The Data Fix with Dr. Mél Hogan

This episode is a recording of an event that took place at Concordia University: So an AI Data Centre is coming to your community? Don't panic! A roundtable on strategies for building community power. We discuss tactics and strategies for pushing back against Big Tech and their AI data centers -- seen as monstrosities by those who know how much humanity stands to lose by and through AI logics and their instantiations in infrastructure. Recorded June 12, 2026. Released June 29, 2026.Featuring: Adam Wilkins and Lauren Stephens Smith (Save Lorneville), Rania Masri (NC Environmental Justice Center), Simon Enoch (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives). Hosted by the Social Justice Centre.So you’re getting a data centre! Here’s what to knowhttps://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/so-youre-getting-a-data-centre-heres-what-to-know/In New Brunswick, residents battle the government over a planned AI data centrehttps://thenarwhal.ca/lorneville-ai-data-centre/Dr. Rania Masrihttps://ncejn.org/staff/dr-rania-masri/Event Sponsors: Social Justice Centre (Concordia), SCPA Student Association (SCPSA), School for Community and Public Affairs (Concordia), Climate Justice Montreal, Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Time, Technology, and Capitalism (Concordia), Confronting Emergent Dystopia Working Group (Concordia).

This episode covers the role of fiction -- literal readings and total misreadings of sci-fi -- in how they shape tech CEOs ideas about the future. Teresa Hefffernan is incredible at communicating the problems with AI today. Please listen to the podcast/lecture linked below, too, for more. Recorded June 10, 2026. Released June 15, 2026.CBC Ideas Literature Versus the AI Industryhttps://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16208906-literature-versus-ai-industryThe 2026 Wiegand Lecture featuring Teresa Heffernan — Literature Versus the AI Industry https://youtu.be/hPV-Ql_KGzM?si=XperXIzFO5ydcStUTeresa Hefffernan websitehttps://www.socialrobotfutures.com/publicationsmedia/publications/

This episode is with the amazing Valerie Veatch, director of Ghost in the Machine -- a documentary that serves as a critical takedown of "AI". It's the best argument against "AI" that I've seen, highlighting the voices of scholars across various academic disciplines. You can watch the film via the link below and listen to the director explain her process and ideas for continuing the conversation... as a trilogy. Recorded May 12, 2026. Released May 25, 2026. Ghost in the Machine 2026 • 1h 30m • Documentary • Valerie Veatch (dir)https://kinema.com/films/ghost-in-the-machine-pvxg4p Not AIhttps://notaidoc.com/

In this episode, in front of a live audience at Carleton University for their "The Ends of AI: A symposium on technopolitics and intellectual culture", I spoke about strategies and outlooks on environment justice with policy expert, Sonja Solomun. Recorded Apr 2, 2026. Released May 11, 2026.The end of accountability: How autonomous AI could supercharge climate disinformationhttps://www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/27/opinion/ai-conspiracies-climate-disinformation Polarization as the technological goal – not the errorhttps://www.mediatechdemocracy.com/all-work/polarization-as-the-technological-goal-not-the-errorFrom Tech to Justice: A Call for Environmental Justice in AIhttps://ainowinstitute.org/publications/collection/a-new-ai-lexicon-sustainabilityBeyond Technology: The Role of Information Interference in Climate and Election Obstructionhttps://www.mediatechdemocracy.com/all-work/beyond-technology-the-role-of-information-interference-in-climate-and-election-obstruction“You will be in positions that matter. Positions in which you can decide thenature and quality of other people’s lives. Your errors may be irrevocable.So when you enter those places of trust, or power, dream a little before youthink, so your thoughts, your solutions, your directions, your choices aboutwho lives and who doesn’t, about who flourishes and who doesn’t will beworth the very sacred life you have chosen to live. You are not helpless.You are not heartless. And you have time.”― Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

In this episode with Dan McQuillan, we discussed the current AI moment as/within the polycrisis, and also as a temporary period between illusion and simulation. Dan proposes a series of countermeasures to AI under the umbrella of 'decomputing'. We also spend some time talking about illusion, shame, authenticity, and a slew of other contradictions that are important to note in relation to this AI moment. Recorded Apr 7, 2026. Released Apr 27, 2026.Preprint: AI, Decomputing and the Interregnumhttps://www.danmcquillan.org/ai_decomputing_interregnum.html Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence (2022)https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai Meta Security Researcher's AI Agent Accidentally Deleted Her Emailshttps://www.pcmag.com/news/meta-security-researchers-openclaw-ai-agent-accidentally-deleted-her-emails

For this episode, I interviewed someone who asked to be made anonymous (and voice altered) in order to openly discuss their complicated feelings of regularly offloading work tasks to an AI chatbot. Is there any shame is using AI? Isn’t everyone doing it? Why would people pretend not to? Does it change you? Is it bad for the brain? Recorded Mar 22, 2026. Released Apr 13, 2026.How I Realized AI Was Making Me Stupid—and What I Do Nowhttps://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/how-i-realized-ai-was-making-me-stupidand-what-i-do-now-5862ac4dStudy Finds That People Who Entrust Tasks to AI Are Losing Critical Thinking Skillshttps://futurism.com/study-ai-critical-thinking 

In this episode, Wendy H. Wong explains the human rights implications of datafication. We talk about how data become valuable, sticky data, big tech’s encroachment on governance, our faces/selves as datapoints, and how the mundane underlies and explains so much of how data collection happens in the first place. Recorded Mar 20, 2026. Released Mar 30, 2026.Wendy H. Wong We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Agehttps://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262048576/we-the-data/Human Rights in the Digital Agehttps://youtu.be/HyLV5Tf54QM?si=y08lMREdIgYVULcGBig Tech companies govern our lives. It’s time they’re held accountable for ithttps://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-google-amazon-apple-meta-microsoft-governance-accountability/

In this episode, Olivia Guest, Iris van Rooij and Andrea Reyes Elizondo discuss why it’s important to the overall purpose and significance of the university to resist the uncritical adoption of AI in academia. The risk of AI adoption is that it’ll hollow out the institutions first, and then society at large. Recorded Feb 27, 2026. Released March 16, 2026.Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in AcademiaOlivia Guest, Marcela Suarez, Barbara Müller, Edwin van Meerkerk, Arnoud Oude Groote Beverborg, Ronald de Haan, Andrea Reyes Elizondo, Mark Blokpoel, Natalia Scharfenberg, Annelies Kleinherenbrink, Ileana Camerino, Marieke Woensdregt, Dagmar Monett, Jed Brown, Lucy Avraamidou, Juliette Alenda-Demoutiez, Felienne Hermans & Iris van Rooijhttps://philarchive.org/rec/GUEATU*the 2nd quote read on the episode:Guest, O. (2025). What Does 'Human-Centred AI' Mean?. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.19960We've been here before! What do you mean?Olivia Guest, 18 February 2026https://olivia.science/before/Summer School: Critical AI Literacies for Resisting and Reclaiminghttps://irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2026/02/18/summer-school-critical-ai-literacies-for-resisting-and-reclaiming/ and https://olivia.science/ai/ Academic Collaborations and Public Health: Lessons from Dutch Universities' Tobacco Industry Partnerships for Fossil Fuel Ties. Zenodo. Knoester, L., Pereira, A., Vanheule, L., Reyes Elizondo, A., Littlejohn, A., & Urai, A. (2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15274865Why AI transparency is not enoughhttps://www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/why-ai-transparency-is-not-enough