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Aberystwyth University held a mini-conference on generative AI last week, and Amanda Clare and I submitted an abstract. It’s safe to say that neither of us is embracing generative AI in the classroom, or in our work. Indeed I think we would both be classified as “generative AI resisters”. There are all sorts of reasons why people are enamoured with the current flavours of Generative AI on offer, and it’s been a useful thing for me to talk with Amanda and work out why exactly we find it so hard to embrace this new technology in our teaching. Looking around the conference it became clearRead More →

US THEM STUPID EVIL axis filled in with the different AI types

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On 22 November I presented at BSides Aberystwyth – my title was “AI powered scammers: Looking at four some new-ish types of threat” and the talk was a summary of my thinking about cybersecurity and AI. I teach cybersecurity and I have spent most of my adult life working in AI so I have a few opinions about both. This blog post is a summary of the arguments in my talk, in case anyone’s interested. Firstly, I think it’s important to set out some ‘ground rules’ when discussing this kind of thing and I am very cautious about attributing agency where there may be none.Read More →

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Last week we held the 18th BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium, in Glasgow. It was the biggest ever, with about 275 people in total (and about 170 posters). On one level, it was the same as previous years (a one-day conference, with a keynote and some speakers, and a poster session, with a pre-event social the night before to stop students from feeling alone). On another level, though, there’s something qualitatively different about an event of that size. One thing is certain: it’s definitely no longer “my” conference. I’m student chair and Safia Barikzai (of LSBU) is the chair, and there’s a whole team of people aroundRead More →

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BCSWomen Lovelace 2022 happened! It happened online, again, for the third time. Little did I realise that when we moved 2020 online due to threat of COVID and lockdown, I’d be chairing Lovelace 2022 online whilst actually suffering from COVID. I cannot recommend the experience of hosting a conference and being ill with COVID. From our core team of 4, one had been off with a virus in the run up and two of us had COVID so the whole event was a bit snotty. I’ve written a detailed account here: https://bcswomenlovelace.bcs.org/?page_id=398 so if you want to see who won and watch the talk videosRead More →

view from bristol city centre marriott

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ACCU was my first conference for a long time and I threw myself into the conference experience, enjoying talks on all sorts of topics. The event was a bit more dynamic in planning than many conferences because people kept pulling out with COVID (and so other people kept stepping up and offering talks to fill the gaps). This meant there were more short talks than I think had originally been planned. There were also more general talks, which suited me fine. Here are the things I’m taking away from those sessions attended: Day 1 highlights Guy Davidson’s keynote on growing better programmers: Lots of goodRead More →