How AI could make our systems fairer, with Tamara Polajnar

Let’s be honest, for a lot of people in my world, AI feels like a bit of a villain right now. It’s been decimating creative industries, disrupting business models, and flooding the internet with content that’s at best soulless, and at worst, dangerous. I’m recording this just as the whole Grok-goes-anti-woke mess is playing out, so feelings are certainly mixed.

I’ve got plenty of thoughts about AI, and I’m happy to talk your ear off about them (do send me a DM). But today’s guest offers a different perspective. One that’s a little closer to the utopian vision we used to have: that tech might actually make our lives easier, and free us up to do more fun, creative, human things.

Dr. Tamara Polajnar is a computer scientist with over 25 years of experience in Natural Language Processing. She’s the co-founder and CEO of herEthical AI, a deep-tech company developing ethical, explainable AI for the justice sector. She’s led AI research across academia, fintech, and public-sector innovation – including at the University of Cambridge – and is now focused on building AI tools that don’t just automate processes, but challenge systemic bias and drive real cultural change.

Her team is developing tools to help institutions like police forces and family courts identify victim-blaming language, track bias, and hold their systems to account, with a clear emphasis on fairness, transparency, and survivor-centred innovation.

In this episode, we talk about how bias shows up in official documents, what it really takes to build ethical technology, and how systems grounded in empathy and real-world constraints might be part of the way forward.

If you’re suspicious of AI – good, me too. But this conversation shows what it can look like when it’s built with care and used to create meaningful accountability.

So let’s get into it. Listen to Tamara get on her soapbox.

Tamara's Links:

herEthical.AI Website
Follow herEthical.AI on Instagram
Connect with Tamara on LinkedIn

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