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15 - Interviews: Humanity

from Part V - Machine Learning and Humanity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2026

Rebecca Fiebrink
Affiliation:
University of the Arts London
Marco Gillies
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths, University of London
Gonzalo Ramos
Affiliation:
CNRS, Sorbonne Université
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Summary

This chapter features three interviews that address ML and AI at the scale of communities, societies, and the planet. Asmelash Teka Hadgu, co-founder and CTO of Lesan, a machine translation startup focused on low-resource African languages, describes what it means in practice to build ML systems for the community you come from rather than for the languages most amenable to commercial development. He also discusses the concrete harms that arise when social media platforms lack content moderation in languages like Tigrinya, and the potential for ML to reduce maternal mortality in underserved regions. Phoenix Perry, artist and academic at the University of the Arts London, challenges the premise of "human-centered" design itself, arguing that the Anthropocene calls for a planet-centered approach and that conventional human-centered design, as practiced, serves a narrow commercial conception of the user rather than people more broadly. Rick Barraza, designer at Microsoft, draws a distinction between human-centered and what he calls "humanity-centered" design, warning that sophisticated human-centered insights are often deployed in service of addictive products, and calling for AI development guided by human dignity rather than engagement optimization.

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