Recorded live, this episode is a letter to our Series 1 selves. Jenny and Leah look back at what they thought the podcast was for when they started, the questions they were too polite to ask, the episode they'd re-record, and what it's actually like working together as mother and daughter. Along the way they get to the moment the conversation itself became the learning, which is where the title of their book comes from. AI for Equity, the book, is out on 27 October. The episode ends with one line of advice each for anyone sitting at their own Series 1, about to start something they don't feel ready for.

What makes us tick? In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, how do we hold on to the essence of being human?

In this episode, Leah Garrett and Jenny Garrett OBE are joined by Fabiola Williams for a conversation about technology and human emotion. Fabiola reflects on how AI interacts with our emotional wellbeing, reminding us that AI is one big part of many things, alongside growing up, illness, disability and loss. Together they explore how young professionals can support themselves in an ever-changing world of work, why we should question AI outputs rather than trust them blindly, and why sense-making is slow, iterative work that can't be done alone.

📖 Our book, AI for Equity: Creating a More Equitable Society for All, is out on 27 October with Emerald Publishing. Pre-order your copy now:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/AI-Equity-Creating-Equitable-Society/dp/1837428573
Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/ai-for-equity-creating-a-more-equitable-society-for-all-jenny-obe-garrett/586c7c50e50b5e55?ean=9781837428571
Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/ai-for-equity/jenny-garrett/leah-sunshine-garrett/9781837428571

Want to be a guest on AI for Equity? Apply here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScDrKnarbBmYZFUueLBsPlpRGArBwOA5pxUeENCtrKnMYbS2g/viewform?usp=header

AI didn't arrive three years ago. It's been decades in the making, and Dr Salim Sheikh has been there for most of it.

Salim has worked in AI and software engineering for over 30 years, starting in the 1990s when the field was still largely academic. In this episode he joins Jenny Garrett OBE and Leah Garrett to unpack the real history behind today's AI boom, why the pandemic accelerated adoption faster than anyone expected, and why AI literacy is the skill we all need now.

We also get into the balancing act at the heart of it all: keeping technology as the facilitator and human creativity, wellbeing and decision-making as the driving force. As Salim puts it, AI should amplify human potential, not replace it.

📚 Our book AI for Equity (Emerald Publishing) is out 27 October 2026. Pre-order now:
Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/ai-for-equity-creating-a-more-equitable-society-for-all-jenny-obe-garrett/586c7c50e50b5e55?ean=9781837428571
Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/AI-Equity-Creating-Equitable-Society/dp/1837428573
Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/ai-for-equity/jenny-garrett/leah-sunshine-garrett/9781837428571

Want to be a guest or partner with us? Email aiforequity@outlook.co.uk

Follow us: @leahsrg and @coachjennygarrett

When AI saves you time, where does that time actually go?

In this episode, Leah and Jenny talk to Rachel Seftel, Head of Research and Impact at the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. Rachel is the first to admit she's no tech enthusiast. She got into AI for one reason: she hates wasted time. That led to the RachelBot, her personal experiment in automating everything from scheduling appointments to checking her son's homework.

But this conversation goes far beyond personal productivity. Rachel shares findings from the Foundation's research with over 3,000 women entrepreneurs, almost all of whom were balancing their businesses with caregiving. The headline finding: when AI saves women time, that time doesn't automatically become free time or growth time. It gets reabsorbed into everything that was already waiting for them.

We also dig into why adoption numbers can be misleading. AI use among women entrepreneurs jumped from 38% to 82% in a year, but Rachel argues the more important question is whether that use is meaningful, sustained and actually changes the fundamentals of a business.

📚 Our book, AI for Equity (Emerald Publishing), is out on 27 October 2026. Pre-order your copy now:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/AI-Equity-Creating-Equitable-Society/dp/1837428573
Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/ai-for-equity/jenny-garrett/leah-sunshine-garrett/9781837428571
Bookshop.org: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/ai-for-equity-creating-a-more-equitable-society-for-all-jenny-obe-garrett/586c7c50e50b5e55?ean=9781837428571

Want to be a guest on the podcast? Apply here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScDrKnarbBmYZFUueLBsPlpRGArBwOA5pxUeENCtrKnMYbS2g/viewform?usp=header
Get in touch: aiforequity@outlook.co.uk

What if AI's most powerful defence application isn't fighting wars, but preventing them?

In this episode of AI for Equity, Jenny Garrett OBE and Leah Garrett are joined by Melanie Garson, Associate Professor at University College London and expert in international security and conflict resolution. Melanie challenges the dominant narrative around AI and defence, making the case for "peace tech": technology designed to stabilise societies, forecast conflict, and rebuild after war.

In this episode:

• Peace tech vs defence tech, and why the distinction matters
• How innovation ecosystems bring governments, industry and civil society together for conflict prevention
• The dual use dilemma: the same drone that surveils can deliver vaccines
• AI's role in post conflict reconstruction, coordinating housing, healthcare and law enforcement data
• The ethical trade offs: privacy, surveillance, and how much we're willing to give up for security

Melanie Garson brings extensive experience in international security and conflict resolution to a conversation that will change how you think about technology's role in peace.

🎧 Subscribe to AI for Equity for conversations at the intersection of AI, ethics and social impact.

Pre-order AI for Equity, the book by Jenny Garrett OBE and Leah Garrett, is out 27 October 2026!

#AIforEquity #PeaceTech #ArtificialIntelligence #ConflictResolution

Claire Roberts has spent twenty five years in technology strategy and transformation, most of it as one of the only women in the room. She got in without a degree, on the strength of being more useful than anyone else in the building.

In this conversation with Jenny Garrett OBE and Leah Garrett, she talks about what she saw when a major AI engineering company quietly let its diversity commitments slide once the external pressure changed direction, why researcher Sarah Weier's experiment on how models answer questions about women should worry us more than it does, and why the uncomfortable finding is not about the technology at all. The bias is not programmed in. It is in the record we left behind, and the model is reading it back to us.

She also makes the case for AI as a thought partner rather than a replacement, in healthcare, in engineering, and in the ordinary work most of us do every day. Her instruction is simple and harder than it sounds: don't outsource your thinking, use it to improve your thinking.

In this episode:
Getting into tech without a degree, and what usefulness actually buys you
Being the only woman in the room for twenty five years
What happened when diversity commitments met commercial pressure
Sarah Weier's experiment and what the training data revealed
Using AI to sharpen judgement instead of replacing it

The AI for Equity podcast, hosted by Jenny Garrett OBE and Leah Garrett.

What does it mean when an elderly woman calls a plastic device her best friend?

This week, Tracy Fischer and Mary Linberg from the Aging and Disability Resource Center in Dunn County, Wisconsin, join us to talk about their pilot with Ellie Q, an AI companion sitting in the homes of people the care system has quietly left behind. It's a genuinely warm conversation, and an uncomfortable one, because the device works. Users feel less alone. Annie found a friend.

But warmth and indictment can live in the same story. We get into the ethics of putting AI into elder care, the difference between complementing carers and replacing them, and the systemic failure that makes any of this necessary in the first place.

The technology isn't the villain here. The gap it's filling is the point. Loneliness was never a tech problem, and no lamp, however clever, is going to fix a society that stopped showing up.

Listen now.

"Hard to reach" gets treated as a fact about disabled people, when the real story is a research industry that never built the relationships needed to include them properly.

Christine Hemphill joins Leah and Jenny Garrett to unpick that phrase and the industry built around it. She talks through her move out of traditional design roles into disability-inclusive research, why touchscreens and voice interfaces both started as disability-led design before anyone called them mainstream, and why the choice between "innovative" and "inclusive" was never a real one. The conversation also covers positionality, the bias every designer carries into a room without noticing, and what it takes to build genuine empathy with the people research is meant to serve.

AI for Equity is hosted by Leah Garrett and Jenny Garrett OBE.