Lecturing eh?

Well yesterday was the final session of my teaching seminar course, which was by and large a necessary evil for me to get a small certificate to say that I can continue demonstrating in the undergrad labs which is a) fun and b) well paid. So the last session was all about presentation skills and leading from the front. Which was then made clear after the initial blurb that 7 of the 28 of us would be getting up front and presenting a 4 minute talk about our PhD (pitched at a first year undergrad level) in front of a camera, to then be watched back and critiqued by the group plus two leaders of the session.

Everyone was then given five minutes to prepare, at the end of which names were pulled from a hat. In a move that came as completely unsurprising to me my name was chosen.

So with no over-heads, no script and no notes in front of me I launched into why life as a bacteria can be difficult when even on a needle point there can be up to 2 million of you fighting over food and mating with each other. So, just as evolution gave chimps sticks to beat each other with, evolution has given you colicins; which you effectively chuck at other bugs and it eats away their DNA so they cant eat, mate, live, nothing. However, when you’ve got hold of them you need to stop them killing you so simultaneous production of an immunity protein is required. This interaction is effectively what I study, and if it can be characteristed well enough; ie know how bugs kill each other, then we as humans can come up with new antibiotics to kill them that mirror the same action.

Needless to say, I thought I rushed through it all a bit quick and slurred my words a bit. However, watching it back, aside from the typical human thing of hearing their own voice back and thinking it’s terribly (as well as my stance) it didn’t seem that bad. But what was really shocking was that I was then asked if I’d done any teaching from the front before. Which I hadn’t really, only the usual uni presentations that everyone else has done at some point. I was then told by several peers and a former lecturer that they’d hire me in an instant on that performance.

Afterward, I was caught by the seminar leader and told that I should really consider lecturing as a career. Apparently I have a relaxed, informal style and conveyed the information well whilst making it relevant and most importantly really interesting.

So, given the parents, maybe there is a gene for teaching?

What distinguishes you from other developers?

I've built data pipelines across 3 continents at petabyte scales, for over 15 years. But the data doesn't matter if we don't solve the human problems first - an AI solution that nobody uses is worthless.

Are the robots going to kill us all?

Not any time soon. At least not in the way that you've got imagined thanks to the Terminator movies. Sure somebody with a DARPA grant is always going to strap a knife/gun/flamethrower on the side of a robot - but just like in Dr.Who - right now, that robot will struggle to even get out of the room, let alone up some stairs.

But AI is going to steal my job, right?

A year ago, the whole world was convinced that AI was going to steal their job. Now, the reality is that most people are thinking 'I wish this POC at work would go a bit faster to scan these PDFs'.

When am I going to get my self-driving car?

Humans are complicated. If we invented driving today - there's NO WAY IN HELL we'd let humans do it. They get distracted. They text their friends. They drink. They make mistakes. But the reality is, all of our streets, cities (and even legal systems) have been built around these limitations. It would be surprisingly easy to build self-driving cars if there were no humans on the road. But today no one wants to take liability. If a self-driving company kills someone, who's responsible? The manufacturer? The insurance company? The software developer?