Is AI Pessimism Feeding the Powerful? (with Rumman Chowdhury)
Is AI Pessimism Feeding the Powerful? (with Rumman Chowdhury)  
Podcast: The Rip Current
Published On: Wed Oct 15 2025
Description: Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, an AI ethicist and the head of Humane Intelligence, is sick of all this complaining. Not because there isn’t plenty to complain about — in this episode we unpack a host of horrors that AI and the companies who make it are foisting on all of us — but because she believes that the fatalism of AI criticism inadvertently empowers powerful corporations. Dr. Chowdhury, who has worked at Accenture, Twitter, and served as a science envoy for the Biden administration, has an unusual background for an AI builder — political science and quantitative social sciences — and her work on the inherent biases within algorithms has led her to believe that the solutions are far more complicated than just switching the whole thing off. Enjoy!Thanks for listening to The Rip Current by Jacob Ward! Feel free to share this episode with someone you feel needs a new perspective on AI.00:00 Introduction: The Pessimism Around AI00:36 Meet Dr. Rumman Chowdhury: AI Ethicist02:00 The Role of Political Science in AI04:26 Challenges in Creating Ethical AI06:20 The Myth of Political Neutrality in Algorithms14:10 From Accenture to Twitter: A Journey in AI16:17 The Twitter Experience: Ethics and Algorithms19:07 The Impact of Social Media Algorithms26:18 The Audacity of Modern AI Developments33:12 The Podcast’s Initial Concept and NPC Idea34:23 Nostalgia Culture and the Creative Class36:09 The Loop: AI and Legal Precedents36:58 Algorithmic Choice and User Agency38:59 Right to Repair and Algorithmic Agency40:23 Exit, Voice, and Loyalty in Tech45:47 Algorithmic Amplification of Right-Wing Content01:03:13 The Hero Narrative and Collective Movements01:05:13 Conclusion and Call to Action This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe