The Good Robot podcast: Lithium extraction in the Atacama with Sebastián Lehuedé

Hosted by Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney, The Good Robot is a podcast which explores the many complex intersections between gender, feminism and technology.

Lithium extraction in the Atacama with Sebastián Lehuedé

In this episode, we talk to Sebastián Lehuedé, a Lecturer in Ethics, AI, and Society at King’s College London. We talk about data activism in Chile, how water-intensive lithium extraction affects people living in the Atacama desert, the importance of reflexive research ethics, and an accidental Sunday afternoon shot of tequila.

Listen to the episode here:

Sebastián’s research focuses on the governance of digital technologies from a global social justice perspective. His current project, AI’s Nature, explores the connection between Artificial Intelligence and environmental justice. In this work, he has engaged with urban, peasant and Indigenous communities in Chile and Colombia mobilising against a data centre project, resisting lithium extraction and participating in AI-centred conservationist initiatives. His previous project, Scientific Data Colonialism, examined the governance of astronomy data in Chile. Sebastián’s approach combines ethnographic methods, political ecology and decolonial thought. He has also contributed to conceptual development on data friction, digital sovereignty and reflexivity in critical data studies.

You can find the episode reading list and transcript here.

About The Good Robot Podcast

Dr Eleanor Drage and Dr Kerry McInerney are Research Associates at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, where they work on the Mercator-Stiflung funded project on Desirable Digitalisation. Previously, they were Christina Gaw Postdoctoral Researchers in Gender and Technology at the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies. During the COVID-19 pandemic they decided to co-found The Good Robot Podcast to explore the many complex intersections between gender, feminism and technology.