DN-AI: Sequencing and Artificial Intelligence

Many newspaper articles, TV shows and social media posts discuss climate change and promote many different views. In this talk, I will share some of the ways that AI can be used to understand this space and highlight ways we can recognise the effectiveness of these messages. We’ll see how social media interactions can shed light on levels of polarisation in engagement with climate change media, how the technology behind ChatGPT can reveal the ‘echo’ of attempts to influence attitudes and how we can efficiently identify patterns in thousands of images in media coverage.

An AI which can solve any problem, is adaptable, learns on its own and reasons. This sounds like science fiction but in the recent years with the developments in Deep Reinforcement Learning, Transformers and Large Language Models, the question has become when. In this talk I will define AGI, look at some of the research questions from the literature and present some of my personal research projects around building, assessing, and preparing for AGI.

The development of DNA sequencing has enabled us to begin to decode the biological blueprint for life on earth. The ability to reliably sequence DNA has changed the face of biosciences and health research and accelerated the rate of scientific discovery and medical advance.
This talk will cover a little of the history of DNA sequencing, a little about the most important technologies involved and a few highlights of the discoveries which DNA sequencing has made possible.