Hosting the short podcast Our Data, Our Future, with Robin Riback is proving to be a fascinating adventure.
Because?
Well, we’re keeping it under 10 minutes, focused on a topic around data and from our different perspectives.
The challenge – making it succinct, worth watching and with a least one ‘big idea’.
Episode 2 on data hoarding is out now – let us know how we’re doing and what you think of the ideas we pose.
As part of my applied science fiction work, I was involved in a project to look at AI-driven tools in children’s mental healthcare.
Recently, a paper about the project has been published.
This is the abstract:
Artificial intelligence may be able to improve the efficiency, accuracy and predictiveness of mental health assessments, and public perspectives are crucial to ensuring these tools are implemented with fairness and accountability. We developed an artificial intelligence-driven tool to automatically analyse parents’ speech data, which if successful could be implemented in children and young people’s mental health assessments. To engage stakeholders with this project, we worked with a science fiction writer to produce two stories about possible futures of our tool, which we discussed in workshops with young people and parents. Here, we summarise key themes arising from this novel method of engaging the public in mental health research, and highlight considerations for clinicians and researchers creating novel technologies for children and young people’s mental healthcare.
The full paper can be read here: https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/camh.70045
Well, this is good news… so pleased to be one of the top ten winners in the Dubai Futures Foundation short story competition, alongside other writers from around the world.
https://www.dubaifuture.ae/future-stories-2025-edition
I have others to thank for this, including Prof Claire Steves of King’s College London for helping me think through the science behind it.