I asked, What are you creating for? The

Mutale Nkonde:

second thing is, what do you want this creation to do for

Mutale Nkonde:

you? Do you want it to be if you are in the video with the

Mutale Nkonde:

Maserati and the shiny pants, and the yacht? And what do you

Mutale Nkonde:

want it to do for you? If you want these creations to be part

Mutale Nkonde:

of what sustains you, not just financially but spiritually,

Mutale Nkonde:

emotionally? Then what safeguards do you need around

Mutale Nkonde:

that? Because if you want it to do all of that it becomes an

Mutale Nkonde:

asset? And how do we treat assets? And if the rules aren't

Mutale Nkonde:

there, are you going to be prepared to negotiate them in

Mutale Nkonde:

Samuel L. Jackson, for example, will never sign a contract that

Mutale Nkonde:

says that his image can be used artificially. And the reason he

Mutale Nkonde:

doesn't want to do that is that he saw how the Fast and the

Mutale Nkonde:

Furious movie was able to be shot after the actor died. And

Mutale Nkonde:

summer L. Jackson was just like, they're trying to draw actors

Mutale Nkonde:

in. Oh, no, no, they won't be doing that to me. So what do you

Mutale Nkonde:

want it to do? Then I think the third thing is, you really need

Mutale Nkonde:

to lean into your education. And if you don't have it formally,

Mutale Nkonde:

then you need to pursue it. And you need to start thinking about

Mutale Nkonde:

the history of black and brown creators, how would they treat

Mutale Nkonde:

it? What led to that? And I think the conversation we've

Mutale Nkonde:

just had around DMX and Craig Mack, it doesn't have to be a

Mutale Nkonde:

deep history. It doesn't have to be a deep history. We know that

Mutale Nkonde:

they were exploited and they were exploited. In those cases

Mutale Nkonde:

by P Diddy. You know, they were just exploited by somebody else

Mutale Nkonde:

who wanted to be a capitalist in that in that region, and all of

Mutale Nkonde:

those things and if we think about AI, look at Addison Ray,

Mutale Nkonde:

who is this white dancer on Tik Tok, she did the renegade dance,

Mutale Nkonde:

she made it famous. The dance was actually created by this

Mutale Nkonde:

black girl who was in Georgia Addison Ray got representation.

Mutale Nkonde:

She got Netflix deals, she got all of this, based on the fact

Mutale Nkonde:

that she was this white girl that was dancing on Tik Tok?

Mutale Nkonde:

Would she have got those same crops? If she looked like me?

Unknown:

No. Mic drop right there.

Mutale Nkonde:

I mean, think about the millions of dollars

Mutale Nkonde:

that Facebook Twitter made off advertising against that BLM

Mutale Nkonde:

hashtag.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Right. And those people never seen a

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

dime of it.

Mutale Nkonde:

No, you know, and maybe be a bad example,

Mutale Nkonde:

because they ended up getting, like raising money in 2020. But

Mutale Nkonde:

it's every hashtag that goes viral,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

right? And just an understanding of how

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

large that hashtag was. And to be like, if an organization like

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

social media is making money off of it, right, but you have no

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

rights to that, because the platform holds the content

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

versus you. Right? I think that's one of the things that is

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

so interesting, right? Where people were like, I want free

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

speech. I want this. I'm like, all these platforms are free

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

because they're owning your rights and images. If you had to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

pay for it, you wouldn't pay for it. But then you'd own your own

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

information. Right. So like there's a reason why it's free

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

for are to be free, we have to give up some, well, we don't

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

have to. But that's the contract, the contract we build

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

in is, we are going to be part of this so that we don't have to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

pay.

Mutale Nkonde:

We're giving up our ideas, we're giving up our

Mutale Nkonde:

creativity, we're giving up. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't post a

Mutale Nkonde:

thing. You know why his time is valuable? He is going to get em

Mutale Nkonde:

compensated.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Right. But he doesn't need to know,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

right? When you think about all of these people who do you know,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

he's also not totally egocentric, like Elon Musk, who

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

needs to be out there in the zeitgeist all the time. Right.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

But you know, I think that is that he knows what he's doing,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

and has the right people doing the things that he thinks needs

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

to happen, and just rakes in the dough. Right, which a lot of

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

bigger people are doing that you don't really know most of the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

people in these big companies?

Mutale Nkonde:

You don't know. And I think AI for the people is

Mutale Nkonde:

kind of my answer to that, in the sense that I have this big

Mutale Nkonde:

interest in social media. But rather than mini blog about it,

Mutale Nkonde:

on my own platforms, I can actually go in, roll up my

Mutale Nkonde:

sleeves, develop an organization that looks at some of these

Mutale Nkonde:

questions that that tries to create rules that provide

Mutale Nkonde:

opportunities for more people. And it can sustain me, it can

Mutale Nkonde:

stay my lifestyle, it can be my work. And I think if you're

Mutale Nkonde:

going to be a content creator, you have to look at it through

Mutale Nkonde:

the lens of work.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

So as we start to get towards the end,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

and I appreciate you understanding how I like to dig

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

into why we do things, but part of this conversation, right is

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

you're going to be presenting at the White House conference being

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

held virtually in October. And I want to ask you a couple of

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

questions that are more specific to that what that conference is

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

about, and potentially, you know, giving us a sneak peek

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

into what you may be discussing in October. So one of the things

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that we need to think about is the prioritization of diversity,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

equity inclusion in organizations, right. And it's

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

obviously, you're thinking about in policies, but how do you

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

think that organizations need to make sure they prioritize this

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

in the way that they focus on different aspects of their

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

business?

Mutale Nkonde:

I think the first thing is that I reject

Mutale Nkonde:

this idea of diversity, equity, inclusion being somewhere else

Mutale Nkonde:

doing something else. And I think that companies need to

Mutale Nkonde:

really think about it in terms of compliance. And they really

Mutale Nkonde:

need to understand that if you want the most innovative product

Mutale Nkonde:

goods or service that is going to take the world by storm, then

Mutale Nkonde:

you need to make sure that you have a workforce that draws from

Mutale Nkonde:

every single part of the the talent pool, and in drawing from

Mutale Nkonde:

every single part of the talent pool is going to make you

Mutale Nkonde:

compliant to non discrimination laws. Because specifically, if

Mutale Nkonde:

you operate in the United States, your company could

Mutale Nkonde:

actually be fined for being non compliant. And we have really

Mutale Nkonde:

good examples of this, for example, Facebook, which was

Mutale Nkonde:

Metis, former name was fined by the FTC, some huge amount

Mutale Nkonde:

because of housing discrimination and its

Mutale Nkonde:

algorithm. And what they had done was to create an algorithm

Mutale Nkonde:

that enabled people that were renting houses to not show it to

Mutale Nkonde:

black people that was in violation of the Fair Housing

Mutale Nkonde:

Act. And they got fines, would that algorithm have been built

Mutale Nkonde:

and got through their compliance team, if there had been people

Mutale Nkonde:

within that team with expertise within civil rights and civil

Mutale Nkonde:

rights law?

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

So with that, right, and obviously, we

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

always know that the inclusion of of the proper people in these

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

organizations helped make sure that that some of these

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

conversations that are being held are being done, the more

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

correct way is the landscape of D AI, in the future? Shifting?

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Do you think that it's, it's going in a positive or a

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

negative direction,

Mutale Nkonde:

I think is going to go in a completely negative

Mutale Nkonde:

direction for a while because politically, people are not

Mutale Nkonde:

accepting of it. I think that there is a lot of momentum for

Mutale Nkonde:

what people call anti woke. I'm not sure what that means. That I

Mutale Nkonde:

think we're going to see the types of firings that we're

Mutale Nkonde:

seeing in the movie industry, for example, here in the United

Mutale Nkonde:

States, there have been for a diversity and inclusion heads

Mutale Nkonde:

that were all fired within two weeks of each other. I do think

Mutale Nkonde:

that that's going to hurt the experience of the products, the

Mutale Nkonde:

goods, the services that those companies use. I do think that

Mutale Nkonde:

that is going to hurt share price, we have seen the that in

Mutale Nkonde:

Twitter, for example, Elon Musk bought the platform in April of

Mutale Nkonde:

2022, for 44 billion, he got rid of many of the people that were

Mutale Nkonde:

doing diversity and inclusion work, he got rid of their

Mutale Nkonde:

responsible AI team. And the experience of the platform

Mutale Nkonde:

changed and people came off the platform. And it was recently

Mutale Nkonde:

valued of 15 billion. So you're talking about a $30 billion

Mutale Nkonde:

share price drop. And I think that his shareholders are going

Mutale Nkonde:

to be like you need to have these people on because they're

Mutale Nkonde:

making it safe for more people to be online. And I think that

Mutale Nkonde:

once we get to that point, we can start right sizing, because

Mutale Nkonde:

so much of what I've seen of DIY, specifically in the tech

Mutale Nkonde:

space, is around like workshops and books that are just about

Mutale Nkonde:

people being nice to each other in the interpersonal. And

Mutale Nkonde:

they're not really about answering structural questions

Mutale Nkonde:

like, how do we search for bias in our own datasets? And then

Mutale Nkonde:

what do we do about them?

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Right? Is a lot of times surface level.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

A lot of times also, it's not even including the right people

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

in the room? Can you give us a little bit of a sneak peek of

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

what you're going to be talking about what if

Mutale Nkonde:

I have not even started to plan it, which is not

Mutale Nkonde:

unusual for me. But one of the things that I'm hoping to talk

Mutale Nkonde:

about, so I would have just been back from the Congressional

Mutale Nkonde:

Black Caucus, and I'm on a panel called AI for the culture, which

Mutale Nkonde:

I thought was hilarious. And they were like, we can't we love

Mutale Nkonde:

the name of your organization. So we invited you and I was

Mutale Nkonde:

like, Oh, you have no idea why I wanted to go on that panel are

Mutale Nkonde:

going to be folks from Universal Music Group, because we very

Mutale Nkonde:

famously had the AI generated Drake and weekend song that was

Mutale Nkonde:

released, and in my opinion sounded better than Drake or the

Mutale Nkonde:

weekend. And so I think it's going to be based on whatever

Mutale Nkonde:

findings, I can come back on the music end. And hopefully, I'll

Mutale Nkonde:

be able to play some of that song. Also, I've just come back

Mutale Nkonde:

from a week with Tik Tok. And we were looking at their algorithm

Mutale Nkonde:

and content moderation. And I'm gonna figure out what I can say

Mutale Nkonde:

publicly about that, because they're doing some really

Mutale Nkonde:

interesting things with technical design that get to

Mutale Nkonde:

this idea that they literally won every kid in the world to be

Mutale Nkonde:

ticking and talking. And they have to change the platform to

Mutale Nkonde:

do that.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Wow. Well, I definitely can't wait to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

see what you present on that day, as we all tune in

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

virtually. And last but not least, where can our listeners

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

find out more about you AI for the people, and what we should

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

be looking for in the future.

Mutale Nkonde:

You can find me on LinkedIn, I, every other

Mutale Nkonde:

social media platform, I don't know, because I was a big

Mutale Nkonde:

tweeter. And now, I'm not really down with kk k like that. So I'm

Mutale Nkonde:

not trying to be on Twitter. But definitely find me on LinkedIn

Mutale Nkonde:

coming up, you're gonna see a lot of conversation from us

Mutale Nkonde:

around culture, and AI. So in November, I'm going to Milan to

Mutale Nkonde:

be at the Vogue photo summit to talk about art and AI and

Mutale Nkonde:

pictures and images, and AI, I'm doing this in October. And I

Mutale Nkonde:

definitely am going to do some writing some journalism just

Mutale Nkonde:

around where we're going. You know, I always say I want AI to

Mutale Nkonde:

be for the people. That's why the organization is called what

Mutale Nkonde:

it is, I don't want to get rid of it. I just want to make sure

Mutale Nkonde:

that every single person that interacts with this technology

Mutale Nkonde:

has at least some opportunity to to benefit from it. And and not

Mutale Nkonde:

this kind of eat or be eaten dynamic that we have right now.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Yeah, I mean, you know, the biggest

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

resonation with me is the fact that as content creators, you

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

know, being able to control the content and using these tools,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

these tools to elevate what we do to accentuate what we do, but

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

not to replace what we do. And a lot of the conversation that

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

you're talking about, right is people think that, you know, AI

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

can replicate what we do. But people are so scared of that,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

because they think that as a learning model, like you said,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

it's sentient and able to connect dots. And it's not. And

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

I think one of the big things is that we need to be here to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

connect those dots and fill in the blanks. And I love hearing

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

just kind of, you know, you stating AI for the people and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

really understanding what is artificial intelligence for the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

people mean, and how we can start to, I guess learn to train

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

the system better to start to include some of these things,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

which tend to be the emotional things that are connected to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

What these very surface level things are? Right, right,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

because you can't teach emotion.

Mutale Nkonde:

Lastly, what would it look like to join a

Mutale Nkonde:

social media network? And within the Terms of Services, say, if I

Mutale Nkonde:

create a hashtag that goes viral? I want a percentage of

Mutale Nkonde:

advertising, you wouldn't make so many people rich on their

Mutale Nkonde:

couches. Right? And rightly so. Right. You know,

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

they are the content providers of why

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

you're on the platform in the first place. It's not the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

platform, it's the people. No,

Mutale Nkonde:

no, it's the people so and it's gotta be for

Mutale Nkonde:

the people. I keep telling y'all it's gotta be for the people.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Of course. And, of course, we need

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

to end on that, once again, with Holly, thank you so much for

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

this chat. I really appreciate it. I really love the down and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

dirty Hip Hop references, I could do that all day. And we're

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

both of them same generation, where we just understand that

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

how this whole thing is shifting. And I can't wait to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

hear what you come up with and your presentation. And I

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

understand that it's, you know, too early in the in the calendar

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

year to figure out what you're doing. But there's so many other

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

things that will happen before that will, that will definitely

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

influence your presentation that day. But I can't wait to hear

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

what you're going to do for the what if seminar, October 3 or

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

fourth, I forget what day you're presenting, check out my show

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

notes to get a code for the event. And hopefully you can

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

also see Metalia and some of the other people that will have on

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

the podcast during the two day event. But I appreciate the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

conversation, learning so much more about kind of

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

deconstructing my own biases against AI and what it is or the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

lack of understanding and thinking it's just this kind of

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

fun for all tool and really understanding how tech and the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

policies and the IP and things that go into it. You know, as

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

content creators, we need to be more responsible of and start to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

own. And I love the fact that you're trying to get us to that

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

point, with one knowledge and then to focusing on ways for it

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

to be the shift that needs to happen. So thank you so much for

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

that. I really appreciate this conversation. Take care and this

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

has been Works in Process. Oh wow. I just want to thank

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Metallian Conde for enlightening us on AI the accountability and

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

bias that will occur with new technologies. It's really

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

interesting how we can start to be the owners and controllers of

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

our own technological destiny and I want to see how AI for the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

people is going to help us envision that and if you want to

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

learn more about the various projects or people organizations

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

mentioned in our conversation, please check out the show notes

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

on your podcast player or at our website w i p dot show. The

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Works in Process podcast is created by me, George Gary

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

sticky Jr. and the content transcriptions and research have

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

been done by or Szyflingier and this episode has been edited by

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

RJ Basilio. You can find the Works in Process podcasts on all

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

media platforms such as Apple, Spotify, Google, and more. And

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

if you liked the episode, feel free to give us a five star

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

rating on Apple podcasts and Spotify. And if you're feeling

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

extra generous, write us a review. It helps other people

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

find the show. And you know what, just describe on whatever

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platform you're listening to right now. It's that easy.

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

Follow us on Instagram or LinkedIn to stay up to date on

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

the new releases of episodes. I really appreciate you taking the

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

journey with me. And I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Until

George Garrastegui, Jr.:

next time, remember your work is never final. It's always a Works

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About the Podcast

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Works In Process w/ George Garrastegui, Jr.
How Creatives Work.

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About your host

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George Garrastegui

George is an educator, designer, advocate, and curator looking to elevate the creative process by shifting the focus to how we work over what we produce.

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