The IDEMS Podcast

Continuing their exploration of alternatives to today’s dominant AI paradigm, David and Kate reflect on what the future of work could look like beyond AI empires. They discuss the role of education, apprenticeships, and human expertise in a world increasingly shaped by AI, and consider how technology might free people to focus on more creative, collaborative, and meaningful work. The conversation highlights the importance of building alternative visions for the future and asks how societies can create systems that value human development, collaboration, and social impact alongside technological progress.

Continuing their examination of the assumptions underlying today’s dominant AI narrative, David and Kate reflect on why AI has become such an important topic within IDEMS. They discuss how years of work on community ownership, trust, interoperability, and complex social systems have shaped their thinking, and why recent advances in AI may finally make it possible to build technologies that support rather than constrain local agency. The conversation explores the relationship between technology, governance, and social impact, and considers what kinds of foundations are needed for more distributed and community-centred approaches to AI.

Lily and David discuss recent work on the ePICSA system, focusing on the development of a structured summaries database to support climate information for agriculture. They explore how moving from file-based systems to a database approach creates new opportunities for versioning, quality control, decentralised workflows, and accreditation of climate products. The conversation also reflects on the broader challenges of climate data quality, data rescue, and building sustainable systems that can support national meteorological services.

Michele and David explore the ideas and design principles behind the Open App Builder, a system developed through IDEMS’ collaboration with Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH). They discuss the challenges of creating flexible, reusable app infrastructures that support collaboration across technical and non-technical teams, and reflect on the long-term vision of enabling local organisations to build and adapt their own digital tools. The conversation highlights both the complexity of the system and the growing opportunities emerging as it matures and expands into new contexts.

Santiago and David discuss the emergence of STACK question authoring as a growing area of work within IDEMS. They reflect on the value of cross-institution collaboration, the role of formative assessment and feedback in mathematics education, and how expertise developed across diverse educational contexts can support universities internationally.

Lily and David discuss the AIMS Rwanda doctoral course on problem solving in data science, reflecting on how participants engage with complex simulated datasets. They explore the challenges students face in identifying underlying models, the limitations of relying on AI tools, and the importance of interpretation and human insight in data analysis. The conversation highlights how the course evolves alongside new technologies while continuing to reveal fundamental lessons about working with data.