Screen multitasking, cognitive overload, and learning

This week, for me, is week 1 of a new academic year (not all universities start at the same time; and, indeed, even within the same university, there may be staggering starts for different programmes and year groups. Luckily, this year I managed to go back to the classroom. I say “luckily” because, while teaching … Continue reading Screen multitasking, cognitive overload, and learning

The potential and limitations of AI in home care – the users’ view

This week, the English parliament approved a new “health and social care” tax, corresponding to an increase in National Insurance contributions from 12% to 13.25% of salary (i.e., a whopping 10.4% increase!!). This increase is to pay for the home care needs of older people, disabled citizens, and others with high care needs. That is, for carers … Continue reading The potential and limitations of AI in home care – the users’ view

New paper “Digital strategy aligning in SMEs: A dynamic capabilities perspective”

Several years ago, Sarah Quinton, Rebecca Pera, Sebastián Molinillo, Lyndon Simkin and I set out to investigate how small and business organisation (SMEs) adopt digital technology, and how they adapt their strategy to succeed in the digital environment. While there is a significant body of work on digitalisation, it tends to focus on large organisations, … Continue reading New paper “Digital strategy aligning in SMEs: A dynamic capabilities perspective”

Drivers of acceptance of AI vary with type of service setting

Not all consumption settings are the same. They can range from situations where we can easily evaluate what we are consuming (for instance, buying a new car), to situations where we can only evaluate what we are consuming afterwards (for instance, renting a car), as well as situations where we will struggle to evaluate what … Continue reading Drivers of acceptance of AI vary with type of service setting

Social media marketing vs User generated content vs Electronic word of mouth – Crib sheet

It’s that time of the year when I am supervising dissertation projects. And, again, I find myself clarifying the difference between three terms that often get confused and wrongly used as synonyms: Social media marketing (SMM), user generated content (UGC) and electronic word of mouth (eWoM). So, I ended up creating this table for my … Continue reading Social media marketing vs User generated content vs Electronic word of mouth – Crib sheet

Technological disruptions in services

When our fridge broke down, at the end of last month, the job of finding a replacement was made a lot easier by the existence of websites, and significantly more interesting by the existence of augmented reality. With the former, we could gather lots of information about each fridge’s features and their availability, which helped … Continue reading Technological disruptions in services

Critical science’s framework to classify the risks from AI

Artificial Intelligence has great potential, but also presents many risks, from taking over jobs, to making biased decisions. Rather than thinking about the risks of AI separately and reactively, it would be useful to have a framework to identify those risks holistically and proactively. Shakir Mohamed, Marie-Therese Png and William Isaac suggest one such framework, … Continue reading Critical science’s framework to classify the risks from AI

We are more willing to trust tech companies with our sensitive data than the government

Contact tracing is a key mechanism for monitoring the evolution of communicable diseases. For instance, it is routinely used in the case of sexually transmitted diseases, to trace people who may have been infected, and to urge them to get tested and take precautions to avoid infecting others. Other applications include tuberculosis, measles, chicken pox, … Continue reading We are more willing to trust tech companies with our sensitive data than the government

“Gender and Money” project – Results released

This spring, I have been working on a very interesting project examining how men and women are represented with money in visual media. In this project, supported by Starling Bank, my colleague Shireen Kanji and I examined 600 images collected from the UK’s leading image banks: Getty, iStock and Shutterstock. We embarked on this project … Continue reading “Gender and Money” project – Results released

[Miscellany] Three interesting podcast episodes

I want to share with you three interesting podcasts that I came across recently. Daniel Kahneman on noisy decision making, and the need for algorithms Sandra Peter interviews psychologist / behavioural economist and Noble prize winner, Daniel Kahneman, for the Sydney Business Insights podcast. He discusses his famous book, Thinking Fast and Slow. But, most … Continue reading [Miscellany] Three interesting podcast episodes