Helen Hastie

It's really important that we do adopt these robots if they are capable of performing properly.

But it's also important not to overtrust.

So you shouldn't overtrust an autopilot in a ship, for example.

It's important that you always have the human eye on it.

Well, I grew up in a house that had early computers.

My father was an early adopter.

We had Commodore PC, for example, in the house.

And he was always putting together computers.

So I think from an early age, I was surrounded by tech.

My father was a lecturer in international relations and my mother in classics.

And I'm the youngest of four.

Most of us have PhDs in the family, to put it like that.

So when you're 16, you have to decide what three A-levels you're going to do.

And I wanted to do all the languages and all the sciences.

And I think my father could see a bit of a conflict inside me.

So he bought me this encyclopedia of language.

This really caught my attention.

And linguistics being the science of language really kind of found a sweet spot with me.

So I'm a half American, so I wanted to study out there.

And I was given a fellowship for, believe this or not, Welsh females studying science at master's level in America.