After 7 virtual and in person roadshows, I am so excited to say we have recruited a total of 23 PEAs! To take part in the PEAs in PODs project. These PEAs will form POD1 of our Programme and soon begin to engage in training sessions and one-to-one mentoring sessions.
So how did we go about it?
The roadshows were designed to inspire and attract PhD students, early career researchers, new and mid-career academics, and SMEs to sign up to become PEAs. We were looking for enthusiastic people from interdisciplinary backgrounds, who were open to doing things differently. At each roadshow, I first gave an interactive presentation which introduced the PEAs in Pods project and what becoming a PEA would entail and the commitment that would be required. We also explored what was public engagement and co-production and I gave examples of projects such as the Responsible Tech Collective Citizen-Led Security Standards Project and the Peoples Panel for AI from the Turing funded People-powered AI: responsible research and innovation through community ideation and involvement project. To motivate the roadshow participants on why to get involved I included some information from the UKRO Strategy (2022-2027) which aims to “inspire interest and participation in research and innovation through innovative public dialogue, youth and educational engagement, and community participation.”
UNESCOs recommendations on AI, also provides a powerful quote “To bridge the digital divide, there should be a “creation of mutual language and understanding of AI”
which I found motivational and I hope that the participants did to!. To find out more about participants in the roadshow, I used Mentimeter to capture the answers to 4 questions: 1) Describe your research in a few words 2) Have you ever taken part in public engagement and co-production 3) In a few words – what do you see as the impact of your work? 4) How would you describe Artificial Intelligence in 3 words to a citizen?. Figure 4 shows some sample output to question 4. All engagement was optional, some participants choose not to take part.
Figure 1: Selected roadshow attendees to the question “How would you describe Artificial Intelligence in 3 words to a citizen
Participants in the roadshow found questions quite difficult (expressed verbally) due to perceived difficulty in trying to take a complex concept such as AI and explaining it simply. At the end of the roadshow, participants also optionally filled in a short evaluation of the roadshow.The journey to recruit PEAS took place over 7 Roadshows in total, with a couple of interested people contacting me a week later as news had spread. 23 applications were received comprising of 12 PhD candidates, 2 SMEs, 3 Early Career Researchers and 6 experienced academics. There was an equal mix of applications from Manchester Metropolitan Univeristy, Manchester Univeristy and Univeristy of Salford. Applicants to become PEAs were very interdisciplinary and had backgrounds in data and/or artificial intelligence in the fields of computer science, healthcare, medicine, education, social science, games, engineering, psychology, theology, data science, sociology, and smart cities. The diversity of our PEAs will enable a very exciting journey into the realms of co-production. I would like to thank the teams of people and our project partners at the University of Salford and Manchester Univeristy who supported these roadshows. Exciting times ahead as we move now into the PEAs training phase.
