The Science and Technology cross get together team
Holyrood asked users of the Science and Technology cross bash team a selection of inquiries on their professional subjects – some significant, some less so.
Have you made use of any emerging systems like ChatGPT in your role as an MSP and if so, what do you use it for?
Murdo Fraser: I have not individually employed technologies this sort of as ChatGPT in my MSP job, although I know there are colleagues who have performed so. I can see why this would be a really practical resource when tackling an situation wherever I did not have considerably background expertise, but my desire is always to communicate from personalized awareness and investigation fairly than outsource this to AI.
Clare Adamson: I have experienced a participate in with it, and I’ll search at it. I employed ChatGPT for 1 speech to demonstrate how it operates. I questioned it 5 concerns to clarify the Scots Independent newspaper. I got five acceptable responses of what it was, but it didn’t seriously communicate about what it stands for, or go into the detail of the Scots language in it, or the help for Gaelic.
I issue no matter if it will at any time change persons like journalists and the difficulties they look into. I have occur to the conclusion that it will not.
Brian Whittle: I sometimes use Otter.ai to transcribe some views and strategies when I’m out and about alternatively than scribbling in a notebook. For case in point, if I have a imagined all over opportunity plan concepts or feelings on a press report, I will make a verbal be aware.
Stuart McMillan: We have not made use of ChatGPT in my business office despite the fact that I know some of my team have utilized it in their spare time. I appreciate it does have its works by using but I’m not confident that AI is able to replace, or make much easier, the occupation of my workers when it will come to placing collectively responses to constituents or press releases, for case in point.
Finlay Carson: I haven’t. I should really glimpse at how it would assistance me, especially presented that I am not very superior at beginning from a blank piece of paper or making a superior framework for a speech.
Ivan McKee: No, I have resisted the temptation so far. But I feel it would be appealing to create some thing and then established ChatGPT the obstacle to see what it comes up with and how it compares.
I do imagine these systems will complement what persons do somewhat than change them.
How about is the loss of CodeClan to Scotland and its technological innovation group?
IMcK: It is extremely concerning. If we are significant about tackling the capabilities hole in tech – which is the most significant problem we have – then we should really be substantially growing this type of provision to get far more expertise into the sector, and the kind of brief retraining classes that CodeClan sent are vital.
FC: It is very about that a nicely-respected organisation like CodeClan set its failure down to a lack of profits from business enterprise placements. Scotland has a standing for being at the forefront of technological enhancement, we will need to search to see why the need for coding graduates is not what it should really be: is our community sector way too threat-averse to new know-how? Or do we will need CodeClan-form training at the coronary heart of our nearby college or university sector, creating coders for community firms to push their boundaries and broaden their horizons?
CA: It was a amazing design of education. I know people who have absent via courses and they now do the job for a significant worldwide corporation that was born in Edinburgh.
It is one thing that I believed, if points went pear-shaped in my career, CodeClan would have aided me get up to velocity again swiftly.
I’m not mindful of the purpose why it went into liquidation, but it was fantastic that CodeBase stood up and took the belongings and permitted absolutely everyone to end their program.
MF: CodeClan presented a substantial possibility for these who want to transform careers and speedy-monitor into the tech sector and it is extremely disappointing that it has unsuccessful. If we are to preserve Scotland’s tech marketplace thriving and competitive, we do have to have to discover a alternative as immediately as feasible.
SMcM: I was disappointed to listen to of CodeClan likely into liquidation. In truth, the condition going through the wider tech market is considerably from ideal. The downturn in tech that has followed the pandemic has been exacerbated in the United kingdom by difficulties surrounding the Uk Government’s On the net Safety Bill, which Apple, Meta and others have warned about (with at the very least a person enterprise stating they would consider leaving the United kingdom if amendments were being not created), as effectively as wider concerns that the United kingdom is no for a longer period as appealing a put to devote for tech get started-ups given that Brexit.
I was however happy to listen to that 80 CodeClan students’ experiments have because been saved by the UK’s biggest technological innovation incubator Codebase, following the sale of the electronic techniques academy’s assets.
BW: I assume the decline is exceptionally unfortunate, specified it was a conduit for the enhancement of emerging engineering. It is an location we will have to excel in and have finished in the earlier. There is now no substitute for this decline.
What regions of science and technological know-how desire you the most?
CA: At the instant it is close to encouraging men and women into the industry.

I imagine that finding girls into tech has long gone backwards. I graduated in 1989 and in my time, I would say there have been far more ladies going into IT jobs. We have to have to encourage more range in the sector and explain to people what it is and does.
I think there is a huge information hole, and it has that ‘geek’ matter attached to it. But basically, the just one detail that I located aided my career was conversation abilities.
MF: I consider in science and evidence-dependent policymaking, and it will have to be a make a difference of regret that far too many coverage selections from the Scottish Government look to be based mostly on prejudice and ideology, instead than science. Two superb illustrations of this are nuclear energy and GM food items engineering, both of those of which have sizeable and demonstrable advantages, but both equally of which are opposed by the SNP-Green coalition. If we relied on science and evidence we could be using forward plan initiatives that would provide genuine advantages to men and women throughout Scotland.
BW: I am genuinely fascinated in the ability of AI in place exploration. It appears to me that it is most very likely AI that will allow that form of exploration in the first area, specified the harsh natural environment of area. We already know that asteroids can be incredibly loaded in sources and we will in all probability have to think about how we can mine those people methods in the future. AI would seem the most secure and most very likely way. And in any situation, I’m a bit of a little bit of a nerd when it will come to cosmology.
I am also pretty interested in the potential of the eco-friendly hydrogen market place due to the fact if we can make it viable, we will have obtain to an practically limitless resource.
FC: How data is utilized, saved and accessed is an location which I believe is not fully optimised, notably in well being and public sector, notably now when AI and uncooked processing power could convey so many rewards in a much shorter timescale.
IMcK: I’m an engineer by background so have a wide appreciation of all kinds of technologies and a relentless curiosity about how factors perform. What’s taking place in the power sector just now, with a huge vary of renewable technologies all jockeying for place, is extremely interesting, aided by the simple fact that the systems are typically fairly nicely recognized and fairly quick to get your head close to.
What is the most essential technological progress from your childhood?
IMcK: It’s been a prolonged time, so there is a great deal to choose from. Cellular telecoms are almost certainly the greatest progress. But the most outstanding factor for me is how we managed to purpose – frequently really proficiently – in former many years without the need of mobile phones, laptops or even IT methods in the office. Which I believe shows that at the conclude of the working day, it’s not the know-how that’s the most important, but how people organise to run their lives and corporations. Technologies only will make issues much easier, or tougher if we misapply it.
FC: When I was in the IT business, every Xmas prospects would say they wanted the subsequent big thing. And normally there was a ‘big thing’. Things like the development of color monitors or ink or bubble jet printers, changing from monochrome to color, flatbed scanners for digitising people’s images and slides, and electronic projectors. And then of system the web. But the know-how crammed into the authentic Iphone was the major technological advance that, in my view, almost nothing has genuinely trumped even to this day.
BW: I assume accessibility to info via intelligent technology. We all have these a resource at our fingertips with smartphones and wearable tech.
CA: It’s in all probability the mobile telephone. When I started off coding we didn’t even have tricky drives and PCs, it was the outdated mainframe that we utilised.
The most profound experience at that time for me was likely to CERN. They have a museum there and you can see the Computer system that Tim Berners-Lee launched the net with. That was altruistic and from tutorial research and currently being equipped to share data across the environment.

It has experienced the largest influence on our life nevertheless, we have failed to check and control it and we see that even though there are great matters that come about on it, the downside is the darkish world-wide-web and misinformation.
MF: The most significant technological advance in my life time has been the development of the smartphone, which properly makes it possible for absolutely everyone in the entire world to communicate with just about every other instantaneously and have access within just seconds to the complete retail outlet of human information. Even 20 several years back, these kinds of an initiative would have been unthinkable. With this huge resource at our fingertips, it is a small ironic that it appears to be to be primarily employed for sharing humorous cat videos.
What technologies could you not live with no and why?
MF: I could not dwell devoid of a smartphone.
IMcK: I’m wedded to my laptop computer and carry it everywhere you go. There are not a lot of issues that cannot be preset by firing up a fast spreadsheet.
FC: Mobile connectivity and my smartphone. I would be completely dropped devoid of staying connected to the exterior world. It is a unhappy reflection on the rate of today’s lifestyle but absolutely everyone desires an respond to or reaction virtually by return.
BW: My Garmin has develop into such a element of my daily life these times. Who does not want to observe their VO2 max, coronary heart charge, blood pressure, and each day training?
CA: Likely my motor vehicle, it provides you actual freedom. It’s hugely liberating, nevertheless it’s maybe not extremely Computer system to say that. But clearly cellular phones, I’m on mine regularly and to be straightforward I would like to dwell devoid of it. I was away on break just lately and didn’t have any Wi-Fi and I discovered that really liberating.
Is there a technological advance that you wish hadn’t been made? If so, why?
IMcK: Of course, nuclear weapons and Twitter. Both of those are harmful in their very own methods.
CA: As I have claimed about the world-wide-web, there are superior and negative matters. There is altruism at the rear of some matters, there are serious dissimilarities produced in people’s life. But there is usually a draw back. I feel we want to search to the fantastic sides and make use of that to make people’s life far better.
FC: Research engines are a amazing detail but I want that regulation of some kind had been brought in to ensure awareness when establishing search motor algorithms of how they can impact our lives, our communities, and even our democracy, specifically now provided the position algorithms have, not only in research engines but in so numerous other applications.
Algorithms can, in the words and phrases of a lookup engine, build vicious cycles by demonstrating consumers far more written content relevant to their problems. Social media buyers ought to maintain in brain that these platforms current a distorted look at of actuality that seldom matches people’s genuine day-to-day existence. Algorithms can also have unintended outcomes, like making filter bubbles, perpetuating bias, and undermining our creativeness, options, and alternatives.
BW: I consider there are components of social media I could do devoid of. As a species, we seem to be equipped to utilise fantastic technological advancements and flip them in a damaging way. Consider the splitting of the atom – the biggest danger to us is ourselves.
SMcM: The nuclear bomb. It’s an costly squander of dollars which I never really feel has produced the entire world a much more peaceful or safer spot.
MF: It cannot be un-invented now, but it normally helps make me smile to imagine that e mail was invented as a time-conserving innovation. Even though it has its benefits, the day-to-day deluge of email, a lot of it irrelevant and arriving at all occasions of working day and night time, can be irritating. The sheer volume of communication can make it harder to sift what is important from the dross.
