Episode description

Is it ever okay to pass off someone else’s work as your own? What if it’s a computer programme faking it? And how are our perceptions of ownership and Identity influenced by the apparent power of digital technology?

These are some of the big questions Chris Harding discusses with :

Rebecca Kuang, author of a new novel, ‘Yellowface’, which is largely a story about plagiarism and publishing, but also touches on identity, social media and use of digital technology in perpetuating misinformation.

New Generation Thinker Kerry McInerny, who researches the impact of AI. Amongst other aspects she’s looking at how it can get things wrong, and its misuse in racial profiling. https://www.gender.cam.ac.uk/technology-gender-and-intersectionality-research-project/kerry-mackereth

And, MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, whose new book ‘Power and Progress’ says advances in technology don’t always equate with positive outcomes. He discusses the way AI algorithms have been used in social media to make money and spread hate, but also outlines how we can harness tech for good Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity written by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson is out now

Ghislaine Boddington is a curator and director, specialising in the future human, body responsive technologies and digital intimacy. She is a Reader in Digital Immersion at the University of Greenwich. https://ghislaineboddington.com/

You can find more from Kerry on the Arts and Ideas podcast as part of our strand New Thinking – made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council which focuses specifically on research being done in UK universities – And the AHRC is also behind a big project involving academics in Edinburgh and the Ada Lovelace Institute looking at AI ethics And if you want to hear about AI in music – composers Robert Laidlow and Emily Howard talked to Radio 3’s Music Matters programme and you can find that on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001l4d8