Lead Data Scientist at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), gave a talk at LINX105 in May on a research project that’s exploring how different data sources can help gain insights into the data driven Internet economy.

Using data from the LINX traffic flow portal (https://portal.linx.net/) as a proxy/small window view of overall Internet traffic volume ONS have investigated the following:

1. The potential to use traffic flow data to identify and measure Internet time-use
2. Anomaly detection and traffic impact of large-scale events
3. Relationship between traffic flow and various economic indicators

Philip commented:

“As part of our ongoing research in the newly formed Data Science Campus, part of the Office for National Statistics, we are currently exploring the wider theme of deriving social/economic indicators from alternative and novel data sources for potential use in new and experimental statistical outputs. One such project to emerge from this exciting research area aims to explore if it is possible to extract social and economic insights from real time internet traffic volume data. This talk summarises some insights discovered from data obtained from the LINX status monitoring portal which may be of interest to LINX members.”

The video of Philip’s talk can viewed in full below which led to much debate amongst those present at the event.

Philip Stubbings Biography

Philip Stubbings joined the ONS Data Science Campus in November 2016. He has since been applying computer vision and machine learning to image segmentation problems.

Prior to joining the campus, he had worked as a research software engineer in a number of areas including crop health monitoring, algorithmic trading, photometry, numerical control, optimisation and OR. He holds a BSc in Artificial Intelligence and MSc in Computer Science from the University of Essex.

Richard Tang of Zen Internet recently gave a presentation at the LINX105 member conference on artificial intelligence, specifically focussing on when AI is likely to become super-intelligent.

In an industry where the pace of change is so great making predictions on this potentially globally life-changing subject isn’t easy but Richard takes an approach that covers human values as well technical enhancements. Richard told us:

“I very much enjoyed presenting my thoughts on the development of AI over the coming decades, and in particular the prospect of AI becoming super-intelligent. If my predictions are correct, then the changes we have ahead are much bigger than most people realise. There were some great questions and comments from the audience. I even accepted a bet from one member of the audience on what date AI would be clever enough to get rid of 100% of spam!”

You can view the video of Richard’s presentation on artificial intelligence below.

Richard previously spoke at LINX103 in November covering the development of the Internet since Zen’s inception in the mid-90s. An interesting aspect to that talk was the importance of staff when looking to grow a company.

“With Zen being privately owned I can simply decide I’m not going to take the usual approach. In a business sense we of course have sales targets but it’s not the be all and end all for us. What we want is happy staff, happy customers, and strong supplier relationships. Some say why would you put staff before customers but to me it’s clear that if you’re going to give an outstanding customer experience you have to start with your people.”