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7 wastes of data production – when pipelines become sewers
I recently had the chance to present an updated version of my 7 wastes of data production talk at DataEngBytes Melbourne 2023. I think the talk was stronger this time around and I really appreciated all the great feedback from the audience. Check out the video below and the slides. Thanks to Peter Hanssens and…
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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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LLM WTF
What Token Follows (WTF) when generating text with a Large Language Model (LLM)? This notebook (you can run in Colab) and companion slide deck is my perfunctory (don’t say tokenistic) attempt to demystify GenAI for a general technology audience, specifically: how text is generated by LLMs. The premise of the notebook is to demonstrate and…
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Maths Whimsy with Python
At PyCon AU 2023 in Adelaide I delivered a talk titled Maths Whimsy with Python. It was a great chance to review a range of projects small and large I’ve already shared here. Check out the slides and video. In three years of the maths whimsy repo, I’ve covered a lot of ground, and got…
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On stage with Adam Spencer
That’s the post. I was on stage with Adam Spencer. We talked about Generative AI with excellent co-panellists Muneera Bano and John Cox (I hope to the benefit of the AI conference attendees), but growing up a maths nerd and Triple J listener in the 90s, the green room chat with Adam was my highlight!
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Perspectives edition #27
I was thrilled to contribute to Thoughtworks Perspectives edition #27: Power squared: How human capabilities will supercharge AI’s business impact. There are a lot of great quotes from my colleagues Barton Friedland and Ossi Syd in the article, and here’s one from me: The ability to build or consume solutions isn’t necessarily going to be…
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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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Humour me – DRY vs WRY
Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) is a tenet of software engineering, but – humour me – let’s consider some reasons Why to Repeat Yourself (WRY). LEGO reuse lessons In 2021, I wrote a series of posts analysing LEGO® data about parts appearing in sets to understand what it might tell us about reuse of software components…