The public event, AI and the Future of Young People, was held at Barnsley's Digital Media Centre on 14 July and was led by Loughborough University PhD researcher and AI safety researcher Timipado Imomotebegha. Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the event brought together local residents, technology organisations and academic experts to explore how AI is affecting young people in the UK.
Barnsley was recently selected by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology as the UK’s first government-backed Tech Town and is intended to serve as a national blueprint for how AI can reshape a British town and is being positioned as a national model for how artificial intelligence can help transform regional economies. A Tech Town is a programme that aims to make a town a testbed and national model for adopting technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) across public services, education, healthcare, skills development and local businesses.
Anonymous polling conducted before and after the session revealed a significant shift in participants’ understanding of AI. All respondents reported leaving with a clearer understanding of the technology, while feelings of uncertainty on arrival largely shifted towards optimism by the end of the event. However, participants also expressed concern that the younger generation is not fully prepared for an AI-driven future, demonstrating the need for greater education and support around the subject. The findings from the event will inform a policy-facing academic article, and funding is being sought to support sustained, hands-on AI-literacy work with young people in the town.
Contributors to the event included Tracey Johnson, Director of Tech SY, and Richard Brown, Projects and Contracts Manager at Tech SY, with support from Ben Hawley, Group Leader at Enterprising Barnsley, and Yuwei Wang, PhD researcher at the University of Leeds, who spoke about career pathways.
Timipado Imomotebegha is a PhD researcher at Loughborough University, supervised by Dr Elizabeth Ratcliffe and Dr Laura Justham, as well as a Data Science Facilitator at the Alan Turing Institute. Their research examines how AI systems should be evaluated and held to account.
This event was held in collaboration with the University's Inclusive Engineering research cluster, that aims to bring together researchers from diverse engineering backgrounds, data analytics, computer science, social sciences and sociology, and support their journey to become leaders in inclusive engineering.
Find out more about the University's Inclusive Engineering research cluster, People to Products. (https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/clusters/inclusive-engineering/).