For Tech’s Sake

In this bonus episode from For Tech’s Sake, Elaine and Jenny single out their techin’ eejits and techin’ legends from recent tech news. Listen in to find out why Elaine is calling for a fight between YouTube and OpenAI, Jenny is mad at AI image generators, and both agree that scarecrows are due an upgrade.

For links to the stories discussed in this episode, and some helpful visual aids, check out fortechssake.info.

CONTENT NOTE: This episode contains swearing.

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We’re back! And we’re catching up on all the AI news, good and bad, that’s been happening. And to prove there really are good applications of AI out there, we spoke to Dr Mark O’Sullivan, co-founder and CEO of NeuroBell, which is developing a device using AI to help detect seizures in newborns. You can find out more about their work at NeuroBell.com.

You can also check out the following stories discussed in this episode:

— The problematic Tessa chatbot: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/06/08/1180838096/an-eating-disorders-chatbot-offered-dieting-advice-raising-fears-about-ai-in-hea

— Tyler Perry’s studio pull-out: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/tyler-perry-ai-alarm-1235833276/

— OpenAI’s Sora videos: https://openai.com/sora

— Why WPP’s partnership with Nvidia is bad news for creators: https://businessplus.ie/tech/ad-tech-nvidia/

— Joe Biden robocalls: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/fake-phone-calls-ai-voice-joe-biden-new-hampshire-us-elections

— Trump’s AI-generated Black friends: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68440150

— Jenny’s interview with Dr Pallavi Tiwari: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/ai-machine-learning-pallavi-tiwari

— AI for Māori language preservation: https://www.newscientist.com/article/0-how-artificial-intelligence-is-helping-keep-indigenous-languages-alive/

— The story behind the development of Charlie Bird’s voice tech: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/future-human-keith-davey-trevor-vaugh-voice-banking-motor-neurone-disease-charlie-bird

— AI for flood warnings: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/flood-warning-system-ai-researchers-ceadar

You can find Conor Nolan’s excellent tribute to the Glasgow Willy Wonka debacle on Instagram (@cheesenolan), and we’ll share the hilarious AI-generated obituary on socials so you should follow us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice.

CONTENT NOTE: This episode contains a brief discussion on disordered eating.

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It’s just us, your hosts, for this bonus episode of For Tech’s Sake. Following on from our round-up of 2023, we’re giving out the For Tech’s Sake awards for Biggest Techin’ Eejit of the Year and Techin’ Legend of the Year, among others.

This episode makes a lot more sense if you’ve listened to episode 15 in our main feed, and here are some other episodes we mentioned that you might enjoy:

— Our robotics episode with Niamh Donnelly: https://pod.fo/e/1fd892

— Our sex-tech episode with Dr Caroline West: https://pod.fo/e/18563d

— Our AI episode with Abeba Birhane: https://pod.fo/e/1856e8

And you can also check out this recent interview Jenny did with Abeba, after her appointment to the UN’s advisory on AI: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/future-human/abeba-birhane-generative-ai-chatgpt-openai-machine-learning

You can find us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice or let us know what you think via [email protected].

Be sure to come back next year for an all-new season!

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This week it’s just Elaine and Jenny as we round up 2023’s tech news – which took a long time to get through! And even at that, things have changed since this recording and the EU AI Act did in fact enter the next stage of its development, and we’ll be following up on that in the new year.

In the meantime, we have plenty of suggestions to entertain you until we come back with season three.

You might also enjoy reading the New Yorker’s report on the ‘Turkey-Shoot Clusterfuck’, or you can get lost in space while gazing at these images from the James Webb Space Telescope:

— Cat’s Eye Nebula: https://www.jameswebbdiscovery.com/astronomy-news/webb-telescopes-exploration-of-cats-eye-nebula-and-its-galactic-impact

— Pandora’s Cluster: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/james-webb-telescope-pandora-cluster-galaxy-image-nasa

— Tarantula Nebula: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/james-webb-space-telescope-tarantula-nebula

And follow us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice.

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In this extended interview with Padraig Hennessy, chair of AgTech Ireland, you’ll hear more about how he built a successful agri-tech start-up as CEO of Terra Nutritech (from 2:20), as well as Ireland’s role in the global context of sustainable farming and some of the agritech innovations that most excite him (from 19:30).

You can find out more about Terra Nutritech and the other agritech start-ups we mentioned on SiliconRepublic.com, and you can find us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice or let us know what you think via [email protected].

We hope you enjoy this discussion with Padraig as much as we did, and be sure to come back next week for an all-new episode.

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For a sustainable future, farmers need to learn to work smarter, not harder. That’s according to our guest Padraig Hennessy, CEO of agri-tech start-up Terra NutriTECH and chair of AgTech Ireland. And while ‘smart’ often means internet-connected devices and technological wizardry, there’s a lot more to getting agri-tech right than that.

You can find out more about Terra Nutri-tech and the other agritech start-ups we mentioned on SiliconRepublic.com and here are some more links on topics we discussed:

— The cluck translator: https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-chickens-emotions-research-translation-japan-2023-9?r=US&IR=T

— The study on pig emotions: https://science.ku.dk/english/press/news/2022/pig-grunts-reveal-their-emotions

— The hacked John Deere tractor: https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/15/23306650/def-con-hacker-john-deere-tractors-run-doom-right-to-repair

— The study on farmer burnout: https://www.independent.ie/farming/news/more-than-25pc-of-irish-farmers-are-burnt-out-new-research-finds/a1365570023.html

— The right to repair vote: https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/1121/1417605-right-to-repair/

— And our recent robotics episode: https://pod.fo/e/1fd892

We’ll release Padraig’s interview in its entirety in our bonus feed next week, and we’ll be back in a fortnight with an all-new episode.

And follow us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice.

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If you enjoyed our chat about the digital disruption of the value of money, you're in luck because we had a lot more to discuss with Rachel O’Dwyer.

Rachel is a lecturer in digital cultures at NCAD and her recent book, Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform, explores the historical concepts underpinning digital money, while looking to the future of transactions.

In this extended chat, we discuss the gendered attitudes to money that prevail, the kids growing up a world of in-game currencies and virtual gifts, as well as the utopianism of rebuilding money as a technology, and its failings.

If you want to jump straight to the stuff that wasn't in the main episode, skip to about 19:30 and then ahead to about 32:15 for more.

You can get Tokens wherever you find good books and you can follow Rachel’s work @rachelodwyer on Twitter.

You might also enjoy a look at the mad Meta ad mentioned at the end of the podcast: https://youtu.be/lfj-QH7IMxQ

You can find us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice or let us know what you think via [email protected].

We hope you enjoy this discussion with Rachel as much as we did, and be sure to come back next week for an all-new episode.

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Do you understand money? Neither do we, to be honest. And now that digital platforms are creating their own forms of finance – often without the restrictions of any pesky regulation – the meaning of ‘money’ continues to evolve.

To get our heads around the changing nature of money, we spoke to Rachel O’Dwyer, a lecturer in digital cultures at the National College of Art and Design and the author of Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform. Rather than deep-dive on the tech underpinning the likes of digital currencies and NFTs, we explore the cultural notion of value and how the digital world is disrupting and manipulating that.

You can get Tokens wherever you find good books and you can follow Rachel’s work @rachelodwyer on Twitter.

— Here’s a report on the NFT crash: https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/21/95_percent_nfts_worthless/

— Here’s some background on M-Pesa and recent calls for it to be regulated like a bank: https://techcabal.com/2023/03/09/m-pesa-lawsuit/

— And here’s a story from the Silicon Republic archive about Bruce Willis (allegedly) giving out to Apple over iTunes and ownership: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/life/updated-yippee-ki-yay-apple-will-bruce-willis-sue-over-itunes-inheritance

— For further listening you might enjoy our full-length interview with Aoife Barry on shifts in online culture, where we also discussed how the internet is becoming increasingly transactional. This is available for HeadStuff+ Community members right here: https://headstuffpodcasts.com/show/for-techs-sake/episode/v2-3_bonus-aoife-barry-author-of-social-capital/

We’ll also release Rachel’s full interview in our bonus feed next week, and we’ll be back in a fortnight with an all-new episode.

And follow us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice.

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In this extended chat with Niamh Donnelly, the award-winning entrepreneur and co-founder of Akara Robotics, we learned even more about the challenges of building robots that can work with humans and went through an extensive breakdown of various robots on the market today, from Roombas to robot dogs to creepy humanoids. We also got Niamh to reveal her favourite robot, exclusively for our HeadStuff+ Community listeners. You're welcome!

Jump to 17:15 for all the stuff that wasn’t in the main episode.

And check out these robots:

— Paro, the ‘therapeutic’ baby seal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJq5PQZHU-I

— The incredible realistic robots are Ameca, from Engineered Arts, and Sophia from Hanson Robotics

— And then there’s Digit, from Agility Robotics

— Here’s the story about the robots who formed a Happy Birthday chorus: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/robot-lawnmowers-sing-happy-birthday-mars-curiosity-rover

— And the one about the pizza-making failure: https://www.outkick.com/robot-pizza-start-up-shuts-down-because-they-couldnt-keep-cheese-from-sliding-off/

— And you may also like to listen back to our sex-tech episode, which did mention a very specific type of robot… https://pod.fo/e/18563d

You can find us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice or let us know what you think via [email protected].

We hope you enjoy this discussion with Niamh as much as we did, and be sure to come back next week for an all-new episode.

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Robots are among us, and are likely to become an even more commonplace fixture in our future. But what does it mean to be living and working alongside robots, and what does it take to develop these robots responsibly? We spoke to Niamh Donnelly, co-founder of Akara Robotics, about these challenges and the considerations roboticists need to have for workers and society.

You can check out Akara Robotics’ work and robots at Akara.ai and you can follow Niamh on Twitter at @engineeve.

– Watch clips of the UN AI Summit robot press conference here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_rR1mMjEfE

– Check out this interview with Niamh for pics and video of Stevie the Robot: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/stevie-robot-elder-care-niamh-donnelly

– Here’s Jenny’s favourite hapless hot dog robot: https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/wtyyuj/this_robot_making_hotdogs/?rdt=45333

– And the bipedal who can’t shelve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzlsvFN_5HI

– And this is the adorable Disney robot Niamh mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cfIm06tcfA

– Read all about the MIT study looking at how to make robots more dexterous on Silicon Republic: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/ai-smoothing-robot-hands-holding-objects-mit-study

– As well as the deployment of robots in United Drug’s Dublin warehouse: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/careers/working-robot-trolleys-united-drug-baldonnel-dublin

We’ll release Niamh’s interview in its entirety in our bonus feed next week, and we’ll be back in a fortnight with an all-new episode.

And follow us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice.

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