In this AI for Good Special episode of Digitel Talk, host Ian Ginn sits down with Professor Janet Wiles, leader of the Florence Project at the University of Queensland—a groundbreaking initiative co-designed with people living with dementia to reimagine communication technology.

Rather than designing “for” people with dementia, the Florence Project designs with them. Over 10 years, the team has developed a series of simple, empowering tech tools that support communication, dignity and daily life—ranging from tactile cameras to private social circles and custom-designed diaries.

From AI-enhanced speech recognition to user-guided co-design, Janet shares how human-centred AI is not just a technical approach but a moral one—enabling people to stay connected, independent and seen.

Links and resources:

• Florence Project – University of Queensland
• University of Queensland – School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
• AI for Good Global Summit

Episode sponsored by IFG Consulting Europe– Supporting telcos with tech strategy, digitisation and growth.

Guest bio

Janet Wiles is a Professor in Human Centred Computing at the University of Queensland. Her multidisciplinary team co-designs language technologies to support people living with dementia and their carers and social robots for applications in health, education, and neuroscience. She is currently developing a citizen science project which uses insights from neuroscience, AI and language technologies to explore the electrical characteristics of mycelial networks of symbiotic fungi in local ecosystems. She received her PhD in computer science from the University of Sydney and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in psychology. She has 30 years’ experience in research and teaching in machine learning, artificial intelligence, bio-inspired computation, complex systems, visualisation, language technologies and social robotics, leading teams that span engineering, humanities, social sciences and neuroscience. She currently teaches research methods for thesis and masters students, and is developing a new course in human-centred AI. Previous special interest courses include a cross disciplinary course ”Voyages in Language Technologies” that introduced computing students to the diversity of Indigenous and non-Indigenous languages, and state-of-the-art tools for deep learning and other analysis techniques for working with language data.

Podcast credits:

• Host: Ian Ginn
• Guest: Janet Wiles 
• Editor: Francis Wright
• Designer: Rebecca Ginn
• Project manager: Ivana Duric

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