Response-ability.Tech
45 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago -The annual Response-Ability Summit, formerly the Anthropology + Technology conference, brings together leading experts from the social sciences and technology to champion socially-responsible tech, and to foster dialogue and collaboration across the disciplines. The summit has been curated to help today’s leading technology companies understand the significant value of combining teams of technologists with social scientists. Together we can build a future in which socially-responsible tech is the norm.
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Episodes
What data scientists can learn from feminist social scientists in India. With Radhika Radhakrishnan.
November 28, 2022 05:00 - 36 minutes - 25 MBIn this episode, we're in conversation with feminist scholar and activist, Radhika Radhakrishnan. Radhika is a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the HASTS (History, Anthropology, Science, Technology & Society) programme. This programme uses methods from history and anthropology to study how science and technology shape – and are shaped by – the world we live in. Trained in Gender Studies and Computer Science engineering in India, Radhika has worked for over ...
Why Human Rights Law is AI Ethics With Teeth. With Susie Alegre.
May 23, 2022 20:00 - 30 minutes - 21 MBOur guest today is Susie Alegre. Susie is an international human rights lawyer and author. We're in conversation about her book, Freedom To Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds (Atlantic Books, 2022). Susie talks about freedom of thought in the context of our digital age, human rights, surveillance capitalism, emotional AI, and AI ethics. Susie explains why she wrote the book and why she thinks our freedom of thought is important in terms of our human rights in the digital age. W...
Anthropology and Artificial Intelligence. With Veronica Barassi
April 20, 2022 04:00 - 29 minutes - 20.6 MBOur guest today is Professor Veronica Barassi. Veronica is an anthropologist and author of Data Child Citizen (MIT Press, 2020). Veronica campaigns and writes about the impact of data technologies and artificial intelligence on human rights and democracy. As a mother, Veronica was becoming increasingly concerned about the data being collected on her two children by digital platforms. Her research resulted in the book as well as a TED talk, What tech companies know about your kids, that’s h...
Understanding Data and Privacy as a UX Researcher. With Laura Musgrave
February 09, 2022 05:00 - 27 minutes - 19.1 MBOur guest today is Laura Musgrave. Laura was named one of 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics™ for 2022. Laura is a digital anthropology and user experience (UX) researcher. Her research specialism is artificial intelligence, particularly data and privacy. Laura gave a short talk at the inaugural conference in 2019 on privacy and convenience in the use of AI smart speakers. And at the 2021 event Laura chaired the panel, Data: Privacy and Responsibility. We start our conversation by explorin...
Social Science-Led User Research in Tech. With Rosie Webster
January 12, 2022 05:00 - 26 minutes - 18.2 MBOur guest today is Dr Rosie Webster. Rosie has a PhD and an MSc in health psychology. She’s currently Science Lead for Zinc’s venture builder programme. Prior to Zinc, Rosie worked as a UX researcher at digital health company, Zava, and was Lead User Researcher at Babylon Health. While at Babylon, Rosie established the foundations of an effective Behavioural Science practice, which is partly what we’re here to talk about today. Rosie explains that if businesses are interested in deliverin...
Engineering Cultures and Internet Infrastructure Politics. With Corinne Cath-Speth
December 08, 2021 05:00 - 47 minutes - 32.7 MBMy guest today is Dr Corinne Cath-Speth. Corinne is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on Internet infrastructure politics, engineering cultures, and technology policy and governance. Corinne has recently completed their PhD at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), which was titled, Changing Minds & Machines. It was an ethnographic study of internet governance, the culture(s) and politics of internet infrastructure, standardization and civil society. Drawing on their research...
Recommender Systems and Inequality in the Creator Economy. With Matt Artz
November 10, 2021 05:00 - 50 minutes - 34.4 MBOur guest today is Matt Artz. Matt is a business and design anthropologist, consultant, author, speaker, and creator. As a creator he creates podcasts, music, and visual art. Many people will know Matt through his Anthropology in Business and Anthro to UX podcasts. We talk about his interdisciplinary educational background — he has degrees in Computer Information Systems, Biotechnology, Finance and Management Information Systems, and Applied Anthropology — and Matt explains what drew him...
Communicating the Social Implications of AI. With Nat Kendall-Taylor
October 06, 2021 04:00 - 44 minutes - 30.5 MBOur guest today is Dr Nat Kendall-Taylor. Nat received his PhD in Anthropology at UCLA and in 2008 he joined the FrameWorks Institute, a non-profit research organisation in Washington, D.C., where he is now the CEO. FrameWorks uses rigorous social science methods to study how people understand complex social issues such as climate change, justice reform, and the impact of poverty on early childhood development. It develops evidence-based techniques that help researchers, advocates, and pra...
Communicating the Social Impacts of AI. With Nat Kendall-Taylor
October 06, 2021 04:00 - 44 minutes - 30.5 MBOur guest today is Dr Nat Kendall-Taylor. Nat received his PhD in Anthropology at UCLA and in 2008 he joined the FrameWorks Institute, a non-profit research organisation in Washington, D.C., where he is now the CEO. FrameWorks uses rigorous social science methods to study how people understand complex social issues such as climate change, justice reform, and the impact of poverty on early childhood development. It develops evidence-based techniques that help researchers, advocates, and pra...
The Ethics of Venture Capital Investors. With Johannes Lenhard
September 07, 2021 23:00 - 45 minutes - 31.4 MBOur guest today is Dr Johannes Lenhard. Johannes received his PhD in Anthropology at Cambridge University and in 2017 started a post-doctoral research project, at the Max Planck Centre Cambridge for the Study of Ethics, the Economy and Social Change, on the ethics of venture capital investors. Johannes spoke at the 2021 Response-ability Summit. He shares what drew him to studying venture capitalists and how he does ethnography in this very closed, elite world across various field sites in...
Humanising Cybersecurity Through Anthropology. With Lianne Potter
June 30, 2021 06:00 - 38 minutes - 26.7 MBOur guest today is Lianne Potter. Lianne is an anthropologist, self-taught software developer, cyber security evangelist, and entrepreneur. Lianne works at Covea Insurance as their Information Security Transformation Manager where she advocates for innovation in the cyber security field. Lianne's talk at the 2021 Response-ability Summit was titled, "Reciprocity: Why The Cyber Security Industry Needs to Hire More Anthropologists". In this episode Lianne is in conversation with Isabelle Cot...
Bringing an Anthropological Lens to Covid-19. With Gitika Saksena
June 16, 2021 05:00 - 36 minutes - 24.9 MBMy 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 ou...
Dignity-Centred Technology: Enabling Human Flourishing. With Lorenn Ruster and Thea Snow
May 17, 2021 04:00 - 35 minutes - 24.5 MBMy 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,...
Creating Emergent Socio-Digital Futures. With Susan Halford
May 11, 2021 05:00 - 30 minutes - 21 MBMy 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 system...
How Spotify and Google are Using Social Science to Innovate. With Tom Hoy
May 05, 2021 06:00 - 35 minutes - 24.1 MBMy 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 s...
Building Trust with Algorithmic Audits. With Gemma Galdon-Clavell
April 21, 2021 07:00 - 39 minutes - 27.1 MBOur 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 algo...
The Future of Privacy Tech. With Gilbert Hill
April 07, 2021 07:00 - 50 minutes - 34.8 MBIn 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...
The Power and Politics of Algorithmic Life. With Taina Bucher
March 24, 2021 08:00 - 43 minutes - 29.8 MBIn 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 ar...
An Engineering Anthropologist. With Astrid Countee
March 10, 2021 08:00 - 56 minutes - 39 MBMy 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 softwa...
Making Data and AI Work for People and Society. With Reema Patel
February 24, 2021 08:00 - 28 minutes - 19.5 MBIn 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...
The Office, Media, and Embodied Computing. With Simon Roberts
February 10, 2021 08:00 - 43 minutes - 29.6 MBIn 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 ...
Building Evidence-Based & Problem-Led Commercial Ventures. With Rachel Carey
January 27, 2021 08:00 - 40 minutes - 28.1 MBIn this episode we talk to Dr Rachel Carey who is Chief Scientist at Zinc. Backed by the London School of Economics, Zinc was created in 2017 to test different ways of tackling important societal issues. Rachel is a behavioural scientist with a PhD in Psychology, and a passion for research translation and innovation. During our conversation, Rachel explains what her role involves and we talk about Zinc's mission and purpose, their Venture Builder Programme, and what it really looks like wh...
Making Tech Accountable: Reflecting on 2020. With Martha Dark
December 16, 2020 08:00 - 26 minutes - 17.9 MBIn this episode we catch up with Martha Dark. Martha is the co-founder of Foxglove, a new NGO that exists to make tech fair for everyone. Made up of lawyers, technology experts and communications specialists, Foxglove believe that governments and big tech companies are misusing digital technology, and that this is harming the rest of us. Their aim is to fix this situation. We interviewed Martha in Episode 2 ahead of her talk at the 2020 conference. What better way to end the year than by ce...
Addressing Ethical Challenges in a FinTech Startup. With Jeffrey Greger
December 02, 2020 08:00 - 50 minutes - 34.6 MBJeffrey Greger is a UX Researcher at Varo Bank. His work focuses on the ethical and organisational challenges that design professionals face as they develop financial services for and with low- to moderate-income communities. He holds a Master’s degree in Applied Anthropology from San José State University. During our conversation, Jeff explains how he came to anthropology from industrial design and what sparked his interest in financial inclusion. We discuss his Master’s thesis which ex...
Why Our Cities Aren’t Just Another Technology Problem. With Ben Green
November 18, 2020 07:00 - 41 minutes - 28.3 MBDr Ben Green is our guest in this week’s episode. Ben Green spoke in the Smart Cities stream at the conference on 9 October 2020. Ben is the author of The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology In Its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future and he is a Postdoctoral Fellow, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan. During our conversation, Ben shares what prompted his move from a physics major to his research on the social and political impacts of government algorithms. We m...
DNA Testing Sites: The Promises and Pitfalls of Precision Medicine. Part II
November 04, 2020 06:00 - 26 minutes - 18.3 MBIn this special two-part episode, Zoe Weaver, a Psychology student at the University of the West of England and our 2020 Summer intern, unravels some of the privacy concerns raised by the Blackstone group’s recent acquisition of genealogy provider, Ancestry.com. Zoe’s guests are Phil Booth, co-ordinator of MedConfidential, and Dr Laura Sobola, Senior Consultant at Unai and one of the Health Tech stream leads at the 2020 conference. In this second and final episode, Zoe delves more deeply...
DNA Testing Sites: Are They Safe? Part I
October 21, 2020 07:00 - 26 minutes - 18 MBIn this special two-part episode, Zoe Weaver, a Psychology student at the University of the West of England and our 2020 Summer intern, unravels some of the privacy concerns raised by the Blackstone group’s recent acquisition of genealogy provider, Ancestry.com. Zoe’s guests are Phil Booth, co-ordinator of MedConfidential, and Dr Laura Sobola, Senior Consultant at Unai and one of the Health Tech stream leads at the 2020 conference. In this first episode, Zoe focuses on the privacy concer...
Why Advocacy Is Underappreciated and Outsized in Research. With Alex Freeman
October 06, 2020 05:00 - 40 minutes - 28 MBOur guest in this week’s episode is Alex Freeman, who is a Senior User Researcher at Spotify. We’re delighted that Spotify are our Gold Partner for the 2020 edition of the Anthropology + Technology Conference. Originally from California, Alex is currently living in Stockholm, Sweden. Alex describes himself as a Professional People Watcher, and we chatted about how he got into user research, and explains how advocacy was important to him in his own career. Alex explains how companies like ...
Why Representation Really, Really Matters in Tech. With Aisha Thomas
September 30, 2020 07:00 - 31 minutes - 21.4 MBMy guest today is Aisha Thomas, who is an Assistant Principal at an inner city secondary school in Bristol, England, and an educational activist. Aisha originally trained as a lawyer but an encounter with a young prisoner drew her into teaching. In her new profession she was shocked to discover how few Black teachers there were in Bristol, and was approached by the BBC to present a documentary on the issue. We talk about the conversation she wanted to ignite with her powerful, honest, and...
Harnessing the Power of AI, Responsibly. With Richard Potter
September 28, 2020 07:00 - 16 minutes - 11.3 MBIn this episode, my guest is Richard Potter, Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft Consulting Services, UK. We're delighted that Microsoft are our 2020 Gold Partner. Richard is also Microsoft UK’s Ethics Lead for AI so he’s passionate about organisations making the most of this powerful technology but in a responsible way. We chatted about why Microsoft has such a strong position on responsible AI, and why it’s imperative for business leaders to adopt a responsible approach to using the ...
AI, Power, and Politics. With Ivana Bartoletti
September 23, 2020 06:00 - 54 minutes - 37.7 MBIn this episode, we talk to Ivana Bartoletti, who is speaking on the panel at the conference on 9 October. Ivana is a Privacy and Data Protection professional, a media commentator and a public speaker. She is Technical Director, Privacy at Deloitte and advises businesses and organisations on best practice and how to comply with privacy legislation at both a national and global level. She is also co-Founder of Women Leading in AI, and author of An Artificial Revolution – On Power, Politics a...
Freedom of Thought in the Digital Age. With Susie Alegre
September 16, 2020 07:00 - 41 minutes - 28.8 MBOur 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...
Diversity, Design, and Digital Health. With Ijeoma Azodo and Rafiah Badat
September 09, 2020 06:00 - 53 minutes - 36.7 MBIn 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 medi...
Using Tech To Transform Financial Wellbeing, Responsibly. With Ben Breen
September 02, 2020 06:00 - 27 minutes - 19.1 MBBen 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 startlin...
The Future of Safe and Transparent Access to Health Data. With Eerke Boiten
August 26, 2020 15:00 - 25 minutes - 17.5 MBProfessor 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 thin...
Using Deep Learning to Detect Retinal Disease
August 19, 2020 08:00 - 45 minutes - 31.6 MBPearse 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 researc...
Using Deep Learning to Detect Retinal Disease. With Pearse Keane
August 19, 2020 08:00 - 45 minutes - 31.6 MBPearse 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 researc...
Why Diversity Really Matters in the Health Service. With Sam Shah
August 12, 2020 06:00 - 38 minutes - 26.6 MBSam 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 ar...
Delivering Social Value in the Built Environment. With Gemma John
August 05, 2020 06:00 - 23 minutes - 16 MBGemma 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 s...
Digital Money, Mobility, and Long Tails with Erin B. Taylor
July 28, 2020 20:00 - 28 minutes - 19.6 MBIn 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 ...
Why Building AI Responsibly is Like Building a House. With Anders Kofod-Petersen
July 21, 2020 20:00 - 36 minutes - 25.2 MBIn 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...
Why We Need to Understand Humans as Well as Data. With Phil Harvey
July 14, 2020 19:00 - 26 minutes - 18.5 MBWhat 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 th...
Small nudges towards more responsible AI with Dr Allison Gardner
July 06, 2020 20:00 - 50 minutes - 34.8 MBIn this episode we’re thrilled to be interviewing Dr Allison Gardner, who is one of our 2020 keynote speakers in the health tech stream. Allison is a Teaching Fellow at Keele University and Programme Director for the Science Foundation Year. Her research is focused on gender and computing, AI ethics, governance of AI and the use of machine learning to predict disease. She works on the IEEE P7000 Global Initiative on the Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and specifically P7003 o...
How Responsible AI Benefits Everyone
July 01, 2020 07:00 - 5 minutes - 3.65 MBWelcome to the Anthropology + Technology Conference Podcast. Thanks for tuning in, we’re delighted to have you with us. In this first episode of our series, your host is Dawn Walter, the conference founder. Dawn set up the Anthropology + Technology Conference in 2019 with the aim of bringing together technologists and social scientists to ignite much-needed conversations and to help facilitate the adoption of more socially-responsible AI. As we’ll discover during this podcast series, AI c...
Making Tech Accountable with Martha Dark
July 01, 2020 07:00 - 22 minutes - 15.7 MBIn this episode we’re delighted to be talking to Martha Dark, who is speaking on the health stream at the conference. Martha is the co-founder of Foxglove, a new NGO that exists to make tech fair for everyone. Foxglove is a team of lawyers, technology experts and communications specialists, who believe that governments and big tech companies are misusing digital technology, and that this is harming the rest of us. Their aim is to fix this situation. During this episode, Martha shares some ...