Podcast: The IDEMS Podcast

A simple question, but not such an easy answer. Starting from their observations of street vendors and students in Burkina Faso and Niger, David and Lucie discuss what development could look like in this context. How does development in Niger, for example, compare to the developments needed in the UK?

In this follow-up to episode 035, Lily and David consider a recent development in the realm of AI image generation: Google’s Gemini model recently came under criticism for generating historically inaccurate images, seemingly as a result of overcorrecting for racial biases. They discuss topics including: how making mistakes can show that Google might be ahead…

This episode is a follow-up to episodes 033 and 034, which were a conversation between Santiago and David on IDEMS’ vision and mission. Here, Danny and David respond to that discussion, further explicating how they view the vision and mission and taking a critical look at their current formulations.

Lily and David discuss the challenges of using AI to generate images, highlighting biases observed in the results – in particular, regarding race and gender. They discuss the importance of recognising and addressing these biases, proposing solutions such as creating specific guidelines for using AI tools ethically and advocating for diversity in AI development.

Following a more theoretical assessment of IDEMS’ vision and mission in the previous episode, Santiago challenges David to explicitly analyse how these apply to three IDEMS projects. These are explained and contextualised before exposing how the vision relates to them. The mission is revealed to be explicitly relevant to each project once the vision analysis…

Description David and Santiago delve deeply into IDEMS’ vision and mission. David explains how these guide most of what IDEMS does and engages in, while going into detail about their meaning and implications. Transcript [00:00:00] Santiago: Hi, and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I am Santiago Borio, an Impact Activation Fellow, and I’m here with…

Lily and David discuss the “Impact Activation Postdoctoral Fellow” role at IDEMS. They discuss the objectives and experiences of the fellowship program, and its impact on both individuals and the broader organisation. They explore the flexibility and opportunities provided by the fellowship to engage in diverse projects, the transition to more permanent roles within IDEMS,…

WARNING: This episode was recorded outside on a mobile phone, and the audio quality reflects this. If that kind of thing bothers you, you may want to skip this one! Reports based on current trends predict that the world could have its first trillionaire within the next few years. What does this say about our…

Lucie and David discuss various forms of study, including opportunistic studies, surveys, questionnaires and experiments. They consider some best practices for good research, using anthropology and agroecology as examples. How might modern data science be able to employ existing data for new opportunistic studies? And who might typically be excluded from data as it is…

How can students be assessed effectively if large language models can be used to generate good answers to examination questions? Lily and David look at the effects of AI on education, in both the present and the future. How must pedagogy change in order to embrace the latest technological advances, and do we need to…