Have you ever wandered through the park on your way to work and spotted two vintage double decker buses improbably parked on the greenery? That’s exactly what anyone who walked across Parker’s Piece in central Cambridge on 26th and 27th October 2023 experienced!
The Hopes and Fears Lab, our flagship engagement project, went on tour in October 2023 to Parker’s Piece and then on to London as part of the nationwide AI Fringe (more about the Fringe at the end of this page). You may have already seen our video (here) from these events – read on to learn more about how it happened and how it felt to be part of it.
Here at KCESP, Artificial Intelligence has been one of those key cutting edge scientific areas with potentially big implications for society that we’ve been keeping an eye on. When the first global summit on AI Safety came to the UK in November 2023 we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be a part of the conversation, and to do our part in bringing as many publics as possible into that conversation. But where?
Cambridge is a beautiful city which boasts incredible architecture and the most fantastic buildings and halls – however, we couldn’t find a space that felt right. Somewhere that felt equal, where academics and researchers weren’t on their ‘home turf’. The Hopes and Fears Lab is explicitly designed to level the playing field and equalise all participants, so putting it in an exclusive-access building felt counter-productive.
That was when the buses hit us. (Not literally)
The idea came from a conversation our deputy director, Richard, had with his partner. He off-handedly mentioned her suggestion of using buses as a pop-up, bespoke venue to ask ‘where are we going with AI?’ – and rather unfortunately for us, we all thought it was perfect.
Cue the mad rush to organise all the paperwork one needs to park a pair of double decker vintage buses in a public park – we were knee deep in risk assessments and hardstanding but the end result was truly worth it!
Over two days on Parker’s Piece, one sunny and one significantly less so, we invited over 20 researchers (32 researchers if one includes the London day!) from all corners of the university onto our buses. They had expertise stretching from medical science, through arts and creativity and to hardcore physics. They spent 15 minutes at a time talking to hundreds of members of the public, and by the end of it we had people asking if they could come back to do it all again! The beauty of the Lab is that our researchers gain as much from the experience – if not more – than our publics.
The buses themselves were worth every piece of endless paperwork we poured into them – there’s something about seeing something so unusual on your commute that draws you in, and then you’re suddenly having a conversation that you never would have thought you’d enjoy. Thankfully, our guests and attendees didn’t seem to only be there for the buses – at least by the end of it!
Before arriving on the bus, we asked everyone to tell us if they were feeling more fearful about the future of AI, more hopeful, or if they weren’t sure. After their conversations, we asked them the same question.
We had no agenda with this – we weren’t trying to make everyone suddenly hopeful about AI. We just wanted to see if people were able to have a meaningful conversation – did you change your mind? Going from hopeful to fearful was just as important to us. We were delighted to see so much change in opinion over the course of the event:
The conversations that happened on our buses were a journey … and many many of our participants did indeed end up ‘somewhere different’ by the end – researchers and publics alike.
A bit of context…
The AI Safety Summit; a two day global meeting of leaders which resulted in the publication of this declaration. Whilst Rishi Sunak and representatives from over 20 countries discussed the implications of AI behind closed doors at Bletchley Park, the AI Fringe events popped up across the country to include publics and society in the conversation.
More can be learnt about those events here: https://aifringe.org/ai-fringe-2023
Watch our video of our event – as well as the London iteration – by the wonderful CambridgeTV team, here: AI Hopes and Fears Lab Videos.
Read about how we got in London here.