When your AI agent books a rental car, it needs your driver's license, credit card, calendar access and permission to message your contacts—creating what Meredith Whittaker calls "fundamental backdoor" threatening apps like Signal.
At ADAPT ADVANCE 2025, Signal Foundation President and AI Now Institute co-founder Meredith Whittaker joined Dr Abeba Birhane for a fireside chat dissecting why "bigger is better" serves hyperscaler monopolies not evidence.
How AI companions weaponise 1970s Eliza manipulation psychology on minors, why "open source AI" became marketing arbitrage exploiting software community goodwill, and what sovereign AI actually requires beyond anxiety signifiers—including democratic governance, trusted local data, and answers to "who owns deployment infrastructure?"
THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
* “Bigger is better" AI myth protects hyperscaler monopolies, not users
* Agentic AI demands sweeping permissions creating existential privacy backdoor threats
* AI companions weaponize known psychological manipulation tactics against vulnerable minors
* "Open source AI" exploits software community goodwill without delivering benefits
* Sovereign AI requires democratic governance beyond geopolitical anxiety signaling today
GUEST DETAILS
Meredith Whittaker is President of the Signal Foundation and co-founder of the AI Now Institute—one of the most trusted voices in AI ethics, transparency and accountability. Her decade of work has profoundly shaped ethical AI frameworks, bringing impact from academia to industry.
At Google, Meredith was core organizer for the 2018 Google Walkouts where over 20,000 employees protested military AI use (Project Maven), surveillance, and sexual misconduct—forcing Google to discontinue their military contract and oust implicated VPs.
As AI Now Institute co-founder, her research cuts through AI hype, grounding discussions on what truly matters: power concentration, labour exploitation in AI pipelines, and protecting fundamental rights including privacy and rule of law.
Her work exposes corporate capture, debunks "bigger is better" myths, reveals sustainability costs, and provides foundational open source research.
Meredith has provided congressional testimony to US Congress and leads Signal—one of the most trusted privacy-friendly messaging apps. Her background building large-scale network measurement systems at Google gives her unique expertise in data quality, evaluation criteria manipulation, and how benchmark gaming serves hyperscaler interests over real-world effectiveness.
Dr Abeba Birhane is founder and director of the AI Accountability Lab at Trinity College Dublin. Her groundbreaking research examines AI datasets, uncovering how larger datasets contain higher hateful content and pornography—debunking "bigger dissipates problems" assumptions.
Her work on benchmarks and measurement demonstrates that purpose-built smaller models often outperform larger models in real-world contexts with appropriate contextual data.
Connect with the guests:
* Signal Foundation: signal.org
* AI Now Institute: ainowinstitute.org
* AI Accountability Lab: Contact through ADAPT Centre
* Follow their research and writing on AI accountability
MORE INFORMATION
You can learn more about the Sea-Scan project and other cutting-edge research at Trinity College Dublin's ADAPT Centre here: www.adaptcentre.ie/
Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the ADAPT Centre
For more information about ADAPT's groundbreaking AI and data analytics research visit www.adaptcentre.ie/
KEYWORDS
#TrustedAI #AIaccountability #AIprivacy #AIgovernance #MeredithWhittaker
All content for ADAPT Radio is the property of The ADAPT Centre and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
When your AI agent books a rental car, it needs your driver's license, credit card, calendar access and permission to message your contacts—creating what Meredith Whittaker calls "fundamental backdoor" threatening apps like Signal.
At ADAPT ADVANCE 2025, Signal Foundation President and AI Now Institute co-founder Meredith Whittaker joined Dr Abeba Birhane for a fireside chat dissecting why "bigger is better" serves hyperscaler monopolies not evidence.
How AI companions weaponise 1970s Eliza manipulation psychology on minors, why "open source AI" became marketing arbitrage exploiting software community goodwill, and what sovereign AI actually requires beyond anxiety signifiers—including democratic governance, trusted local data, and answers to "who owns deployment infrastructure?"
THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
* “Bigger is better" AI myth protects hyperscaler monopolies, not users
* Agentic AI demands sweeping permissions creating existential privacy backdoor threats
* AI companions weaponize known psychological manipulation tactics against vulnerable minors
* "Open source AI" exploits software community goodwill without delivering benefits
* Sovereign AI requires democratic governance beyond geopolitical anxiety signaling today
GUEST DETAILS
Meredith Whittaker is President of the Signal Foundation and co-founder of the AI Now Institute—one of the most trusted voices in AI ethics, transparency and accountability. Her decade of work has profoundly shaped ethical AI frameworks, bringing impact from academia to industry.
At Google, Meredith was core organizer for the 2018 Google Walkouts where over 20,000 employees protested military AI use (Project Maven), surveillance, and sexual misconduct—forcing Google to discontinue their military contract and oust implicated VPs.
As AI Now Institute co-founder, her research cuts through AI hype, grounding discussions on what truly matters: power concentration, labour exploitation in AI pipelines, and protecting fundamental rights including privacy and rule of law.
Her work exposes corporate capture, debunks "bigger is better" myths, reveals sustainability costs, and provides foundational open source research.
Meredith has provided congressional testimony to US Congress and leads Signal—one of the most trusted privacy-friendly messaging apps. Her background building large-scale network measurement systems at Google gives her unique expertise in data quality, evaluation criteria manipulation, and how benchmark gaming serves hyperscaler interests over real-world effectiveness.
Dr Abeba Birhane is founder and director of the AI Accountability Lab at Trinity College Dublin. Her groundbreaking research examines AI datasets, uncovering how larger datasets contain higher hateful content and pornography—debunking "bigger dissipates problems" assumptions.
Her work on benchmarks and measurement demonstrates that purpose-built smaller models often outperform larger models in real-world contexts with appropriate contextual data.
Connect with the guests:
* Signal Foundation: signal.org
* AI Now Institute: ainowinstitute.org
* AI Accountability Lab: Contact through ADAPT Centre
* Follow their research and writing on AI accountability
MORE INFORMATION
You can learn more about the Sea-Scan project and other cutting-edge research at Trinity College Dublin's ADAPT Centre here: www.adaptcentre.ie/
Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the ADAPT Centre
For more information about ADAPT's groundbreaking AI and data analytics research visit www.adaptcentre.ie/
KEYWORDS
#TrustedAI #AIaccountability #AIprivacy #AIgovernance #MeredithWhittaker
How we view the past is very much shaped by the stories we're told about it and AI innovations are helping researchers to enrich our understanding of history.
A new project called VOICES is using artificial intelligence to uncover the untold women's experiences of extreme trauma and civil war in early modern Ireland. The project was recently launched at Trinity College Dublin and today we hear from the interdisciplinary team of historians and computer scientists leading the research.
Our expert guests are two Trinity researchers, Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History, Jane Ohlmeyer, and Professor in Computer Science in the School of Computer Science and Statistics, Declan O'Sullivan.
THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
● Challenges in processing data from the 16th and 17th Century
● Utilising knowledge graphs for interpreting phrases, spelling and grammar
● Recovering stories of Ireland’s forgotten women
● Creating processes and digital archives for future researchers
● Crossovers in learning from interdisciplinary approaches
GUEST DETAILS
Professor Jane Ohlmeyer is Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin and Chair of the Irish Research Council, which funds frontier research across all disciplines. Jane was the founding Head of the School of Histories and Humanities, Trinity’s first Vice-President for Global Relations (2011-14) and Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute (2015-20).
Jane is an expert on the New British and Atlantic Histories and has published extensively on early modern Irish and British history. She is the author or editor of numerous articles and 13 books. Jane has been the Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI for 25 research and research infrastructure projects with awards totalling c.€22 million from national, European and international funders.
Declan O’Sullivan is a Professor in Computer Science at the School of Computer Science and Statistics, and is a co-applicant Principal Investigator in the ADAPT SFI Research Centre. Prof. O’Sullivan and his team’s research in Knowledge Graph Techniques, which extracts, transforms and integrates data, is central to this relationship between data and machine learning.
Since joining TCD from industry in 2001, Declan has established himself as an international research leader in his field: authoring 260+ scientific peer-reviewed papers and international Journals; being a member of 3 journal editorial boards and having undertaken 12+ chair roles in IEEE and IFIP conferences over the years. He has won competitive research funding as PI and Co-PI of approximately 7.8M euro. He was elected as a Fellow in Trinity College Dublin in 2019 in recognition for the quality of his contributions.
MORE INFORMATION
Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre
For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie/
KEYWORDS
#knowledgegraph #ireland #data #history #17thcentury #archives #AI
ADAPT Radio
When your AI agent books a rental car, it needs your driver's license, credit card, calendar access and permission to message your contacts—creating what Meredith Whittaker calls "fundamental backdoor" threatening apps like Signal.
At ADAPT ADVANCE 2025, Signal Foundation President and AI Now Institute co-founder Meredith Whittaker joined Dr Abeba Birhane for a fireside chat dissecting why "bigger is better" serves hyperscaler monopolies not evidence.
How AI companions weaponise 1970s Eliza manipulation psychology on minors, why "open source AI" became marketing arbitrage exploiting software community goodwill, and what sovereign AI actually requires beyond anxiety signifiers—including democratic governance, trusted local data, and answers to "who owns deployment infrastructure?"
THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
* “Bigger is better" AI myth protects hyperscaler monopolies, not users
* Agentic AI demands sweeping permissions creating existential privacy backdoor threats
* AI companions weaponize known psychological manipulation tactics against vulnerable minors
* "Open source AI" exploits software community goodwill without delivering benefits
* Sovereign AI requires democratic governance beyond geopolitical anxiety signaling today
GUEST DETAILS
Meredith Whittaker is President of the Signal Foundation and co-founder of the AI Now Institute—one of the most trusted voices in AI ethics, transparency and accountability. Her decade of work has profoundly shaped ethical AI frameworks, bringing impact from academia to industry.
At Google, Meredith was core organizer for the 2018 Google Walkouts where over 20,000 employees protested military AI use (Project Maven), surveillance, and sexual misconduct—forcing Google to discontinue their military contract and oust implicated VPs.
As AI Now Institute co-founder, her research cuts through AI hype, grounding discussions on what truly matters: power concentration, labour exploitation in AI pipelines, and protecting fundamental rights including privacy and rule of law.
Her work exposes corporate capture, debunks "bigger is better" myths, reveals sustainability costs, and provides foundational open source research.
Meredith has provided congressional testimony to US Congress and leads Signal—one of the most trusted privacy-friendly messaging apps. Her background building large-scale network measurement systems at Google gives her unique expertise in data quality, evaluation criteria manipulation, and how benchmark gaming serves hyperscaler interests over real-world effectiveness.
Dr Abeba Birhane is founder and director of the AI Accountability Lab at Trinity College Dublin. Her groundbreaking research examines AI datasets, uncovering how larger datasets contain higher hateful content and pornography—debunking "bigger dissipates problems" assumptions.
Her work on benchmarks and measurement demonstrates that purpose-built smaller models often outperform larger models in real-world contexts with appropriate contextual data.
Connect with the guests:
* Signal Foundation: signal.org
* AI Now Institute: ainowinstitute.org
* AI Accountability Lab: Contact through ADAPT Centre
* Follow their research and writing on AI accountability
MORE INFORMATION
You can learn more about the Sea-Scan project and other cutting-edge research at Trinity College Dublin's ADAPT Centre here: www.adaptcentre.ie/
Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the ADAPT Centre
For more information about ADAPT's groundbreaking AI and data analytics research visit www.adaptcentre.ie/
KEYWORDS
#TrustedAI #AIaccountability #AIprivacy #AIgovernance #MeredithWhittaker
