Interest, Taste and Expertise: Growing in post-AI Software Engineering (or anything I guess)

There’s been a million thinkpieces about ‘AI took our entry level jobs, so where will tomorrow’s Seniors come from’, so I don’t want to add to them; just a short braindump from conversations I’ve been having with peers, superiors, students and teachers over the past few weeks. You can think of this as a spiritual successor to my ‘Being a DORC’ blog earlier in the year. But, it all comes down to a simple and unoriginal thought; to anti-phrase Yoda ...

10 October 2026 · Andrew Bolster

So, what is it you do again?

Update: I got asked to do a simplified version of this post for the University of Liverpool, it lives here (Backup) I’m technically in a third year of a PhD, and most of the time, when someone asks me what it is I’m actually doing, I fluff it and say something about “autonomous submarines” or “collaborative autonomy” or “Emergent properties of communities” or something similarly vague. In the spirit of setting the record straight in a less-academic way, I thought it’d be worth while to edit a presentation I recently made to the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence last month in Stanford and make it a little more digestible. ...

13 May 2014 · Andrew Bolster

So long and thanks for all the fish

I’m leaving Northern Ireland, and I’m moving to Liverpool. Via Portsmouth. I have spoken with a few people about the situation I find myself in, and a few more people about my decision, but I want to get it all down somewhere. Where did this come from? The short answer is that a series of unexpected events mean that it makes sense to move my research. Recently, my PhD supervisor, Prof Alan Marshall, was offered a research Chairship at the University of Liverpool, which he gladly accepted. It’s a great move for him (Another Russell Group, one of the original ‘redbrick’ universities, etc etc), but that’s his life not mine so all it does is provide an option. (Disclosure: I also work with Alan on his spinout Wireless Security company, TOM Ltd) ...

20 June 2013 · Andrew Bolster