Beyond the Hype Scott Logic

In this episode, Oliver Cronk, Doro Hinrichs and Kira Clark from Scott Logic are joined by Peter Gostev, Head of AI at Moonpig. Together, they explore whether we can ever really trust and secure Generative AI (GenAI), while sharing stories from the front line about getting to grips with this rapidly evolving technology.
With its human-like, non-deterministic nature, GenAI frustrates traditional pass/fail approaches to software testing. The panellists explore ways to tackle this, and discuss Scott Logic’s Spy Logic project which helps development teams investigate defensive measures against prompt injection attacks on a Large Language Model.
Looking to the future, they ask whether risk mitigation measures will ever be effective – and what impact this will have on product and service design – before offering pragmatic advice on what organisations can do to navigate this terrain.
Links from this episode
Prompt injection explained, with video, slides, and a transcript – Simon Willison's Weblog

Spy Logic on GitHub

Spy Logic – Doro Hinrichs and Heather Logan

How the tables turned – My life with Spy Logic – Kira Clark

In this episode, Oliver Cronk and David Rees from Scott Logic are joined by Hannah Smith, Director of Operations at Green Web Foundation, an organisation aiming to make the internet fossil-free by 2030. Together, they explore the potential benefits and limitations of ‘carbon aware’ computing, which involves scheduling computational workloads during times or in locations where energy sources have lower carbon emissions.
With the simplicity of ‘carbon aware’ being at odds with the complexities of managing the electricity grid, they move on to discussing ‘grid aware’. This concept goes beyond carbon intensity to take into account factors like grid stability, demand patterns, and energy sources being curtailed.
Ultimately, they consider just how marginal the gains are likely to be. With global emissions from cloud computing already exceeding those from commercial flights, is ‘carbon aware’ a distraction from getting to grips with the scale of the challenge we face?
Links from this episode
Green Web Foundation
What software engineers need to know about how energy grids work - Green Web Foundation (thegreenwebfoundation.org)
Full Grid Aware Research on GitHub
Sustainability topic on the Scott Logic Blog

In this episode, Colin Eberhardt is joined by Jess McEvoy and Peter Chamberlin, who have both spent many years in senior roles within public sector organisations.
Their conversation covers the excitement and concerns around AI, both from a citizen's perspective and for those building public services. They discuss the UK government’s approach to addressing AI challenges with its pro-innovation mantra, and whether this creates the right environment for success. They also touch on the need for global cooperation when tackling what are increasingly becoming global challenges.
Links from this episode
A guide to using artificial intelligence in the public sector 
National AI Strategy (PDF)
A pro-innovation approach to AI
Prime Minister's speech on AI: 26 October 2023
The Bletchley Declaration – November 2023
Policy implications of artificial intelligence (AI) 
A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation: government response 
AI Safety Institute - Third progress report

In this episode, Oliver Cronk, Andrew Carr and David Hope talk about the ever-changing world of data, with conversations moving from data warehouse to data lake, and data mesh to data fabric. They discuss the importance of data ownership and common tooling, and their view that data mesh is an approach rather than an architecture.
Links from the podcast
Data Mesh by Zhamak Dehghani
Data Fabric as Modern Data Architecture by Alice LaPlante
Principles of Data Fabric by Sonia Mezzetta

In this episode, Oliver Cronk is joined by experts including Jeremy Axe, Group CTO at DS Smith, and consultants Darren Smith and Katie Davis from Scott Logic. Together, they unpack topics like the energy usage and carbon emissions of IT infrastructure, the challenges in accurately measuring sustainability, and whether claims of ‘green tech’ are substantiated or just hype.
The conversation covers the nuances around operational versus embodied carbon emissions, the sustainability trade-offs involved in cloud versus on-premises hosting, and the need for transparency and standards around eco-friendly tech claims.
Links from the podcast Proposed Technology Carbon Standard – open sourced by Scott Logic under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence
Scott Logic blog posts on Sustainability – including the Conscientious Computing series
DS Smith's approach to sustainability
Scott Logic’s approach to supporting technology sustainability

In this episode, Colin is joined by Rebecca Rumbul, CEO of Rust Foundation, and Mirko Boehm from Linux Foundation Europe. Between them, they have decades of experience in open source.
They start by discussing the critical role open source has grown to play in the world of software and how this, along with its growing complexity, presents significant challenges. They then turn their attention to the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), a piece of EU legislation that is actively under development, designed to make end-user products more secure.
Early drafts of this act detailed significant obligations on open source maintainers, despite the fact that they often work without financial reward. This caused concern, fear and some anger in the open source community. They discuss the latest update to the CRA, which has thankfully addressed these concerns, and ponder whether it will actually solve the problems it has set out to tackle.
Links from the podcast:
Panel Discussion: The Impact of the CRA on the Open Source Ecosystem – Cheukting, Mirko & Greg, Laura, Justin, Philip The EU's new Cyber Resilience Act is about to tell us how to code – Bert Hubert's writings Will the Cyber Resilience Act help the European ICT sector compete? Understanding the Cyber Resilience Act: What Everyone involved in Open Source Development Should Know EU CRA: What does it mean for open source? – Bert Hubert's writings  The EU's Proposed CRA Law May Have Unintended Consequences for the Python Ecosystem