“We are coming full circle. In the early days it was about accessing food and clean water. Those things became commodities, so we wanted education, transportation, entertainment, and so on. We got so much more than we ever needed, but now ironically we are back at the start. We are running out of drinkable water; the lakes are running dry and we don’t even have clean air in our cities. These problems must be solved, quickly and I believe that it is AI that can help us once again to secure our basic human needs.”

This is a conversation with Dr Harin Sellahewa. Harin is the Dean of Computing at the University of Buckingham. His research interests are in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning and he has co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. Harin has expanded his work into augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) used in education and is leading an Education 4.0 project. He is also a passionate promotor of increased diversity in Computing.

In this episode, Harin talks about how Electric Vehicles need AI to optimise energy usage, the pros and cons of mass surveillance and smart cities, and how we’ve come full circle to once again to prioritising the need to access food, clean water and essentials.