Conversations on AI : Open Mic Night

Our intention with ‘conversations’, is to create the space and community to think deeply about the human element in all the various ways that AI is transforming our world – with as wide a range of perspectives as possible. So, we wanted to turn this final ‘conversation’ of the year over to our community and provide the opportunity to raise concerns or points of view that feel most pressing, or that aren’t being covered elsewhere.

Over time, we hope these conversations will provide research insights and the team at Northeastern University have used NLP to analyse transcripts from prior events and are experimenting with AI use to turbo-charge literature reviews and other academic practices. Before our open mic officially starts, we’ll present the NLP analysis, research findings and summaries of the 2025 events to date on AI in education, AI and innovation and the shareholder perspective.

Then we’ll open up to the audience. When you register, let us know of any topics you’d like to raise and whether you’d like to take the mic yourself. To enable as much discussion as possible – we’ll limit speakers to 3 minutes, delve into more depth in breakout groups and bring it all together with an audience debate.

As well as any concerns over human impact, or different ethical nuances, we’d especially love to hear of any example of great practice of human engagement in designing/implementing AI. There are plenty of examples of things going wrong – but it is also really valuable to spread the word on good practice too!

Hope to see you there or at a future event. We’ve got an interesting range of topics for 2026 under development which we’ll share before the end of the year.