Crack the code of human behaviour on the 7th March
Understanding and predicting human behaviour is a crucial yet unsolved scientific challenge. Because human behaviour shapes our world, the lack of tools to accurately predict it creates uncertainty and hinders progress in areas such as expanding opportunity, driving economic growth, and addressing global challenges like trafficking and climate change.
Mind Hacks, Electric Twin’s Hackathon, challenges participants to apply machine learning to real-world problems by focusing on one of several industry tracks.
Trafficking
In collaboration with Ruari Bradburn, CTO Langland Conservation
Data on animal trafficking routes, methods, and networks is fragmented and difficult to access. Current methods for detecting and tracking illegally trafficked animals are often inefficient and reactive. There is plenty of activity by individuals who try to sell goods online, their conversations and their reactions to posts.
We have access to social media conversations about animal trafficking which we will provide for this challenge. Can we use this to predict if people would buy trafficked goods and infer any helpful information about why they do this?
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Key words: social media data, predictive modelling, network analysis, trafficking
Education
In collaboration with Joysy John, ex-Director of Education at Nesta
AI could automate 20-40% of teacher tasks, potentially saving up to 13 hours per week for meaningful student engagement. Edtech presents opportunities to address teacher workload in England and indeed forms a central part of government plans to reduce it, and tackle the recruitment and retention crisis. Despite the potential benefits of Edtech, its impact has not been felt equally among educators. Only 30% of teachers reported that technology had reduced their workload.
Can we predict what the barriers for adoption are, given surveys of teacher perceptions of technology and what strategies can encourage teachers to embrace AI and EdTech as workload-reducing tools? How do we ensure technology further reduces administrative burdens while maintaining high teaching quality and improving learning experience?
Keywords: AI adoption barriers, human-AI collaboration tools, education, engineering, product
Food waste
In collaboration with WRAP
Increased pressures and time constraints are leading to less focus on food management. People undervalue food, unaware of the significant environmental and financial cost of the increasing normalization of food waste. In 2021/22, 6.4 million tonnes of food waste was generated from UK households. This equates to 95 kg per person per year, leading to householder food waste costs of £17 billion per year.
We can provide survey data which contains information about how people’s attitudes around food consumption and waste has changed. Can we use this to understand what the main predictors and drivers of food waste are so that we can minimise this? What are the main changes in culture, home environment and household behaviours contributing to food waste? What may be a product innovation or policy to address these?
Keywords: policy intervention, food waste prediction, data science, survey data
Housing
In collaboration with Generation Home
Community opposition to new housing developments significantly delays supply, contributing to the UK's housing shortage and affordability crisis. This opposition stems from concerns about environmental impact, infrastructure strain, and changes to neighbourhood character.
We have a list of local planning authorities which would have information about planning objections and reasons for those objections. Can we use this data in a meaningful way in order to predict what the biggest opposition drivers are? Can we build a tool which helps us explore this data in an effective manner?
Keywords: data scraping, housing opposition, data engineering, exploratory data analysis
Speakers
We have curated a list of speakers across human behaviour, AI and industry
Ben is the co-founder of Electric Twin and Former Chief Data Advisor to the PM. Leading data scientist with experience across government, polling and industry - built the data strategy for the Vote Leave Campaign, the most accurate model of the 2019 election and has helped many businesses through their adoption of AI.
Associate Professor of Economic Psychology at the LSE and author of A Theory of Everyone. His work on cultural evolution focuses on answering three big questions: why humans are so different from other animals, what are the psychological and evolutionary processes that underlie culture and social change, and how the answers to these questions can be used to tackle some of the biggest challenges we face as a species.
Lawrence is an experienced campaigner who was at the forefront of leading the XL Bully Ban Campaign. He has a deep understanding of how people’s attitudes change. He is now spreadheading the Crush Crime and Looking For Growth campaigns!
Joysy is an entrepreneur, edtech advisor and innovation consultant. Joysy is the ex-Director of Education at Nesta and ex-CIO of Ada, the National College for Digital Skills. She was on the Department for Education’s Edtech Leadership Group and Welsh Government’s Schooling Reimagined expert-panel, helping to shape education technology policy and promote innovation in the sector. She is passionate about improving diversity in tech and tackling the digital skills gap.
Ruari is the Chief Technology Officer at Langland Conservation, with over 8 years of experience in intelligence operations. Ruari began his career in the British Army, where he served five years as an intelligence analyst. At Langland, Ruari leads the development of an advanced suite of intelligence tools designed to integrate, process, and analyse data, empowering Langland’s conservation partners to make informed, impactful decisions.
Former military commander with extensive experience of complex strategic campaigns and counter-terrorism. After leaving the military he joined No10 during Covid and was Director of UK’s Covid testing operations, working closely with Ben. Alex has a deep understanding of the value of insights, intelligence and simulation in complex strategic campaigns from defence and pandemic response.
Will is the CEO and co-founder of Generation Home, working to rebuild the home-buying process, making it simpler, more transparent, and fairer for potential homeowners. They have has developed innovative mortgage products designed to help aspiring homeowners, particularly first-time buyers, enter the property market.
More speakers coming up soon​...
Agenda
9:00-10:00
17:30-20:00
10:00-16:00
16:00-17:30
Registration and Introductions
Hacking
Speakers and Rewards
Networking
Other attendees
And many other great companies such as:
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DeepMind, Palantir, Robin AI, PhysicsX, Conode, Tenyks, 10DS, Vanta, Heim, Instadeep, A2I, Monzo, BoxxDocks, Skyscanner, Conduct AI, Imperial, Generation Home, Wayve, Google, Signal AI, Yelp, Arondite, Faculty and others...
With the support of
