Free Thinking

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The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Yellowface, AI and Asian stereotypes

Yellowface, AI and Asian stereotypes

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Yellowface, AI and Asian stereotypes

Novelist R F Kuang, Dr Kerry McInerney, Ghislaine Boddington and MIT's Daron Acemoglu.

How are our perceptions of ownership and Identity influenced by the apparent power of digital technology? Should we be concerned about the growth of AI ?

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

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