What we ask Google | Q&A with Google's Data Editor

Ever wondered what goes through other people’s minds – their silly questions, their inner anxieties, their hopes and dreams? In his new book, What we ask Google, Simon Rogers draws on two decades of aggregated Google search data. He examines what traditional search has revealed about humanity’s private fears, hopes and instincts, and asks what happens as we move from typing keywords into a search bar to asking Chat GPT fully formed questions. Join us to hear Simon Rogers, in conversation with Anuschka Schmitt, as he shares insights from what is now the world’s largest dataset and learn that it offers a surprisingly hopeful picture of humankind. Meet our speaker and chair Simon Rogers is Google’s Data Editor, leading a team of data journalists, analysts, and visualisers to tell stories with Google’s data. Previously, he was Twitter’s first ever Data Editor, and he is also the author of Facts Are Sacred (2013, Faber & Faber), based on the Guardian’s Datablog which he helped launch. A lecturer in Data Journalism at Medill-Northwestern University in San Francisco, he has received the Royal Statistical Society’s award for statistical excellence in journalism and been named Best UK Internet Journalist by the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. Dr Anuschka Schmitt is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems in the Department of Management at LSE. Her research examines how AI-based systems augment human work, as well as individual decision-making and learning, placing special emphasis on conversational AI. Her work uses laboratory and field experiments, as well as digital trace data analysis methods. Anuschka’s research has been published in outlets such as the Journal of the Association of Information Systems.