Anna Bacciarelli and Shazeda Ahmed know more than anyone that there are only a handful of tech companies asserting dominance around the world by talking in high-level abstractions about what the future looks like. At REAL ML, they want to change that.

More like this: REAL Resistance: Who's Behind Big Brother?

This is REAL Resistance, a collection of conversations produced in collaboration with Real ML, featuring the experts and advocates who make up Real ML’s global network.

In this final conversation, Real ML executive director Anna Bacciarelli and researcher Shazeda Ahmed discuss what it takes to knit together a global community that is working to resist the material harms of big tech: the powers that be want to keep any discussion about the future of AI as vague as possible — which is why the experts that attend Real ML workshops take the time to get specific about the issues.

Further reading & resources:

• More about Real ML
• Field-building and the epistemic culture of AI safety by Shazeda Ahmed et al
• A 2024 profile on Frantz Fanon — The Guardian
• Computer-vision research powers surveillance technology, by Abeba Birhane, Ria Kalluri, et al — Nature Magazine June 2025

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Computer Says Maybe is produced by Georgia Iacovou, Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Sarah Myles, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout