Tag Archives: AI

Video of Festival of Politics 2026 event on AI

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In August I participated in a panel at the Scottish Parliament’s Festival of Politics. Entitled ‘Why we need to talk about AI’, we discussed a wide variety of issues relating to the growth in LLMs in contemporary societies.

The abstract for the panel is below:

Chatbots are transforming society, politics and business and it’s one of the biggest and fastest technological changes in history. Millions of people now talk to ChatGPT, daily. It has moved from novelty to everyday infrastructure astonishingly fast with people organising their finance to seeking therapy via machines. Some people use it to intensify their work productivity while others fall into dangerous conspiracy rabbit-holes and emotionally risky content. How do we learn how to talk– and not to talk to AI in a way that makes the most of technology rather than succumb to manipulation?

Big thanks to our chair Maggie Chapman MSP, the other panelists (Robert.P. Moran, Dr. Kate Orton-Johnson and Dr. Ronnie Smith) and the audience for contributing to an excellent discussion.

The video of the session is below:

Participant in a panel on AI, misinformation and Scottish election

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On Wednesday I was an invited contributor to a panel organised by The Ferret. Entitled AI, misinformation and the Scottish election, the focus was on how best to respond to mis-and disinformation in Scotland.

Ali Brian (The Ferret), Digdem Soyaltin Colella (University of Aberdeen) and I discussed a variety of topics, including how bad actors use AI-images to pollute political discourse online, the vectors of misinformation in contemporary Scotland, and how we can rebuild trust in democratic institutions.

Many thanks to Susannah Fitzgerald for charing, Jamie Mann for the invitation, and our audience for their thought-provoking questions. The session can viewed below.

Please do consider supporting The Ferret, who are doing some fantastic in-depth investigative journalism in Scotland. Full details on how to subscribe can be found here.