PhD

This is an approximate transcript from my July 2018 talk at Digital DNA’s AI NI Community Panel on wether the use of AI in defence and surveillence was inherently evil Yes, It’s been sitting in my drafts folder for months because I completly forgot about it, sorrynotsorry Hello folks, I’m Andrew Bolster, most everyone calls me Bolster. And nobody calls me Doctor. I’m a Data Scientist at Alert Logic, a cyber security firm based Texas but with a research office in Weavers Court where we monitor, analyse and identify malicious and suspicious internet activity, protecting thousands of companies with advanced sequence and pattern matching sensors deployed across the world. ...

This is another short extract from the Thesis that I thought was particularly relevant given recent news coverage of the dangers of autonomy and AI, particularly in the field of “killer robots”. Legal Considerations in Design Trust If there is one key feature of the application of robotics and autonomy to the defence field that separates it from applications in commercial and civil fields, it is the potential direct impact on life and safety. ...

Preface It’s nearly a year to the day since I passed my Ph.D Viva (And since I last updated the blog…), so I thought it’d be fun to very-gently tidy up one of my appendices that’s a bit relevant to current stories about the end of the world and machines taking over and such. It’s a piece of work that I enjoyed researching and had originally had as a significant part of the main thesis, but it just didn’t fit in anywhere sensible, so it got stripped to it’s bare minimum and kicked to the end. ...

Thesis submitted, Viva cleared (with minor corrections) but this post isn’t about all that… Simple one; how do you go from one monolithic project repository to multiple respositories without losing all that tasty tasty commit history? #! /bin/zsh # # git_split.sh Current_Repo username new_repo {list of files/folders you want to keep} # Copyright (C) 2016 bolster <[email protected]> # # Distributed under terms of the MIT license. # BASEDIR=$1 INITDIR=`pwd` NEWREPO="[email protected]:$2/$3.git" shift 3 FILTER_ARGS=$@ TMPDIR=`mktemp -d -t ${BASEDIR}_XXXXXXXXX` echo $BASEDIR $TMPDIR $FILTER_ARGS cp -ra $BASEDIR/. $TMPDIR cd $TMPDIR git filter-branch --index-filter "git rm --cached -qr --ignore-unmatch -- . && git reset -q \$GIT_COMMIT -- $FILTER_ARGS" --prune-empty -- --all && git repack -a -d -f --depth=250 --window=250 && git remote set-url origin $NEWREPO && git gc && git push -u origin master ls -latrh cd $INITDIR rm -rf $TMPDIR YMMV, IANAGG, No refunds, Safety not guaranteed ...

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. ...

About 6 months ago now, I had the pleasure of getting Phil Herron to talk at the Farset Labs PyBelfast group about his work in GCC/Cython fron end optimisation work, which was simultaneously waaaaay over my head and really interesting. I’ve been a ‘Python Primary’ software engineer now for about 5 years, in web-dev, infrastructure monitoring, data analysis, and scientific computing, with some esoteric stuff involving small-vector linear algebra optimisation on GPU CUDA, Matlab bridging with Octave / Oct2Py, and distributed state systems. But somehow, I’ve managed to dodge hardcore Cython. ...

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) ...

I was skimming through the Oral Statement from yesterday’s Assembly, with a specific interest in Dr Stephen Farry’s discussions on the NI Economic Activity Baseline Report (everyone loves Baseline reports these days, but very few ever seem to get followed up…) can came across a Question and Response between Sammy Douglas (E. Belfast) and Dr Farry. Mr Douglas: […]Will he outline what his Department is doing to ensure that we are educating our young people in the skills that the workforce needs? ...

Hold on, what? I attended a Postgraduate Training event over the weekend, ‘Starting to Write in the First year of your PhD’, presented by the brilliantly wise and entertaining Daniel Soule. What I expected: How to start writing your thesis in the first year of your PhD What I got: Start writing in the first year of your PhD, for your own sanity and academic security Now, depending on your academic background, these may sound exactly the same. They’re not. This post summarises the ‘best bits’ of the very very good course. ...

2011 has been a great year for me; Graduated with a 1st MEng in Electronics & Software Engineering @QUB, Got Job offer to a major financial house, which I turned down, Got Job offer to a C|EH company in England, which I turned down, Got DELNI Funded PhD offer (x4) from CSIT/ECIT, which I turned down, Got selected to be one of the two UK projects within a Joint UK/FR Defence PhD Programme, which I accepted, ...