Coming out of our latest Computing Week on campus in SETU, Rob spoke with two members of the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau – Detective Sergeant Eoin O’Connell and Detective Noel O’Gorman. They spoke about the work of the Bureau, how cybercrime threats have evolved over the past few years and what individual and organisations can do to help protect themselves. TRIGGER WARNING: the podcast includes discussion of offences around online sexual abuse and child pornography. The conversation is not graphic but listeners may want to exercise discretion.

By an amazing coincidence, in the period from when the interview was recorded and published, SETU has been the victim of a cyberattack. At the time of podcast publication, all systems on the Waterford campus are offline and the site is under active investigation. So the podcast is particularly timely for the SETU community …

For more information on the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau, please visit https://www.garda.ie/en/about-us/organised-serious-crime/garda-national-cyber-crime-bureau-gnccb-/ To keep up to date with The Machine or for any follow-ups, you can contact Rob via the SETU website https://www.setu.ie/staff/robert-oconnor

Autonomous Systems are the jumping off point for this podcast episode with Indrakshi Dey of the Walton Institute at SETU. We talk about how computer science research is progressing in this area, encompassing the world of AI and forming links with partners across all disciplines. This leads on to a chat about how we (humans) tend to anthropomorphise Artificial Intelligence systems. We also discuss Indrakshi’s career to date and how being a woman of colour has given her unique insight across the sector.

Here are some links if you wish to follow up the podcast:

· Walton Institute Key Research Areas https://waltoninstitute.ie/research/key-research

· CONNECT project https://www.connect-science.net

· Indrakshi Dey’s profile at the Walton Institute https://waltoninstitute.ie/about/staff/dr-indrakshi-dey

· Indrakshi Dey’s profile on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/indrakshi-dey-aa658839/

· Rob O’Connor on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertoconnorirl/

To help celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, Rob spoke with Spanish computer scientist Nuria Oliver about her work to date, such as using big data systems to help unbanked people access credit in developing nations or combating bias in AI systems. Nuria recounted how she first became interested in computing and turned that interest into a career. They also discussed the gender imbalance in computing today and Nuria offered some thought-provoking suggestions as to how these issues might be addressed. Nuria is also a fellow with Association of Computing Machinery, so thanks to the ACM for setting up the interview.

Here are links to projects mentioned during the podcast:

• ELLIS – European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems https://ellis.eu
• Data-Pop Alliance https://datapopalliance.org
• Nuria Oliver’s Personal Website https://www.nuriaoliver.com
• Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) https://www.acm.org

To keep up to date with The Machine, you can find the podcast on X/Twitter @machine_podcast or you can connect with Rob O’Connor via LinkedIn