Bowman Lecture 2024

Speaker: Chris Wiggins, Chief Data Scientist, New York Times

Date/Time: Thursday, 29th August 2024, 6:30pm

Location: Sir Charles Wilson Building, The University of Glasgow

We live in a world where data, in multifarious forms, play increasingly prominent roles in everyday life. In particular, there is now considerable public discussion of how the advent of AI, powered by the widespread availability of data, may affect our lives in the future. This talk will reflect on how we have arrived here by considering the history of data and its uses, using a wide range of examples including early government censuses, scientific studies and the advent of powerful internet search engines. It will also include reflection on the political and ethical impacts of data, as an important part of the public discussion on how best to harness the powerful data-driven tools which are emerging.

Chris Wiggins is the Chief Data Scientist at the New York Times, where he has extensive experience of developing and implementing data-driven methods. He is also an Associate Professor at Columbia University where he is a senior member of the Data Science Institute. In addition to his many scientific and technical publications, he is an author, with Matthew Jones, of a recent book on "How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms”.

Host or Publisher Mathematics & Statistics, University of Glasgow