Responsible AI in Action: Beyond Policy Regimes

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast

#Science #Social Sciences

33:02

Ian Ramirez has spent his career finding innovative ways to make mouth-watering meals for clients—and one of his latest ingredients is artificial intelligence. As a chef, culinary consultant, and co-founder of Mad Honey Culinary Studio and Goods, he’s the guy that brands hire to get their product on restaurant menus, and make it look and taste good—whether it’s a sauce, syrup, spread, or spice. Ian uses AI to tackle the repetitive, time-consuming parts of menu planning for commercial kitchens, and help clients visualize new concepts before anything gets sliced or diced. It’s a tool that augments his creativity, he says, and makes prep less of a grind. On this episode, Ian talks about how AI is helping him and his team spend more time doing what they love: cooking and getting creative in the kitchen. Learn more about Mad Honey Culinary Studio and Goods at madhoneyculinary.com Learn more about Dropbox Dash—the AI universal search and knowledge management tool from Dropbox—at workingsmarter.ai/dash ~ ~ ~ Working Smarter is brought to you by Dropbox Dash—the AI universal search and knowledge management tool from Dropbox. Learn more at workingsmarter.ai/dash You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube Music , Amazon Music , or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard : producer Dominic Girard , sound engineer Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to our illustrators Justin Tran and Fanny Luor , marketing consultant Meggan Ellingboe , and editorial support from Catie Keck. Our theme song was composed by Doug Stuart . Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga. Thanks for listening!…

about a year ago

MP3•Episode home

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Cheryl Hagan can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/02/responsible-ai-in-action-beyond-policy-regimes/. About the post: Researchers at RAIL are acting in good faith and their research requires them to negotiate and make choices that result in both inclusion and exclusion. They are also making choices that have been structured by colonial legacies.

171 episodes

Responsible AI in Action: Beyond Policy Regimes

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast

published about a year ago

MP3•Episode home

171 episodes

#Science #Social Sciences

All episodes

1
Collaborating Bodies: Community Gardens and Food Forests in Central Texas

12 days ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Nadia Luis can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/09/collaborating-bodies-community-gardens-and-food-forests-in-central-texas/. About the post: Soils depend upon their ability to form relationships with a myriad of organisms. Like the human bodies that interact with it, soils are complex and worldly agents. Soils have different textures, grit, coarseness, porosity, specialization, various parent materials, as well as different memories...if soils are complex living organisms, then perhaps they can be considered to have a body. If soils have a body, then how does my human body collaborate with the soil’s body?…

1
Feeling Adrift in the Ethnography of a Laboratory

14 days ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Mauricio Baez can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/09/feeling-adrift-in-the-ethnography-of-a-laboratory/. About the post: This reflection explores the possibilities of broadening our perspective on laboratory work by incorporating an analysis of the ordinary dynamics that shape the surrounding spaces. I propose that such an examination can reveal an affective network shared between scientists and their environment, which is essential for understanding how the relationships necessary for research are produced and sustained. This is especially relevant for those of us interested in understanding the geopolitics of scientific knowledge in situated contexts, particularly within regions of the Global South.…

1
Can We Make Space for Technique?: Politics and Play in Digital Coaching

19 days ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Martin Jesper Larsson can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/09/can-we-make-space-for-technique-politics-and-play-in-digital-coaching/. About the post: In Sweden, youth soccer is expected to be fun –but in a specific way. Rooted in the 19th-century idealization of amateurism over professionalism, fun in Swedish youth soccer has come to emphasize spontaneity, inclusion, and teamwork (Bachner, 2023). Over time, these amateur ideals have been woven into a broader political agenda in which youth sport is understood as a vehicle for public health, social integration and the cultivation of social capital (Doherty et al., 2013; Ekholm, 2018). I hadn’t really perceived the problematic nature of these notions of fun and its broader political framework until I started working as a translator for the digital coaching app Supercoach, in 2018. Developed from the talent development methodology of IF Brommapojkarna –Sweden’s most prolific soccer academy– Supercoach aimed to improve grassroots clubs through structured content and a clear pedagogical pr (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)…

1
Odors, Leakage and Containment: The Story of a Southern California Landfill

21 days ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Emma Jahoda-Brown can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/09/odors-leakage-and-containment-the-story-of-a-southern-california-landfill/. About the post: My interest in Chiquita Canyon and the community of Val Verde grew out of my involvement with the community opposition to the landfill expansion in 2017. Now, as an anthropology student, my focus has shifted to how the sensory experience of Chiquita Canyon is interpreted, classified, regulated and elusive to regulatory agencies, community members and landfill operators and how these experiences come into conflict. Community members can use odor complaints filed through regulatory agencies to argue the case that the landfill is causing harm. These odor complaints, however, are highly contested by landfill operators as it is difficult to prove that odors are coming from the landfill as opposed to another source.…

1
For the Flourishing of Feminist Sciences: Distributing Seeds from the RAFeCT Network

26 days ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Clarissa Reche can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/08/for-the-flourishing-of-feminist-sciences-distributing-seeds-from-the-rafect-network/. About the post: In a political and scientific landscape that is becoming ever more arid, tense, and hostile to the struggles for transformation and social justice, it is with great joy and enthusiasm that we present this series of four posts written by Brazilian feminist anthropologists and intended for academic readers specializing in STS, as well as for readers in broader feminist networks and activist/grassroots communities. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)…

1
The Politics of Translation Across Policy, Grant Proposal, and Agricultural Landscapes

28 days ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Cydney Seigerman can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/08/the-politics-of-translation-across-policy-grant-proposal-and-agricultural-landscapes/. About the post: In June, we submitted a modified scope and budget to align with new requirements and policy priorities while striving to maintain the overall objective: to support producers to expand sustainable agricultural practices and access to related markets. We are still waiting for the USDA’s decision on what I call Project A version 2.0. In this post, I examine the dynamics of transdisciplinary agricultural research in the context of recent, stark changes in political priorities. I consider the mobilization of the term “underserved producers” to shape research objectives and activities through processes of translation from government policy priorities to grant proposals and participant-recruitment efforts.…

1
Hawa-laat: Polluted Air in Delhi, India

7 weeks ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Vasundhara Bhojvaid can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/08/hawa-laat-polluted-air-in-delhi-india/. About the post: Experts ascertain that air pollution is a regional phenomenon engulfing the Indo-Gangetic Plain that encompasses northern and eastern India (including Delhi), eastern Pakistan, southern Nepal, and almost all of Bangladesh (Hameed et al. 2000; Ramanathan and Raman 2005). This regional assessment too requires the mediation of human-made science that seeks to quantify the effects of materials in the air inhaled by breathing bodies. However, in popular discourse the air pollution problem in the Indo-Gangetic Plain remains a largely urban issue. My intent then is to interrogate how Delhi became a hawaalat since 2014, a city that seemingly encloses air in popular imagination, and not lose sight of the slippery and ephemeral planetary circulations of air. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)…

1
Patch-“working” the Field: Methodological Reorientations During a Global Pandemic

8 weeks ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Anushree Gupta can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/07/patch-working-the-field-methodological-reorientations-during-a-global-pandemic/. About the post: My research has been a culmination of witnessing, participating, and archiving otherwise invisible acts of care, hopeful experimentation, and provisional collaboration that enabled urban survival in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Paying attention to provisional and patchworked modes of response, and offering a partial yet grounded view, created a critical vantage point to examine the evolution of digital platformisation through different phases of the pandemic and beyond. Auto-ethnographic curiosities about the normalization of digital platforms for accessing necessities during the pandemic led me to ask what exactly was being platformised.…

1
Technics in the Dust

9 weeks ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Spencer Kaplan can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/07/technics-in-the-dust/. About the post: Each year, thousands of Bay-Area tech workers attend Burning Man: an annual art festival in the Nevada desert. In this article, an ethnographer of AI development joins his interlocutors at the event and reflects on its resonances with the AI industry he studies. He argues that Burning Man’s unique environment and otherworldly experiences can help us think about the AI industry’s aspirations for civilizational transformation.…

1
The Sovereignty of Wearables: Indigenous Health and Digital Colonialism in Taiwan

10 weeks ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Aaron Su can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/07/the-sovereignty-of-wearables-indigenous-health-and-digital-colonialism-in-taiwan/. About the post: While the language of an easy technological “solution” certainly cannot undo the history of Indigenous injustice in Taiwan, it is important to remember that new technologies always also bring with them novel ways of imagining material relationships—of ownership, use, and control. To stay with such possibilities would entail not just denouncing health wearables altogether or aspiring toward a technology-free past, but would allow us to locate different ways that the trajectory of wearables might be changed to emphasize new relations of governance and self-determination.…

1
“I Just Want to Be Happy!”: Singing, Scrolling, and Healing in a Chinese Senior’s Digital Life

11 weeks ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Hui Wen can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/07/i-just-want-to-be-happy-singing-scrolling-and-healing-in-a-chinese-seniors-digital-life/. About the post: Like many older adults in China, Auntie Zhang has found her own way into the digital world. Her fascination with short videos is not about escaping reality, but her way of engaging with reality and making sense of it. When she scrolls, sings along, and lip-syncs, she holds onto her core values that life has often shaken but not erased. The sentimental ballads drifting through these online videos give shape to frustrations and bafflement that rarely find words. Although dismissed by outsiders as shallow or “tacky,” these short clips offer their creators something that lingers beyond fleeting internet trends: a way to reconcile with the past, to momentarily soften its sharp edges, and to craft a version of life that feels both bearable and expressive. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)…

1
“Excavating” Cosmotechnical Diversity in Colombia and Sweden

12 weeks ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Eric Orlowski and Juan Forero-Duarte can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/07/excavating-cosmotechnical-diversity-in-colombia-and-sweden/. About the post: "Excavating" Cosmotechnical Diversity in Colombia and Sweden offers an ethnographic comparative study of metaphorical Silicon Valley's within local contexts of Sweden and Columbia using Yuk Hui's (2017) cosmotechnics as a conceptual framework.…

1
Simulating Systemic Violence: Game Design as Speculative Ethnography in "Seven Days of Destruction"

12 weeks ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Mayshu (Meixu) Zhan can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/07/simulating-systemic-violence-game-design-as-speculative-ethnography-in-seven-days-of-destruction/. About the post: “Seven Days of Destruction” is a speculative game that confronts the structural logics of gun violence in the U.S.—poverty, miseducation, addiction—not through realism but through allegory and constraint. Set in a surreal environment of surveillance and coercion, players navigate ethical compromise and systemic complicity. Designed in the wake of campus shootings, the game merges procedural rhetoric with speculative ethnography, asking: what if the unplayable conditions of real life could be felt, not just represented? This post reflects on game design as method and politics, where playing the system becomes a mode of critique.…

1
Smart Wallets and the Shifting Boundaries of Trust in Decentralized Finance

13 weeks ago

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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Kate Zogaj can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/06/smart-wallets-and-the-shifting-boundaries-of-trust-in-decentralized-finance/. About the post: This article explores how smart wallets not only reflect changing technological norms but also reveal deeper social and political dynamics. Drawing on themes of delegated trust, infrastructure politics, and usability, it asks what kinds of financial agency are being enabled—or foreclosed—as DeFi (Decentralized Finance) tools move from niche platforms to mainstream adoption.…

1
Submarine Cyborgs: At Sea with Haraway and Jue

13 weeks ago