Podcast: The IDEMS Podcast

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…

David and Lily discuss the possible effects that advances in AI might have on the world of work. It seems that AI has the potential to affect almost all work, but should we be worried? What skills do we value as a society, and can AI ever replicate human creativity?

While many organisations seem to focus on a small area of expertise, IDEMS is involved in a wide range of projects and activities, in a wide variety of roles. In this episode, David talks to Santiago about the thinking behind, and advantages of, embracing diversity in how IDEMS can have impact and add value.

SMART goals and principles are common monitoring and evaluation tools, but what’s the difference between them? Lucie and David compare the two approaches and their respective acronyms, considering when being SMART is useful, and when a GUIDE might be more helpful.

Lily and David discuss consciousness in relation to AI. Whilst there is a lot of popular debate in this area, can we really have a meaningful discussion without a clear definition of consciousness? They consider advancements in AI, ethical dilemmas surrounding sentient machines, and the potential future of human-AI relationships.