Humbled to share this piece today covering the insidious Brahminical and colonial genealogies of AI surveillance and facial recognition tech in Hindutva India (a short-form version of my senior thesis)—read below / DM me re any access issues ⬇️
🎓 AHH! Graduaaaated this week from Harvard with High Honors in History & Literature and CS, + a secondary in South Asian Studies 🥹💫
So blessed to now be onto
@Cambridge_Uni
for an MPhil in Ethics of AI, Data, & Algorithms this fall, w/ a
@LeverhulmeCFI
Postgrad Studentship!
Beyond grateful to share this piece for
@logic_magazine
— a companion to my short film, ALL EYES ON US. An intimate reflection on trans (hyper)visibility, complicity, & surveillance. Indebted to worlds of love, glamor, grief, & wisdom shared with me ❤️🔥🇵🇸
Nikhil Dharmaraj wraps up their senior thesis with an 8-minute film that overlays a neoliberal ‘celebration’ of International Transgender Day of Visibility with gendered face-tracking software used by countless, recognizable brands and corporations.
UC class-privileged/rich Indian diaspora: we srsly need to stop claiming the model minority myth as oppression & instead start redistributing + unlearning the violent anti-Blackness & erasure that this project of racial wedge politics has enabled...
So grateful to announce this panel on Mar 8, 12pm EST — DATABASES, CRIMINALITY, & POLICING by
@logic_magazine
x
@CPAProjectIndia
x
@ruha9
's Just Data Lab (and deeply humbled to share brief opening words as well among such brilliants) 💚
RSVP + SHARE:
Deeply appreciating reading & sitting with this important article on ‘Academic brahmins’ by
@SumitSamos
— incredibly relevant & accurate esp for myself & fellow brahmin-savarnas studying in progressive & anti-caste academic spaces
Awful reminder the surveillance state is lethal in its silence.
Notice how gimmicky race-scientific pop cultural artifacts (“BuzzFeed’s AI generated a Barbie from every country!”) are doing legwork, normalizing “AI” as a valid arbiter of public life, human difference, safety…
Amidst all the unthinkable violence of Monday’s inauguration, may it not get lost how Indian state has installed *10,000* “AI-powered CCTV surveillance” cameras in Ayodhya, with facial/license recognition sold as “foolproof” by Gurgaon startup Staqu ⬇️ (by
@internetfreedom
)
In the run up to Monday’s event, Ayodhya has dialled up security by stationing CCTV cams at every turn & using AI-based facial recognition to detect “suspicious activities”
We are concerned such sweeping surveillance will jeopardise the privacy of millions of visitors.🧵👇1/8
In San Jose, near where I grew up.
As those of us who are beneficiaries of the tech industry know, such violence is quotidian & routinized within the internal geography of Silicon Valley (from gentrification to caste terror), and inseparable from its boomeranged genocidal reach
Some doxxing threads about me going around & while I'm grateful for support, please do *not* engage/QT/reply (even condemning feeds the algor!thm)
Please redirect that energy to stand against genocide in
#Gaza
🇵🇸
ACT:
DONATE:
Please join us for the below teach-in, FRI JAN 26, 6:30-8pm GMT!
In-person in London, or hybrid online — ahead of the spring, may we sustain momentum as CS students, tech workers, and anyone interested in organizing against digital complicity ❤️🔥🍉
RSVP:
Calling all students, workers, and anyone interested in organising against digital complicity from occupied Kashmir to Palestine. Join us for a teach-in with
@NoTechApartheid
on Friday, 26 January 2023, 6:30 - 8 pm GMT. Register here & share widely:
URGENT 🚨
Hi all! Please boost, contribute to, and share this fundraiser for a crowd-funded (graduate) fellowship to support the life-giving scholarship of the brilliant, auto-didactic
@thotscholar
for "birds of a different feather" (upcoming project):
So excited to announce the installation of THE LAUGHING ROOM, a project I contributed to over the summer at
@metalabharvard
! (shoutout to
@jonnysun
&
@ahandvanish
for being the best!)
If you're in Boston, please please come check this out!!! Hope to see you there :)
SOME NEWS: im excited to launch a new art installation i made at MIT and harvard with
@ahandvanish
!
THE LAUGHING ROOM is an artificially intelligent sitcom set that plays a laugh track based on what people in the room say.
nov 16-18! cambridge!
DETAILS:
What does it even mean to say anything, at all, about 'AI Ethics' if we are not first and foremost opposing the unthinkable, automated death-making happening before our eyes?
SO excited that
@thirunangai
amma is coming to the UK! 💕💫 Please attend, boost, share, RT. What a gift that we can learn from her brilliance 💙
TALKS:
- Cambridge: June 8 @ 5pm GMT
- Oxford: June 10 @ 6pm GMT
- London: June 13 @ 3:30pm GMT (RSVP: )
22 trips around the sun today! ☀️thank you to all my chosen family for making this life beautiful 💞
It would mean the world if folks would consider boosting/contributing (any amount!) to any of the ongoing fundraisers below, supporting dear ones—with deep gratitude and love:
:) little life update: so grateful to announce that I'm spending September in Barcelona as the HeyHuman! artist-in-residence at
@domesticstream
💌 working on a forthcoming video gallery piece around racialized + trans (hyper)visibility, surveillance, complicity, and subversion!
🥹 AHH— so excited to share this cover I got the privilege of modeling for earlier this month! Wildly grateful to have played a small part in bringing this gorgeous story to life 🌸💌🌟
JUST HAPPY TO BE HERE (Out Jan 2024), by
@NaomiKanakia
@HarperCollins
🤍
📸: Liam Woods
🚨🚨 URGENT: Malem Thongam is a trans activist from Manipur, now on DAY 15 of her hunger strike to end the ongoing violence in Manipur. The state has neglected this brave fight, so it is on us to spread awareness. BOOST+REPOST!
@KhuraiSanta
#peaceinmanipur
#supportmalemthongam
💙 What a privilege to register for this Aug 3 workshop on caste by
@TanyaA875163
: (proceeds to Gaza)
Fellow brahmin-savarnas, join me in supporting this work—any prospective attendees for whom it’s helpful, would be so happy to cover your fee. DMs open!
We're back with more workshops 🥳🥳 Come sign up for "What is Caste" with Dr. Shaista Patel
@TanyaA875163
who co-founded the UC Collective for Caste Abolition
@UCC4CA
👏👏 Sign up in the Linktree in our link in bio.
And, with deep acknowledgment of the immense caste/class privilege that has opened many doors for me in this rigged system of academia — and the eternal intention to build a life founded on care, humility, redistribution, & solidarity instead.
See you soon, UK! ❤️🔥
Horrified at today’s atrociously racist attacks on Dr. Gebru — unfortunately not aberrant but paradigmatic of the genocidal, zionist, anti-Black, brahminical ethos of this “AI” field...
As grad students, let us continue to take her principled clarity as an exemplar & lodestar 🇵🇸
Indebted, grateful, and accountable to the labor + community knowledge of Dalit-Bahujan feminists that continuously paves the way for these convos; the Muslim families (now dear friends) who shared their stories with me; &
@internetfreedom
@karwanemohabbat
for their organizing
I graduate with infinite gratitude for my chosen family—the people who have taught me how to live, love, and create within these institutions from a place of care, humility, and ethics. This degree is for you 🤍🤍🤍
so grateful for this powerful example 🇵🇸🩵
Did the same today for an academic conference in Germany. Even as early-stage grad students, we can & must be principled in our solidarity & where we invest our labor + research.
#BoycottGermany
🚨 URGENT: LOOKING FOR JOURNALIST/REPORTER LEADS
Student organizers I’ve spoken to at
@Fraternity_DU
have asked for prominent natl/intl outlets to cover their brave protest against the fascist CAA in India, being intentionally neglected by media.
DM with leads. Share/RT widely.
Deeply concerned by the trend of AI image-generated men by ethnicity…
I know those threads are meant as jokes, but in the process, we are culturally priming ourselves to eventually accept “AI” as a valid arbiter of constructed social categories like race, ethnicity, etc 🫠
@Muralisvelan
Wow, this is ridiculously bad-faith, and disgustingly common for us as savarnas to endlessly claim victimhood and innocence behind gender and other identities. Solidarity with you Prof., and your critical caste analysis which remains incredibly important & instructive for us all
So grateful for these reminders & deep ethical clarity always 🤍
*Esp* for fellow brahmin+savarna academics/grad students, how easily we become experts on brahminism, Hindutva, occupation after reading Ambedkar once, while leaving our family networks of deep complicity intact?
Some of the most gorgeous and urgent writing, required reading ⬇️✨
Honored to have been learning & citing this brilliance, and so excited it’s out in the world now too 🤍 love you Sahiba!
My MA thesis got published as a 2-part series if was interested 🌻:
“The ally must die: Theorizing a politics of death and unbodiment”:
“Reading Sikhi and transness together: Theorizing a politics of death and unbodiment”:
@AggiHnic
@philipsonicare
& are really good resources put together by Palestinian organizers (also, part of the movement works to avoid using the term "conflict" as a euphemism for the occupation)!
With special thanks to
@stoplapdspying
& all the Black, Dalit, Muslim, Palestinian, Indigenous, feminist/queer/trans organizers, coalitions, + communities whom such convos must always be indebted and accountable to. In solidarity & deep gratitude always—may these systems burn ♥️
So grateful to be presenting the third topic
@DesirableAI
, moderated by the incredible
@mayameme
— on the history of biometric surveillance in India up to Hindutva FRT & towards an abolitionist ethics of AI that centers my/our Brahminical complicities in digital violence
What does a 'people-centered' AI look like in Sub-Saharan Africa? How is 'mechanical intelligence' depicted in Arabic culture? How is facial recognition tech related to Brahminical colonialism in India? We'll be covering these questions and more at the
#ManyWorldsofAI
#conference
We can & must disrupt in ALL our spheres of influence, particularly in the wake of the damning 972 report. In classrooms, seminars, conferences, workshops.
This work must be more than a signature or a statement. Our pressure cannot diminish.
Also — the appeal to (false!) professional/medical credibility via a stereotypically N. Indian savarna surname is an urgent reminder why we (Brahmin-savarna folks) need to practice caste accountability in tech & uplift critical caste/tech studies…
See
@Muralisvelan
’s syllabus!
LLMs shouldn't be used to give medical advice. Who will be held accountable when things inevitably go sideways?
Also, this techno-saviorism crap is absolute BS -- helping "economically disadvantaged" people with AI is a myth.
married life is honestly a lot more difficult than people realize. it takes work to make a house into a home. so proud that
@bhargypoo
and i have made it work though, through thick and thin ♥️
One of the most important things I’ve read. So excited for the work enclosed, per today’s panel conversation — please please take a moment to sit with this editorial note & follow
@logic_magazine
for this brilliant next issue 🤍
✨ supa dupa skies: move slow and heal things now available for pre-order !
“This issue heralds the dawn of a new era for Logic(s) and we plan to do something very different than counting up falling sky Chicken Little style.”
long form editorial note ⬇️
ATTN h*rvard mutuals: pls sign on to prevent the establishment of this disgusting course literally teaching students how to build algos for data-driven POLICING?! ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️
Wow.
Talking to
@bhargypoo
about how platonic friendship can feel just as deep + raw as romance; how society is weirdly obsessed w/ romantic and sexual relationships; what it‘s like to have a 3am deep convo w/ a friend, when it feels like nothing else exists in the world but...
🤩 So thrilled that this is now out — read this incisive ethnography of Delhi police!!
@ShwangsNarayan
's words are always a gift, so grateful to call you a dear mentor and friend ♥️
last day in california & thinking about how much my relationship to home has evolved over the last few years…i actually think i’ve *started* to figure out how to manage being here in a way that’s realistic but also allows for my own joy :)
Staqu’s JARVIS software makes automatic matches from a criminal database of 800,000, an algorithm created in concert w/ the UP police department (see
@glorious_gluten
’s brilliant work on the violently brahminical history of police databases and modern day digital surveillance)
In the spirit of unsettling the historical violence in our lineages and dismantling our complicity in mass digital death: please go beyond just reading this.
Amplify the works of incredible folks above & materially support orgs
@internetfreedom
@ASEEM_India
@karwanemohabbat
to hammer into young people, from K to college, the notion that we can’t ALL have these constructed “good” things, bc there somehow isn’t enough for us all to lead plentiful lives in this capitalist world — sold to us as just some unfortunate fact of life. but like,,,
Staqu — the same startup whose founder specifically dreamed of creating the “Palantir” of India, now touting a (spurious) “99.7% accuracy”
Meanwhile, Hindutva commentators are celebrating this software as the “AI Hanuman,” (!?) a supposed protector of their genocidal jubilee
not to mention the ableism classism, & white supremacy inherent in quantifying “intelligence” (w/e that even means), esp considering that constructions of “success” both in & out of school are rooted solely in wealth/access/privilege rather than “hard work”
grades and money are both FAKE, you can give more As, you can print more currency...? it’s such a carefully-constructed lie that these things are necessarily finite, that there just isn’t enough to go around. abolish grades & wealth...
no like the time i spend in college getting ready each morning alone in front of the mirror is easily the most sacred part of my day…i miss it so much ⭐️
Above all, I aim to write and (un)learn w/ ongoing reflexivity, accountability, and humility, from my own positionality of caste privilege and family wealth from Silicon Valley—with the intention of interrogating my own passivity and urging others like me to do the same
center liberation — bearing in mind self-liberation IS collective liberation & collective liberation IS self-liberation.
enacting your own deeply personal journey of liberation is one of the most radical, revolutionary things you can do.
(all thanks to
@bhargypoo
for this 💖)
Berkman Klein Fellow
@uhlily
is exploring how algorithms distribute power between people. Learn more about how she is working to bring ethics into machine learning in this interview with
@nikdharmaraj
and Julia Pan.
tldr Silicon Valley’s fascist reach is global. Computing tech is a grave part of this story.
As savarnas of Hindu descent in the tech diaspora, the blood of this genocidal violence is on our hands in more ways than 1. How are we organizing against this complicity close to home?
Posting for a friend— BOOST ⬇️
PAID GIG (Remote): Looking for a Tribal person from Northeast India who can set up an interview with an Indigenous traditional healer from their community, and translate it into English.
Apply on this form by 21 April:
Thank you so much to those who attended + brilliant speakers for their wisdom, critique, & hope. For a video recording & resource guide:
as
@UpFromTheCracks
said, “solidarity is a very concrete thing” so do support orgs on-the-ground *materially* if able!
Especially for those of us who occupy any level of privilege or proximity within the violent worlds of tech, computing, & Silicon Valley, our responsibility is immense & urgent
Those of us with complicity in / wealth from / ties to tech & Silicon Valley need to be making radical interventions, the violence is happening right in front of us & in our name.
And always open to doing that accountability work together; DMs open 🤍
no like the time i spend in college getting ready each morning alone in front of the mirror is easily the most sacred part of my day…i miss it so much ⭐️
please consider joining us at The YX Foundation (rolling deadline)!! ⬇️🤩
we're organizing for radical futures around technology and building a hybrid coalition-design lab at the intersection of deep tech & critical race theory :) feel free to DM with questions!!
The YX Foundation is looking for team leads and members passionate about the intersection of deep technology and critical race theory!
#TheYXFoundation
#AI
#ML
#DeepTech
you two and your stories. And how it feels afterwards, in the silence that follows after your conversation has ended — struck (maybe for the first time?) by the feeling of being truly seen + known by someone else.
Friendship really is love, damn