Pi Mash

• Mindshare Huddle event - The Journey to Post Human
• DESTROYING OURSELVES: Artificial Intelligence poses a THREAT to humanity - Shock Report! - The Daily Express
• RISE OF THE MACHINES: Top astronomer warns humans will be wiped out by robots who will take over the earth - The Sun
• This is how AI ROBOTS will take over the world - and why we need to stop scientists NOW - The Daily Express
• The Paris Agreement

Guests in order of appearance:

Sarah McConville - Deputy Group Publisher at Harvard Business Review

Greg DeMichillie - Director of project management in the office of the CTO at Google Cloud

Duncan Russell - Research coordinator overseeing the Horizon 2020 projects; SecondHands  and SoMa

Andreia Silva - Data Science Team Lead

Matthew Leadbetter - Data Scientist

Written and hosted by Holly Godwin

Produced by Green Barge Audio with original music by Nic Sims

Today we're going to jump right into two of the hottest topics in technology - AI and machine learning. We hear these terms bandied around in mainstream media all the time, but what do they actually boil down to?

Show notes (hyperlinks available on  most mobile devices)

Useful Links

• Mindshare Huddle event - The Journey to Post Human

• Do Not Pay - The chatbot designed to fight your parking fines for you.  Joshua Browder also wrote an article on medium to announce the fact he was open sourcing the technology to anyone who wanted to make use of it, the article can be found here.  

• Google Vision API - Image recognition and analysis API. Google photos can now organise photos by exact search criteria using image analysis.

• What-Dog.net - The service that uses image recognition software to distinguish what breed your pampered pooch is.

• SecondHands - The robot built to assist technicians in Ocado's highly automated warehouses. For more reading material visit our blog.

• SoMa - Soft manipulation technology designed to be able to carefully pick deformable items. For more reading material visit our blog.

References for the History of AI and Machine Learning:

• Talos - the giant, bronze automaton that protected Europa in Crete from pirates and invaders, circling the island's shores three times daily. A detailed account of Talos can be found in the Argonautica, but detailed images from ~400 BC predate this by around 150 years.

• Galatea - The statue of a woman Pygmalion carved out of ivory. After falling in love with his creation, he made offerings to Aphrodite, who later brought the statue to life. From Ovid's Metamorphoses.

• Yan Shi - The engineer who presented King Mu of Zhou with a mechanical man. First recorded in the Liezi ~300BC.

• Aristotle's Syllogisms - Using deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two or more propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true.

• Ramon Lull - author of The Ars Magna (published 1305). Now considered one of the forefathers of information science.

• Pascal's mechanical calculator - known as the arithmetic machine, the calculator was designed in the early 17th century by Blaise Pascal and was known for its revolutionary carry mechanism.

• The Analytical Engine - Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace's 19th century programmable mechanical calculator.

• Ferranti Mark 1 - The first working AI programs were written in 1951 to run on the University of Manchester's Ferranti Mark 1 machine: a checkers playing program written by Christopher Strachey and a chess playing program written by Dietrich Prinz.

Credits

Guests in order of appearance:

• Sarah McConville - Deputy Group Publisher at Harvard Business Review

• Paul Clarke - CTO at Ocado Technology

• Duncan Russell - Research coordinator overseeing the Horizon 2020 projects; SecondHands and SoMa

• Written and hosted by Holly Godwin

• Produced by Green Barge Audio with original music by Nic Sims

During the next two episodes we will be taking a step inside the Ocado Technology offices to find out more about the opportunities available in technology today, taking a closer look at the ever evolving industry culture from both sides of the interview table. In such a fast paced, quick changing environment, technology is requiring an ever growing range of skills, and they're not always what you would expect...

This episode delves into the dreaded to-do list. Featuring guests Susannah and Anna; experts within product management, who want to wave goodbye to backlogged work for good, and AJ, who explores the psychological ramifications of an unmanageable list of work undone. Maybe we could all see ourselves saying no to ever-growing workloads after this episode of Pi & Mash.

A discussion with Celine Boudier, team lead of the Code for Life initiative, reveals the importance of teaching children how to code at a young age. We explore how we can start introducing these all important life skills, discuss Code for Life's accessible and engaging coding games and find out why you should never give up on your dream of managing a robotic football team.

Code for Life - An education initiative with a mission to create free open source games and teaching materials to help children learn to code. For more relevant reading material, go to our blog or follow @codeforlifeuk on twitter and facebook for live updates.

Rapid Router - Code for Life's first game designed for primary school students as a response to computer science being added to the curriculum in 2014.

AI:MMO - Have a sneak peak at Code for Life's second game (currently in development), where students can program an avatar on an adventure through space and time. Designed for 11-18 year olds.

Nao - The 58cm tall android designed by SoftBank robotics. Star of the Robo Cup League. Also See Aibo, the Robo Cup's previous bot of choice prior to Nao.

Linda Liukas - founder of Rails Girls and author of Hello Ruby.

Guests in order of appearance:

Celine Boudier - Code for Life Team Lead

Lilla-May - Year 6 student living in London.

Written and hosted by Holly Godwin

Produced by Green Barge Audio with original music by Nic Sims

Pi&Mash the new podcast from the buzzing hub of Ocado Technology - Coming soon!