Blog introduction (2013)

Hello and welcome to my new blog. Some may remember my original blog that was hosted for many years on a certain social networking site, through some what I’m sure were some rather self-loathing and hormonal teenage years. Unfortunately, it was lost to the great nothing-ness in cyberspace as a result of an argument with a particularly crazy girlfriend. Sometime later I tried to return to said social networking site and found an horrendous fallen standard; to a level where everything was in pastel colours and aimed at telling the world what band you thought was hot.

Alas, it saddens me somewhat as I’m sure there must have been a few diamonds in the rough hidden in there. A few gems that I could have liked to remember 6th form by. And then for whatever reason, I haven’t really kept any record throughout university of my thoughts. Which isn’t to say I didn’t have them. What it came down to was that I took a ridiculous university course that gave me very little time to myself. Balancing that with a social life and a girlfriend, it meant that I never had the time to sit down and express myself. Or when I did I was so knackered I preferred rather to sink into a sofa and let my brain recover.

Nevertheless, a new blog is here. A new blog dedicated to my post-university life. Which as it turns out has actually taken me back to university for some more pain and suffering as I chose to do a PhD. So expect my thoughts and musings on current affairs and the occasional bitching about life. And of course continued bitching about university life, even if it is a different university.

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Packing up

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?