What "no tech sundays" can teach us about AI

Bethany Koby-Hirschmann is a designer, social entrepreneur, and co-founder and Chief Vision Officer of Fam Studio, a research and design practice based in Somerset, England. She holds a BA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice from the University of Bath, and is completing a PhD on youth co-creation and the uses of enchantment. In 2012, after finding a discarded laptop in a skip near her home in East London, she co-founded Tech Will Save Us with her husband, Daniel Hirschmann, on the conviction that children should be producers of technology, not just consumers of it.Tech Will Save Us grew into a STEAM company selling in 97 countries and partnered with the BBC, Microsoft, Samsung, and ARM to design the BBC micro:bit — a pocket-sized computer distributed free to a million UK children that has since reached more than four million users worldwide. After selling the company in 2021, Bethany founded Fam Studio, which co-creates with families and children to build technologies, learning content, and experiences centered on people and the planet. Current projects include a multimodal "Imagination Tool" that uses generative AI to bring children's voices into large-scale co-creation, and a wellbeing-and-AI research partnership with Oxford's Reuben College and its Child-Centred AI Design Lab.In this episode, Bethany talks with Svenia Busson about:Finding a laptop in a skip — the origin story behind Tech Will Save UsDesigning the BBC micro:bit with Microsoft, Samsung, and ARM — reaching four million children across 97 countriesWhy Fam Studio exists to serve "the village," not just the childTechno-optimism versus AI anxiety — holding both at onceWhether AI reinforces the industrial-era school model or finally breaks it openBuilding the "Imagination Tool" — using generative AI to bring children's voices into co-creation at scale"No Tech Sundays" and the house rules her family set for her teenager's AI useMoving from human-centered to life-centered design — what biomimicry teaches educatorsShe closes with future-guest picks: Caroline Essame, author of Why Nature Matters (Routledge); Noan Fesnoux, creative adviser to Dubai's Museum of the Future (LinkedIn); Liz Robinson, CEO of Big Education (bigeducation.org); and Jenny Gibson of Cambridge's PEDAL Centre (pedalhub.net).