This month, we chat with Dr Vanessa Pirotta, a wildlife scientist and science communicator with a passion for creatively making use of technology for her work in wildlife conservation. We learn all about how she uses drones to survey the health of whales in transit and what research like this is telling us about these magnificent creatures. We also get into a wide-ranging discussion about life in science as a woman in STEM and in academia, the importance of sharing our work with society, the role citizen science can play in our understanding of the world, and so much more.

Vanessa is a real inspiration, and we think our chat with her is a perfect way to get yourself in the mood for Australia's National Science Week.

Guest: Vanessa Pirotta

Hosts: Zena Assaad, Liz Williams

Producers: Zena Assaad, Liz Williams, Robbie Slape, Martin Franklin

A video of our chat and a full (edited!) transcript are available on our website:

https://algorithmicfutures.org/s03e05

What are AI standards – and why should we care? Our guest today, Dr Kobi Leins, has first-hand experience as both contributor to the development of AI standards for the world and a professional working on supporting safe AI in real world industry contexts. We talk about what AI standards are for and why the discussion and work feeding into standards – and AI development and deployment more broadly – matters for us all. It’s the kind of tricky discussion that starts in industry and day-to-day applications of AI, and ends in military uses of AI.

If you care about AI ethics, safety, responsibility, all those words – then you need to listen to this conversation.

Credits

Guest: Dr Kobi Leins

Hosts: Zena Assaad and Liz Williams

Producers: Robbie Slape, Zena Assaad, Liz Williams, Martin Franklin (East Coast Studio)

Thanks to the Australian National Centre for the Advancement of Science for letting us use their podcast studio.

For episode links and the full transcript, visit https://algorithmicfutures.org/s03e04

The idea that artificial intelligence is taking our jobs can be scary – but in actuality, there are cases where this is a good thing. Dr Sara Webb (Swinburne University of Technology) shares one of these stories in today’s episode, which begins with a TedX talk in Melbourne and ends with a discussion of some of the many ways techniques developed for astrophysics are transforming seemingly unrelated fields. Sara is an astrophysicist based at Swinburne University and is also a published author with a talent for communicating complex ideas about our universe (and AI) for broad audiences. Listen in to hear more about the role AI is increasingly playing in astronomy, how she got into astrophysics in the first place, and more in this wide ranging episode that paints a picture of what a career in STEM can look like.

Episode credits:

Guest: Sara Webb

Co-hosts: Zena Assaad and Liz Williams

Producers: Zena Assaad, Robbie Slape, Liz Williams, Martin Franklin (East Coast Studio)

Thanks to the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science for letting us use their podcast studio to record this episode.

For the full episode transcript, visit https://algorithmicfutures.org