About The Episode

Welcome to the first year’s final episode of Automated, the podcast that explores the impact of technology on jobs, with your host Marc Verbenkov. 

I will be returning to Canada for the month of December, and as I need to initially quarantine before  spending time with family, I will be in a typical Canadian Cabin in the woods, chopping firewood with limited tech access, so the podcast will have a little break, but will be back in January with new interesting discussions on the future of tech and automation. It has been a really interesting and fun year putting this podcast together and having on many excellent guests, and I hope you have derived as much value from the discussions as I have, and looking forward to more after the holidays. 

Now, this week I was happy to have my first return guest back on the podcast Serf Doesborgh and his colleague Jurriën Hamer from the Rathenau Institute in the Netherlands to talk about Voice technology, (think Alexa, smart home systems, and AI assistants), and its impact on society. We discuss the negative and the positive repercussions that this tech will have, what governments can do to regulate or deal with it, and how the future might look like when it becomes ubiquitous.   

About The Guests

Serf studied Liberal Arts & Sciences at University College Maastricht (UCM), focusing on sustainability and technological innovation. During his Master European Studies on Society, Science and Technology (ESST) he explored the societal issues regarding the automation of labour. And he is currently working on the theme digital society and focuses on societal issues regarding virtual / augmented reality and voice assistants.

Get in touch with Serf:
             Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/serf-doesborgh/
             The Rathenau Institute: shorturl.at/yJO12

Jurrien studied law and philosophy and obtained a PhD at Utrecht University in 2017. He wrote his dissertation on the political meaning of human rights and conducted research at the London School of Economics, Government and Law. Jurriën researches various topics in the realm of digital technology, ethics and human rights. He explores developments in the field of artificial intelligence, voice technology, surveillance technology and offensive cyber capacities. Vital questions, with regard to these subjects, are the way these technologies change society and how society should respond in order to handle such changes appropriately. 

Get in touch with Jurrien:
             Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurri%C3%ABn-hamer/
             The Rathenau Institute: shorturl.at/xHIRT  

Additional Notes:
Rathenau Institute intro to Voice Tech: https://www.rathenau.nl/en/digital-society/hey-google-what-do-you-know-about-me
Full Report on Voice assistants: https://www.rathenau.nl/en/digital-society/look-whos-talking
Dutch Report on Voice Tech: https://www.rathenau.nl/nl/digitale-samenleving/hoor-wie-het-zegt