STAI CDT PhD students Mackenzie Jorgensen (2020 cohort) and Munkhtulga Battogtokh (2020 cohort) recently took part in a KCL Utopia Now! Project with Lambeth Carers Hub.
Utopia Now! is a research project based at King’s College London that aims to find out more about the kind of society that young people want to live in.
Mackenzie and Munkhtulga both attended a science fiction writing workshop with writers, researchers, and young people to discuss the roles that technology and, specifically, AI will play in our near future and how it will change the world we live in.
This year’s workshop was held in person and after 2020’s online workshop, was an exciting and invigorating opportunity to meet students face to face at the KCL Science Gallery London.
For Mackenzie, the workshop left her feeling inspired and motivated and she said, “I enjoyed hearing young people’s thoughts on the not-so-good aspects of technology that they are already grappling with, like social media causing more disconnection than connection and issues around data-privacy and surveillance. They are incredibly socially aware and give me a lot of hope since they will be the future leaders of tomorrow–I, for one, was inspired by them. The workshop also reminded me why my Responsible AI research is so important too!”.
You can find out more about the Utopia Now! projects here.