Response-ability.Tech

My guest today is Gitika Saksena. Gitika is a Director at LagomWorks, a research and innovation consulting firm she founded in 2018. Before that she was a Vice President at Accenture Technology in India, where she led the strategy and design for various talent initiatives.

Gitika gave a talk at the 2021 Response-ability Summit in May.

Gitika has degrees in Economics and Business Management, as well as a second Master's degree in Social Anthropology from SOAS University of London. During our conversation, Gitika explains what drew her to anthropology and to study full-time at SOAS.

She reflects how her experience at Accenture helped her on her new path, and shares some advice for other anthropologists looking to set up their own consultancies. She explains, for instance, that "clients won't engage with you for anthropology in and of itself. They demand, and will demand, very tangible outcomes and to be challenged and offered fresh perspectives."

We explore the Covid-19 research that she and her colleague, Abhishek Mohanty, have variously conducted in both the UK and India on masks, well-being, as well as privacy with respect to contact-tracing apps. They presented their research at the RAI Film Festival 2021, ASA 2021, and the 2021 Response-ability Summit respectively.

Lastly Gitika explains the value that she believes anthropology brings to understanding the unprecedented shifts that the world is undergoing, saying that it's essential that anthropologists "bring our conceptual rigour to understand these shifts".

You can find Gitika on Twitter at GitikaSaksena. Follow LagomWorks on LinkedIn and check out their website where you can sign up to their newsletter.

My guests today are Lorenn Ruster and Thea Snow. Lorenn has recently completed her Masters at the School of Cybernetics at the Australian National University and Thea is the Director at the Centre for Public Impact for Australia and New Zealand.

Lorenn and Thea are speaking at the 2021 Response-ability Summit on May 20-21. Their talk is titled, "Dignity-centred technology — moving beyond protecting harms to enabling human flourishing". Thea and Lorenn explain how they came to work together, and their respective backgrounds.

Lorenn shares her experience as a Masters student at the 3A Institute, which was established by anthropologist, Genevieve Bell, and the aims of the Institute, which is to "build the skills and knowledge needed to help shape the future safely, sustainably and responsibly".

Thea describes the Centre for Public Impact's work, which is to re-imagine government, and together Lorenn and Thea share their dignity ecosystem model, which is a different way into a conversation about ethics in artificial intelligence.

We discuss how their model might be used by technology companies as well as governments, given their model focuses on proactively enabling human flourishing rather than simply harm minimisation.

You can download their report, Exploring the role of dignity in government AI ethics instruments, from the CPI website.

Find Lorenn on Twitter at @LorennRuster and on Medium.  Find Thea on Twitter at @theasnow and on Medium. Follow the CPI at @CPI_foundation.

My guest today is Professor Susan Halford, who is the co-Director of the Bristol Digital Futures Institute at the University of Bristol. Susan is our academic keynote at the 2021 Summit.

The Bristol Digital Futures Institute (BDFI) is a University Research Institute that pioneers transformative approaches to digital innovation. It brings together researchers from across the disciplines and works with partners in industry, government and civil society. The BDFI is developing in-depth systematic understanding of sociotechnical futures to drive the creation of digital technologies for inclusive, prosperous and sustainable societies.

During our conversation Susan explores the word ‘futures’ in the sense of recognising that futures are not fixed rather than in the sense of prediction, and explains the work and research that the Institute does.

She also discusses the difference between the terms ‘sociotechnical’ and ‘socio-digital’, and why it’s important that social scientists and technologists know enough about each other’s fields so we can collaboratively effectively. 

Lastly, Susan talks about 'response-ability' and briefly explores some of the ideas from Donna Haraway's book, Staying With The Trouble, that she finds incredibly provocative.

You can find Susan on Twitter at @susanjhalford and the BDFI at @DigiFutures.

My guest today is Tom Hoy. Tom is one of the founding Partners at Stripe Partners, the London-based innovation consultancy. Alongside co-founders Tom Rowley and Simon Roberts, Tom has built Stripe Partners from a kitchen table to a thriving business, advising clients including Spotify, Facebook, Google, and Intel.

Tom’s particular interests lie in designing new ways to work collaboratively with clients to maximise the impact of Stripe Partners’s work, and helping them to see the value of social science has in unlocking their most complex business challenges. His work has been featured in publications including the Financial Times and the Guardian.

Stripe Partners are our 2021 Silver Partner, and Senior Research Consultant Anna Leggett will be sharing a research project at this year’s Summit that explored opportunities to connect with marginalised communities during the pandemic.

During our conversation Tom shares how Stripe Partners began and some of the reasons for their success as an innovation consultancy. He explains their main areas of practice and tells us about two of their projects, working with Spotify and Google.

We also explore how Stripe Partners has adapted its methodologies during the pandemic, changing the way it does ethnographic research, and what has been gained and lost by doing research solely online.

Lastly Tom recommends three worthwhile reads: Recommendation Engines by Michael Schrage, Valuing the Unique: The Economics of Singularities by Lucien Karpik, and Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam.

You can find Tom on Twitter at @thoy and Stripe Partners at @stripepartners.

Our guest today is Dr Gemma Galdon-Clavell. Gemma is the Founder and CEO of Eticas Consulting. Her multidisciplinary background in the social, ethical and legal impact of data-intensive technology has enabled her and her team to design and implement practical solutions to data protection, ethics, explainability, and bias challenges in AI.

Gemma, together with her colleague Emma Lopez, is talking at the 2021 Response-ability Summit where they will be sharing their bottom-up approach to algorithmic auditing.

During our conversation Gemma shares how she moved from an interest in public spaces to a PhD on surveillance, security and urban policy in 2012 to then founding Eticas.

Gemma explains why Eticas is focused on digital ethics and trustworthy AI, and why she thinks that enforceable regulation is a good thing, not least because it means people can trust the tech.

Gemma explains the three main phases that comprise their Algorithmic Audit Framework technology. She also talks about why we need more people who understand society working in this space — as she says, the future of humanity depends on it. And she has suggestions for young women, particularly those who are studying the social sciences, who want to make a positive contribution to emerging technologies.

Lastly, Gemma shares some recommended reads and further resources.

Follow Gemma on Twitter @gemmagaldon.

To  find out more about their algorithmic auditing work, visit Eticas Consulting, and Eticas Foundation for information about their pubic impact work. 

In this episode we're in conversation with Gilbert Hill. Gilbert is a privacy technologist and he's talking at the 2021 Summit in May.

Most recently Gilbert was CEO and Advisor to Tapmydata, a start-up building consumer-grade tools for people to exercise data rights, with blockchain keeping score.  Before becoming CEO of TapMyData, Gilbert founded Optanon and, as the MD, grew it to become the market leader in the provision of website auditing and cookie compliance solutions in the UK and EU. Gilbert is a Fellow and Senior Tutor on Privacy and Ethics at the Institute of Data and Marketing.

During our conversation Gilbert explains how, after graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in anthropology and archaeology, he became a privacy technologist.

We discuss how he conceives of privacy and we talk about Tapmydata and how it enables consumers to exercise their data rights — contrary to popular opinion at the time that people didn't care about their data — and the advantage for companies who hold it.

Gilbert talks about the growing movement to re-emancipating citizens in terms of their data and its value, and the concept of data unions, which is enshrined in the EU’s Digital Markets Act. We also discuss the role that blockchain and crypto have to play in data privacy.

Lastly, Gilbert shares some of his recommended reads and why he's looking forward to the summit.

Follow Gilbert on Twitter @GilbertHill and read his writing at gilberthill.medium.com.

Mentioned in our conversation:
Covid-19 and the cult of privacy by Daniel Miller
An Artificial Revolution: On Power, Politics and AI by Ivana Bartoletti
The End of Trust (McSweeney's 54) - features an interview with Ed Snowden explaining blockchain to his lawyer.
Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data by Carissa Véliz
The Cryptocurrency Revolution: Finance in the Age of Bitcoin, Blockchains and Tokens by Rhian Lewis

And lastly enjoy comedian Stevie Martin's funny video, which is a biting commentary on the “accept all” cookie option.

In this episode we talk with Taina Bucher who is an associate professor in screen cultures at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo. Taina is the author of IF...THEN: Algorithmic Power and Politics, published by Oxford University Press in 2018.

Taina explains why, as a media scholar, she became interested in algorithms and software, and we discuss her book and her proposal that we must approach algorithms not by asking what is an algorithm but instead when and how are algorithms.

We discuss black boxes, a metaphor Taina finds problematic, and she uses the Facebook 'trending topics' controversy in 2016 as an example of the lack of nuance in discussions around attributing agency to either algorithms or humans.

Taina explores how algorithms materialise in the institutional setting of news media in the context of the recent law passed by the Australian government aimed at making Google and Facebook pay for news content on their platforms.

We also briefly talk about Taina's book, Facebook, published in May by Polity Press.

Lastly, Taina recommends three books with respect to the questions she addressed in our conversation, Cloud Ethics by Louise Amoore, You Are Here by Whitney Phillips and Ryan M Milner, and Metrics at Work by Angèle Christin.

Follow Taina on Twitter (@tainab) and find more about her at tainabucher.com.

My guest today is Astrid Countee. Astrid is an anthropologist and technologist based in Houston, Texas. She is co-founder of Missing Link Studios.

In 2016, Astrid wrote an article for Ethnography Matters on why tech companies need to hire software developers with ethnographic skills, and it's this article I explore with her during our conversation.

Astrid shares her journey from dreaming of being a surgeon to studying forensic science and then medical anthropology before becoming a software engineer.

Astrid explains what she thinks the skills are that anthropologists and ethnographers bring to a development team and we talk about the benefits of technologists who have social understanding.

Astrid shares some advice and tips for social scientists and researchers working alongside technologists and how we can work together.

We also discuss the topic of whether anthropologists need to learn to code and she likens it to learning a language, which anthropologists doing fieldwork often have to do.

Lastly, Astrid discusses how anthropologists might be seen as more than the people who 'make technology usable', and that anthropologists should play a bigger part in tackling the wicked problems of this century.

You can find Astrid on Twitter or LinkedIn.

In this episode we talk to Reema Patel, Head of Public Engagement at the Ada Lovelace Institute. The Ada Lovelace Institute is an independent research institute that was established in 2018. Its mission is to ensure data and AI work for people and society. Reema leads the organisation’s public attitudes and public deliberation research.

During our conversation, Reema shares her journey from Cambridge University where she studied philosophy to becoming one of the founding team members of the Ada Lovelace Institute.

Reema explains why the Ada Lovelace Institute was established, its mission and purpose, and takes us through the four main themes on which the Institute is focused: algorithm accountability; data for the public good; justice and equalities; and Covid-19 technologies. Reema also touches on the Institute's recent work on the risks and benefits of digital COVID-19 vaccine certification schemes.

We discuss the impact the Ada LoveLace Instiute's work is having, determined as it is not to be a "talking shop".

Lastly, Reema tells us about JUST AI, a humanities-led network established in 2020 that is committed to understanding the social and ethical value of data and AI.

Follow Reema on Twitter and connect with her on LinkedIn.

Follow the Ada Lovelace Institute on Twitter, check out their blog, and sign up to their informative fortnightly newsletter.

In this episode we talk to Dr Simon Roberts, business anthropologist and Partner at Stripe Partners, a strategy and innovation consultancy based in London. He's also the author of The Power of Not Thinking. Simon was a keynote at our inaugural summit. And Stripe Partners sponsored both the 2019 and 2020 events.

During our conversation, Simon shares how he started out as a business anthropologist. We talk about his 2018 article, The UX-ification of Research in which he decried the fact that research is being squeezed into a new temporal rhythm — being thoughtful is out, speed is in — and how optimistic he feels now, at a time of economic crisis, when budgets are being squeezed.

We also talk about the office, now that working from home is a reality for most of us for the foreseeable future, and how do we utilise offices to do what they do best.

We discuss his article, The Age of the Ear, in which he calls for a deep understanding of how people experience the aural dimensions of life. Which leads us to think about embodiment, the subject of his book, and embodied computing more generally.

Lastly, Simon shares a couple of his favourite reads from 2020.

We hope you enjoy the show.

Mentioned in our conversation:

• ‘The Big Shift’: Internal Facebook Memo Tells Employees to Do Better on Privacy
• We will miss the office if it dies. Lucy Kellaway, Financial Times, May 15 2020.
• The rise and fall of the office, Henry Mance, Financial Times, May 15 2020.
• James Rebanks: nature is my office, come rain or shine, Financial Times, December 29 2020.
• If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future by Jill Lepore; Caste by Isabel Wilkerson; These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore; India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy by Ramachandra Guha; Unchartered: How to Map the Future by Margaret Hefferman; and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart.