In this session, A+T 2020 speakers Rasmus Thomsen, Lisa Talia Moretti, and Phil Harvey discuss human-centred design in smart cities; sociotechnical processes to support ethical best practice in tech; and humanising data and AI.
Rasmus Thomsen: A Human Smart City
Design director Rasmus Thomsen explores why designing the future should centre people instead of technology.
The success of future smart cities will depend on how technology meets human needs in a meaningful way. Time and time again, we see solutions and innovations where it looks like the designers were dazzled by amazing technology instead of catering to a real human problem or need.
Rasmus talks about the importance of solving important needs for people and how we can ensure that the concept of smart cities becomes synonymous with better living conditions for humans while embracing technology as a tool to help achieve that.
Before designing smart cities, the most interesting question to explore evolves around what great living conditions are. What makes a good life? What is a good city for humans? And then we need to translate this into amazing solutions that support this.
Listen to the conversation with Rasmus on The Human Show.
Lisa Talia Moretti: How to turn ethical principles and frameworks into action
Digital sociologist and tech ethics activist, Lisa Talia Moretti explores how to take action at an individual, team, or organisational level.
(Important note: In Lisa’s presentation, the slide titled ‘The Data Science Team of the Future’ was the output of some research conducted by Methods Business and Technology Limited. We recognise them here as the original source.)
Over the last few years, companies and governments, independent councils and working groups, membership organisations and academics have been in a flurry writing ethical guidelines and principles. They’ve been doing this for artificial intelligence, machine learning, data (and data science) as well as technology more broadly. This has happened for good reason. The social and political impact of technology over the last decade has resulted in a set of cascading consequences that has been devastating at worst and cringe-worthy at best. While the ethical principles and frameworks have been an extremely helpful start, it’s time to put them into action if we are really serious about making an impact.
Aimed at people who are looking for practical advice on how to take the next step on tech ethics or who are frustrated by the current tech ethics conversations and want to hear a new perspective, this talk explores how to take action at an individual, team, or organisational level.
Listen to Lisa’s interview on The Human Show.
Phil Harvey: Humanising Data and AI
Senior Cloud Solution Architect for Data & AI in One Commercial Partner, Microsoft UK, Phil Harvey explores why we need to understand humans as well as data.
Data is important because it gives us new things to know and new ways of knowing. Data also makes software smarter through AI. At Microsoft our goal is to democratise AI to empower every person and every organisation to achieve more. In this session you will learn how Microsoft takes a ‘principled consideration’ approach to AI ethics backed up by tools and skills to be applied in real world scenarios.
Listen to our interview with Phil taking about why we need to understand humans as well as data, or read an edited version of his interview.