Somehow Inevitable

Chances are you’ve already had some kind of experience with a voice assistant. Maybe you’ve tried (with varying degrees of success) to get Siri to write an email. Or maybe you’ve shouted at Alexa in your kitchen. Either way, the tyranny of typing out instructions for computers is coming to an end and our three very willing, very knowledgable guests were able to help us get a sense of just what on earth is really going and what it all means. We met up with Pete Campbell from Kaizen, and we had a natter with Heather Andrew from Neuro Insight and Jeremy Pounder from Mindshare. It was a veritable smorgasbord of insight and ideas. We covered everything from making voice assistants work for marketing, bad sci-fi references and how the way we interact with the Internet is fundamentally changing.

In episode two, we're diving into the fast-moving world of chatbots. Will this talkative new technology bring humans closer together or pull us further apart? We grab a pint with Ben Tossell, co-founder of Botlist and Community Lead at Product Hunt, and speak with Eugene Bann, founder and CTO at San Franciso-based mental health chatbot-builders, X2AI. We’re also attempting a (world first?) interview with Microsoft’s latest artificial intelligence chatbot, Zo.

In our first episode, we look at how technology can be used by businesses to do good in the world, simply by encouraging subtle changes to customer behaviour. We speak to the co-founder of Tap to Give and Lunchbox about feeding schoolchildren in the developing world, and Nikki Maksimovic from Berlin-based search engine, Ecosia. They’ve found a way to use online advertising to plant trees.

In July we gathered in a pub to answer questions, talk tech and raise money for charity. Here's what happened.