Bio
Ashley Noel-Hirst is a PhD candidate in AI and Music at the Centre for Doctoral Training in AI and Music (UKRI), part of the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London, where he is also part of the Communication Acoustics Lab. Ashley holds a BA in Liberal Arts (Major in Philosophy, Minor in Mathematics) from the University of Warwick and a Masters in Sonic Arts from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Before coming to Queen Mary, he worked as a research assistant on the AHRC & Arts Council funded 'Dancing in the Metaverse', a two-year project investigating metaverse technologies through the lenses of critical disability studies and intangible cultural heritage.
Research interests
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly applied for the solution of control problems and the creation of artefacts, the need for users to understand and control these systems becomes more apparent. Latent representations expose high-level controls of an AI-system to users, while eXplainable AI (XAI) methods communicate what it has learned. However explanations and representations must be designed, not just technically implemented. Through his work, Ashley commits to critiquing and improving the interaction between people and these data-driven computing systems. Currently, he focusses on foregrounding the materiality of data through audible and tangible representations of latent spaces.