This week’s episode features Dr. Margaret Heffernan’s powerful keynote from Cambridge Tech Week, giving a call to arms for anyone building or funding the next wave of innovation. She challenges the tech sector to resist “the rhetoric of inevitability” surrounding AI.

Key Takeaways:

On the myth of inevitability in AI:

“What we’re hearing is a kind of ugly, aggressive language of inevitability. AI is coming, it’s going to do what it’s going to do. If you don’t like it, get out of the way.”

The real cost to creators:

“What we’re seeing right now in AI is the greatest level of industrial ID destruction in human history… Artists’ work is all being scraped so that it can feed large language models.”

Copy, consent, and credit:

Dr. Heffernan highlights the necessity of strong copyright for artists to keep their livelihood, identity, and voice. Without it, “no income, no reputation, no control, no consent, no identity.”

The tech sector must act like grown-ups:

“We’re not an infantile adolescent industry anymore… we now have choices in front of us that we have to take with some kind of adult responsibility.”

Opportunity, not inevitability:

The big prompt: Use technology to strengthen copyright protections and ensure creators are part of the value chain.

Produced by Cambridge TV

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re joined by Rupert Elston, who shares his journey from Oxford to leading the London AI Hub - a new centre driving collaboration across the UK’s fast-growing AI startup scene.

Rupert explains how London’s 3,000+ AI startups were once scattered across disconnected clusters:

“That fragmentation was stopping the UK from really leading the charge in AI.”

The London AI Hub is changing that. It’s now a go-to space for founders, policymakers, and researchers to meet, collaborate, and shape the future of UK AI.

In just eight months:

40 events hosted and 3,000 participants engaged

15 resident startups across healthtech, SaaS, wearables, and more

9 of 12 startups expanded their teams, and 5 secured funding rounds

Cross-sector collaboration is sparking fresh ideas and new partnerships

Looking ahead:

The Hub isn’t staying local. Rupert shares plans to connect with hubs across the UK - from Glasgow to Manchester - and to record and share events nationwide. There’s also active engagement with government through policy roundtables giving founders a direct voice in shaping AI regulation.

“It’s about putting founders and regulators in the same room and letting them be heard.”

What’s next?

Expect another 5–10 startups joining the Hub, new themed event series (like investor demo days and sessions on AI in decarbonisation), and better ways to keep the community in the loop.

Produced by Cambridge TV

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second of our exclusive recordings from Cambridge Tech Week 2025, we turn the spotlight on photonics - a sector critical to the future of compute, AI, quantum, and more.

Hosted by Dr Andy Sellars of Cornerstone, the expert panel features Elizabeth Patterson (Seagate Technology), Dr Gwen Wyatt-Moon (Prospectral), Dr Josh Silverstone (Hartley Ultrafast), Mark Rushworth (Finchetto Ltd), and Matthew Anderson (Wave Photonics), sharing insights on how the UK is building global strength in this critical field.

Key takeaways:

Silicon photonics is hitting its stride. After years of promise, it’s now mature enough for large-scale deployment, opening up new opportunities for data centre performance and bandwidth through wafer-scale integration.

Photonics at the heart of AI and data storage. Seagate’s Mosaic 4 Plus drive, using photonic HAMR technology, already stores 30TB with ambitions to exceed 100TB.

A quantum leap. Photonics will be central to scaling different modalities of quantum computers, serving as the critical interface for next-generation systems.

Why the UK, why now? The UK is carving out a niche in photonics that doesn’t depend on leading-edge foundries. With its strengths in packaging technology, materials science, rapid prototyping, and strong university partnerships, manufacturing here is realistic - especially with facilities like Cornerstone in Southampton.

Room for growth. The ecosystem from idea to prototype is world-class, though challenges remain in scaling production and keeping skilled talent local.

💡 Keynote spotlight

Professor Andrew Fitzgibbon opened the session with a thought-provoking talk that connected technology and humanity. His message: innovation should serve core human needs - food, health, and shelter - so that we can spend the rest of our time creating art and exploring what makes us human. It was a powerful reminder of the “why” behind all this progress.

Produced by Cambridge TV

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.