Noon van der Silk

Talks

• June 16, 2022, Functional programming, quantum computing, and economics - a tenuous connection?, Invited, code video slides

  Money. Why work for it, if you could but simply obtain it once, replicate it, and use it an unlimited number of times? Aside from the systemic economic fallout that would result, a practical issue is that most physical currency has built-in protections to make this difficult, but if movies are anything to go by, it’s not impossible. But, is there a way to make currency impossible to counterfeit? And if so, what could that possibly have to do with functional programming or quantum computing? Find out in this talk as we take a tour this connection, from working out what quantum money is, then breaking it, then connecting it to Haskell via type theory, and finally concluding with a few open questions and interesting ideas in the space!

• September 10, 2021, Quantum computing and Haskell: A linear love story?, Haskell Love 2021, code slides

  A tour of a neat connection between Haskell and quantum computing via linear types.

• May 9, 2019, The Quantum AI Landscape, 2^nd applying AI in and DL in Enterprises Conference, slides

  A very rough overview, aimed at a non-technical audience, of the quantum computing and QML landscapes; just a handful of slides as most of the detail was presented verbally.

• May 7, 2019, How much data do you really need for deep learning?, YOW Data 2019, Sydney, code slides

  We looked at how much data you need to learn new transfer-learning tasks; and we discussed some of the issues around confidence.

• April 9, 2019, Deep learning in the browser!, The Web Meetup, Melbourne, code slides post

  We discussed deep learning in the browser, by way of TensorFlow and TensorFlow.js. We trained a Fashion-MNIST classifier on the spot, and deployed it!

• March 5, 2019, Mindful neural networks, Creative AI Meetup, Melbourne, slides post

  We used mindfulness as a way to explore interesting and innovative topics in machine learning.

• February 19, 2019, How much data do you need to train a classifier?, ML/AI, Melbourne, code post

  We did a quiz to see if people could guess how many examples you need to re-train a network for a specific classification task. Turns out it's less than you might anticipate. We discussed some potential reasons.

• February 5, 2019, Getting started with TensorFlow.js, Creative AI Meetup, Melbourne, code

  We set up a TensorFlow.js build environment, and played with some projects that we had set up in advance.

• January 31, 2019, Miso diagrams, MHUG, Melbourne, code

  We saw how to use GHCJS, Miso, and the Diagrams library to get interactive Haskell diagrams in the browser! We observed that it was slow.

• January 24, 2019, Designing functional clothes with Haskell!, linuxconf 2019, New Zealand, code video slides post

  A talk where we went over how to use the Haskell Diagrams library to make interesting patterns, that we could then tie into a pipeline which generates the necessary imagery to print the designs on clothes.

• September 4, 2018, Fashion tech innovation showcase, IFAB, Melbourne,

  A public demonstration of the AI fashion designer, nd a talk describing the technology behind it to a fashion crowd.

• August 15, 2018, AI dance booth, National Science Week - Humans 2.0, Melbourne, code

  An event we put on as part of Melbourne Knowledge Week, where people came to a space and danced in the AI-powered dance booth, and then received an AI-generated "smack-down" dance response.

• July 30, 2018, AI, decision making, and design, Grimshaw Architects, Melbourne, slides

  We presented how AI makes decisions, and some state-of-the-art work to the group architects, and related fields, to the folks at Grimshaw.

• July 4, 2018, Digital threads - Service design in fashion, Academy Xi, Melbourne,

  A panel session on fashion technology, service design, and AI.

• May 31, 2018, Art with Diagrams with Turtle graphics, MHUG, Melbourne, code

  We looked at how we can use "turtle-style" graphics to make cool geometric patterns with Haskell and the Diagrams library.

• May 13, 2018, AI fashion designer, Melbourne Knowledge Week, Melbourne,

  An event for the general public, where they were able to interact with our AI fashion designer (made using AI and explored using joysticks).

• April 26, 2018, The Abstract Algorithm - Discussion, MHUG, Melbourne, code

  A discussion of this quirky codebase/algorithm that can be used to reduce lambda expressions efficiently.

• November 23, 2017, Deep dance extravaganza, Creative AI Meetup, Melbourne, video slides post

  A presentation of the dance booth project, and the process involved in building it, to the Creative AI Meetup.

• August 31, 2017, Deep learning dance t-shirt pipeline, MHUG, Melbourne, code

  A presentation showing how we can combine a bunch of different technologies into one pipeline to create an end-to-end t-shirt production pipeline.

• August 25, 2017, AI dance booth (alpha), ACCA (as part of IJCAI), Melbourne,

  The first outing of the dance booth project; we encouraged members of the public, during an event at the Australian Center for Contemporary Art, to have their dances captured by deep learning.

• June 21, 2017, Gentle introduction to TensorFlow, Creative AI Meetup, Melbourne,

  An introduction to TensorFlow, focused on using it purely as a numerical computation library, to gain familiarity, before using it for deep learning purposes.

• May 25, 2017, The Internet High-5 Machine!, MHUG, Melbourne, website

  The talk that was also the official launch of the Internet High-5 Machine project. We looked at the (entirely-Haskell) based tech-stack, and demonstrated the system.

• May 22, 2017, Current state of Creative AI, Creative AI Meetup, Melbourne,

  The official opening of the Creative AI Meetup, this was a talk covering the current state of Creative AI work; the general direction and active areas of research.

• February 15, 2017, Quantum gradient descent - discussion, ML/AI, Melbourne,

  A reading-group discussion around a recent paper exploring the idea of gradient descent in a quantum setting.

• November 24, 2016, Deep learning with TensorFlow in Haskell, MHUG, Melbourne, code

  A presentation covering the actively-developed haskell-based deep learning library, built on top of TensorFlow.

• August 29, 2016, Compose Conference - Melbourne - 2016, Compose Conference, Melbourne,

  A conference centered around Functional programming, which I chaired/co-organised.

• June 10, 2016, An evening of deep learning, Once-off Event, Melbourne,

  In order to bring deep learning to the Melbourne community, we facilitated an "un-conference" around the idea, bringing a diverse group of people together to discuss issues.

• March 31, 2016, An IHaskell Dashboard using Jupyter, Docker, and the BitBucket API, MHUG, Melbourne, code

  A demonstration of a combination of technologies that lead to an interactive, dynamic dashboard of some dev stats.

• February 23, 2016, Surface code quantum computing, Maths and Science Meetup, Melbourne, post

  An overview of the idea of the surface-code, error correction and quantum computing, and how it helps achieve general quantum computation.

• September 24, 2015, Internet High-5 Machine (alpha), MHUG, Melbourne,

  This was an introduction to the ideas of the Internet High-5 Machine, and an overview of the technical approach using Yesod and WebSockets.

• June 25, 2015, Reference management in Haskell, MHUG, Melbourne, code

  A demonstration of an open-source project I built for managing academic references in a single web-app.

• May 29, 2015, The Fresh Prince of Bell Pair, Melbourne University, Melbourne, video

  A short presentation/song for my Masters, based on the story of quantum computing.

• November 24, 2014, Public or perish - A vision for open science research, BAM, Melbourne, code slides post

  A presentation on a vision of scientific research that takes place using present tools of open source software development.

• October 30, 2014, Elizter-Vaidman bomb testing scheme (of DOOM!) for forging quantum money, MHUG, Melbourne, post

  A talk describing a technique for forging quantum money based on a quirky physical phenomena referred to as "bomb-testing".

• July 19, 2014, Open Science Workshop, Open Science Workshop, Melbourne, post

  A free conference I organised centered around teaching researchers the techniques of "open science": using GitHub, source control, collaborative computing using SageMathCloud, and collaborative research discovery with SciRate.

• July 10, 2014, Daniel J. Bernstein, Laborastory, Melbourne,

  A public talk on a "science hero". I told the story of djb, and his fight for cryptography.

• February 25, 2014, The Church-Turing thesis and the power of quantum computing, Maths and Science Meetup, Melbourne, slides

  A discussion of the power of quantum computing and how it compares to classical computing, and some recent work in trying distinguish them.

• July 23, 2013, The firewall problem (of quantum physics), Maths and Science Meetup, Melbourne,

  An introduction to the so-called "firewall" problem, which is at the interaction of quantum physics and general relativity.

• June 15, 2013, Exploring topological equivalence, AMSSC, Canberra,

  A talk on my Masters project around topological equivalence of certain structures meaning that they result in the same (quantum) computation.

• December 6, 2012, Graphical approaches to quantum computing, MFUG, Melbourne,

  A presentation showcasing some "graphical" approaches to describing and evaluating quantum computations.

• February 16, 2011, How to do database deployments - discussion, MXUG, Melbourne,

  A guided discussion on what people want when they perform automated database migrations.

• January 19, 2011, Quantum programming, MXUG, Melbourne, slides

  An overview of the current state of quantum programming toolkits, with a dive into a few interesting examples.

• August 18, 2010, Complexity theory, P vs. NP, and the recent paper, MXUG, Melbourne, slides

  A discussion centered around a recent (at the time) paper potentially showing P != NP, we discussed the ramifications and likelihood of the paper being right, and the resulting interest it created on the Internet.

• March 18, 2009, Upgradable hashing in cryptography, MXUG, Melbourne,

  A talk describing the technique of allowing any given hash-based login strategies to be replaced, in the case that the hashing method is shown to have flaws.

• April 18, 2007, OWASP and the SCAN project, OWASP, Melbourne,

  An overview of the idea of OWASP.net, and the SCAN project idea - use programming and machine learning to evalulate all open source projects and find vulnerabilities.

• March 15, 2005, SHA/MD5 breakings - Overview and implications, OWASP, Melbourne,

  An explanation of the recent SHA/MD5 breakings, what it means and what do to about it.

• February 15, 2005, Alternative authorisation strategies, OWASP, Melbourne,

  A presentation centered around "login-form-free" applications, to reduce insecurity around passwords and phishing.