Discriminatory instincts, encoded into flawed databases, handed back to police as algorithmic confirmation. Dr. Asvatha Babu maps the injustice baked into one of the world's most expansive surveillance systems—a system most Indians don't know exists.

India is Building Surveillance Infrastructure on Broken Data and Bad Policing

Each layer of the stack amplifies the errors of the layer beneath it, writes Dr. Asvatha Babu.

techpolicy.press

Discriminatory instincts, encoded into flawed databases, handed back to police as algorithmic confirmation. Dr. Asvatha Babu maps the injustice baked into one of the world's most expansive surveillance systems—a system most Indians don't know exists.

India is Building Surveillance Infrastructure on Broken Data and Bad Policing

Each layer of the stack amplifies the errors of the layer beneath it, writes Dr. Asvatha Babu.

techpolicy.press

Coming out of hibernation to plug this piece I wrote for @techpolicypress.bsky.social on why we need to pay attention to the steady expansion of surveillance infrastructure in India. www.techpolicy.press/india-is-bui...

India is Building Surveillance Infrastructure on Broken Data and Bad Policing

Each layer of the stack amplifies the errors of the layer beneath it, writes Dr. Asvatha Babu.

techpolicy.press

that's what I'm saying! medium.com/@fireflyclas...

Stop telling me I don’t know enough about AI.

Okay, this is very India-coded but I’ve had enough of people telling me, despite my 6-yr long PhD where I went pretty deep into…

medium.com

ali alkhatib@ali-alkhatib.com · 4mo ago

maybe the hottest take is that assuming CS people have some elevated profound understanding of AI is dangerously faulty. CS training generally doesn't require any development of analytical skills or theoretical foundations to interrogate and study power and administrative violence.

While the U.S. currently houses 54% of the world's hyperscale data centers, the infrastructure is expanding into countries like India, where the rush for land is sparking protests https://restofworld.org/2026/india-data-center-tax-holiday-farmer-protests-ai/?utm_campaign=row-social

Don't worry tech cos being chased out of US states, our beloved pm is happy to lend our population dense, resource scarce country for your ugly, energy guzzling, data centers. edition.cnn.com/2026/04/12/c...

Data centers are spreading around the country. Now, data-center bans are, too | CNN

In the coming weeks, Maine could be the first state in the nation to pass a temporary moratorium on new data centers. At least four other states are poised to do the same. Proponents say these bills a...

edition.cnn.com

This recent trend of media coverage fawning over "frugal AI" makes me think of the way people love to valorize indian "jugaad" without recognising the serious systemic problems that necessitate such improvisational work.

Rest of World@restofworld.org · 4mo ago

Startups in India and Indonesia are bypassing expensive Silicon Valley chips to build "frugal AI" models that run on low-end devices and offline hardware https://restofworld.org/2026/frugal-ai-big-tech/?utm_campaign=row-social&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social

trying to make my way out of post phd disassociation from thinking too deeply and i'm being tested by the cosmos

man, i really took my US institutional access to research journals and databases for granted when i was a student

Writing on the wall.

I'm not saying STEM grads being exposed to humanities/critical studies etc will solve all or even many of the current problems with big tech but I'm having a hard time with the idea that it won't help at all. Who has done research on this? What can I read to understand this better?

Over at the newsletter I wrote about the unholy scourge that is "CEO said a thing!" journalism:

"CEO Said A Thing!" Journalism

"CEO said a thing!" journalism involves parroting the claims of a business leader or executive with absolutely no context, correction, or challenge whatsoever, no matter how elaborate the delusion.

karlbode.com

Happy to announce (belatedly) that I'm #PhDone! I defended my dissertation "Guilty Faces: Localizing Surveillance through the Cultural Construction of Facial Recognition" last month.

I assure you that you do not actually have to contribute to the great American Casteist NRI vs Racist White Person debates of 2024.. You don't have to speak up for your "Indian friends" and definitely don't have to learn and spout half-baked nonsense about the US immigration process.

Petition to ban the word oomf on bsky

Someone smarter than me needs to write a paper calculating the point at which the informational landscape becomes so polluted with garbage that the genAI hallucination problem becomes unsolvable by fact checking mechanisms.

Hard relate! This whole PhD has been a process of catching up with "basic" theory and foundational scholarship that everyone else already seems to know and is able to pull out (correctly) at whim.

André Sarli, Revolusarli@revolusarli.bsky.social · 2y ago

time. And so I was focused on acquiring practical skills and couldn't focus on some basic academic structures. My PhD was basically a lot of catching up with literature and methodologies from #Sociology and #STS. Now I am doing the same with Critical #AI .

Randomly meeting one of my to-be mentors at a random event and getting a chance to speak with her for 10 mins (which was all the time she needed to convince me that I'm meant to do a PhD instead of job hunting in the DC think tank circuit)

Dan Quintana@dsquintana.bsky.social · 2y ago

What's the moment of luck that's had the biggest impact for your academic career? For me, it was how I wouldn't have gotten a PhD fellowship if it wasn't for the 1st-ranked person declining, which meant that I was awarded the fellowship as 2nd-ranked applicant. That was my last shot at a PhD.

American hubris is really a difficult net to avoid huh? However thoughtful their work is & however they're placed in the socio-cultural hierarchy in the US, you eventually get hit with the casual "we're the best/greatest/insert other superlative in the world" when you least expect it

Dropped by Twitter after a while to see what I missed and Xed outta there so fast. Indian men having a normal one over there to looks like.. I am not looking forward to the day the hordes get here.

Googling Stuff: Then v Now.

Companies are so surveillance-pilled and data hungry that they are trying to get everyone to believe that one of the worst aspects of modern technology—that you are constantly surveilled—is now a thing you should wholeheartedly embrace and integrate into every aspect of your existence.

My biggest problem with gen AI is that by the time the tech "gets better" (whatever that means), AI slop and hallucinations would have already permeated the information ecosystem, and the damage to the verifiability of facts will already be done.

Asvatha@asvatha.bsky.social · 2y ago

One of the many reasons why focusing on "technical flaws" can often be counter productive for effective critiques of new tech. It allows companies to just say that the tech is not perfect *yet* (and that a little more time and money would get it there).

Yes and also, just like the earlier form of the question, it's more complicated than have/have not. Case in point: the number of Indian origin bot accounts on Twitter spewing chatgpt slop as engagement bait in replies to viral tweets while being questionably informed.

José Marichal@josemarichal.bsky.social · 2y ago

The digital divide question has shifted from the "online" vs "not online" to the "relatively well informed"/"mired in information sludge"

the feminine urge to repost every #PhDone skeet with the caption me when

Get my family to stop giving their pics to an AI app for fun challenge

I have interacted with precisely ZERO T****r Sw*ft posts in my life and yet both my bluesky and Twitter feeds are saturated with her. Am I just the exact target audience? Is this happening for everyone else? How many accounts do I block before it stops?

Alright cool now that we're all agreed that gen AI is real, dangerous, fake, and sucks, let's not lose sight of the fact that AI is more than LLMs and chatbots.