A public, postgraduate lecture series offered by the Edinburgh Futures Institute and Science Technology and Innovation Studies, highlighting current research from across the University of Edinburgh

Fridays 15:00-17:30 40 George Sq  Semester 2 2024

The extraordinary growth and pervasiveness of born-digital ‘big data’ from administrative and commercial systems, the novel deployment of ‘data science’, and a whole series of extraordinary and unnerving developments labelled ‘AI’ are generating fierce controversy. For example, the unprecedented dataveillance powers provided by the UK Investigatory Powers Act; concerns over how to regulate AI while promoting national industries;  the widespread implementation of facial recognition; profiling and sorting of immigrants using social media data; the ‘sharing’ of large-scale data sets of health records without consent; fears over AI replacing jobs; global trade wars over technological dominance; the use of social media platforms in political communication; and the protests, court cases and legislation around algorithmically-mediated services such as Uber or Airbnb.

This series of research-led seminars will provide insights from leading researchers across the University of Edinburgh, addressing issues that will shape future ‘data-led’ innovation, a key strategic theme of the new Edinburgh Futures Institute, the Usher Institute and the Bayes Centre. Each seminar will include two talks, and provide time for discussion. The series will can be followed by postgraduate students for credit, and student participants will work to map the issues and relationships between controversies identified in the seminars, and future directions for research and policy activities.

Programme for 2024

Recordings will appear on these pages a few days after the event. The discussion sessions are available to those with University login access unless the participants  agree to make them open.

Please also enjoy the content from the previous years in the Archives or Video repository