The Impact of IoT & AI on Society: A Deep Dive w/ Sepi Chakaveh & Cigdem Sengul- Guest Host Takeover

The Impact of IoT & AI on Society: A Deep Dive w/ Sepi Chakaveh & Cigdem Sengul- Guest Host Takeover

Show Video

welcome back to the iot podcast Guest House special I chidam Shangri and sippy takave will take over the studio for an episode in today's takeover we will be taking the spotlight to discuss the impact of new technologies ranging from data science AI Quantum Computing and more and the opportunities they bring to us this episode is specially sponsored by pixelchat a multi-user platform that delivers instant real-time translator communication via a range of dynamic products episode I was born in Istanbul Turkey and my introduction to technology was probably with started with the Commodore 64 that my father brought home one day but I would not say I was immersed in the technology until I started my undergraduate program in control and computer engineering in Istanbul Technical University where I developed a huge interest in computer networks and security um then I followed that interest with a Fulbright Fellowship to United States and I got an MSC and a PhD in computer science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where I worked on ad hoc networks um and focused on routing and Energy Management Solutions and after my PhD my career kind of followed an unconventional path I believe and I worked in research Labs I held roles in an industry in Academia I worked on delay torrent networks at inria in France I worked on mesh networks in Deutsche Telecom Labs Germany you can see a pattern with networks there and in the UK I worked at Oxford ribs University and then nominate UK which runs the dot UK domain and now at Bernal University focusing mostly on internet of things now currently I'm a reader in computer science at Brunel and I co-lead the computer science for social good research group and I am also affiliated with the research center centers social and digital Innovation and I'm part of the Institute of digital Futures as well my work has now in iot a different focus on usable security privacy and data protection with applications to healthcare um so that's all about me um can you tell me a little bit about your background sepi um thank you uh uh it's it's a pleasure to meet you um well actually I um I'm originally Iranian I was born in Tehran uh but I was quite young with my family when we moved to the UK I um did my a levels and all levels and everything in the UK then I did a degree in electronic engineering and then I moved to do a PhD in experimental astrophysics I did my PhD with the Giotto Mission which went to Halley's Comet and I created the first image processing techniques to extract uh things like the hidden jets in the nucleus of comet Halli then I worked as a experimentalist instrumental astrophysicist at Imperial College and then I moved to Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg where I worked on the analysis of the instrumentation of the Interstellar dust then I was on various post-doc positions and in a year to 1991 I think I I got a job for two years at uh University of goettingen Observatory I was working there as a software system engineer then at some stage I got fed up working in astronomy so I started looking for a job and as it happened I was recruited by GMD which was uh predecessors of Fraun hoofer Society and the first job I had was to build the first internet-wise satellite in Eastern Europe so in countries like Romania Bulgaria Slovak Republic Lithuania and Russia we built the first internet by satellite so we literally went to these countries that was in mid 90s and um then when I built this we were supposed to be representing these technology I didn't know what what I should be uh how I should be representing internet so because all our partners were academic institutions I wrote the first virtual learning environment platform with HTML myself in 1997 and use a streaming technology to show as possible to do e-learning via satellite and our partners were in Central and Eastern Europe but then I um what we did was we connected our Network satellite Network to ISDN to America so the company there were some universities in Pennsylvania who were doing the uh business studies so we actually did the first demos of How It's possible to use internet uh to uh to do teaching this was then I was I did a lot of stuff at franhofer I built the first virtual TV presenter on Avatar because we were working on the multimedia online platform and interactive television then we did a lot of formats last thing I did I was in France 2007. the last thing I was when I was there I was the architect of Citizen media project which was you know I mean all the data convergence stuff that you you know use it was actually partly my brainchild then I moved to the UK back because of family reasons and I was a senior lecturer at University of hartfordshire teaching digital technology and biometrics then in 2013 I went to University of Southampton I worked there at the web Science Institute and in 2014 2015 I set up the first online data science academy in the UK and 2017 I handed over I did a part-time teaching setting up the first data science courses at University of Oxford Open Access and search of lifelong learning based on what I created at Southampton and that's where I'm now I'm at the departmental lecturer and course director teach data science software engineering AI I'm doing a little bit of quantum Computing and then at the same time I set up my own technology pixelr pixel chat which I can talk about it that's me in a brief thank you so much this is so inspiring you've been immersed in so many different Technologies and we're the first in a number of them so this is amazing to hear um so having seen so many Technologies take shape and form what are the most exciting Innovative uses of recent Technologies or artificial intelligence that you've seen recently well I mean this is really an interesting question I think as far as I can say these are I mean what what I've got to tell you is I'm sure you are much more aware of that as as human beings uh we've been living in an analog world for the last 40 to 60 000 years and then because of the inventions which been happening primarily in the last 100 years but especially in the last 20 years um we have completely moved from the digital uh from the um sort of like a analog domain into a digital domain I mean just think about it just think about it that if you had the um pandemic 20 years ago not only half the world population would have um uh died we also would not have the opportunity to do things which really have done like working from home you know doing studying stuff like that these all happened because of the Technologies which is created in the last 20 years it's funny because when I was teaching data science prior to the pandemic to my students I was trying to sort of give them the perception what is data what is Digital Universe what is so I think to answer your question it's really there is nothing unique about the technology it's about building this universe and as Engineers I mean as human beings we were creating all these tools and machines to help us to do a task uh but till recently we've been doing building sort of real physical uh um uh Machinery real physical tools to help us to improve the quality of life now that we have discovered this other universe and the interaction between the two it's a huge amount so I mean the Technologies of AI or iot or Quantum Computing these are effectively some of the enabling Technologies there isn't anything um I think as an individual technology this is my my perception I don't think that any of them are carrying anything specific I mean they are part of a Evolution because um what happened was uh let's say when I was doing my PhD for example I discovered this Jets but I had to sort of sit down and do the write an algorithm and write a filter process these images through these filters run them 40 times this was my own intuition um that I did it but now you have got things like probably it's the same sort of process but you call it neural network what I'm saying is it these are just the evolution and the reason that we can actually access and create all these Technologies is because because of several things first of all um is because the data is is so accessible we've got to your big data and then we have got the possibility of things like a very very cheap uh computation through cloud computing or Edge Computing and uh Dennis is also the the communities have been built so people are sharing their own ideas I mean like I remember when I was working in front of where we built a my Institute built the first uh virtual Studio applications and I remember uh sort of like they were doing some work for um things like Jurassic parks at the time and uh this was like mid 90s I would say and for each of the servers that they were doing processing they they were about eight million dollars something like that to do the image version now you can do that in your mobile I mean this is because it is it's the Democracy it's the uh access to this technology is in is the inclusivity and that is what is important and I think I don't particularly like the um the the perception that some people trying to really uh mystify these technology as something this is really an enabling technology something we have to use and sometimes I personally think that uh we have to be able to walk before we run so the provision of some of the technologies that has been given to the public it's completely distracts the uh the uh Natural Evolution of the uh the technology where the humanities gonna use it so a much more a much more realistic and a much more practical when come it for me there are just tools they're just enabling Technologies and the bits of things that they're coming there are components that if somebody has got an Insight how they can use them does that answer your question it's a long-winded one yeah I completely agree I see them as building blocks as well and as we advance in computational Technologies as well as communication Technologies data collection becomes much more integrated and distributed and with the I would say more access to data you get to operate these Technologies in big data and a lot a number of things became possible within machine learning and artificial intelligence so definitely I consider them as building as blogs as well I am also inspired more about the use of Technology as a tool um mostly with cost-disciplinary work inspires me a lot where I feel like the technology has a great potential to improve um and that's why I'm much more interested in healthcare applications recently because I feel like these Technologies can help from diagnosis to clinical care to disease management as we've seen in covid for instance huge response with the technology as well as our lives we could we could you know follow up on our lives with the enablement of Technology be able to keep in touch with our loved ones continue education access to remote Healthcare so how do we manage our well-being and Care at home with access to technology so that that really really inspires me and we will see more and more Innovative use cases I also like simple Technologies like things that solve one thing and not try to be the world I was recently reading about a company that does metal Lord I believe a GPS tracker hidden in the shoe soles just to detect when an Alzheimer's patient for instance wanders off and may need help and I feel like this is one great example of a simple technology that doesn't try to be lots of things but only one thing and it can transform that the lives of a patient as well as its carers when it's most needed that health is most needed so um so I think of course it's just a great example of how also we need to consider side effects of technology for instance in you know in terms of privacy and Etc when we consider you know how it becomes integrated into our lives and embedded into social systems like healthcare so that leads to be a little bit to my next question about how you feel technology be it Internet of Things beats AI beat other Technologies transform how we live and how we work and what new opportunities do you feel uh it creates for us uh that is again a very good question I think it goes back to the basics of what I mean in my perception the digital world is based on I mean the building block is data so you first have the data then you process it make it an information then you make a knowledge and then I would always say that intelligence is very contextual so what do I mean by that I mean the process of making data to uh to a knowledge is a generic process so it doesn't matter what sort of scenario you've got you still have to do the same data wrangling cleaning do this and that but you only understand the data if you have got some sort of a minimum background about it let's say if somebody speaks to me Swahili I wouldn't understand what they're talking about unless I only know at least to a 20 30 words and it and just happens that I might hear that and then I could make a understanding that they're talking about certain subjects so this is again about intelligence I mean the intelligence is only um applicable if you have got the uh the right uh domain knowledge and that is what the machines do these things like machine learning because they try to do the basic work of the uh of the whole thing but when it comes to the significance of the data literally uh what is happening is that nothing in this world is free and um I mean I have been a data science literally since I've been on a strong astrophysicist because if you are an astrophysicist then you work on the uh perceptions of the worlds that you cannot reach you have to have a means to uh to actually simulate that interpret that look at the the data make analysis so somebody said to me that the best data scientist with all due respects are the astrophysicists anyway uh what I want to say is that uh so when you look at the tech companies I mean this thing that has been always obvious to me because I've been working in this field for the last 30 odd years but nothing is free so effectively if if a tech company offers you a free service what they have done they have um long before anybody else they recognize that the value of the data is far more important because what you do is you get targeted advertising you you get certain type of preferences I'm not gonna go through that um you know it's it's a it's a sort of a long established business I mean like 15 years ago I I came across companies that they were already doing uh things like auctioning uh 15 years ago they were all already systems built into social media that they would provide that type of targeting or even things like emails and stuff like that but the point is that nothing is free in this world so people didn't realize that when they were using a an um set of like an app which they can go and sign up they were actually paying it through their personal data and and to be honest they didn't realize the potential of this uh personal data because most people they were completely unaware of the Digital Universe so this is really uh now is the question of the data privacy I think unfortunately I would say with them especially with the emergence of a number of the recent Technologies come up I think they will fundamentally build an overall personal data and I think we missed the boat well what we have to do is I mean the data is that I I'm my personal understanding is that our digital profile is far more accurate in terms of what what the real uh presentation of us in this world is because every single transaction we do every telephone call we do everything well it just forms our profile act more and more accurate and I think it's uh it's everything is out there so but what happens is now coming back and trying to see something that they've already got the uh the authority and the uh the ownership and the they have already built complete infrastructures that they can EX extract appropriate business models of the data uh is is already done no but I think it is important I think it is important to educate to educate the powers to be to inform them for when they are making decisions they're not making decision based on their Concepts usual 10 years ago and the uh you know even if they come with some sort of a policy or something like that it's not going to be relevant because already let's say if you have got certain type of application I'm not going to talk about it but this this is clearly based on all the information that companies gathered over years and then they come with a new predictive new new type of technology so I think I think the most important thing about data privacy is that you really try to educate the powers to be and they and then they would come unfortunately with all the regulations in the technology is that they're on average 10 years behind 10 years behind of the standard I mean no obviously you've got something like chat GPT and everybody talks about it so uh it is it is for most people it's a it's just a tangled uh uh piece of uh wiring and you know it can be anything to everybody to anyway every anybody but nevertheless what is important is is is to educate people on the status quo of the technology and give them the uh the ability to make the right decisions and this is not the decision about the individuals but I think it's the policy makers is the people who are making sort of like certain decisions for the for the country they are the ones that they have to have the right education in order to do that because um if if they're not really quite aware of it we are losing a lot of opportunities that could could just turn the other way around a question yeah I completely agree this is uh this is an area that I was passionate about as well this we've run a project called 3D uh which looked into rethinking interfaces into you know iot interfaces into Smart Homes with the idea of making um bringing interdisciplinary researchers to discuss how to make things more transparent uh more obvious to the end user in turn depending on the smart home context this could be home security this could be appliances this could be Healthcare this could be smart toys right they're entering all aspects of our lives and they're Transforming Our Lives as well and some technologies are adopted faster than the others like smart speakers or the you know the ring system of the Amazon ring and home security devices and Etc um or you know like uh the heating systems heating control systems and Etc and some of them are entering more slowly but they are they are slowly coming into every aspect of our life and the idea of choice is not there so when we were talking with researchers who we would be expecting to be much more privacy aware and privacy conscious there is even there a uh kind of acceptance that this is the Lost Coast that they don't have a choice and probably they you know they missed the boat on that um and then we need to more and more think towards yes people do care about privacy people do care about data protection they would like to have a choice and they would like to be able to exercise that choice and not every device needs to be networked and you know emitting data at all times we would have to have some control over that so all of those things are slowly I think coming in but again it's in a much more slower Pace than the Innovations in technology we you know we see we see technology growing in a super fast pace adopted very prematurely sometimes and then we see the side effects and then we start thinking oh how what we could be done to avoid those side effects right um so it's it's it's definitely an interesting period to live we are going through towards transformative change there are lots of opportunities but I also think that there is also um we should not just be carried away with the speed of things but have time to think about the utilization of Technology um I I know you know there are so many exciting things happening like 3D printables wearables being able to customize devices according to persons needs facilitating AI human collaboration um especially you know with again Healthcare or other Industries um so so many things are happening but at the same time I think we need to have a thinking cap on and see about how these Technologies affect lives actually we will be running a uh hacking the digital Health event uh we're now in May where this is the questions we're opposing right taking the idea of interdisciplinary co-creation of the digital Health Solutions we would ask you know we'll challenge people to think about um how to make more careful years of data in Smart Homes reduce differences among social classes in terms of accessing digital Health Technologies improving access to digital Solutions especially in older age groups who are we excluding from this digital world how do we eliminate bare barriers to digital Technologies for disabled or differently a bit people right so how do we and and I think there is a lot of opportunities in terms of more inclusive Solutions we just need to Advocate more for them and not be just I think uh taken away by or taken up with the shiny Tech new technology but how it is going to be integrated into our lives there's much more thinking to be done there and that's what I believe absolutely couldn't couldn't you agree more I mean um there are good you know I I also have been inspired by good steps taken by some of the organizations like microbit.org which distributes these um micro bits the small devices um for physical Computing and communication devices to teach younger children you know computational thinking with a very physical Computing object I'm inspired by them because they Set This Global challenges around your own sustainable development goals and they already embed that thinking into the young Generations into future Engineers of our creating technologies that have social impact right so um I think that kind of training you mentioned training a lot I think that kind of training education needs to be even better very early on into our thinking so that we we um we create socially responsible projects basically quick word from our sponsor pixel chat pixel chat is a multi-user platform that delivers instant real-time translated communication via a range of dynamic products this unique groundbreaking technology means that you do not have to know someone's language in order to communicate with them in real time pixel chat opens doors to Greater understanding and Limitless new possibilities whether you want to translate text to text voice to text or voice to voice pixel chat offers instant translated Communications to learn how you can use the pixel track services for your emails conferences or podcasts and much more head over to www.pixelchat.online work on social responsible technology and I think that kind of leads to the next question very well the ethical considerations that we need to be aware of when we are using iot or AI technology and how can we ensure these Technologies be used responsibly what are your thoughts on that I mean I think effectively um there are two there are two uh I think there are two ways to approach it one is obviously we discussed that the education I think we need the power to be they have to understand not things within the short term but what is it we're going to be what sort of world we're going to have in 50 years time and uh I mean it's probably 100 years ago was difficult to project that but now uh with the current technologies that we have got divisions and everything it is not as difficult as to predict what is it that we could have in 50 years time so um I think that is the case and based on that then you have to come back to the drawing board and there is for any action there is a counteraction so um you thought you think about I mean let's say let's take this example of um social media let's let's look at all this um ideas that you know people at schools you know they get this bullying this sort of messaging things like that okay what do we do we this this creates a huge discomfort it's called huge huge impact negative impact a lot of youngsters they go into depression they I mean we don't want to go to that sort of level but it is just by taking one aspect of the this digital technology social media it could do a lot of damage to our society it doesn't matter where where you are I mean it is global impact of it and um and I think what would you do is you look at the counter effect of that so I think it's about creating tools which counter affect that and um and actually it's not very complicated because the way that the engineer these uh social media you can also engineer tools which would flag these things out very early on but you're not you need to actually Implement that so I think it has to be a lot of resources available to do the engineering of these social negative impacts of the tools and technology that exists and that is with the work we have to do uh so um I mean I remember something like uh already as uh I don't know maybe it was about 12 years ago I was trying to work with a student uh which my idea was to actually try to flag out these um uh sort of like messaging that was bullying and stuff like that I mean it's all metadata isn't it I mean it's not really uh rocket science but somebody has to be sitting there somebody has to be dedicated create these tools and it has to be available it has to be part of the services that uh companies social media are offering and they just don't want to maybe do it because it's easier to uh to just roll on an existing business and stuff like that but we have to be socially responsible everybody has to be because for one child or for one individual to be deprived and use this tool I mean if you think about it this can be like a like a weapon and it destroys somebody's life somebody's morality so I mean that that cannot be acceptable and I think the same sort of resources should be dedicated to create these tools which interacts negative impact of the social uh Media or technology that I think we have to realize it shouldn't be about just talking about it's the education and then it's provision of real tangible tools and products which counteract that that's my the opinion I don't know I do I do believe so as well I think well there is the concept of privacy by Design or security by Design um as opposed to having these things take the back seat for a long time and prioritizing Technology Building first I think you cannot afford to do that anymore as I said as the technology becomes more and more embedded into our daily lives you just cannot afford to do that I mean the pre I think the former visions of iot where devices will be quietly integrated and embedded into our background without us noticing it is a scary Vision we have to notice them and this is some of the things that we were discussing in our 3D project where we talked about polite machines which kind of introduce themselves when a new person comes in and says hey by the way I'm recording this area you know or a number of people in our workshops talked about Amish approach to adopting technology maybe creating communities as well where as a community we decide how far we want to adopt a technology because a single person's adoption of attack can affect other people in the vicinity in their neighborhood as well so um we are discussing these things more and more it has to be becoming it has to be more mainstream I think that's that's the thing not only people who are considered or labeled as privacy aware or privacy conscious but mainstream we have to understand that this is an important thing to focus on creating Technologies and we see examples of things going wrong all the time like biases in them in the data affecting machine learning AI uh leading to wrong predictions affecting accuracy of predictions for a certain segment of people um misdiagnosing you know um or chatbots has hallucinating or becoming anti-social quite fast right so we see lots and lots of bad examples of you know how things could go wrong very fast so that awareness needs to needs to be there now we should be building that awareness and be prepared to do something for it um any technology that builds on human data and I think this is any technology that we're talking about now be it Internet of Things be it AI be it you know chat GPT well it needs to be careful about how the data is collected what is what purpose it is used for how it's shared how it's retained how it's deleted right so um and we need to create those trustworthy systems you were going to say something no I was going to say that most of these Technologies already been built on the existing data that they have harnessed anyway so the models that they use as I said that's uh that both has gone so what is important however is to to look at this from the engineering perspective because at the end of the day there were algorithms and there's algorithms if if they don't done properly or if they're trying to do um as you say I mean like these shoes I think I find it absolutely fascinating you know you have to do one thing at a time because the technology of AI is not that advanced I mean we're still on a very narrow I mean it does one thing at a time so if if you are trying to sort of cascade various different uh processes working at the same time in unison it's very very difficult to actually engineering and it's on the cost of the errors on the cost of giving you wrong predictions wrong results so I think at the end of the day goes back to the people who are creating these things and they have to be more responsible and I think we have to also start thinking at the um adopting certain formats certain standards and this has to go through the future of any product which comes and it has to it has to have all these checks and balances before we offer them to the users because uh I mean you if you if you build a car if you build a car you make sure that everything all the safety is there this is exactly the same with the digital product you have to make sure that you as a somebody is creating these things I've got the responsibility the social responsibility you have to take you have to take responsibility if something goes wrong what if the um the I don't know the break doesn't work unfortunately there's an accident who's going to take care of that this is the sort of thing that we are completely oblivious about it and I think this has to go through the new regulations and the standardizations formats and currently um digital domain is just like the wild west everybody comes with something and they don't really think about it I mean it has to be structure structurized it has to be well thought of and it has to be Frameworks it has to be in the place and I and I'm actually very happy that there are no search of organizations and people are coming starting the debate but it has to really be well defined until we do not do that then we would keep generating these tools which go into these Digital Universe and then might have maybe 30 percent of quick return but then the social impact of it on a global scale it can be a disaster we have to think about it [Music] I think absolutely um there are there are steps but I do also feel that these steps are slower compared to the pace of Technology um for instance General data protection regulation I think had a huge role on embedding a little bit of thinking building devices for purpose regulating the data collection a little bit making it more mainstream in terms of Rights citizens rights on their own data and now with the AI regulation we see more attempts on you know create you know regulating that space we will see how effective that is we see also reactions from country level like Italy's reaction to gbt Etc and um you know their response and other uh agents uh saying that we should be how careful we should be in a you know considering these Technologies and Etc so we do we are taking steps I think but I'll be it's a bit more slowly compared to the pace of technology and sometimes the cat is out of the the bag basically when when these things are introduced um Okay so we've talked about the pace of Technology a lot how could businesses organizations prepare for the future when you consider the pace of technology in tentative things artificial intelligence Technologies um and what steps could they take to ensure that they can take advantage of New Opportunities and be prepared for this type of future I mean again that's a very good question I think um I mean I talked about powers to be but I think we also have to go back and if you are trying to introduce these um digital Technologies early age to the um to the uh young children or you know young adults I think we have to have the learn give them the awareness of the boundaries as well while we are introducing them to this and I mean only in the last five or six years people start getting the awareness about the data privacy and things like that whereas long before all these tech companies were just harnessing your data they were using it it was just like a wild west as I said I think now there has been a bit of an awareness but it is you know people are sometimes get very um to the extreme about it and then I guess it's a bit like uh uh I don't know Financial uh advisors law that I always find another way that you can so I I don't want it like that I I think it has to be black and white it can't be shade of gray because as you elongate the Shades of Gray there's always uh room for mistake I would say it has to be as part of any type of education all these it takes all these boundaries all this impacts has to be thought uh from the beginning and uh you can't have one without the other and I think it is the responsibility that goes to the individual as well as it goes to the society as well as goes to the big country and I mean this is a unique opportunity for Our Generation to be able to harness this the emerges of this Digital Universe you know this is a huge opportunity but we have to do it in the right way we have to make it based on knowledge based on correct judgment based on fairness based on on the right Global impact and I think that is really the way forward and you cannot be really uh to uh softly softly about it I think I think we should go back to our um educational teaching books uh we have to teach the teachers we have to teach the lecturers we have to we have to have a really proactive um uh sort of process and then go back and then reinvent ourselves because if you do not do that we are not capable of taking the advantage of this opportunity and I really really very passionate about it and I'm as I said there is no Shades of Gray it has to be black and white you have to actually educate people properly about it it's great to find another person that's passionate with I mean this is music to my ears because this is how I feel as well um having worked in the industry as you know first in Innovation lab in Deutsche Telecom and then an innovation research group in in a smaller company I feel um we discussed this before as well the technology is just a tool and Adoption of a new technology you know how businesses and organizations prepare for it to me they have to embrace systems thinking and consider all the issues that you mentioned um it is beyond technology really it's about how the organization Embraces change and how it manages that change um and I feel like each business needs to analyze how the technology affects them are they disrupted in any way for instance and how would they how would they counter that disruption or any other services or products in enhanced by the new technologies do their customers want that enhancement sometimes that Innovation is not necessary we shouldn't do Innovation for innovation's sake right we should do Innovation because there is a need for it in our companies and and trying to innovate just because it's cool is doesn't take you very far and it's not sustainable either um so I think I think you need to invest in it you need to build capacity if you're interested in building that technology you have to be patient you have to be ready to give time and budget and support and support at every level and from the engineer who's kind of needs to train retrain to the person who manages them to the C Level to the board level right it has to be championed that whatever new technology you're introducing to an organization um and you know if you go I'm going to go back and forth and be undecided about it that's when those things don't take root they just they just get forgotten or disappear very fast whereas when there is is a clear dedication clear commitment then technology is taken on board and you can see how it changes every aspect of the business right it has to be really adopted at all levels um and I think that's one of the key things um not following a technology because it is the next coolest thing to do but following technology because it does add or bring real value to your to your organization or to your business and that's what I learned being in Innovative you know doing that work as part of an innovation team where you're one of your job roles is to innovate but then I would say always earn the side of caution you know innovate responsibly and as needed basically um okay so this we've been talking a lot about this but maybe our final kind of discussion could go around this as well what impact do you think iot AI technology will have on society as a whole in the years to come and how can we make sure that this impact is positive okay I mean the this is uh I think it's a very very important very sort of worst broad subject and um uh what I what I think I would do is I would just talk about my own technology and I I tell you what is my interpretation of this and why I have done that because effectively that is really partly answers uh my motivation um I have created the next uh generation of data communication platforms what do I mean by that you see for example you can uh WhatsApp and you can you can talk to anybody across the world but what I have done is I have created the next generation of this that you can speak with anybody in their own language so you can you can have a conversation a seamless conversation with one or many people in over 100 languages so what is yeah I mean what is uh what is the what is the motivation behind that is because so you get the yes I mean just very very easily we our representation in the digital world is what we call as a social machine I mean this social machine can be just one piece of uh one page of uh I know Facebook which is our representation when all these social machines get connected then we have social media and this is really what happens but the true social media currently it means that if you want to communicate with someone we we have got just one common language or if you go back the telephones for example when you were trying to communicate the first invention of the telephone uh yeah you know from Graham Bell to now uh with the phones that you have got is if you are sitting in in the UK and you want to talk to someone in Tokyo you either have to speak in English or Japanese or Turkish or Persian you have to have one common language if you speak two different languages you can't do that take that and expand that on the social media aspect and that is exactly the problem so this is the problem I have solved and the reason for that is because you only can truly harness the advantage of the Digital Universe if you can communicate express your own ideas in your own language and that is that is the impact I think the the language barrier through the communication through social media is something that is absolutely fundamental and uh um and this is really taking it a step further if you come to iot devices if you come to uh future metaverse or something like that it's everything becomes completely personalized if you can express it in your own language in your own culture if you if you try to copy it from somebody else it doesn't quite work out I mean I I was born in Iran I grew up in the uh in the UK I was a German civil servant I am a search of like a triple uh uh uh speaking three languages but I still sometimes in certain things I I only think in one language and it goes back to the fundamentals because I was born in that country and that language and there is some common cultures that if I want to express it it's just very difficult if you are not really mastering a particular language so for for real digital democracy for real um share of equal share of pie for everyone that is that has been my contribution this talks to me at so many levels it's my personal experience having lived in various different countries France Germany UK us having been embedded in different social cultures and sometimes even if the language is the same the British English and what you know us English and what certain words are used for what and what expressions are used for what is completely changing and you have to even have translation between the same language this talks to me a lot um and I think this is a wonderful invention to be able to unite people across a single platform without being uh you know affected by the barrier or language basically and so this is this is great um and these type of Technologies are going to be even more important with you know covet we've gone to a digital communication world very very very fast and you can imagine how this is going to to be so much more impactful as we continue to embrace this for educational purposes as well as other business purposes so this is this is great invention I mean that I worked on this for the last six and six years I start working and in fact the first versions of it we had we put out for uh digital uh uh catapult 5G network was already in March 2020 before the pandemic and then pixel chat became um sort of we started having the first tests uh with people sitting in the UK and Singapore having a seamless conversation because I mean one thing's about 5G or 6G is uh is obviously uh what you you have got these sort of like the uh the latencies disappears because of the first bandwidth you have got but there's a lot is to do with a lot of people talk about you know streaming or these headsets and stuff and actually in reality that's a bit of a whitewash because if you're if you're watching a movie on your handset on your 5G handset the whole infrastructure of the uh the design is that you always have to buffer the system because of the compression but the true the true seamlessness comes when you have got a conversation with somebody across the world because you are expecting that this person respond back to you without any uh delay and that is why Pixel chat is just perfect for the future networks of communication and it's gonna take off in the sense that uh I mean we already have got customers and we already are testing it with telecom companies but this is really going to be the future and the the idea is that once you have got this uh relatively cheap 5G handsets which are coming into the market and everything uh pixel chat is gonna be there embedded uh communication platform so you can not only speak to your everybody in your own language you can speak in their own language as well and this is uh this is um this is the next generation of data voice communication and that is I mean I've been working on it for six years it's had nothing to do with covet but obviously with covid that the needs for Technologies of remote communication and telecommunication became far more tangible and this essential let's put it this way and in a recent project we've been running called smile which was looking into monitoring infants for health monitoring in Sierra Leone we did we did run a kind of a user study with our stakeholders and with our home carers parents as well as medical staff and it became so obvious in the in that context that language barrier is one of the barriers that we needed to think about um not only we we've kind of this is the part where I kind of find Innovation very important that kind of consults with the stakeholders first because we entered the area project with the whole idea of creating this may be wearable to be able to monitor some some symptoms and Etc but then the whole project took a different turn when you talk to the stakeholders and they say that well our barriers are actually we could you know the carriers and the parents talk different languages and sometimes they don't understand each other and the literacy levels are different sometimes they you know what they mean does not necessarily you know are understood by the carer for instance and you can see within the same country where there are language differences in a healthcare setting you see how it affects um communication and this is not only for remote communication maybe in place communication those kind of facilitators would be really really helpful as well so um there is great potential for and this is this the question was about positive impact to society and I think we are concluding with a brilliant positive example uh with your invention so with that I'll slowly wrap up um we really enjoyed our time on the guest house takeover so just a few comments for more information you can find me in LinkedIn Sango or Dr at Dr chidam Sango at Twitter uh a plugin we're going to be running a uh hacking the digital Health event at Brunel in May you can find that information in social media please come join us and let's create technology with positive social impact and secondly where does our audience find you where can they find you I mean they can also find me on LinkedIn and and also my profile is at University of Oxford so uh yeah that's uh I would be happy to hear from people and if they are interested for this course or discussions uh I would be very happy to participate thank you so much for your time check them it was really really a pleasure meeting you and it was my pleasure I really enjoyed our discussion thank you so much for your time and thank you so much for the opportunity I hope that we can start some sort of more inter closer interaction in this area in Indonesia that will be my wish as well that that's great thank you to pixel chat for sponsoring today's episode don't forget to check out www.pixelchat.online to get started

today the possibilities are Limitless thanks for tuning in to the iot podcast don't forget to subscribe on whatever platform you're on see you next week for more iot talks and tales Christmas [Music]

2023-04-30 23:16

Show Video

Other news