Category: R&D
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What to expect when you weren’t expecting an R&D project
This was supposed to be a regular digital project that consistently made progress towards the objective… right? Problem statement, some analysis, build a solution bit by bit, deploy, …, nice linear progression… but no… we were wrong! It turned out to be an R&D project. Often R&D projects change direction and sometimes seem to go…
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R&D burn up
This article captures the key points of a conversation I have quite often with teams involved in exploratory work, and their stakeholders. Typical burn up We’re used to burn up charts looking like the examples in this description from Atlassian – a roughly horizontal scope line which we work towards with a roughly diagonal completed…
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Effective Machine Learning Teams in print
My book Effective Machine Learning Teams is now in print! Building ML solutions requires multi-disciplinary collaboration. EMLT shows how to use design practices to identify the right products, how to apply good data science and software engineering practices to build products right, and how to structure ML teams and organisations so that they are right…
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Privacy puzzles
I contributed a database reconstruction attack demonstration to the book Practical Data Privacy by my colleague Katharine Jarmul. While we might think anonymous summary data is safe to share, this attack demonstrates it’s possible to dramatically reduce the search space for re-identification, in this case from half a trillion quadrillion possibilities to just one! My…
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A gentle introduction to embeddings at the inaugural GenAI Network Melbourne meetup
I was thrilled to help kick-off the GenAI Network Melbourne meetup at their first meeting recently. I presented a talk titled Semantic hide and seek – a gentle introduction to embeddings, based on my experiments with Semantle, other representation learning, and some discussion of what it means to use Generative AI in developing new products…
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Electrifying the world with AI Augmented decision-making
I wrote an article about optimising the design of EV charging networks. It’s a story of work done by a team at Thoughtworks, demonstrating the potential of AI augmented decision-making (including some cool optimisation techniques), in this rapidly evolving but durably important space. We were able to thread together these many [business problem, AI techniques,…
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A coding saga with Bard
Though but a footnote in the epic of coding with AI, I though it worth musing on my recent experience with Bard. Bard currently uses the LaMDA model, which is capable of generating code, but not optimised for it. The story might be different with Codey as protagonist (or is that antagonist?) I didn’t produce…
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Throwback Thursday
The metaverse is a topic currently, though the concept has a long history. Twenty years ago, in the dotcom era, I was exploring this space, as I was recently reminded. Feeling nostalgic, I dug these projects out of the NAS archives. Tech has moved on, but there’s enduring relevance in what I learned. VO2max (1999)…
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Rebooting AI Review
I was excited to read Rebooting AI (website), to find inspiration and tools for doing things better. Here is the book in one great quote: For now, we are in a kind of interregnum: narrow but networked intelligences with autonomy, but too little genuine intelligence to be able to reason about the consequences of that…
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The Lockdown Wheelie Project, Part 3
In Melbourne’s COVID-19 lockdown, I’ve wheelied over 17km. Not all at once, though. Over three months, I’ve spent 90 minutes with my front wheel raised. I’d like to keep it up, but as lockdown has gradually relaxed, and routines have changed, so have I landed the wheelie project, for now. With all that data collection though,…