Code Conversations

With the rise of AI and automation, how do we as humans find our value in the workplace? How do we work with these new technologies? How do we build resilience to changes? What skills are needed for us to thrive in this new world? People have often felt apprehensive about change, especially big changes to the way we work. It happened in the industrial revolution and now it's happening with the...

Learn how AI can change the game in an important scenario. The age-old battle between Product Owners and Developers rages on: POs push for speed, while devs demand clarity. When specs are too vague, developers waste time making assumptions. When specs are too detailed, POs get bogged down in documentation. The result? Context switching, frustration, and a backlog filled with half-baked work items....

Copilots are everywhere these days, and… rightfully so! Let's face it: these tools are incredible at getting things done. They have the potential to turn any one of us into a 20x developer. Need a new feature? Bam, there you have it! Refactor that function? Sure, it'll be done before you grind the coffee for your next cup. These tools do a very good job of generating well-designed, tested,...

Explore how AI and continual learning can revolutionize MRI diagnostics, using our real-world case study in detecting Focal Cortical Dysplasias (FCD)—a crucial factor in epilepsy treatment. In this session, we’ll dive into how continual learning techniques, inspired by human adaptability, help AI models improve diagnostic accuracy, minimize false positives, and handle evolving data in medical sett...

Ready to give your old code a makeover? Step into the world of AI-powered code refactoring, where smart algorithms take on the challenge of sprucing up cluttered codebases. See how AI deciphers code DNA, performs digital reconstructive surgery, and scales from small scripts to sprawling systems. Explore real-world success stories, understand the current limits, and discover tools that'll make...

So we all know AI is changing the software industry right now. Whether you build backend systems, web or native UIs, or embedded devices, you keep hearing it: the next generation of users will simply expect your software to carry out their tasks intelligently. Let's start with how we got here. I'll demo AI systems from the 1960s primordial soup up to the emergence of large language models...

It's 2025 and we're all adding AI features to our apps. But the tech moves so fast - what solid ground can you actually build on? This talk will focus on one of the best established patterns: building chat UIs that accept natural-language instructions. This includes:Getting started with Microsoft. Extensions. AI and Aspire (without needing any paid service) Ingesting, indexing, citing, and...

Large language models (LLMs) exploded into mainstream awareness in 2022, and have continued to fascinate us since. But what is it about LLMs, compared to other, similarly complex algorithms, that have so captured our imagination? And why is it that we are so ready to believe that these models have started to show signs of human behavior? Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSS1a8ngGRU&list=TL...

Generative AI has leapt from clever chatbots to self-directed digital coworkers, but most organisations still treat it as a plug-in for their existing processes. This session maps the journey from rule-based bots to AI-enabled workflows, then shows why 2025 belongs to true agents: systems that perceive, plan, and act with minimal hand-holding. Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaQOlw0-jQ4

Generative AI, exemplified by tools like ChatGPT, marks a significant shift in computing, enabling machines to perform creative and intellectual tasks once exclusive to humans. This talk will explore the evolution of generative AI, its applications across various fields, and its potential to revolutionize industries. This session will examine the roles AI can assume, from doctor, to creator to sec...

The whole world is excited about generative AI, but how do we start to build with it? Do we need to learn linear algebra, machine learning, or even python? It turns out that our existing knowledge and skills are still very much in demand. There are some terms and tools you need to understand, but it's not as big a jump as you think. This talk is a roadmap for understanding GenAI as a developer...

Every enterprise is under pressure to implement AI - from board mandates to competitive necessity. Yet the path from aspiration to successful implementation is filled with misconceptions, unrealistic expectations, and poorly chosen use cases that waste time and resources before we even tackle technical implementation decisions in this rapidly evolving field..I've spent the past few years imple...

2025 was the year AI stopped feeling chaotic and started feeling buildable. In this Lightcone episode, the YC partners break down the surprises of the year, from shifting model dominance to why the real opportunity is moving back to the application layer, and why the next wave of AI startups may be just getting started.

What will define AI in 2026? 🚀 Martin Keen & Aaron Baughman explore groundbreaking trends like Agentic AI, cloud computing, automation, and quantum computing, plus innovations like Physical AI. Discover how these technologies will transform industries and drive the next wave of intelligence.

Large language models (LLMs) exploded into mainstream awareness in 2022, and have continued to fascinate us since. But what is it about LLMs, compared to other, similarly complex algorithms, that have so captured our imagination? And why is it that we are so ready to believe that these models have started to show signs of human behavior? In this talk, we’ll delve into some of the more extraordinar...

The roles of programmers and designers are evolving. The convergence of design and code signals a narrowing gap, prompting us to question the future landscape of design. As we enter the age of AI, will this lead us to chart a new course, or will it see us walking down familiar paths? Drawing from her experience leading Design at GitHub, she’ll delve into her journey starting out as a designer who...

Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) provides large language models with up to date information and helps them hallucinate less. But how does it all work beneath the covers? In this live coding session we'll build the components of a RAG system from scratch. (Aside from the LLM, there probably isn't time for that!) By building our own, we'll understand vectorisation, similarity search,...

AI is transforming the way Security Operations Centers (SOCs) work, and as a SOC engineer, your role is evolving fast. Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaZbsbKnOho&list=PL03Lrmd9CiGey6VY_mGu_N8uI10FrTtXZ&index=47

Cybersecurity is rapidly evolving, shaped by artificial intelligence (AI) and the emergent potential of Quantum Computing. AI enhances security through automated detection and analysis, swiftly processing vast amounts of data to spot and predict threats, and Quantum Computing holds the promise to revolutionize various industries by offering unparalleled computational speed and efficiency, enabling...

With GenAI, developers are shifting from traditional code reuse to generating new code snippets by prompting GenAI, leading to a significant change in the ways software gets developed. Several academic studies show that AI generated code based on LLM's that are trained on vulnerable OSS implementations lead to vulnerable generated code. Another study showed that developers tend to trust GenAI crea...

In the past year, ChatGPT and the OpenAI API have gone from 0 to 100 faster than a Tesla. No one wants to be left behind. Businesses are automating tasks and having content written instantly. Some companies are suddenly ✅ 10x more productive, and some companies ❌ struggle. SSW consultants have been leveraging AI to improve client’s products…. And solving problems inside SSW too. Let’s take a loo...

Web developers: you have a fantastic opportunity to make your web UIs more intelligent and productive than before. But don’t just throw on a chat pane and call it done, as people may not even use or like it. Let's explore how language models can integrate into your existing web UIs, anticipating your users' needs and completing their tasks faster. This is a technical, demo-centric talk wit...

In this session, we will explore what this model can do, and rather than just showing a perfect polished final demo, I will walk you through my entire journey of trying to use the model to solve Wordle puzzles, starting with "Hello World". Along the way, you will gain a good understanding of the model's capabilities, along with learning some prompt engineering techniques that drove p...

The focus upon AI continues to be the predominant technology subject of the day; it’s the must-have feature of any new product or service; it’s at the forefront of many discussions about ethics, attribution and indeed our own future employment prospects. But increasingly, the term “AI” has become synonymous with only one flavour of artificial intelligence - that being “machine learning” (ML) - e.g...

AI CoPilots are all the rage - but none quite offer that personalised butler service SciFi told us we might one day have. To understand what it takes to train a CoPilot, we will see how training a model works under-the-hood; discuss the importance of quality training data to craft a truly powerful and personalised experience, and safety or security concerns to consider when training a model on a p...