Rachael McKelvey

• “Learn to change your mind”
• Can someone tell me how I should feel about AI already?
• BOGOF, will they won’t they?
• If you need to fake data, do not use Excel
• Kellogs is ditching its degree requirement

Learn to change your mind
Professor Irene Tracey, the current vice-chancellor of Oxford University has said that students need to learn how to change their minds to ensure free speech is protected. She has presided over an incredibly “intense period” of much conflict at Oxford Union, who does enjoy a controversial speaking engagement and a good protest.

I think the thing that got me thinking was that Tracey said that when she was a student “there was more ease in having debate and discussions and argument and disagreement” and I just can’t work out if that’s true or not.

I had a conversation with a colleague recently about the current “struggle” in life and the world and why it seems so fraught, and we came back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it’s all just GCSE Business Studies baby, we’re the generations with our lower needs met and now we are battling with our higher needs and it’s all new ground, it feels just as unsafe & insecure. I found that oddly comforting.

Can someone tell me how I should feel about AI already?
In the same week a new French AI start up raised Europe’s largest-ever seed round the European Parliament voted to reign in the technology due to “significant risk of harm to the health and safety of persons”.

So are we trusting Mistral AI, the trio of former researchers from Meta and Google who founded *checks calendar* four weeks ago, without a product, with €105m from a seed round and total funding round of €240mn or is AI going to kill us all? At this point, I am not fussed either way, but I do feel like I need to pick a side.

I’ve still yet to ask ChatGPT a question, or run myself through an image generator (because I know it will assume I am Asian because chubby cheeks, so no eyes when I smile) because what AI definitely does not need is more middle class, privileged white people data so maybe I still will always be on the fence, because AI shouldn’t be allowed to extrapolate on undeniably  biased data and use it to take over the world, because that’s not right or fair.

BOGOF, will they won’t they?
If you can cast your mind back to when Boris Johnson was PM, as part of the new obesity strategy he created a ban on BOGOF offers on “unhealthy” foods, which was postponed until October 2023 due to the cost-of-living crisis.

At the start of the week Ministers were pretty keen to say there was no change of plan to that date and on Wednesday even Rishi Sunak confirmed to the Commons that no decision had actually been made. So here we are now on Saturday with the announcement that the ban will be pushed back until 2025, once again citing consistently high food prices.

Cynically, I am just choosing to believe this is definitely general election related and absolutely nothing to do with how stuffed we are for 2 more years…

If you need to fake data, do not use Excel
I was quite tickled by this tweet this week, the jist being do you know excel or do you know love? Yeah, no I know excel. I also occasionally check in on DataColada which belongs to a professor of behavioural science, an applied statistics professor and a professor of Business Administration and Marketing because they look at research that interests them and gives a real peoples perspective in their analysis and opinion.

This weeks was a belter, the first in a four part series of fraud in academic papers co-authored by a Harvard Business School Professor in which faked data has been found in studies about dishonesty. Two things, one, you couldn’t make it up, two; you do not need to be a genius to know that Excel is the worst for faking data, why would you do it, use a proper programming language. I’m currently reading a book by one of the studies authors so I am very keen to see how this plays out.

Kellogs is ditching its degree requirement
The cereal giant this week has said it no longer requires prospective hires to have a degree to apply for most of its jobs, unless it’s a degree specific role, with the hope of becoming a more inclusive employer and I am here for this.

They had successfully trailed ditching the requirement amongst their field sales team in the last year and have now taken the decision to roll it out across the wider business, Kellogs is way ahead in creating an inclusive environment, having reached their female representation at management level target ahead of schedule and having a raft of other leading employee policies already in place that most other organisations can only dream of making possible.

Nothing frustrates me more than receiving a good candidate CV who fails some arbitrary requirement that actually adds no value to the role. You can’t teach enthusiasm and a want to learn but you can pass on pretty much everything else in most roles. Less gate keeping please!

Current watch: Grand Slam Poetry Champion – Harry Baker I have watched no TV this week & it’s been quite nice, but I did take myself on a date to see the wonderful Harry Baker at Buckingham Literary Festival and what a beautiful way to spend an hour of my life.

Harry is a gift to maths, a gift to poetry and unlike me don’t wait till you see him in real life to think he is a gift to the world, he absolutely is. He is so clever with words and numbers that even if you only like one, I think you’d struggle not to enjoy him.

Current read: Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut – It’s hard to tell you who Billy Pilgrim really is and I don’t think he’d be able to tell you. A biographical work of fiction, honesty and insanity sometimes really are the best of friends.

Billy is unstuck in time, having lived a horrific and joyful life he is able to move seamlessly back in his recollections, from hiding in the basement of a slaughterhouse the night Dresden was destroyed, to the moments of “normality” on display in a zoo on Tralfamadore, the planet to which he has been abducted by aliens. The horror is horrific but that just makes the absurd that much more joyful. While never stated as such, it felt profoundly like the most beautiful expression of PTSD I’ve ever read, there is as much in the lines as between them.

Most Impactful Listen: Marianna in Conspiracyland – Hosted by Mirianna Spring the BBC’s Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent (cool job). This 10 part short episode series sees Spring investigates the legacy of the rise of the conspiracy movement in the UK. Having had my own problem with a conspiracy theorist in the pandemic that Thames Valley Police were very helpful in resolving, I am extremely interested in the push and pull factors of how people end up down the rabbit hole, especially in the UK. This is not Springs first look at just how it happens in the UK, her series Death by Conspiracy that came out last year was also fascinating.