Asad's online home
TL; DR - Aid funding is diminishing. I see a new playbook emerging for scaling social justice: build products people love, grow incomes, master the institutional inflection point, transfer stewardship, shift culture. That’s how impact scales and sticks. (12 min read 3,013 words)
TL; DR - A write-up of my lecture to MSc students at University College London. (27 min read 6,794 words)
TL; DR - AI systems enhance human autonomy if we deliberately design them that way. This piece proposes one piece of that puzzle: ensuring the data that underpins AI models is bespoke, and owned and stewarded by those represented in the data. (15 min read 2,802 words)
TL; DR - To unlock the promise of freedom of speech, we need to pair it with the duty to be constructive. Without thoughtfulness, we have a less free, less flourishing life and world. (4 min read 894 words)
TL; DR - Imagine a world where communities nurture, own and govern their data. Community owned data could give us a better, more vibrant AI ecosystem, and rewards whose data makes AI models tick. (6 min read 1,501 words)
TL; DR - Our digital spaces are run by algorithms: they dictate what we see. The fight back againt this begins with curation. That means bringing our human agency back, to define the digital worlds we inhabit. (3 min read 696 words)
TL; DR - A plea for us to talk more about 3 things, when it comes to AI. The data (specifically, its blind spots/biases); the way AI affects human craft and connection; and why not to humanise AI with the language we use. (7 min read 1,618 words)
TL; DR - Tech products are additive, they add tasks to our lives. That's a big deal, and a big responsibility for those who build them, given our finite time on this planet. Meeting that responsibility means solving real problems, and building with restraint. (4 min read 959 words)
TL; DR - I live and work by two values - agency and commitment. When those values manifest in my day job funding and scaling tech ideas, is when I feel I'm doing the most 'good'. (6 min read 1,536 words)
TL; DR - I listened to the radio in my late teens and early 20s, as much as I listen to podcasts today. They symbolise different things: both in my life, and how we think about technological progress. (4 min read 803 words)