AI for the rest of us Welcome to the AI community for everyone. Hello friends, Well it looks like we’re getting a new Prime Minister here in the UK. This will be the 6th PM in the past 7 years which makes you wonder if this has become an impossible job, a role that no one can fulfil. To get elected is a personality contest and the prize is to be villainised and targeted by a relentlessly negative media with whatever story they think will get the most clicks that day. It's disappointing. It's...
11 days ago • 9 min read
AI for the rest of us Welcome to the AI community for everyone. Hello friends, Happy Father’s Day, unless you are in a country that doesn’t celebrate it today in which case, um, happy Sunday. This week Charles has mostly been at his desk tapping away. Hannah has also been at her desk tapping away. This is good from a work point of view but doesn’t, it has to be said, make the most exciting of intros. Next week should be a bit more exciting: Hannah is travelling to Vienna to give the opening...
18 days ago • 9 min read
AI for the rest of us Welcome to the AI community for everyone. Hello friends, Thank you to everyone who joined us at Agent Craft this week. It’s amazing what happens when you put smart people in a room together and just let them talk about what they care about. A few people said it was their highlight of London Tech Week, but the greatest compliment was one attendee who said “I’ve met people here I genuinely want to see again” and that’s the whole point of community. We all have so much to...
25 days ago • 11 min read
AI for the rest of us Welcome to the AI community for everyone. Hello friends, Hannah is currently watching the rain from a lodge in Keldy Forest. A friendly squirrel just stopped by to say hello so she fed him a cherry tomato. Lucky squirrel! This week Hannah has been in London at two very developer focussed conferences, AI DevCon and LeadDev (LDX3). There is so much change in the world of software engineering that instead of feeling empowered and informed, she left feeling more conflicted...
about 1 month ago • 11 min read
AI for the rest of us Welcome to the AI community for everyone. Hello friends, Hannah is home from Italy for 2 nights before repacking her case and heading to London for two events this week. She will be speaking at AI Dev Con and Lead Dev about the shifting roles, responsibilities, skills and team composition in software development. Ahead of her talk, Tessl has also published Hannah’s opinions and observations on this topic on their blog. Charles’ house is full of teenagers for half-term,...
about 1 month ago • 11 min read
AI for the rest of us Welcome to the AI community for everyone. Hello friends, Hannah is writing this week’s newsletter from Florence where she’s been absolutely delighted to discover their famous / infamous Wine Windows! Tiny little hatches scattered throughout the city through which you can purchase a glass of wine to take away. They date back to 1559 when they were originally installed as a way for families to sell their wine without opening a shop and incurring taxes, but made a comeback...
about 2 months ago • 9 min read
AI for the rest of us Welcome to the AI community for everyone. Hello friends Charles’ youngest is a fanatical gamer and has been developing his own mods, and recently also his own games in Unity. So on Sunday the two of them went to GamersLounge at the Boiler Room in Guildford. This club was set up to preserve how retro games used to be played, on the original consoles they were developed for. Using modern flashcarts, they have managed to archive lots of games so that everyone coming to the...
about 2 months ago • 10 min read
AI for the rest of us Welcome to the AI community for everyone. Hello friends, With tropical storms rumbling around, Hannah has been unusually productive from the beautiful island of Okinawa. She’s also discovered a tiny hole in the bottom of her 10 year old Adidas gazelles which is causing her left foot to get really rather wet. If the next pair lasts 10 years she'll be wearing them until she's 50 (WTF) which makes this a very big decision! [those of us well past 50 would like a word about...
2 months ago • 11 min read
AI for the rest of us Welcome to the AI community for everyone. Hello Friends, The power went off in Charles' house yesterday so we went to bed very early. When it came back on at about 1:00 in the morning he woke up and could not get back to sleep. So he started writing this week's AI for the Rest of Us newsletter at around 3:00am armed with a cup of Earl Grey. He is sorry if it feels a bit sleepier than usual. This week Hannah was back in her natural habitat stomping up and down the...
2 months ago • 9 min read