For Tech’s Sake

In this bonus episode of For Tech’s Sake you get to hear our complete interview with Prof Gareth Jones because we simply couldn’t fit all his knowledge on search technologies and information retrieval into the main episode.

In this extended interview, you’ll learn how search engine optimisation (SEO) can be used responsibly but also deployed like a dark art to manipulate search results. You’ll also find out why effective information retrieval is getting harder, and how our search queries can actually help to predict disease outbreaks.

It’s fascinating stuff and if you want to just jump in to the bits we left out of the main episode:

— At 6 minutes in, there’s more on the cat and mouse game behind the systems that give you search results and recommendations

— At 17.17 we talk about SEO: how it works and can be manipulated

— There’s more on how search is evolving for formats such as audio from 23.30

— And from 32.10 we have Gareth’s thoughts on whether Google is as good as it used to be, why effective information retrieval is so important for society, search as a skill and what we can learn from medical searches

You can find out more about Gareth’s research at adaptcentre.ie and you can find us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice, or let us know what you think via [email protected].

We hope you enjoy this discussion with Prof Gareth Jones as much as we did, and be sure to come back next week for an all-new episode.

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How much do you know about a tech tool you use every day? Google is often the first port of call for many of us online, but how much do we understand the algorithms deciding the results of our search? And how are recommendations engines shaping our online experience?

To discuss these things and more, we spoke to Prof Gareth Jones, an internationally recognised expert on information retrieval and search technologies based at the ADAPT Centre in Dublin City University.

Gareth gave us an insight into how search engines work, answered our questions on whether platforms are listening to us to generate recommendations, and gave us a glimpse into how we might search audio and video media in future.

— Find out more about Gareth’s research at adaptcentre.ie

— You can listen to Elaine’s TV reviews and recommendations every Monday evening on The Last Word, TodayFM

— Read about the Bot Sentinel report she referred to at the top of the episode here: https://dot.la/amber-heard-trolls-2657703228.html

— Check out Silicon Republic’s analysis of the 2023 Digital News Report for Ireland here: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/social-media-digital-news-report-ireland

— Power up your search skills with these pro tips: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/20-tips-use-google-search-efficiently.html

— And if you want to understand more about algorithms and AI, check out our previous episode, AI & U

We’ll release Gareth’s interview in its entirety in our bonus feed next week, and we’ll be back in a fortnight with an all-new episode.

And follow us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice.

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In our latest episode we spoke to Dr Patricia Scanlon, Ireland’s AI ambassador, about the kind of work that needs to be done to build better AI, and we wondered why that isn’t already the done thing. In this extended cut of the interview, you can also hear Patricia’s thoughts on how every start-up is an AI start-up now, and why “computer says no” just won’t cut it when it comes to explaining your AI.

Patricia is also the founder of SoapBox Labs, which uses AI to build speech recognition and voice-tech tailored specifically for kids, so we also spoke to her about kid-tech. She revealed how AI could be used to better protect kids online but, for some reason, this isn’t often deployed.

If you want to skip to the stuff you missed, jump in at 21:55 and enjoy the extra chat.

You can find Patricia @ScanlonPatricia and see her work @soapboxlabs on Twitter (we’re not calling it X).

You can also read more on the role of Ireland’s AI ambassador here: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/ai-ambassador-patricia-scanlon-chatgpt-ethical-ai

— The story about nurses being overruled by AI was actually published by The Wall Street Journal, not The Washington Post, and can be found here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-medical-diagnosis-nurses-f881b0fe

— The AI bias scandal that brought down the Dutch government can be found here: https://www.politico.eu/article/dutch-scandal-serves-as-a-warning-for-europe-over-risks-of-using-algorithms/

— And the mistakes made by AI detectors are covered here: https://www.popsci.com/technology/ai-bias-plagiarism-non-native-english-speakers/

Also, if you want to hear us picking apart the potential of self-driving cars, we covered this in a previous bonus episode, v1.7_bonus: You drive me lazy.

You can find us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice or let us know what you think via [email protected].

We hope you enjoy this discussion with Dr Patricia Scanlon as much as we did, and be sure to come back next week for an all-new episode.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Patricia Scanlon is Ireland’s first AI ambassador, and she sees it as her duty to start a national conversation on AI and, especially, ethical AI. She joined us to talk about the kind of work that needs to be done to build better AI, and we wondered why that isn’t already the done thing.

Patricia is also the founder of SoapBox Labs, which builds kid-focused speech recognition technology. Follow her @ScanlonPatricia and their work at @soapboxlabs on Twitter (we’re not calling it X).

You can read more about Patricia and her role as Ireland’s AI ambassador here: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/ai-ambassador-patricia-scanlon-chatgpt-ethical-ai

And some more links as promised in the episode:

— Cringeworthy product placement for Bing in Hawaii Five-0 (not Miami Vice as Elaine mistakenly thought): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfHuZ5qrYX4

— Background on the EU AI Act: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/ai-act-passed-eu-parliament

— Some background on OpenAI’s efforts to ensure the safety of ChatGPT: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/openai-chatgpt-ai-safety-data-hallucinations

— What you need to know about Bard, Google’s ChatGPT rival: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/google-bard-eu-europe-available-ai-chatbot-languages

— A look at how hands-on piloting skills are diminishing as a result of automation: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/business/automated-planes.html

— Our season one episode on AI with Abeba Birhane: https://pod.fo/e/1856e8

— A great chart illustrating the dramatically shortening route to 100 million users: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/threads-100-million-users/

— A bit of background on Threads, Meta’s Twitter rival which was released shortly before we recorded this episode: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/threads-twitter-rival-eu-data

We’ll release Dr Patricia Scanlon’s interview in its entirety in our bonus feed next week, and we’ll be back in a fortnight with an all-new episode.

And follow us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice.

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There’s so much to talk to when it comes to cybersecurity that we could only fit a fraction of our discussion with internationally recognised expert Brian Honan into our main episode. Lucky for you bonus listeners, we have the entire episode here for you to listen, learn and rethink your cyber-hygiene.

This one is also packed with insights for business leaders and decision-makers when it comes to cybersecurity, because as you will have heard in our main episode, Brian is not into victim-blaming when it comes to cybercrime. He can see a future where we aren’t beset with a preponderance of passwords, authenticators and multi-factor login tools – but this will require vendors making better-designed secure systems.

Find out from Brian how car safety provides a better model for cybersecurity, why paying ransoms makes this problem much worse, how scams have evolved while also staying much the same since the days of writing letters, what impact AI will have on our online safety and much more in this extended interview.

You can of course listen to the whole interview start to finish, but if you want to skip to the bits that weren’t in the main episode, here are the timestamps:

— There’s a deeper discussion about the challenges users face when it comes to cyber hygiene and the need for better security standards for products from about 13:21.

— Then from about 34:34, we continue our discussion around the need to bring more diverse talent into cybersecurity.

— Then, from about 40:35 onwards, we spoke in more detail about wider cybersecurity trends, including scams, artificial intelligence, encryption and backdoors, issues with personal apps on business devices and more top cyber hygiene tips from Brian.

Check out Brian’s cybersecurity company, BH Consulting, and follow the man himself on Twitter @BrianHonan. And keep up to date with the top stories in cybersecurity on SiliconRepublic.com.

— BH Consulting have published some advice on what to do if you suspect your phone has been hacked: https://bhconsulting.ie/what-to-do-if-you-suspect-your-personal-mobile-has-been-hacked/

— Brian previously spoke to Silicon Republic about Ireland’s preparedness for cyberattacks: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/ireland-cybersecurity-cyberattacks-resilience-prepared-brian-honan

— You can read all about the case of the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone here: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/14/22383957/fbi-san-bernadino-iphone-hack-shooting-investigation

— And learn more about tech-facilitated abuse from our episode on the subject: https://pod.fo/e/1856ea

You can find us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice or let us know what you think via [email protected].

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We are not the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain, at least that’s what expert Brian Honan says. Brian is internationally recognised for his expertise on cybersecurity and has advised Europol’s Cybercrime Centre along with several innovative security companies. He has even been inducted into the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame.

And, according to Brian, it’s the tech-makers that need to take more responsibility for the safety of our digital information. While he has some sage advice on passwords and protecting ourselves, he believes in a future where remembering dozens of different complicated sequences of letters and numbers can be a thing of the past. This will take innovative thinking from the tech-makers, resilience from attack victims to avoid paying ransoms that go on to fund more cybercrime, and for the industry to stop limiting who can become a cybersecurity specialist. Because we really do need more Brians and their brains to keep us safe.

Brian’s own cybersecurity company is BH Consulting and you can find him on Twitter @BrianHonan.

You can find lots of cybersecurity stories on SiliconRepublic.com, and a good place to start is their Cybersecurity Week collection from earlier this year. And here are a few more links you may find interesting:

— Brian recently weighed in on Ireland’s preparedness against cyberattacks for Silicon Republic: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/ireland-cybersecurity-cyberattacks-resilience-prepared-brian-honan

— If you need a refresher, this is what happened with HSE cyber attack: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/hse-cyberattack-explainer-conti-ransomware

— This is how Gmail plans to introduced verification: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2023/05/expanding-gmail-security-BIMI.html

— And here’s some background on Google’s plans to ditch the padlock icon in Chrome: https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/03/google_chrome_padlock/

We’ll release Brians’s interview in its entirety in our bonus feed next week, and we’ll be back in a fortnight with an all-new episode.

And follow us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice.

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You may have already listened to our episode on online content and social media with journalist and author Aoife Barry, and we had so much more in this chat that we just couldn’t fit in the main feed. In this bonus episode, you can hear the full, uncut interview, going more in-depth on social media pile-ons, online toxicity, content moderation and being a journalist online.

Aoife is the former assistant news editor of TheJournal.ie and has written the book Social Capital, a non-fiction book that discusses life online in the shadow of Ireland’s tech boom.

We really recommend listening to the full interview uninterrupted because it’s just a really great discussion. But if you are short on time and want to skip to the bits we missed in the main episode, here’s where to go:

— There’s more of us discussing our own app addictions from about 3:30

— There’s more on growing up online, how social media has evolved and self-censorship from about 8 minutes in

— There’s a look back on a family that received online abuse after appearing in a Lidl ad (more on that story here: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/couple-in-ad-campaign-decide-to-leave-ireland-after-online-abuse-1.4041612) from about 24:45

— A discussion on the ‘selective ignorance’ that leads to moderation challenges starts around 30:55

— A deeper look inside content moderation comes in around 37:30

— And, finally, we have a chat about what it means to be a journalist online in this changing landscape, and some nostalgia for old Irish Twitter and dank memes, from about 56:08 (the meme Elaine references is this one: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/crying-wojak)

You can follow Aoife online @sweetoblivion26 on Twitter and Instagram, and check out these links for more:

— Pick up a copy of Social Capital: http://linktr.ee/aoifebarry (This book also includes contributions from previous For Tech’s Sake guest Dr Caroline West and upcoming guest Brian Honan)

— Subscribe to Aoife’s newsletter at https://sweetoblivion.substack.com

— Read about the court case Aoife and other women took against their harasser: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2023/04/22/it-felt-as-risky-being-a-teenage-girl-on-the-internet-as-it-did-being-a-teenage-girl-in-real-life/

— Find out more about BeReal: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/what-is-bereal-photos-instagram

— And about the problematic Tattle: https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/tattle-life-investigation

— And a little history of Scunthorpe Problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

You can find us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice or let us know what you think via [email protected].

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Social media can connect us, divide us, entertain us and enrage us. We’d love if online spaces were made safer and better moderated to keep the nasty parts at bay, but in the end it often comes down to how we moderate ourselves, with some people understandably pulling back from their digital lives just to protect themselves.

We spoke about the good, the bad and moderation of social media with journalist Aoife Barry, the author of ‘Social Capital: Life online in the shadow of Ireland’s tech boom’. This book is like a Reeling in the Years of online content, and we highly recommend you pick up a copy.

You can follow Aoife online @sweetoblivion26 on Twitter and Instagram, and check out these links for more:

— Find where you can pick up a copy of Social Capital here: http://linktr.ee/aoifebarry

— Subscribe to Aoife’s newsletter at https://sweetoblivion.substack.com

— Read more about the court case Aoife and other women took against their harasser here: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2023/04/22/it-felt-as-risky-being-a-teenage-girl-on-the-internet-as-it-did-being-a-teenage-girl-in-real-life/

— Find out more about BeReal, the social app we are big fans of, on Silicon Republic: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/what-is-bereal-photos-instagram

— And more about the problematic Tattle, here: https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/tattle-life-investigation

— And a little history of Scunthorpe Problem can be found on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

We spoke at length with Aoife and couldn’t fit it all in here, but we will release her interview in its entirety in our bonus feed next week. And we’ll be back in a fortnight with an all-new episode.

And follow us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice.

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If you already listened to our episode on how small start-ups become Big Tech behemoths and how that scaling cycle continues today, you might like to hear more from our expert guest, David Singleton, the chief technology officer at Stripe – especially if you are an entrepreneur, aspiring or otherwise, or a team leader looking for advice and guidance.

Stripe is a fintech and payments company you have certainly interacted with if you have ever bought anything online, and this international tech business was founded by Ireland’s own John and Patrick Collison. David is also an Irishman and spent years on the engineering team at Google before he joined Stripe.

In this expanded discussion you can hear more about how Stripe helps small companies to scale and compete with much bigger entities, and what David thinks about the no-code revolution and the implications of generative AI writing code instead of engineers.

If you’ve already heard the main episode, you can skip to about 5 and a half minutes in for some fresh, unheard insights from David. And if things start sounding familiar again, skip on once more to about 23.55.

You can follow David himself over on Twitter, @dps, and you can find us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice or let us know what you think via [email protected].

Tune in next week for an all-new episode!

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We’re talking Big Tech, small start-ups and how they scale, disrupt and sometimes become one. Our special guest is Stripe CTO David Singleton, who we nabbed for an exclusive interview during his recent visit to Dublin. 

David has been a fintech whizz ever since he built some invoicing software for his parents when he was a kid. But before he was the technical lead of a global financial services and software company, he spent many years in engineering at Google. 

Google was once among the born-on-the-internet companies disrupting industry incumbents, but now it’s one the Big Tech behemoths eating up small businesses that threaten their dominance. 

We explored this dynamic between big and small, and asked David about the scaling journey in between. He explained what makes crafty software businesses so nimble, and shared his own top tips for managing fast-growing software projects.

You can follow David over on Twitter, @dps, and check out these links for a bit more background on this conversation:

— Stripe is a multibillion-dollar company founded by Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison. For more on what it’s about, check out this recent article on Silicon Republic: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/stripe-david-singleton-payments-engineering-dublin 

— Eileen O'Mara, head of EMEA revenue and growth at Stripe wrote this piece on scaling start-ups in Europe: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/stripe-research-europe-startup-ecosystem

— Check out this earlier interview with David on Silicon Republic, when he had just joined Stripe as CTO: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/stripe-david-singleton-payments-engineering-dublin

— At the top of the ep, we mention the controversy surrounding Tesla’s autonomous driving claims. HeadStuff Podcast Network members can hear more on this in v1.7_bonus: You drive me lazy (originally released 18 January 2022)

— And at the end, we mention this great discussion on building and scaling a start-up with Intercom’s Des Traynor at Future Human 2022: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/des-traynor-intercom-future-human-entrepreneurship

We’ll release David’s interview in its entirety in our bonus feed next week, and we’ll be back in a fortnight with an all-new episode. 

And follow us @fortechssakepod on your platform of choice.

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