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Synthetic intelligence

Thursday 26 July at The Royal Institution 

So we have this amazing thing at work called “Culture club” - essentially you submit your name to a draw every month and the winners get to attend a cool event/exhibition/play/etc. I won in July, and I got the opportunity to attend a Synthetic Intelligence open class taught by Zdenka Kuncic (don’t worry, I can’t pronounce her name either), professor of Physics at the University of Sydney. It was amazing to see people of all ages and backgrounds just come together, and instead of going to a cinema and watching a movie, coming to the RI and listening to a world-class lecture. The technology she described was beyond my comprehension, but what I took from it is that SI will be an alternative to AI, without all the requirements that come with AI for quality and quantity of data. 

My favourite part of the evening was at the end, during the Q&A, a little girl kept her hand up for over 30 minutes. Finally, the usher gives her a microphone. She stands up and confidently, she asked:

“What kind of new toys can we expect to get thanks to this technology?”

Brilliant. The room burst out laughing.

The RI is a shockingly old and beautiful building, and only a month later I recognised the rooms whilst watching the new version of Cosmos with Neil Degrasse Tyson, season 1 episode 10: the Electric Boy, about Michael Faraday. I love living in London!

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Gravitas Workshop

As a former start-up employee, student, retail assistant and a list of more low-budget backgrounds, one of my favourite things about my new job is all the learning resources and workshops. Soon after joining I got a chance to attend a small workshop with TED’s Caroline Goyder about gravitas and confidence when speaking in public. We did a few exercises for concentration and speaking, but the most important things I took away are the following:

Empathise with your stakeholder. Who are you presenting to? What is what they want from you? What are they worried about? What is their body language saying? 

Try and put yourself in their shoes before you meet. Sit like them, try to think like them. What’s on their mind? Are they worried, stressed? How do they feel about meeting you?

Always, always practice before a presentation. Especially if it’s a pitch. Take time at work to rehearse, and take 15 minutes or ideally 30 minutes before to centre yourself, clear your mind and warm up your voice. It sounds silly for the business place, but it’s a clear difference between amateur and professional speakers. Now, where to warm up your voice in a public setting? That’s a challenging one.