59 episodes

Faculty and students from the South East Technology University (SETU) Ireland explore a wide range of topics related to computing and technology. Hosted by Rob O'Connor. All opinions are personal and do not represent University views.

The Machine: A computer science education podcast Rob O'Connor

    • Technology
    • 5.0 • 10 Ratings

Faculty and students from the South East Technology University (SETU) Ireland explore a wide range of topics related to computing and technology. Hosted by Rob O'Connor. All opinions are personal and do not represent University views.

    Indrakshi Dey - Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence

    Indrakshi Dey - Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence

    Autonomous Systems are the jumping off point for this podcast episode with Indrakshi Dey of the Walton Institute at SETU. We talk about how computer science research is progressing in this area, encompassing the world of AI and forming links with partners across all disciplines. This leads on to a chat about how we (humans) tend to anthropomorphise Artificial Intelligence systems. We also discuss Indrakshi’s career to date and how being a woman of colour has given her unique insight across the sector.

    Here are some links if you wish to follow up the podcast:

    ·       Walton Institute Key Research Areas https://waltoninstitute.ie/research/key-research

    ·       CONNECT project https://www.connect-science.net

    ·       Indrakshi Dey’s profile at the Walton Institute https://waltoninstitute.ie/about/staff/dr-indrakshi-dey

    ·       Indrakshi Dey’s profile on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/indrakshi-dey-aa658839/  

    ·       Rob O’Connor on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertoconnorirl/

    • 46 min
    Nuria Oliver - Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Addressing Imbalances

    Nuria Oliver - Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Addressing Imbalances

    To help celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, Rob spoke with Spanish computer scientist Nuria Oliver about her work to date, such as using big data systems to help unbanked people access credit in developing nations or combating bias in AI systems. Nuria recounted how she first became interested in computing and turned that interest into a career. They also discussed the gender imbalance in computing today and Nuria offered some thought-provoking suggestions as to how these issues might be addressed. Nuria is also a fellow with Association of Computing Machinery, so thanks to the ACM for setting up the interview.

     

    Here are links to projects mentioned during the podcast:


    ELLIS – European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems https://ellis.eu
    Data-Pop Alliance https://datapopalliance.org
    Nuria Oliver’s Personal Website https://www.nuriaoliver.com
    Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) https://www.acm.org

     

    To keep up to date with The Machine, you can find the podcast on X/Twitter @machine_podcast or you can connect with Rob O’Connor via LinkedIn

    • 55 min
    Jobs in Computing (Live Panel Discussion)

    Jobs in Computing (Live Panel Discussion)

    Here's a live panel discussion we recently hosted at SETU, in which a bunch of computing professionals talked about what it's like to work in the tech sector in Ireland. This took place in front of approx. 200 Leaving Cert students, tied in with Computing Week at SETU. If you're a student or someone who's interested in starting a career in IT, this discussion might be very useful. The panel is comprised of:


    Padraig O’Neill – UNUM
    Sinead Queally – VoxGig
    Mick O’Brien – Kargo
    Donna Tilson – Sun Life
    Brendan O’Farrell – Red Hat
    Amanda Freeman-Gater - SETU

    Please excuse the poor audio in places. This was held as a live event and not a podcast. However, there were some great nuggets of info in there so we decided it was better to get it out there, warts and all.

    • 35 min
    Building a Local Large Language Model (LLM)

    Building a Local Large Language Model (LLM)

    Another #ComputingWeek talk turned into a podcast! Two Red Hat software engineers, both recent graduates of SETU, returned to discuss the issues surrounding running your own LLM on a local machine, how models and datasets are built and reduced (quantised) so as to run on a laptop rather than an array of servers. Mark Campbell and Dimitri Saradkis provided excellent insight on the technical issues surround this topic, before getting into some of the ethical and moral issues with host Rob O'Connor at the end.

    You can connect with all the people on this podcast on LinkedIn at:


    Mark Campbell https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-campbell-76846b194/
    Dimitri Saradakis https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimitri-saridakis-32a087139/
    Rob O'Connor https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertoconnorirl/

    Here are links to some of the tools referenced in the podcast:


    Red Hat OpenShift AI https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/openshift-ai


    LMStudio https://lmstudio.ai/
    Ollama https://ollama.ai/
    HuggingFace https://huggingface.co/

    • 51 min
    How AI is changing the ICT work environment

    How AI is changing the ICT work environment

    On the back of a packed #ComputingWeek talk at SETU, Rob nabbed two speakers from UNUM Ireland – Gary Kenneally and Shourjya Sanyal – and recorded a conversation about the pace of change in the ICT industry, how AI tools can be integrated into a workflow and why new developers should even care about AI. The lads discuss why the think AI won’t be replacing anyone anytime soon – but it may help us work smarter.

     

    To keep up to date with The Machine, you can find the podcast on X/Twitter @machine_podcast Or you can contact Rob via the SETU website. Thanks for listening

    • 47 min
    Quantum Computing and Quantum Communications

    Quantum Computing and Quantum Communications

    Don't know your q-bits from your bytes? This is the podcast for you! Quantum Computing is one of the next-gen technologies that can truly usher in a new era in computing. Quantum Communications has the potential to provide a truly secure infrastructure for communications across small or vast distances. Deirdre Kilbane (Director of Research at the Walton Institute) joined Rob O'Connor in the studio to talk about all of this and the recent announcement of a large research investment in Ireland QCI (Quantum Communications Infrastructure). Deirdre breaks down some of the theoretical elements in an easy to understand manner and lays out the practical applications for this technology across Europe (and beyond).



    For more information on Ireland QCI, check out this web story https://waltoninstitute.ie/projects/ireland-qci For more information on Deirdre Kilbane, check out her profile https://waltoninstitute.ie/about/staff/dr-deirdre-kilbane Stay up to date with The Machine podcast by following us on Twitter @machine_podcast

    • 37 min

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