Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Payal Arora is a Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University and co-founder of the Inclusive AI Lab. She is a leading digital anthropologist with two decades of user experiences in the Global South to help shape inclusive AI enabled designs and policies.
About the series
Critical AI Talks invites leading AI researchers to explore the human and societal impacts of GenAI. Join us at this and other upcoming talks and learn more about the Critical AI Talks series here: csma.humanities.mcmaster.ca/our-community/critical-ai
03:25 Why do you emphasize optimism about AI (especially in the Global South)?
09:54 Small acts and incremental change
In your book From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech, you explain why youth in the Global South approach AI with cautious optimism rather than despair. How do everyday, localized uses of digital technologies create meaningful social and economic change in contexts where large political or institutional transformation feels unreachable?
18:04 Liberation vs emancipation in the age of Big Tech
If, as Rouveroy & Berns note, technology can be personally or socially liberating but not fully emancipatory, how should we understand AI’s role amid growing Big Tech dominance, eroded state sovereignty, and global inequality?
21:38 The privilege of AI pessimism and critics’s double standards
Drawing on your article The Privilege of Pessimism: The politics of despair towards the digital and the moral imperative to hope, why is refusal or withdrawal from technology often a privileged position, and how do double standards emerge when critics call for resistance while continuing to rely on dominant platforms themselves?
27:10 What does “inclusive AI cultures” mean?
Beyond access and representation, what forms of inclusion matter across AI’s full value chain, from data labor and infrastructure to design, governance, and everyday use?
33:17 Optimism about Capitalism in the AI Era
You resist simple anti-capitalist critiques of AI. How do you see the relationship between private-sector innovation and government regulation in shaping AI’s development?
42:06 The Role of Universities in the light of AI: False promises of Techno-Solutionists?
In The Next Billion Users: Digital life beyond the West, you criticized Big Tech’s false promises around educational technology. Are today’s claims about AI in universities repeating those same patterns, and how should institutions respond as AI tools become embedded in their infrastructures?
46:54 Who Is AI Really Assisting?
Is AI primarily assisting institutions and corporate actors through cost-cutting and consolidation, or can it meaningfully expand access where educational systems are failing? How do we balance structural critique with lived educational realities in the Global South?
53:08 Universities as Agents of Liberation and Colonialism
What guardrails need to be put in place to ensure that AI and universities don’t become new agents of colonialism? Or what are some principles to be followed?
57:03 Q&A
In the Global South, are everyday uses of generative AI driven more by global platforms like ChatGPT or by local models, and what determines that choice?
1:02:25 Q&A
How does your optimism about technology apply to contexts like Iran, where digital blackouts eliminate platforms for organizing? What happens when both optimism and pessimism appear to reinforce state power?
Payal Arora is a Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University and co-founder of the Inclusive AI Lab. She is a leading digital anthropologist with two decades of user experiences in the Global South to help shape inclusive AI enabled designs and policies.
About the series
Critical AI Talks invites leading AI researchers to explore the human and societal impacts of GenAI. Join us at this and other upcoming talks and learn more about the Critical AI Talks series here: csma.humanities.mcmaster.ca/our-community/critical-ai
03:25 Why do you emphasize optimism about AI (especially in the Global South)?
09:54 Small acts and incremental change
In your book From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech, you explain why youth in the Global South approach AI with cautious optimism rather than despair. How do everyday, localized uses of digital technologies create meaningful social and economic change in contexts where large political or institutional transformation feels unreachable?
18:04 Liberation vs emancipation in the age of Big Tech
If, as Rouveroy & Berns note, technology can be personally or socially liberating but not fully emancipatory, how should we understand AI’s role amid growing Big Tech dominance, eroded state sovereignty, and global inequality?
21:38 The privilege of AI pessimism and critics’s double standards
Drawing on your article The Privilege of Pessimism: The politics of despair towards the digital and the moral imperative to hope, why is refusal or withdrawal from technology often a privileged position, and how do double standards emerge when critics call for resistance while continuing to rely on dominant platforms themselves?
27:10 What does “inclusive AI cultures” mean?
Beyond access and representation, what forms of inclusion matter across AI’s full value chain, from data labor and infrastructure to design, governance, and everyday use?
33:17 Optimism about Capitalism in the AI Era
You resist simple anti-capitalist critiques of AI. How do you see the relationship between private-sector innovation and government regulation in shaping AI’s development?
42:06 The Role of Universities in the light of AI: False promises of Techno-Solutionists?
In The Next Billion Users: Digital life beyond the West, you criticized Big Tech’s false promises around educational technology. Are today’s claims about AI in universities repeating those same patterns, and how should institutions respond as AI tools become embedded in their infrastructures?
46:54 Who Is AI Really Assisting?
Is AI primarily assisting institutions and corporate actors through cost-cutting and consolidation, or can it meaningfully expand access where educational systems are failing? How do we balance structural critique with lived educational realities in the Global South?
53:08 Universities as Agents of Liberation and Colonialism
What guardrails need to be put in place to ensure that AI and universities don’t become new agents of colonialism? Or what are some principles to be followed?
57:03 Q&A
In the Global South, are everyday uses of generative AI driven more by global platforms like ChatGPT or by local models, and what determines that choice?
1:02:25 Q&A
How does your optimism about technology apply to contexts like Iran, where digital blackouts eliminate platforms for organizing? What happens when both optimism and pessimism appear to reinforce state power?
