Show Notes 166: Margaret Heffernan live from Cambridge Tech Week

In this week’s Cambridge Tech Podcast, hosts Faye Holland and James Parton crack open the latest regional headlines, then deliver a timely keynote on AI, creativity, and responsibility from Dr. Margaret Heffernan—guaranteed to get startups and VCs alike talking. Here’s a curated look at what makes this episode unmissable.

Cambridge Tech: News Bites & Growth Stories

• The Postdoc Venture Creation Challenge featured eight early-stage teams. Notable winners included Otzi, Dielectrics, Green Mixes (Social Enterprise), and Somnyx (Audience Choice). One standout presenter “gave one of the most polished presentations that I’ve seen for a long time.”

• Filtronic bags a €7M+ contract for RF assemblies in LEO satellite constellations.

• SuperSharp welcomes Elizabeth Seward as incoming CEO, leveraging her “over 20 years of experience,” as they aim to scale commercial space tech.

• Lavidian secures double wins in the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50.

“Nothing’s Inevitable”: Dr. Margaret Heffernan on AI, Copyright, and Taking Responsibility

Part two shifts gears with Dr. Margaret Heffernan’s powerful keynote from Cambridge Tech Week—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 or you’ll be roadkill. You have no choice. It’s all decided. We’re done.”

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.

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