Meet Our IoA Fellows

Dr Clare Walsh is one of the world’s leading academic voices in data analytics and AI with her mission at the IoA being to help people in any field feel empowered by technology and understand its benefits. Having worked alongside Professor Tim Berners-Lee and Dame Wendy Hall, she was also an academic tutor at the University of Southampton’s Data Science Academy and during this time, worked for the Government as a researcher within the Office of AI.

Working alongside governments

Clare contributed to the recently-published Government White Paper on AI Regulation, has published peer reviewed research papers and is often called upon as an expert witness to advise governments in complex legal cases.

She also worked with the Welsh government re-evaluating how the education system scores children’s skills.

Traditionally, schools looked for academic success in subjects such as maths, the sciences and the subjects’ core to the GCSE and A level curriculum. These are particularly well suited to being scored by a machine if they require a yes, no, or a very specific correct answer.

Clare developed a way to score more complex skills into the curriculum, such as collaborative teamwork or dealing with complex problems – in other words, skills better suited to the real world. By understanding the strengths and limits of statistical solutions, she understands how we can encourage the best of both human and machine worlds with real synergy.

Interestingly, those children who had traditionally scored top marks using a purely academic approach started bobbing along the pass level whilst those who had struggled academically rose to the top when asked to demonstrate complex skills.

The Other Side of Clare

Favourite film: Muppet Christmas Carol

Favourite book: Stories of Your Life – Ted Chiang

Data icon: Vannevar Bush - before you can build a thing, someone needs to think of a thing. He dared to imagine a different way to think and organise ideas outside of linear books and paved the way for hypertext connected devices (anyone can read his original article 'As We May Think', The Atlantic, 1945.)

And Doug Engelbart. The Mother of All Demos is unlikely to be repeated in anyone's lifetime. He literally created all the things we use today and demoed them in 1.5 hours.

How do you hope the impact of data will shape the future?

Small shifts in thinking can lead to unimaginable results and set us on amazing new trajectories. Seeing the world mathematically is not perfect and it doesn't give a complete view but it gives us a different, additional perspective. If we combine the best of machine and human thinking, we have the best hope for the future. The new processing powers, combined with data trails and accountability, may offer solutions to the most intractable problems today such as the environment or finding treatments for incurable diseases.