Anasuya Sengupta: AI, Colonising Knowledge, and Iran's Information War

The internet is a monocrop. A plantation of knowledge in English, owned by a handful of mega corporations, built on the bones of colonial infrastructure. And we are no longer just the consumers and as ever we are the product, the training set, the data points. So who gets to imagine the future? A leadership podcast about people, power and possibilities. This week on If You Were In Charge, Sanam and Kavita sit down with Anasuya Sengupta, co-founder of Whose Knowledge?, a global multilingual campaign to centre the knowledges of marginalised communities (the minoritised majority of the world) online. Anasuya traces a direct line from the telegraph networks of the British Empire to today’s Big Tech monopolies. But this is not just a story of extraction. Anasuya shares what it looks like when voices from the margins reimagine technology. From building sovereign language models in Bangla, Urdu and Hindi, to transforming Wikipedia so that women are no longer invisible. The episode opens with Sanam and Kavita reflecting on the Iran ceasefire, the extraordinary Lego memes coming out of Iran, and what it means when the world is surprised that Iranians have both sophisticated technology and a sense of humour. Anasuya Sengupta — Co-founder of Whose Knowledge? Enjoyed this episode? Follow If You Were In Charge wherever you listen and leave a rating to help more people find the show. Get in touch and stay connected: Email ICAN: [email protected] Sign up to the ICAN newsletter: https://icanpeacework.org/2025/03/sign-up-to-icans-newsletter/ More from us: adapodcasts.com If You Were In Charge is brought to you by ICAN, the International Civil Society Action Network. An ADA Production. Original Music, Little Monster Media Executive Producer: Pearse Lynch This is an ADA Production Timeline 00:00 — Cold open: Anasuya on “plantation tech” 00:26 — Intro with Sanam and Kavita 00:36 — Hosts discuss the Iran ceasefire, Lego memes, and Iranian political humour 07:15 — Transition to the possibilities theme and Arundhati Roy quote 07:35 — Reflection on the ceasefire moment and what comes next 10:30 — Discussion of Anthropic, AI containment, and Palantir 12:13 — Main interview begins: Anasuya Sengupta on the internet and search 14:30 — Tech solutionism and the polycrisis 16:34 — Colonial history of the internet: telegraph to Big Tech 20:30 — Infrastructure: who owns the message vs the messenger 23:12 — “We are the training set” — AI and data extraction 24:21 — Founding of Whose Knowledge? and feminist tech activism 28:16 — Women’s invisibility in knowledge systems and Wikipedia 33:12 — “If you were in charge” — reimagining tech from the margins 35:37 — Language, plantation tech, and multilingual futures 38:26 — Disability rights and imagining from the margins in 40:09 — Scaling across, not scaling up 43:30 — The right to refusal and feminist archives 47:24 — Representation: necessary but insufficient 49:38 — A growing coalition for change 50:15 — Radical idea: knowledge as a commons 52:59 — Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices