Episode 18: This AI Is Built for Liberation, Not Just for ProfitWe are constantly told that artificial intelligence is neutral.That data is objective.That algorithms simply optimise.That harm is an unfortunate side effect of progress.But what if the real question isn’t what AI can do but who it is built to serve?In this episode of Builders of the Broken Bazaar, Dr Tabish Zaman is joined by Said and Hani Chihabi, brothers and founders of Thaura AI, to explore what it means to build technology from the margins rather than for the market alone.This is not a conversation about AI hype or technical superiority.It is not about disruption for disruption’s sake.It is a conversation about power, dignity, and liberation.Drawing on their lived experiences and their work developing Thaura AI, Said and Hani reflect on what it means to build artificial intelligence that resists surveillance, extraction, and domination and instead centres justice, context, and human consequence.Together, they discuss:• Why most AI systems reproduce existing power structures rather than challenge them• How surveillance technologies disproportionately harm already marginalised communities• Why “ethical AI” often fails when it avoids politics and power• What it means to design AI from places shaped by conflict, occupation, and exclusion• How language, culture, and history are erased in dominant AI models• Why liberation must be a design principle, not a marketing claim• How entrepreneurship can be a tool for resistance, not just valuation• What responsibility looks like when technology operates at scale🎙 “Technology is never neutral, it always reflects who had the power to build it.”This episode challenges founders, technologists, investors, and policymakers to reconsider what responsibility really means in the age of artificial intelligence.Because when AI is built without accountability, it doesn’t just optimise systems it decides who is seen, who is protected, and who is erased.And if AI is shaping the future,we must ask a harder question:Who gets to define that future and at whose cost?Host: Dr Tabish ZamanGuests: Said Chihabi & Hani Chihabi (Founders, Thaura AI)

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