Data Summit 2023 Highlights
Members of the Scottish AI Alliance Team with Minister Richard Lochhead MSP and Brian Hills, CEO, Data Lab at Data Summit 2023.
In November, the Scottish AI Alliance exhibited at Data Summit 2023. While AI was at the top of the agenda, and dominated most of the discussions, complementary topics included space, healthcare, education, culture, and genomics.
With our own AI Alliance stand, our team in attendance, and an opportunity to get on stage, we witnessed this great event from pretty much all angles.
Here are some highlights and takeaways…
Yuko Itatsu on gendered robots
How does the gendering of robots expose attitudes to the division of labour in different cultures? When an AI assistant is given a human-like appearance and personality, who does this look and behave like? Does it perpetuate existing prejudices? Prof. Yuko Itatsu, Director for the B’AI Global Forum, University of Tokyo, shared fascinating insights into these issues.
Moriba Jah on space sustainability
More than 25,000 objects larger than 10cm are known to be orbiting the earth right now, but most of these are “trash”. That’s according to an eye-opening keynote from Moriba Jah, astrodynamicist and space sustainability expert who gave us a demo of Wayfinder, an open access digital tool that tracks and visualises objects in Earth orbit.
Carissa Véliz on Privacy
In a serious mythbusting session about tech and data, Prof. Carissa Véliz laid out the price we pay for the digital tools and services we use. We should all be concerned with the extent of data collection, and the accessibility of that data to the highest bidder. However, there’s room for optimism: particularly with regard to regulation and the demonstrable profitability of better practice.
Vivienne Parry on the computing challenge of genomics
65 petabytes. (Also known as 65,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.) That’s the size of the National Genomic Research Library held by Genomics England. Genomic data, as Vivienne Parry points out, is huge, and this has had significant implications for the speed at which genomics research can take place. AI assistance, needless to say, will be transformational.
Angus Watson on Colon Capsules
Is AI the solution for curing bowel cancer? Could swallowing a small capsule replace colonoscopies? Prof. Angus Watson, Colorectal Surgeon, makes a compelling and fascinating case for the ScotCap Test: using colon capsules and AI analysis to improve early cancer detection.
DALL-E at the Scottish AI Alliance Stand
We don’t really like waste at the Scottish AI Alliance, and less so to generate it ourselves, so we decided to forego the usual ‘swag’ at our stand this year and instead focus on meaningful engagement with attendees. We asked visitors to submit their thoughts on regulation, discrimination and diversity in AI. And we also gave them a chance to create prompts for visual gen-AI tool DALL-E and see the results on a screen. It was loads of fun, particularly the various attempts to visualise the notion of Scottish AI (occasionally with cats).
Finally, here are our three main takeaways from the event:
AI loves complex problems
While much of the talk in the media has been about generative AI, replacement, and fearmongering, disciplines with particularly complex challenges have become poised to make significant progress. These include genomics (that’s the study of genomes and DNA), population screening in medicine, analysis of satellites and space debris, and more.
Education
Delivery of education can and needs to change to benefit from the huge potential of AI, but the way we assess learning needs to change as well. Educators simply cannot stay ahead of generative AI technology, and plagiarism detection may not be the best use of investment, so change is coming.
Data safety
With the growing awareness of AI, we’ve seen a parallel growth of apprehension and mistrust of it across society. And while maintaining a critical and inquisitive attitude is vital in the adoption of new technology, we mustn’t lose sight of some of the older and potentially more profound dangers in technology, particularly regarding personal data. The bad news is lots of our personal data is still be collected in numerous ways by the various digital tools and services we rely on. Worse still, according to an amazing keynote from Carissa Véliz, some of this data can be collated and sold to the highest bidder, whether that’s a government, a company, or an individual. The good news? Recent data is far more valuable than old data, so it’s never to late to take control of your online information.
What’s next?
If you’re inspired by all this talk of events and AI, please save 28 March 2024 for the Scottish AI summit, a one-day AI-focused event that will be held in Edinburgh and available online. We’ve just announced two amazing keynotes and registrations will open on 19 January - join our mailing list to be the first to hear.
