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Who owns AI with Meredith Whittaker from Signal
Monday, 10 November, 2025
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
