SNHU Agents of Change Podcast · SNHU Social Sciences

Season 4 Episode 3 AI for Humanity and Social Good

·37 min·2 clips

Alison Cohen says AI is a “social artifact,” not just a tool, because teams embed values, incentives, and biases.

Dr. Leman Taj hosts the conversation. She introduces Alison Cohen, a senior applied project manager at NILA Quebec within the AI for Humanity team, and asks how her work moved from policy development and research into practical AI deployment. The tone stays steady. Cohen explains that her role sits between AI research, social science expertise, and external partnerships, with the goal of professionalizing projects meant to do social good. Her podcast also comes up. She describes The World We're Building as a show that brings hope, agency, and critical thinking into the AI hype cycle. Higher education comes next. Taj and Cohen talk about how AI is changing universities and society more broadly, treating the subject as a civic and institutional issue. Copyright enters the frame. Cohen points to lawsuits involving OpenAI and creators whose work may have been used without consent, payment, or credit, and she uses that example to show how fragile AI infrastructure can become when its foundations are contested. The risk is practical. If a company has built products on top of a model or training pipeline that later has to change, the user's experience can become volatile, unpredictable, and harder to trust. That is why regulation matters. She argues that AI development needs regulatory infrastructure instead of the current Wild West approach, where people move quickly and then sort out the consequences afterward. Labor is not optional. The conversation turns to supervised learning and annotation work, with Cohen noting that the people labeling data are often underpaid, sometimes exposed to troubling content, and working through systems that can leave their rights underprotected. Turkopticon is mentioned. She cites it as an organizing example for gig workers hired through platforms like Mechanical Turk who do annotation and want stronger rights. The episode closes carefully. Taj returns to the promise of responsible AI tools, mentions the OECD tool and the other deliverables Cohen is watching, and ends with a conversation that keeps accountability, worker protections, and thoughtful public oversight in view.

As heard by us

A steady AI conversation about accountability, labor, and regulation.

Alison Cohen and Dr. Leman Taj treat AI as a public question, not a shiny forecast, and that gives the conversation its weight. They move through higher education, copyright, labor conditions, and regulation without rushing past the hard parts.

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If you want a calm, policy-minded AI conversation, start here.

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