What "no tech sundays" can teach us about AI

About this episode

Bethany Koby-Hirschmann is a designer, social entrepreneur, and co-founder and Chief Vision Officer of Fam Studio, a research and design practice based in Somerset, England. She holds a BA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice from the University of Bath, and is completing a PhD on youth co-creation and the uses of enchantment. In 2012, after finding a discarded laptop in a skip near her home in East London, she co-founded Tech Will Save Us with her husband, Daniel Hirschmann, on the conviction that children should be producers of technology, not just consumers of it.

Tech Will Save Us grew into a STEAM company selling in 97 countries and partnered with the BBC, Microsoft, Samsung, and ARM to design the BBC micro:bit — a pocket-sized computer distributed free to a million UK children that has since reached more than four million users worldwide. After selling the company in 2021, Bethany founded Fam Studio, which co-creates with families and children to build technologies, learning content, and experiences centered on people and the planet. Current projects include a multimodal "Imagination Tool" that uses generative AI to bring children's voices into large-scale co-creation, and a wellbeing-and-AI research partnership with Oxford's Reuben College and its Child-Centred AI Design Lab.

In this episode, Bethany talks with Svenia Busson about:

• Finding a laptop in a skip — the origin story behind Tech Will Save Us
• Designing the BBC micro:bit with Microsoft, Samsung, and ARM — reaching four million children across 97 countries
• Why Fam Studio exists to serve "the village," not just the child
• Techno-optimism versus AI anxiety — holding both at once
• Whether AI reinforces the industrial-era school model or finally breaks it open
• Building the "Imagination Tool" — using generative AI to bring children's voices into co-creation at scale
• "No Tech Sundays" and the house rules her family set for her teenager's AI use
• Moving from human-centered to life-centered design — what biomimicry teaches educators

She closes with future-guest picks: Caroline Essame, author of Why Nature Matters (Routledge); Noan Fesnoux, creative adviser to Dubai's Museum of the Future (LinkedIn); Liz Robinson, CEO of Big Education (bigeducation.org); and Jenny Gibson of Cambridge's PEDAL Centre (pedalhub.net).