Let's Chat Ethics

This week Alba Curry joins us to discuss emotion AI grounded on the story "Under Old Earth". Are we aiming for happiness that is "bland as honey and sickening in the end"?

Resources:

Under Old Earth by Cordwainer Smith

How emotions are made by Lisa Feldman Barret

Affective Computing by Rosalind W. Picard

Could sex robots enhance our intimacy in relationships? 

This week we are back with an incredible guest Kate Devlin who shares her super interesting research into sex robots and our relationship with technology. 

Bio:

Kate Devlin is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London. Having begun her career as an archaeologist before moving into computer science, Kate's research is in the fields of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), investigating how people interact with and react to technology in order to understand how emerging and future technologies will affect us and the society in which we live.

Kate has become a driving force in the field of intimacy and technology, running the UK's first sex tech hackathon in 2016. In short, she has become the face of sex robots – quite literally in the case of one mis-captioned tabloid photograph. Her 2018 book, Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots, was praised for its writing and wit.

Are we addicted to our smartphones? How did we function before? 

This week Amanda shares her journey of giving up her smartphone (influenced by Charles Radclyffe from EthicsGrade) and we look at how social media and smart phones have infiltrated our lives!  

We also have an announcement - the podcast will be bi-weekly for the summer 

Ever bought a five-star moisturiser only to find out it breaks you out? YutyBazar is tackling waste by ultra-personalising your beauty routine using AI. Find out more about how it in this week's episode!

Want to try YutyBazar yourself? https://www.yutybazar.com/

Simi Lindgren is the founder and CEO of YutyBazar.

Socials:

Twitter: @YUTYBAZAR

Insta: yutybazar

Twitter: @letschatethics

Insta: lets.chat.ethics

www.letschatethics.co.uk

How does ESG work when rating big tech on their ethics?

This week we are joined by Charles Radclyffe who is the Co-Founder of EthicsGrade. EthicsGrade is an ESG ratings agency specialising in evaluating companies on their maturity against AI governance best-practice. Listen to why Charles decided to give up his phone pre-pandemic.. phone addiction culture has us all trapped!!

Twitter: @dataphilosopher

LinkedIn: Charles Radclyffe 

Bio:

Charles is the Co-Founder of EthicsGrade and has built and sold three tech companies. In-between he has consulted to large Financial Services organisations on Emerging Technology.

Charles holds an MA in Law from Cambridge University 

This week we are back reflecting on the past month of incredible guests from Chinese philosophy, ethical investing and the future of innovation. We also look the new EU regulations and how this compares to China's social scoring system. We will be going deeper into the new EU regulations in a coming episode. 

What will tech look like in 2025? This week we are joined by the amazing Charlie Oliver CEO and founder of the incredible platform Tech2025. We get deep into voice recognition, the effect of technology on children and Charlie shares her journey of founding Tech2025 and why it was so important to her.

Twitter: @itscomplicated LinkedIn: Charlie Oliver

Bio: Charlie’s years of experience in the trenches of old media include working in advertising in New York at such media goliaths as BBDO Worldwide and Condé Nast, to producing sitcoms and dramas at Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, Dreamworks and Oscar-award winning indie production companies, to event management at the Sundance Film Festival.

After spending several years in corporate law in document review at global firms (White & Case, Clifford Chance and Wachtel Lipton, to name a few), Charlie segued seamlessly into tech and new media as a web video producer where she co-created and co-produced experimental video projects such as an 8-hour live webathon for the 2008 presidential election and numerous web video series. Soon thereafter, Charlie launched ArtofTalk.tv (a site that brought the vast world of tv, web and radio talk shows online to Users in bite-size video snippets of debates and interviews in social media). I

n 2009, Charlie launched Served Fresh Media™ (a New York-based company) where her team provides digital marketing strategy, event management, product development, and senior management advisory for companies. Clients Served Fresh Media has worked with include IBM, New York Press Club, Cognizant, Digital Flash, Digital Realty, Tierpoint, and It’s About Time, among others.

In January 2017, Charlie launched Tech 2025 — a community and platform for professionals to learn about the next wave of disruptive, emerging technologies and to facilitate discourse about the impact of these technologies on society with an emphasis on problem-solving. Having produced over 80 events since they launched, coupled with providing professional services, Tech 2025 has quickly gained a reputation for helping professionals and companies to understand and embrace emerging technologies and the whirlwind changes they bring, and to strategize for the future impact of accelerating innovation. 

Will venture capitalists see the value in ethical investing? Can there be growth with ethics?

This week we are joined by Mike Butcher the Editor-at-large of TechCrunch to share his expertise and knowledge about VC investment and if VCs can see the value in ethics. 

• Mike Butcher MBE is Editor-at-large of TechCrunch, and co-founder of Pathfounder editorial events and reports series on ‘impact innovation’. Mike has been named one of the most influential journalists in European technology by Wired and The Daily Telegraph, among others. He has interviewed Tony Blair, Dmitry Medvedev, Kevin Spacey, Lily Cole, Pavel Durov and many other tech leaders and celebrities. He co-founded The Europas Awards for European startups, the non-profits TechVets and Techfugees, the co-working network TechHub. He is a regular tech commentator on the BBC, Sky News, CNN, CNBC and Aljazeera and has been a judge on The Apprentice UK. GQ magazine named him one of the 100 Most Connected Men in the UK and he’s a “Maserati 100 innovator”. He has advised previous UK governments on tech startup policy and was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Twitter: @mikebutcher

This week we are joined again by Alba Curry and Ryan Harte to discuss how Chinese history and philosophy have shaped China's AI policies. This episode is part 2 of the conversation. 

• Ryan Harte holds a Ph.D. in the comparative thought and literature of China and Greece, specialising in ethics. He has lived and taught in East Asia and the U.S. In autumn 2021 he will take up a post as Assistant Professor of Asian and comparative philosophy at Utah Valley University.

This week we are joined by Alba Curry and Ryan Harte to discuss how Chinese history and philosophy have shaped China's AI policies. This episode is part 1 and next week you can listen to the rest of the conversation! 

• Ryan Harte holds a Ph.D. in the comparative thought and literature of China and Greece, specialising in ethics. He has lived and taught in East Asia and the U.S. In autumn 2021 he will take up a post as Assistant Professor of Asian and comparative philosophy at Utah Valley University.

China's Ai Ethics principles

Books from Alba:

1) Daniel Bell (2006) Beyond Liberal Democracy, Political Thinking for an East Asian Context. Princeton University Press.