Response-ability.Tech

Our guest in this week’s episode is Susie Alegre. Susie is an international human rights barrister and consultant with extensive experience working in international development and human rights policy and practice. She is talking in the FinTech stream at the conference on 9 October.

Susie describes international human rights law as “ethics with teeth”. She shares some of her career highlights and what sparked her interest in digital technology.

We move on to discuss her interest in freedom of thought, and why it is so relevant in our 21st century digital society, in which behavioural micro-targeting is a growing enterprise.

Susie also talks about why algorithmic decisions need to be explicable in the context of financial services, and gives us a sneak peak into her talk at the conference.

We loved talking to Susie and we hope you enjoy the episode.

To find out more about Susie, visit https://susiealegre.com.

Susie’s article, Rethinking Freedom of Thought for the 21st Century, discussed in the podcast.

Susie is interviewed on the Better Human show. 

Forum Internum: Freedom of Thought (BBC Sounds). 

To catch Susie’s talk at the Anthropology + Technology Conference on 9th October, visit us online at anthtechconf.co.uk and sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

In this episode, we talk to Ijeoma Azodo and Rafiah Badat, who are speaking in the health tech stream at the conference on 9 October 2020.

Ijeoma is a surgeon who is now using her clinical expertise in clinical service design. Rafiah is a speech and language therapist, doing a clinical doctoral fellowship on a digital therapy tool for children with a language disorder.

During our conversation, Ijeoma and Rafiah share their career paths and backgrounds. Ijeoma explains what drew her to medicine and surgery, and Rafiah describes how she came to specialise in speech and language therapy.

We move on to discuss Ijeoma’s work in clinical service design and Rafiah’s clinical doctoral fellowship, and the work they are both doing in digital health.

Lastly Ijeoma and Rafiah share why the Shuri Network is important to them and how the Network supports women of colour, and allies, who are working in digital health, particularly in terms of challenging the system to take action and supporting women of colour to succeed in their careers.

We loved talking to Ijeoma and Rafiah and we hope you enjoy the episode.

To find out more about the Shuri Network, you can visit https://shurinetwork.com.

To catch their joint talk at the Anthropology + Technology Conference on 9th October, visit us online at anthtechconf.co.uk and sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

Ben Breen is our guest in this week’s episode. Ben is the co-Founder of NestEgg. He’s talking in the FinTech stream at the conference on 9 October.

During our conversation, Ben describes his career as a technologist, and explains why he and his co-Founder, Adrian Davies, set up NestEgg and what they were trying to change about the financial consumer market.

We move on to discuss the research NestEgg did to understand its target market better, something so few start-ups do, and the startling finding it revealed. Ben shares his perspective, both as a technologist and an entrepreneur, about why beginning with the consumer is essential. We also talk about how NestEgg is innovating responsibly in the fintech space and why that’s important to both him and Adrian.

Lastly Ben discusses the opportunities in the world of fintech in the next five years or so, and gives us a sneak peak into his talk at the conference.

We loved talking to Ben and we hope you enjoy the episode. 

To find out more about NestEgg, you can visit https://nestegg.ai.

To catch his talk at the Anthropology + Technology Conference on 9th October, visit us online at anthtechconf.co.uk and sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

Professor Eerke Boiten is our guest in this week’s episode. Eerke is Professor of Cyber Security and Director of the Cyber Technology Institute at De Montfort University. He’s talking in the Health Tech stream at the conference on 9 October.

During our conversation, Eerke shares what prompted his move from computer science into cybersecurity and explains his interest in health data. He talks about data sharing in health, why anonymisation isn’t really safe, and suggests that we need to think about health data in a new way, which might offer a way forward.

We move on to talk about ethics in AI and where the responsibility lies, and that proceeding thoughtfully rather than at haste pays dividends. We also touch on why, as an academic, Eerke actively engages in policy and public debate on issues such as data privacy and cybersecurity.

Lastly, we explore the ‘privacy versus saving lives’ discourse that contact-tracing apps have re-ignited, and why data protection impact assessments are crucial.

We loved talking to Eerke and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Read Eerke’s opinion piece on health data in The Guardian, and his article in The Conversation on the U.K. government's COVID-19 data project.

To catch Eerke’s talk at the Anthropology + Technology Conference on 9th October, visit us online at anthtechconf.co.uk and sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

Pearse Keane is our guest in this week’s episode. Dr Keane is speaking in the Health Tech stream at the conference in October. 

Pearse explains what drew him to ophthalmology, and shares his story about how he came to collaborate with DeepMind to use deep learning to identify age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a devasting but common retinal disease that, if not treated quickly enough, leads to blindness.

Pearse talks about the two papers published in Nature Magazine about this research and the realities and challenges involved in moving from research to real world implementation, and the importance of working with industry to bring benefits to patients.

Pearse explains what the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship means to his work, which explores the development and application of AI in the NHS, particularly sharing his learnings around ethics, data protection, and transparency, so that the NHS and the UK can be world leaders in this space.

We loved talking to Pearse and we hope you enjoy the episode. 

To catch his talk at the Anthropology + Technology Conference on 9th October, get your ticket at anthtechconf.co.uk.

Sam Shah is our guest in this week’s episode. He’s on the panel at the conference in October. Dr Shah is a Global Clinical and Digital Adviser, NHS Clinician, former Director of Digital Development for NHSX, and the Financial Times 4th most influential UK BAME tech leader 2019.

Sam talks about one of the public health projects he worked on that’s still very close to his heart, Healthy Places, Heavy Lives, which aimed to reduce health inequalities. He discusses the fact that health issues are complex, and why we don't always need more clinicians, instead we need a better way of tackling the wider social determinants.

Sam shares his belief that people should always be at the heart of digital development, and discusses the balancing act in healthcare around the clinical, emotional, and practical needs of patients.

We move on to discuss telehealth, its fast adoption during the pandemic, and the risk of omitting people who can’t access these services and driving a new inequality.

Sam also talks about the lack of diversity in leadership roles within the health service, why inclusivity means better outcomes for everyone, and shares his ideas on how the public health sector can be made more diverse and representative of our wider society.

We loved talking to Sam and we hope you enjoy the episode.

To get in touch with Sam, go to his LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-shah-nhs/

To catch his contribution on the panel at the Anthropology + Technology Conference on 9th October, get your ticket at anthtechconf.co.uk.

And check out Sam’s conversation with Dr James Somauroo on the Health-Tech podcast.

Gemma John is our guest in this week’s episode. She’s talking in the Smart Cities stream at the conference on 9 October. Dr John is an urban anthropologist and Managing Director at Human City. 

Gemma explains how her PhD research into the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 led to her focus on spatial transformation in the context of the knowledge economy. She discusses the work Human City does with asset management companies and local authorities, and shares a success story from a small town in England where a retail space delivered both social and financial value in the context of crisis. 

Gemma shares her experiences of interdisciplinarity and collaboration and the ways in which anthropologists add value to the design of buildings and the built environment.

We move on to discuss the lack of affordable housing at a time when most people are now working from home, how seriously we should take this ability to work at a distance, and why the systemic equation between housing, employment, and health urgently needs to be made more explicit.

Lastly Gemma explores the concept ‘speaking for the social’, why it’s important, and what that means in practice, particularly when collaborating with people from different disciplines. 

We loved talking to Gemma and we hope you enjoy the episode.

To get in touch with Gemma and to find out more about Human City, visit https://humancity.co.uk.

To catch Gemma's talk at the Anthropology + Technology Conference on 9th October, get your ticket at anthtechconf.co.uk.

In this episode we are in conversation with Dr Erin B. Taylor, who is talking in the FinTech stream at the conference in October. Erin is an economic anthropologist who specialises in research into financial behaviour, and is the co-founder and research lead at Canela Consulting. 

Erin explains what an economic anthropologist does, what got her hooked on exploring how finances affect people’s lives, and why we don’t understand our own financial behaviours despite money affecting so much of what we do.

Erin shares some stories from her consulting life, including anecdotes that showcase why understanding the cultural is so important as well as the value that anthropologists like Erin bring to fintech companies.

We move on to discuss the Consumer Finance Research Toolkit that Erin’s developed, which researchers can use to help them understand specific aspects of financial behaviour. She also discusses mobility and digital money, and explains how fintechs can create niche solutions which address specific financial needs untapped by banks.

Lastly Erin talks about the Female Finance report she’s co-written with Dr Anette Broløs, and why it makes commercial sense to deliver financial services specifically for women.

We loved talking to Erin and we hope you enjoy the episode. 

To get in touch with Erin and to find out more about Canela Consulting, you can visit https://canela-group.com.

To catch her talk at the Anthropology + Technology Conference on 9th October, visit us online at anthtechconf.co.uk and buy your ticket.

In this episode we talk to Dr Anders Kofod-Petersen. Anders is the Deputy Director of the Alexandra Institute in Copenhagen and also a Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He’s talking in the FinTech stream at the conference in October.

During our conversation, Anders shares his favourite success story, the Danish Natural Language Processing repository, and why collaboration is essential, both across companies and disciplines. He shares his beliefs about why we need social scientists to help build technology, and why an AI project should be seen as an organisational one rather than an IT project.

We move on to discuss responsible AI and the ways in which companies can be encouraged to build AI responsibly without the need for regulation. We also talk about the importance of understanding that we often pay for digital technologies with our data.

Lastly Anders offers a challenge to anthropologists and other social scientists.

We loved talking to Anders and we hope you enjoy the episode.

To get in touch with Anders and to find out more about the Alexandra Institute, you can visit https://alexandra.dk/uk.

To catch his talk at the Anthropology + Technology Conference on 9th October, visit us online at anthtechconf.co.uk and sign up for our newsletter. We’ll be in touch as soon as tickets go on sale. 

What opportunities lie ahead in the world of AI? How can businesses prepare? And what must leaders do to avoid putting their business and wider society at risk? 

These are just some of the topics we cover with Phil Harvey, our guest in this week’s episode. 

Phil is a Senior Cloud Solution Architect for Data & AI in One Commercial Partner at Microsoft UK. He’s the co-author of Data: A Guide to Humans, which will be published in January 2021. And he’s talking in the Smart Cities stream at the conference in October.

During our chat, we talk about the ways that data in smart cities relates specifically to people’s lives and why it’s essential that it’s handled ethically. Phil also explains why leaders who aren’t using AI responsibly risk damaging their business as well as the people they serve.

We move on to discuss the need to educate wider teams to help identify business risks and Phil shares some key advice on implementing AI responsibly, including some of the steps already taken at Microsoft. 

Last, but certainly not least, we explore the importance of soft skills like empathy. Phil explains why we must have a deeper understanding of people, as well as the data that we’re working with. 

We loved talking to Phil and we hope you enjoy the episode. 

To get in touch with Phil or to find out more about his work and book, you can visit his LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipdavidharvey/

To catch his talk at the Anthropology + Technology Conference on 9th October, visit us online at anthtechconf.co.uk and sign up for our newsletter. We’ll be in touch as soon as tickets go on sale.