Designing for Trust: Power, Policing and AI with Professor Martin Holbraad

 “A police report isn't merely a record; it can be a memory aid, a legal artifact, a shield or even a performance.”

Join us as Mahesh welcomes back Professor Martin Holbraad, a leading anthropologist and director of the Ethnographic Insights Lab at University College London. This episode delves into the idea that anthropology offers more than cultural interpretation; it provides a radically different way of thinking about systems. Using frameworks like actor-network theory, you’re invited to rethink agency, not as something humans possess, but as something co-produced in the relationships between tools, practices, people and policies. This fundamentally changes how AI is understood, not as a "ghost in the machine," but as an active participant in dynamic, shifting networks where meaning, power and responsibility are constantly negotiated.

As Mahesh and Martin discuss, a police report isn't merely a record; it can be a memory aid, a legal artifact, a shield, or even a performance. These overlapping realities that exist within the same system are never neutral; they are shaped by power, pressure and purpose.

For those who seek to be on the cutting edge of innovation, anthropology reminds us that imagination is a method. Every system encodes assumptions about the world, and at Motorola Solutions, we believe those assumptions can always be questioned, rethought and reimagined to better serve the mission-critical needs of public safety professionals around the world.

Let's geek out.

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