Alix Dunn

Alix Dunn is the founder and CEO of The Maybe (formerly Computer Says Maybe), a critical consultancy, collective, and media studio on technology and society, and host of the weekly Computer Says Maybe podcast (see Person entry). She is the corpus's first AI-and-society media-and-conversation infrastructure Voice. She is tracked here as a Voice because her public-facing output — a weekly long-form podcast interviewing "visionaries, researchers, and technologists working in the public interest" across "the possibilities, problems, and politics of technology", a media studio whose New Protagonist Network collective, published reports, and regular newsletter together compose a generalist curatorial vehicle for the make-AI-good register, and a cross-organisational governance footprint at Foxglove, the Ada Lovelace Institute, AI Now, and the AI Collaborative — anchors a public-interest-technology generalist-curator register that the corpus's voices slice had previously left without a media-side anchor.

Voice anchors

The Voice closes three registers that the corpus's voices slice had previously left underweight.

• The AI-and-society podcast / media-production voice anchor entirely. The voices slice's existing entries anchor on organisers, lawyers, researchers, and policy advocates; not one had previously anchored on the media-and-conversation infrastructure register that Computer Says Maybe exemplifies, despite the corpus's working principle naming "are people outside AI being engaged in work to make AI better as they see it?" as the inclusion criterion. A weekly podcast with multi-platform distribution across Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Audible whose declared register is "visionaries, researchers, and technologists working in the public interest" is the corpus's most direct media-side answer to that engagement question.
• The cross-organisation public-interest-technology connector voice anchor entirely. Dunn sits simultaneously at Foxglove as Non-Executive Director since September 2024 and as a prior Advisory Council member from the organisation's inception, at the Ada Lovelace Institute as Trustee, at AI Now Institute and the AI Collaborative as Senior Advisor, and previously co-founded The Engine Room — the global non-profit supporting activist organisations to incorporate technology into their work. The voices slice has no comparable multi-organisation governance-and-advisory connector voice anchor.
• The public-interest-technology generalist-curator voice anchor entirely. The voices slice's existing entries anchor on specific issue registers — biometrics (Ella Jakubowska, Reclaim Your Face), autonomous weapons (Mary Wareham, Stop Killer Robots), algorithmic-employment-decisions (Mercy Mutemi, Kenyan content-moderator docket), creative-industry-and-AI (Karla Ortiz), AI-safety / Pause (Andrea Miotti), and so on. Dunn's curatorial role across the entire public-interest-technology field — the podcast, the New Protagonist Network collective, the published reports, the regular newsletter, and the multi-organisation governance footprint — is structurally distinct from any of those single-issue anchors.

Public output and venues

Dunn's public-facing work runs through four overlapping channels.

• The Maybe and the Computer Says Maybe podcast. Computer Says Maybe is the most load-bearing channel of Dunn's voice — a weekly long-form podcast Dunn hosts under The Maybe (the media studio she rebranded from Computer Says Maybe to anchor a wider collective). The show interviews "visionaries, researchers, and technologists working in the public interest" across "the possibilities, problems, and politics of technology", with weekly publishing across Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Audible. Beyond the podcast, The Maybe operates the New Protagonist Network collective, publishes research reports on technology policy and societal impact, runs a regular newsletter on technology politics, and offers strategic consultancy to organisations at the technology–society intersection — together composing the corpus's single most consolidated AI-and-society media-and-conversation infrastructure under one institutional roof. Dunn's role across the whole vehicle is Founder and CEO.
• The Foxglove governance arc. Dunn has been on Foxglove's Advisory Council since the organisation's inception and was appointed Non-Executive Director in September 2024 — the governance-line public-output channel through which her voice carries into the UK strategic-litigation cluster anchored on the worker-plaintiff side by Daniel Motaung, on the African-counsel-of-record side by Mercy Mutemi, and on the convener-strategist side by Cori Crider. Dunn's role is structurally complementary to Crider's: where Crider's voice anchors the founding-director and post-2024 senior-fellow output that organised the same cluster's litigation and press infrastructure, Dunn's voice anchors the institutional governance line through which the wider public-interest-technology field's external connectivity is brought into Foxglove's board-level architecture.
• The Ada Lovelace Institute governance arc. Dunn has been a Trustee of the Ada Lovelace Institute since the institute's establishment — the governance-line counterpart at the corpus's UK participatory-and-deliberative AI-and-data-governance anchor. Dunn's voice is structurally complementary to Reema Patel's on the Ada Lovelace side: where Patel's voice anchors the participatory-data-stewardship lead-authored output line, Dunn's voice anchors the institutional governance line through which the wider public-interest-technology field's external connectivity is brought into the Ada Lovelace board-level architecture.
• The AI Now / AI Collaborative senior-advisory and the 15-year public-interest-technology career arc. Dunn is a Senior Advisor to AI Now and the AI Collaborative — international-advisory affiliations through which her voice runs into the wider US-and-international algorithmic-accountability and AI-policy infrastructure. These advisory roles sit alongside Dunn's 15-year public-interest-technology career arc, opened by her co-founding of The Engine Room — the global non-profit supporting activist organisations to incorporate technology into their work — and carried through into the institutional connectivity profile her voice now anchors across Foxglove, the Ada Lovelace Institute, AI Now, and the AI Collaborative.

Organisational vehicle

Dunn's public output runs primarily through The Maybe — the media studio she founded and rebranded from Computer Says Maybe — under which sit the weekly Computer Says Maybe podcast (produced by Georgia Iacovou and Sarah Myles), the New Protagonist Network collective, the published research reports, the regular newsletter, and the strategic consultancy line. Beyond The Maybe, her voice carries through governance roles at Foxglove (Non-Executive Director, September 2024–; prior Advisory Council from inception), Ada Lovelace Institute (Trustee), AI Now Institute (Senior Advisor), and the AI Collaborative (Senior Advisor), and through her co-founder lineage at The Engine Room — the institutional connectivity profile that distinguishes her register from any single-issue Voice in the corpus.

Why this is a Voice entry

A Voice entry is created here, rather than additional structure on the Person entry, because Dunn's public-facing output is itself the load-bearing object the corpus needs to track: the weekly Computer Says Maybe podcast and the wider Maybe media studio that together compose the corpus's most consolidated AI-and-society media-and-conversation infrastructure; the cross-organisation governance and senior-advisory footprint across Foxglove, the Ada Lovelace Institute, AI Now, and the AI Collaborative through which her voice carries into the corpus's strategic-litigation, participatory-data-governance, and algorithmic-accountability slices; and the public-interest-technology generalist-curator register through which the podcast and the collective frame the field for a non-specialist Anglophone audience. The corpus's voices slice had no AI-and-society podcast / media-production voice, no cross-organisation governance-and-advisory connector voice, and no public-interest-technology generalist-curator voice — this entry closes all three anchors. Affiliation, governance roles, and biographical structure are recorded on the linked Person entry per the corpus's Person/Voice split.