 Welcome to ITU Telecom World 2019 here in Budapest. I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio by Tim Unwin, who is co-founder of Tech Together, amongst lots of other things too. Thanks. It's great to be back here again. Cheers. So, Tim, I wanted to start off by... There's been a lot of talk here about digital skills, innovation, innovation connectivity that matters. But I wanted to start off by asking you about digital exclusion. What are the major factors in digital exclusion, specifically in the digital gender gap, do you think? I think we have to begin by realising that technology, digital technologies, ICTs are an accelerator. So they will accelerate whatever is happening already in society. And so where you have exclusion, particularly around gender issues, particularly in patriarchal societies, tech, unless you do something about it, is always going to accelerate that. And I think we're now beginning to understand that exclusion or inequality is not just on one kind of variable. It's where they all intersect. I don't particularly like the word intersectionality, but that's what this refers to. So where you say have refugees who have disabilities who are women, they're going to be the most excluded of all. And I think I've been working for the last 20 years in trying to change that. And I think we need to begin by focusing on the most marginalised, women in patriarchal societies and understanding how they are marginalised, particularly by technology. And what's tech together doing for this? Well, tech together, there have been so many initiatives about reducing gender digital inequality, nearly all of them by women, for women. And because so many other people have been working in the field, although it's something I've been caring about ever since the work we did 20 years ago with women in Ethiopia, it was based on our saying, if we don't change men's attitudes and behaviors, we're not going to make a difference. So tech together is all about changing men's attitudes and behaviors. So that isn't actually the same as allies for women. It's about, you know, guys like you and me, we have to change if there's going to be any difference really to gender digital equality. Now, of course, guys like you and me are one thing. What about AI? How does gender bias manifest itself in AI systems and how do you think it can be mitigated? The mitigating is probably the easier one to answer in some ways because it's about understanding how AI is leading to greater differentiation, exclusion, but it's worse than that. It's how AI can be used to harass and abuse women as well. And so the answer is understanding or sharing understandings, getting people actually to do things differently. There are lots of ways in which it is impacting the Equals Initiative, which the ITU plays a really major role in, has recently launched a wonderful report on AI and gender. So there are all sorts of things, the use of female voices for things like Siri to name one. But why is it women? And how are those programmed? And how do they respond to different questions? And you then go back and say, well, why were they designed like that in the first place? To me, that's the interesting question. Probably like a bad man driver. I need a woman's voice to calm me down. But more seriously, AI is only as good as the data that is put in. And so I'm fascinated by the way that if you think of China, which has whatever it is, 16% of the world's population, that is a huge amount of data. But again, that's only Chinese data. If you take US corporations, US is only 4% of the world's population, but has kind of a bigger reach. But still the data that is accumulated has biases within it. And if those biases reflect, the structural biases in society that I was talking about earlier, male, female, disability, they will then be replicated and exaggerated through the use of AI. So how are you working in your various roles to increase inclusivity? Particularly around gender. Well, tech together is one of the main ways we're doing that. We're also very involved and equals more generally about supporting the highest possible quality of research, getting gender disaggregated data. We're doing exciting things for the moment around migration and the inequalities associated with migration. And how can we use AI to reduce inequalities in the migration process, particularly in countries, I don't like the word south, but in countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. So that's much more migration than from those countries, those continents to the north. So actually how can we use digital technologies to do that? And I think we're also particularly working around understanding just the scale and the extent of the ways in which these technologies are actually used to do harm, abuse and sexual harassment. And the numbers of people who commit suicide, particularly women, particularly in strongly patriarchal societies, because of what happens to them digitally. Working on that. Now, you're no stranger to ITU, no stranger to ITU events with many times and talked in many studios in many different countries. I just wanted to ask you, what's the value for you of attending events such as this at ITU Telecom World? I think it has to be meeting some brilliant people. It's a great opportunity for ministers, for CEOs, for thought leaders to come together to thrash out some of the real challenging issues. I have to say, perhaps I've been around too long, but one of the challenges is every new generation makes the same mistakes that we did. So we're hearing the same things over and over again about a new technology. So what's said now about AI, actually we were talking about getting computers into schools and big computer labs and things. I'm trying to find ways that we can short-circuit the mistakes that people are making because you just see it over and over again. And I hope that'll change. We're trying to create new next year, for example, a non-conference where you don't have any panels, you don't have any keynotes, but you actually have a range of different activities. So wouldn't it be amazing to get a group of... Well, we're here in Budapest, a group of senior people in the sector actually talking about the problems while walking up the hill to the castle or when they're going around an art gallery. So we're going to be trying to mix it up and you can talk about cybersecurity or gender inequality while painting pottery or something like that. Well, that's correct. But there is a place, obviously also, for events like this and it's always good to come back. And actually, and reflecting it, it's good to see the way, since Penny Pot, that the ITU is moving forward, doing things differently and beginning to talk about things like meaningful connectivity. Great. Well, thank you for taking the time to sit still for a little while and move forward too quickly for us. But that's wonderful and very much wish you the very best with all of your initiatives and look forward to catching up with you again soon. Thank you. And it's always a real pleasure to chat with you on occasions like this. Thanks to the ITU for inviting me to be here. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.