St Anne’s Supernumerary Fellow, Prof. Charlotte Dean, took over as executive chair of the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC) in January. This leaves her facing the difficult task of helping the public sector keep up with advances in AI technology, with the goal of generating financial returns.
Speaking to the Times Higher Education Supplement, she explains that computers have long been “a toy and tool to help us get better understanding or change the experiments we do” but “we now have some new toys like machine learning…which allow us to do things that five or six years ago we thought were impossible. It’s really exciting because you can see how it will change how we do science – it allows us to think about things in a different way and do experiments differently.”
Prof. Deane also notes that academics can also investigate areas that might prove highly valuable within a decade or so. “These areas might not seem cool now but might be some day…quantum [technology] is a really good example. It’s worth about $9 billion and will be worth $90 billion in 10 years’ time. The reason this exists, and is a strength for the UK, is because – a long time ago – investment was put into something that still doesn’t sound that cool – which is photonics. AI too – it wasn’t that long ago that the idea you’d have companies in this area wasn’t such a good idea.”
The full interview can be found here.