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Step into the minds of leading academics with UCL Press Play: a podcast and documentary series featuring groundbreaking voices and cutting edge ideas.
Join UCL academics as they uncover ground-breaking new ideas and fresh insights on diverse topics such as queer histories, neurodiversity, and climate justice.
Season 4: A Cup of Tea With… is your chance to share a tea break with inspiring academics from UCL (University College London). Join Professor Judy Stephenson, Professor of Economic History of the Built Environment, to learn how they got into their field and hear insights from their research. Plus, find out how they like their tea!
Website and transcripts: https://uclpress.co.uk/ucl-press-play/
00:00:03:16 - 00:00:26:07
Unknown
Hello. Welcome to a cup of Tea. I'm Professor Julie Stephenson, and I'm going to bring ten questions to our academics about research, about what drives them and about what the challenges ahead are. A cup of tea is a global commodity. It's also a British tradition. Let's get started.
00:00:26:10 - 00:00:33:19
Unknown
Welcome to A Cup of Tea, where we are interested in how academic research can make the world better, or at least change the world.
00:00:33:22 - 00:00:36:24
Unknown
Today I'm having a cup of tea with Professor Danny Miller,
00:00:36:29 - 00:00:52:13
Unknown
Professor of Anthropology at University College London, and Heads or Director of the Center for Digital Anthropology. Now, a cup of tea. It's it's a global commodity. It's a British tradition. What are you having today, Danny?
00:00:52:18 - 00:00:57:11
Unknown
Well, I specified, could I have some Chinese tea?
00:00:57:15 - 00:00:58:29
Unknown
Why did you choose Chinese tea?
00:00:59:01 - 00:01:05:24
Unknown
well, in a way, I feel it's not that I'm choosing Chinese tea, but I found that Chinese tea is kind of choosing me
00:01:05:26 - 00:01:06:07
Unknown
Okay.
00:01:06:07 - 00:01:15:24
Unknown
because what's happened, particularly like the last ten years, is I've got more and more Chinese students coming, and particularly then Chinese students.
00:01:15:26 - 00:01:18:16
Unknown
And when they come, sometimes their parents come to visit
00:01:18:18 - 00:01:19:03
Unknown
Oh, wow.
00:01:19:04 - 00:01:20:07
Unknown
Never tell me
00:01:20:10 - 00:01:24:03
Unknown
they bring me Chinese. China. Now,
00:01:24:05 - 00:01:29:27
Unknown
what I think matters more than that is that these PhD students, I mean, like I said, we finish this year
00:01:30:03 - 00:01:34:23
Unknown
The quality of this work is absolutely outstanding.
00:01:34:23 - 00:01:35:02
Unknown
Yeah.
00:01:35:04 - 00:01:52:03
Unknown
I mean, they're conscientious, creative. It's some of the best PhD work I have ever had the fortune to supervise. So I sort of feel, the beneficiary of this. So I feel I should drink to that. And the appropriate thing to drink would be a cup of Chinese tea.
00:01:52:03 - 00:01:56:06
Unknown
I'll say cheers to your China tea. Great. Okay. Thank you for that.
00:01:56:08 - 00:01:56:24
Unknown
So
00:01:57:01 - 00:02:00:27
Unknown
with all these great students you have, if you had 1 million pounds
00:02:01:00 - 00:02:03:22
Unknown
to research something.
00:02:03:25 - 00:02:05:18
Unknown
How do you spend it? And what do you spend it on? I
00:02:05:21 - 00:02:06:28
Unknown
really do want 1 million pounds
00:02:06:28 - 00:02:09:12
Unknown
right now because I have the topic.
00:02:09:15 - 00:02:16:21
Unknown
I want to study something called companion AI. And this is something that is developed especially really in the last few months.
00:02:16:26 - 00:02:17:05
Unknown
Yeah.
00:02:17:07 - 00:02:25:29
Unknown
What's happening? In China, us all over the place is that AI is now coming in kind of anthropomorphized form.
00:02:26:02 - 00:02:32:03
Unknown
So it can be a friend, a lover, a secretary, all these kind of it has, you know, names,
00:02:32:11 - 00:02:35:26
Unknown
you relate to it, possibly text it, possibly talking to it.
00:02:36:03 - 00:02:59:10
Unknown
And actually it even starts to become part of the family. So, for example, my students talking about what's going on in China and saying, oh, you know, when, my mum and dad argue about something, they turn to companion AI to decide which of them was right. Plus they people develop all these kind of relations and we're talking about huge numbers of people.
00:02:59:10 - 00:03:18:11
Unknown
And I think it's going to go very fast. Now, if you think about anthropology, I mean, when we started, I started we will continue to do like kinship. So if suddenly there was a new member of the family and that's likely to become a bit awkward, because I think this is going to go everywhere. This really changes things.
00:03:18:13 - 00:03:29:14
Unknown
And I really want to know what happens. So I and it's, it's important to say because the consequences are going to be profound. So that's what I want to study.
00:03:29:14 - 00:03:30:13
Unknown
Fantastic.
00:03:30:16 - 00:03:40:04
Unknown
are you going to study how people interact with it? Or have you got specific questions about, you know, behaviors? Or are you just are you open to
00:03:40:07 - 00:03:45:01
Unknown
just observing observation? What's your other logical methodology is
00:03:45:03 - 00:03:57:05
Unknown
precisely openness. That is to say, I go in, I'm one of those people who go and do fieldwork because I don't know what's happening, and I'm not making presumptions as to what's happening. My job is to is to find out.
00:03:57:05 - 00:04:03:07
Unknown
And and if it turns out to be something completely different from what I really expected, that's a discovery. That's good news.
00:04:03:10 - 00:04:19:03
Unknown
I will go out there and actually try and be in a position to observe, to listen, to talk to people and see are they using it for their, you know, emotional well-being? Are they absolutely in love with, you know, this avatar or whatever?
00:04:19:10 - 00:04:27:13
Unknown
Is it somebody they think of in terms of somebody that they knew? So it's like a fake of a celebrity, then who knows?
00:04:27:16 - 00:04:30:26
Unknown
But the only way to find out is through being there.
00:04:30:29 - 00:04:41:04
Unknown
And that's essentially what we do. We're the ones who try and not make any suppositions, not judge it beforehand, but be there because that's the scholarship.
00:04:41:06 - 00:04:59:16
Unknown
So are we talking about, a, companion AI that's personified. That's like that looks like what we used to call a robot in, in a home or in a social situation. Or are we simply talking about listening to a voice or reading texts from things on the devices that we use every day?
00:04:59:17 - 00:05:00:20
Unknown
The vast majority of
00:05:00:20 - 00:05:05:20
Unknown
it is the latter. But that can include, for example, a screen avatar,
00:05:05:23 - 00:05:05:29
Unknown
yeah.
00:05:06:07 - 00:05:09:07
Unknown
are actually sort of looking at and is interacting with you.
00:05:09:07 - 00:05:10:13
Unknown
but it can be just textual.
00:05:10:17 - 00:05:26:11
Unknown
So, you know, you work in something that can actually start to give it a name. When you start to have concentration, you start to think of it as a person. I mean, the physical, physical at the moment, I would say probably the the leading technology is something like sex robot. That's where basically,
00:05:26:16 - 00:05:28:05
Unknown
Yet on our goals,
00:05:28:07 - 00:05:33:19
Unknown
which actually have combined AI and as close to physical as they can get.
00:05:33:22 - 00:05:41:16
Unknown
But that's a tiny fraction of what's going on, and it's not what I'm studying. I'm looking at the everyday sort of as though it's part of the family.
00:05:41:19 - 00:05:50:00
Unknown
So do we know. And when you say part of the family, then we're talking about domestic familial settings or when you say part of the family part of the team, is that what you mean?
00:05:50:05 - 00:05:56:16
Unknown
well. I think it goes back to what I was saying about, you know, you'll you're talking to it in the way you would talk to a brother or sister.
00:05:56:22 - 00:06:04:27
Unknown
You're getting advice from it. And in a way, it almost has certain advantages over human family members because,
00:06:04:29 - 00:06:10:07
Unknown
if you talk to companion AI, you can tell it anything and then look at it tell anybody else.
00:06:10:09 - 00:06:12:11
Unknown
You sure? Are we sure? We're pretty
00:06:12:11 - 00:06:20:16
Unknown
sure compared to, well, how to put it this way, you say a lot of things to people, in everyday life, they claim they're not going to tell anybody else.
00:06:20:19 - 00:06:28:09
Unknown
How often do things like. Okay, I'm. I'm Irish, I imagine to that sure. I would trust a companion. I
00:06:28:12 - 00:06:40:02
Unknown
And they, they know. I mean, if I ask you your opinion about something. Oh yeah. Might you might you're academic. You might give me a reading companion. I have read thousands of libraries. They know stuff.
00:06:40:05 - 00:06:46:05
Unknown
So there is a trust that people have in companion AI that they might not have in human beings.
00:06:46:08 - 00:06:57:24
Unknown
They're not going to nick your boyfriend. They you can turn them on and off when you choose. You can see why people I mean, hopefully they are not going to displace human to human contact, but
00:06:58:00 - 00:07:08:25
Unknown
when you see, you know, half a billion people interacting with these things, then it follows that they must have reasons why they think this is actually valuable for them.
00:07:09:03 - 00:07:10:18
Unknown
And that's what you're finding out.
00:07:10:18 - 00:07:19:16
Unknown
what? What does theory or what does social science or anthropology, as we understand at the moment, predict will be the effects of something like this?
00:07:19:20 - 00:07:25:20
Unknown
I've just finished a paper alongside somebody else called Divine Boyfriends, and I'll explain why the title.
00:07:25:22 - 00:07:37:15
Unknown
Because you look at that and you say, wow, you know, we are dealing with non-human beings and they're becoming intimate companions and all of this thing, and I'm saying, have you ever heard of something called religion
00:07:37:17 - 00:07:40:17
Unknown
it's a couple of thousand years. Yeah.
00:07:40:21 - 00:07:53:17
Unknown
And actually, if you are secular and do not believe in that religion, then weren't those people dealing with non-human beings and often thinking that these were the most important figures in their lives,
00:07:53:22 - 00:07:59:03
Unknown
having a little favorite patron saint and a little companion, I are the same sort of
00:07:59:05 - 00:08:09:17
Unknown
No, they're not the same. But I do think that anthropological knowledge built on a century of studying the anthropology of religion, can actually help you in stylistics.
00:08:09:22 - 00:08:20:06
Unknown
And so, for example, in The Divine Boyfriends, we were looking at people in love with. I mean, here they say the boyfriends, you know, the point about them is they love me unconditionally.
00:08:20:09 - 00:08:21:29
Unknown
You know, they'll never betray me.
00:08:22:06 - 00:08:34:13
Unknown
And it's it's reminiscent of the sort of sense of God is love. You know, the one thing you can feel about in religion is, is this is the rock. This is this is what you can rely on in your life.
00:08:34:16 - 00:08:47:15
Unknown
So, yes, I think there are precedents and parallels. And as an academic, I want to actually use all that knowledge and those perspectives and not like start from scratch or like this is totally gimmicky.
00:08:47:15 - 00:08:50:02
Unknown
I mean, there were unprecedented aspects of this. Of
00:08:50:09 - 00:08:58:22
Unknown
course, they are not the same as in spirits, but we can learn something from pulling together. Wonderful.
00:08:58:25 - 00:09:08:10
Unknown
So tell me a little bit about digital anthropology and how you got into the field.
00:09:08:12 - 00:09:11:19
Unknown
I start I actually started in, in, in archeology.
00:09:11:26 - 00:09:19:13
Unknown
But I used to go on the, I suppose, interesting things, like looking for the lost empire of Vijaya, which she has in the Solomons.
00:09:19:15 - 00:09:39:21
Unknown
And then I realize, you know, living people there are actually quite interesting. So I kind of switched, but I continued to have this interest in how you understand people from objects, because that's what archeologists did. So I worked when I first came to UK, I was working material culture. Then along comes the digital. Everyone saying, oh my gosh, we've got this thing called the virtual.
00:09:39:22 - 00:09:43:26
Unknown
It's not real and it's not material, I think. But it is.
00:09:43:29 - 00:09:59:22
Unknown
Okay. So, you know, you had photographs before, you've got a load of photographs now you've got social media. They're photographs. I mean, this if that was material. So in a sense, so is this. We've got computers, we've got particular forms, communication. I do a lot of work on smartphones.
00:09:59:22 - 00:10:30:10
Unknown
It's a really important physical thing. I think it's almost like it's so much in front of your nose we don't see it. So I've emphasized that actually, again, the tradition we built of studying material culture and these kinds of objects can actually be deployed in understanding these new digital forms. And that led us then to this kind of subdiscipline called ziggurat topology, which then focuses on the the consequences of these for people.
00:10:30:12 - 00:10:38:06
Unknown
Fantastic. So what are the misconceptions about the fields? And this is actually about anthropology. You may
00:10:38:09 - 00:10:40:05
Unknown
people think it's fluffy.
00:10:40:08 - 00:10:42:10
Unknown
And what I mean by that is, you know, you've got
00:10:42:10 - 00:10:56:10
Unknown
hard science, right? And hard science with, you know, deals with these universals and hypotheses and testing and all the rest of it. And some disciplines that study people tend to go with that model.
00:10:56:10 - 00:11:11:19
Unknown
I think psychologists often do. Economists often do. So, look at me now. I don't collect data. I don't test hypotheses. I actually don't count very much. So I think, oh, what are you doing? I mean, what are you doing? Collecting a couple of anecdotes,
00:11:11:21 - 00:11:17:25
Unknown
that is the misconception because I could collect a couple of anecdotes in a couple of weeks less.
00:11:17:28 - 00:11:25:09
Unknown
But we go out for 16 months and we live with and observe people pretty much all day,
00:11:25:12 - 00:11:33:16
Unknown
for 16 months. And that's because I think we are the only discipline that studies life as it is lived.
00:11:33:22 - 00:11:35:22
Unknown
Why 16 does that? Yeah,
00:11:35:22 - 00:11:37:12
Unknown
because you need 16 months,
00:11:37:12 - 00:11:45:18
Unknown
because actually we do have aspirations to scholarship to a kind of truth, the same things that the sciences have.
00:11:45:25 - 00:11:47:24
Unknown
But we have to do it in a different way
00:11:47:27 - 00:11:51:15
Unknown
because people don't live in a topic. They can't be experiments,
00:11:51:22 - 00:11:52:13
Unknown
right? Yeah.
00:11:52:16 - 00:12:01:23
Unknown
Everything they're doing interacts with everything else they're doing. One of the reasons you need 16 months is you need to know all of those things, because that's true of life.
00:12:01:27 - 00:12:02:13
Unknown
Yeah,
00:12:02:15 - 00:12:03:23
Unknown
is holistic like that.
00:12:04:00 - 00:12:24:26
Unknown
And if I ask you questions, you'll tell me what you think I should hear. But if I really want to know what you think, it will take time. And. And that may not even be what you're doing. And I already know what you want to know what you're doing, which may not be the same as what you say you're doing, etc., etc. so I think we are not in the least bit fluffy.
00:12:24:28 - 00:12:26:02
Unknown
We are actually,
00:12:26:09 - 00:12:36:29
Unknown
very much committed scholars, who will persevere until we think we have the authority to talk about, material in the same way as any scientist might.
00:12:37:04 - 00:12:47:16
Unknown
Tell us a little bit about what you're working on at the moment. And if there's any barriers or challenges to, you know, that arise. Yeah I the message
00:12:47:19 - 00:12:50:16
Unknown
came partly out of Covid when you could see,
00:12:50:19 - 00:12:55:03
Unknown
digital technologies provide really good facilities for care
00:12:55:06 - 00:12:59:21
Unknown
and caring at a distance, monitoring people to make sure they're okay.
00:12:59:24 - 00:13:32:12
Unknown
They also provide all these facilitation for surveillance and watching people and did when you looked at those Covid apps somewhat and South Korea tended to see them as care, whereas say, US Republicans tend to see them as surveillance. And I started to realize that this is actually quite common in many other sectors. So if you think about parents and their their kids with their smartphones, so the parents think that what they're doing in, in looking at what the kids are doing is care.
00:13:32:14 - 00:13:48:23
Unknown
The kids think it's surveillance. And I just found that this kind of tension and balance is very interesting. So we're looking at the moment I found a population about which no monograph has ever been written. As far as like so it's completely new. It's called instinctually.
00:13:48:26 - 00:13:53:18
Unknown
And actually comparing it with the place in China. Yeah. Because
00:13:53:25 - 00:13:55:23
Unknown
attitudes there are so different.
00:13:55:25 - 00:14:15:25
Unknown
So take surveillance. In England, the people I talked to, they. Oh, no, no, you know, there's too many kids too much or there's too much of that. We need freedom. We're worried about it. Whereas in China by Barnard, where there is much more surveillance, there is here generally people are saying to us that actually this is ridiculous.
00:14:15:25 - 00:14:27:02
Unknown
There's not nearly enough surveillance. If there was enough surveillance, there wouldn't be crime. So why is the government failing to provide the kind of levels of surveillance that we think we should be having?
00:14:27:02 - 00:14:29:10
Unknown
we have a book about to come out with UCL press
00:14:29:12 - 00:14:30:06
Unknown
Yeah,
00:14:30:13 - 00:14:33:25
Unknown
understanding China through digital anthropology. And this is one of the key points we're making.
00:14:34:00 - 00:14:53:20
Unknown
The digital is a technology and the history of technology is very, very different. So in China, traditionally technology is being seen as something where the responsibility of the emperor is really twofold. One, to use technology to benefit the welfare of people, and the other is to create social harmony.
00:14:53:22 - 00:14:54:01
Unknown
Whereas
00:14:54:01 - 00:15:08:10
Unknown
you look at discourses in the West, you get the treatment of, you know, the Industrial revolution, capitalism or any new technology that comes up instead of seeing it as enhancing humanity, we've tended to see it as actually taking away all humanity
00:15:08:12 - 00:15:27:22
Unknown
you see it in the press today. Any on any given day you will see a newspaper article about how the new technologies are harming, you know, smartphone addiction or fake news, etc., etc.. So there are really deep differences between the meaning of the term
00:15:27:28 - 00:15:28:08
Unknown
Yeah, the
00:15:28:14 - 00:15:31:28
Unknown
meaning of technology and how people respond to it.
00:15:32:02 - 00:15:40:29
Unknown
That sounds the policy right. When you have these extraordinary differences around the same topic, and that's how we sort of
00:15:41:01 - 00:15:45:03
Unknown
start to understand that this isn't a simple issue of balance,
00:15:45:05 - 00:15:49:21
Unknown
but actually quite complex and has to be understood in particular cultural settings.
00:15:49:28 - 00:15:55:27
Unknown
Okay. So tell me a little bit about what the, the scariest thing you've had to do as a researcher is.
00:15:55:27 - 00:16:19:17
Unknown
Well, a lot of my work has been focused, on issues of poverty and people who, under great pressure, I've worked in in things like low income areas of Kingston, Jamaica, etc.. So, yeah, I've had 2 or 3 times and people of, have guns and and for me, I think that probably does count as scary.
00:16:19:19 - 00:16:28:01
Unknown
So it's in the field, in the field world, I've had encounters that, absolutely down the line scared. First, I think there's there's a
00:16:28:08 - 00:16:49:24
Unknown
bigger side to that, though, which is I believe that one of the lowest amount topology is to work with people, you who you do not agree with at all and probably don't like, because our job is to understand why they think they're right and they think you are, you know, nasty, etc., etc. I mean, empathy basically.
00:16:49:24 - 00:17:07:27
Unknown
And that's, that's the heart of anthropology. So quite often I'm with people that after well, probably realize that no, actually I don't really agree with very much about this. I'm not trying to figure it out, but I mean, part of our job is going out of our comfort zone. And yeah, that can be difficult. After a while.
00:17:07:27 - 00:17:09:17
Unknown
But it's part of what we do.
00:17:09:20 - 00:17:32:01
Unknown
Do you find that in the field? You know, when you, when you, you know, you've got this combination of like risk from something you haven't been able to foresee happening, like people turning up with guns, but you also have the, the possibility that there will be something that you observe that you won't be able to understand or that will be a completely new phenomenon or what?
00:17:32:04 - 00:17:38:06
Unknown
And most of it. Yeah. That's good. Right. You know, that's the whole point really, is that we we get it. That's why
00:17:38:12 - 00:17:40:17
Unknown
that's why I don't ever have a hypothesis.
00:17:40:22 - 00:17:42:15
Unknown
That's what is good about this disease.
00:17:42:19 - 00:17:47:14
Unknown
you know, what is the relevant variable to the thing you're going to study. I don't know,
00:17:47:17 - 00:17:59:07
Unknown
It's both a challenge. And a, a positive that you don't know what you're going to find in the field. But tell me again, you're saying you're not you're not gathering data, but you're gathering something.
00:17:59:14 - 00:18:01:07
Unknown
What are you gathering and how are you treating it?
00:18:01:10 - 00:18:14:28
Unknown
Yes. I mean, I would never use the word data in my work, because then it sounds like the things you are observing, the things you're understanding, can be sort of reduced to little objects that you can kind of play with and experiments and models, etc..
00:18:15:00 - 00:18:15:13
Unknown
and models.
00:18:15:13 - 00:18:16:09
Unknown
But I mean, any
00:18:16:12 - 00:18:36:18
Unknown
parent who's who's dealing with their kids quarreling, I mean, you try reducing that to data and see where you get right. You have to have that more general understanding in the context of previous calls and the context in which that took place. You're trying to make judgments as to what actually is going on, and that is ordinary, normal life.
00:18:36:25 - 00:18:43:19
Unknown
I mean, you cannot start putting that into little boxes called data. They're not commensurate with each other.
00:18:43:26 - 00:19:08:18
Unknown
They are in themselves unique. And yet you can't refuse the challenge of actually trying to understand them. Will, you know, I insist that we we persevere. We listen to it long enough because what you will get eventually is you'll get things like typical chatty. Is this person saying the same thing that you've now heard 30 times from other people, or are they kind of on a live,
00:19:08:21 - 00:19:27:05
Unknown
What is what is normative? What is appropriate? What is common? If you're there for 16 months, those things seem to emerge. So at the end of it, you do start to feel you could talk with authority about things that are thoroughly qualitative, that cannot be put into little boxes like data.
00:19:27:07 - 00:19:39:24
Unknown
So in rejecting data fication, if you like, is there something that the other social sciences can access now, or is anthropology unique in that rejection of justification?
00:19:39:27 - 00:19:44:17
Unknown
I think the way we work is, is ethnography.
00:19:44:19 - 00:19:46:25
Unknown
Yeah. And we're not the only discipline that
00:19:46:25 - 00:19:50:24
Unknown
uses ethnography. You'll find it in human geography and sociology sometimes,
00:19:50:26 - 00:19:59:11
Unknown
But ethnography is different in that respect. And I think as a method, no, it's not, compensable with these other disciplines, but can they learn from us?
00:19:59:15 - 00:20:29:28
Unknown
I certainly hope so, because I think we have the best understanding the what actually is going on, the best means for developing analysis, explanation, understanding. I mean, that's what academics are about. So I, I will sit there and say, well, you can see that say, that was the thing before, why did the Chinese have this particular attitude to say, technology or why do people want to have this relationship to it or to drones or like that?
00:20:30:02 - 00:20:31:22
Unknown
These are questions that are important
00:20:31:25 - 00:20:32:04
Unknown
Yes.
00:20:32:04 - 00:20:33:04
Unknown
And every discipline
00:20:33:09 - 00:20:40:22
Unknown
will want to know, in a sense, the answer to that. But I think if you want to know the consequences, these were people. That's what we did.
00:20:40:24 - 00:20:50:12
Unknown
So in relation to to wider research, do you have a favorite author or researcher in another field or in your field who when you're kind of a bit stuck.
00:20:50:15 - 00:20:53:17
Unknown
Yeah. Go and read or who you cut has always inspired you?
00:20:53:20 - 00:21:02:00
Unknown
I think the a person who I see as a model academic, actually somebody I know called Sonia Livingston,
00:21:02:02 - 00:21:02:11
Unknown
And
00:21:02:16 - 00:21:18:01
Unknown
she focuses on, the relationship between parents and children in the digital age. And what I like about her work is that this is something which people are so opinionated about, you know, oh, it's doing this to the kids or, you know, we have to have this kind of action.
00:21:18:04 - 00:21:40:08
Unknown
And she manages to be an academic who refuses to, as it were, take that bait. He says, no, I am interested in evidence. If something is inconclusive, I've got to stick it out and say, no, the evidence is inconclusive. I refuse to just record what you're desperately trying to get me to say. So that's one of her qualities.
00:21:40:08 - 00:22:08:19
Unknown
The other, which I really like, is the breadth of the way she works. If you will do ethnography, you do the same kind of thing I do. And he respects ethnography. But she would also do, you know, European wide comparisons. And he also takes it to policy and advice. So she works with European governments when it comes to, okay, you've done all that, but then what should be the impact on things like EU regulation and governmental, policy concerns, etc.?
00:22:08:21 - 00:22:14:18
Unknown
So, and I admire that. I think that we should, you know, we shouldn't be divided into theories
00:22:14:18 - 00:22:16:00
Unknown
and yeah, or
00:22:16:04 - 00:22:21:25
Unknown
empirical observers or people who advise policy. We should we should have the spectrum.
00:22:22:00 - 00:22:31:25
Unknown
So how can this approach and what you understand about ethnography and what you found out in your research help us solve the big problems of the world. You
00:22:31:25 - 00:22:52:25
Unknown
Yeah. I think, you know, you take this term deal anthropology and all people find it strange because the digital is, you know, fast moving. It's like changing every year. You know, it's the next thing. And anthropology is the slowest discipline on the planet. I, you know, it's 16 months doing research and then 16 month analysis. So why would you use anthropology to look at the digital?
00:22:52:28 - 00:23:16:27
Unknown
And the answer is that what surely matters most to us is not that this digital is there, but what are the consequences for people? How is it changing people's lives? And that is when you need this 16 months real life was, that allows you to get into things like family relations and, and things people feel very strongly about.
00:23:16:27 - 00:23:27:22
Unknown
But I leave, I want to talk about immediately because it's so close to them. So there are no shortcuts. There is a reason why, even for these fast moving things,
00:23:27:24 - 00:23:36:03
Unknown
You need evidence. You really need proper scholarship that actually says, yes, we have spent time with people.
00:23:36:03 - 00:24:05:22
Unknown
Yes, we think that it is for, you know, changing their relationship to friendship in this way or changing the dynamics of love in this way. Because we've walked in, we know this is not a universal, this everybody is different. We can give you the spectrum of impacts that it's having. But then but whatever problem, as it were, other disciplines are trying to solve, I think they need at the foundation good scholarly evidence.
00:24:05:25 - 00:24:13:04
Unknown
And I don't think it can be provided by shortcut research or, or indeed any other way than the way we do it.
00:24:13:07 - 00:24:15:23
Unknown
Okay, so it's evidence, not data.
00:24:15:26 - 00:24:18:02
Unknown
That's okay, I love it.
00:24:18:09 - 00:24:34:29
Unknown
So the next question we've been asking people is almost ridiculous to ask for all this. But for you as a researcher then will artificial intelligence, genetic intelligence, AI, whatever is it going to transform your job? Is it going to take your job? Is it going to have any impact on your job at all?
00:24:35:06 - 00:24:51:23
Unknown
I rejuvenates my job. It's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for because it is iconic in a sense of what I've been saying. We've got this massive new thing. It's really going to have a profound impact, and we don't know what it is.
00:24:51:25 - 00:25:12:25
Unknown
And I will bring that back to, to actually, my own teaching here. So I run this master's program, the policy and the students being great is you will sit there and say, we read in the papers, oh, it's a disaster for academic teaching because, oh, you can get ChatGPT to write the essay and the newspapers will say it's making people stupider.
00:25:12:27 - 00:25:21:18
Unknown
And it can do those things. But we're sitting there and thinking, wait a minute, but are there ways we could use the same thing to make students cleverer?
00:25:21:21 - 00:25:35:02
Unknown
How actually can you work the procedures of something that you, use its prompts look iteratively at the at the kinds of questions you ask, compare different platforms or even different languages.
00:25:35:05 - 00:25:50:01
Unknown
So. Well, everyone else seems to suggest that this is making people stupider. The students, like we're working together to say, okay, let's work out how we take the same technology in order to make people cleverer.
00:25:50:03 - 00:25:55:26
Unknown
Nice. So given that it's given that rejuvenation a one piece of rejuvenation,
00:25:55:28 - 00:26:07:08
Unknown
what are your hopes and fears for research in universities going forward? It's been it's been a funny year to be a researcher in a universe, particularly in an American university. And we've all had to start thinking about what that might mean for us.
00:26:07:08 - 00:26:10:22
Unknown
So what are your hopes and fears for how we can I mean, I think I've been fortunate.
00:26:10:28 - 00:26:18:04
Unknown
I live in almost a golden age where, you know, for hundreds of years these universities have been fantastic for research and intellectual thought.
00:26:18:06 - 00:26:20:25
Unknown
And for most of my life I've been able to engage with that.
00:26:20:25 - 00:26:38:06
Unknown
But you're like, you can't thank me now because you have, you know, a country where which is essentially the government thinks that what it should do is extortionate and in effect, from universities. And even if that isn't going on, you can see the way universities are being geared to more business orientated.
00:26:38:06 - 00:27:05:19
Unknown
And so what we're supposed to do depends more on where the money is coming in from. And also I worry actually about we circulate is funded. But does that then by I mean I've never done a consultancy. I worry about whether the data, the funding actually influences the research results. So, I obviously retain the values that I started with.
00:27:05:22 - 00:27:19:28
Unknown
I really hope that the young researchers coming in today find a way through this and enabled to keep what, in the end, I think is fundamental to all of this, which is some kind of integrity.
00:27:20:00 - 00:27:23:25
Unknown
And integrity means I mean, give me an alternative means that actually
00:27:23:27 - 00:27:29:04
Unknown
you will say what you find in your research. This is what evidence led means, right?
00:27:29:04 - 00:27:30:02
Unknown
Yes. You will not
00:27:30:02 - 00:27:37:25
Unknown
distort it because it suits your politics, or it suits the money, or it suits some other kind of cause.
00:27:37:25 - 00:27:46:16
Unknown
The integrity is true to the work that you do, and I think that's why I call it fundamental to academia, because that's our responsibility as
00:27:46:22 - 00:27:47:14
Unknown
scholars.
00:27:47:17 - 00:28:00:18
Unknown
I don't think we should even try and top that. I hope you've enjoyed your cup of tea. Exactly. That was a that was a very productive cup of tea for us. And one with a great deal of integrity. Thank you very much. Cheers. Cheers. Danny Miller.