Talks (2) – Ruth Stalker-Firth

Bacon on ice-cream

When McDonald’s withdrew its AI from the drive-thru after it kept putting bacon on ice-cream, most people were left baffled. In this talk, we take a look at speech recognition and natural language processing using machine learning to see why the rogue AI would ‘think’ that bacon is a good topping for ice-cream. And, why it couldn’t possibly improve without human intervention (artificial AI). It is invariably quicker and cheaper to get a human to behave like a robot, rather than the other way round.

Read more: Bacon on Ice-cream and Duolingo Dutch.

Human-computer interaction

Human-computer interaction originated to make it easier for people to interact with their computers and to study how humans experienced technology. But, when the computer moved off the desktop and into our daily lives often capturing every move we make things got a lot more complicated.

From the design of the first user interface with lightbulbs and switches, to wearables such as Fitbits on our wrists, we look at what it means to be human in the field of human-computer interaction and the experiences, both good and bad, that we now have as a consequence.

Digital Anthropology

In the 1970s, anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, began studying up, applying anthropology – the scientific study of behaviour, culture and society – to how Westerners behave. With the rise of the WWW in the 1990s this has extended to our digital life and beyond. From the first office anthropologists, via social animals on social media and undercover anthropologists in the World of Warcraft, to artificial intimacy with chatbots and post-human aspirations, we consider what it means to be human in a digital world.

Digital journalism

Digital journalism began in the 1990s as the WWW became a key place where people went to get their news. Over the years it seems that traditional journalism has scrambled to keep up with the other fast-changing news outlets that are less worried about media law and ethics as they create audience engagement, and numbers often with clickbait and multi-media.

In this talk, we explore trial by public opinion, citizen journalism (aka content creators), misinformation, disinformation, fake news and the impact and responsibilities of AI and social media platforms on today’s media.