Rudy van Belkom is a futures researcher at the Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends (STT). He recently published his book about ethics in the design process (‘AI no longer has a plug’) that offers developers, policymakers, philosophers and basically anyone with an interest in AI, tools for integrating ethics into the AI design process. The main question of his research is always: what future do we want? We need to ask ourselves what purpose we want to use technology for, rather than seeing it as purpose in itself. How can we use technology to create a better world? And what exactly is a better world? Currently Rudy is focusing on the impact of technology on the future of Democracy. In addition he developed an ethical design game for AI, inspired by the scrum process, that can be used to translate ethical issues into practice. The essence of the game is based on the position paper that he wrote together with the HU research group on AI and was accepted for ECAI 2020: ‘An Agile Framework for Trustworthy AI’. Van Belkom also investigated the role of AI in the future of his own field.

Inverse Surveillance AI is a project of The Asimov Institute, funded by the SIDN Fund. The project is a think tank of scientists, policymakers, and philosophers in order to answer the question, “How can we use AI as a Panopticon to promote beneficial actions for citizens by organizations?” Based on the insights produced from this think tank, a first proof of concept will be developed in a hackathon. The project lasts 6 months and operates from a utopian and solution-oriented approach. The main goal is to deepen the subject of Inverse Surveillance, to explore how AI can make this possible, and sharing all information so that it can function as a launchpad for future research. This podcast series together with Asimov director Stefan Leijnen, we go into conversations with experts in the field of AI technology.