Questions need
evidence.
Interest in Technology and Need Analysis for the Adoption of Chatbots by the Elderly
For my CREST Silver Award with the British Science Association, I independently designed and conducted a study with 19 residents of a Hertfordshire care home, aged 60–100. The study explored everyday technology use, chatbot awareness, willingness to adopt AI and the accessibility features that could make conversational systems more useful.
The core finding was that adoption is not simply a skills problem. Many respondents reported reasonable confidence with familiar technology yet still rejected chatbots. Trust, perceived value, privacy, fear of mistakes and motivation all mattered. The research recommends simple conversational interfaces, voice control and clear, slow speech.
Does AI Have Bias?
Awarded Merit with Distinction elements in the Dawson essay competition. The essay examines how bias can emerge from training data, product decisions and the demographics and assumptions of the teams building AI systems.
It considers real-world consequences in areas such as hiring, healthcare and criminal justice, arguing that technical systems can reproduce existing inequalities rather than operating outside society. The final section explores mitigation through better datasets, auditing, diverse engineering teams and shared responsibility between developers and policymakers.