Prof Matthew Chalmers he/him

For a long time, I worked on mobile systems that logged and analysed vast amounts of data about how and where people used them. After a while, I saw that such analysis could not be ethically neutral, but would always have risks and costs that had to be addressed… especially in commercial systems that incessantly gather and mine data about us. I wound down that old research group, and shifted my work towards more ethical ways to do system design. Around this time, AI grew larger and larger in its appetite for data and its abuse – so unstoppably that I did consider just focusing on teaching, climbing, and playing computer games.

Now, though, I want to do something more positive. I want to apply some of the concepts from my old work to the new setting of AI, in projects that don’t just record or critique AI’s ethical/social/environmental harms, but develop ways to let people better understand how it works, how it doesn’t, how to use it, how to avoid it, and how to undermine or resist — most obviously for those minorities treated with most prejudice by the big tech companies, but also for the wider population. Therefore, I’d like to work with students who can combine such issues in creatively developing new concepts and system designs. Most of my prior students are in the tech industry, although a few have retired early because they made a stack of cash through their own companies, and some are academics (less likely to be so rich!).

With regard to EDI, I was Athena SWAN lead for my school for some years, leading EDI work in my school. I’ve also designed specific funding streams in large projects I led, to let under-represented researchers establish their own projects earlier and more easily that is the norm. After saying that: I am literally an old white male professor! I like some very old-fashioned things, like intellectual rigour, e.g. giving credit to those in disciplines (often far from computing) who established the most powerful critiques, theories and concepts around information and technology. (And computer games.)