Dean Burnett - Four Way Interview

Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist and stand-up comedian. He lives in Cardiff and works at the Institute for Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences at Cardiff University. The most-read blogger on the Guardian Science network, his 'Brain Flapping' blog has been viewed over 11 million times. His latest book is The Happy Brain.

Why science?

Obvious answer would be 'Why not science?', but I imagine that's been done. My own interest in science stems, I think, from being an early love of sci-fi that offered some escapism from being a shy, chubby child in an isolated rural community. I wanted to find out why I was different, never really got a good answer, but my research into the brain sparked my interest and it pretty much snowballed from there.

Why this book?

I never planned to write a second book. I didn't even plan to write a first one, if I'm honest, but I got the opportunity to do so and thought I should take it. Figured it would be a one time thing, so essentially splurged all my saved up knowledge in it, expecting it to be met with a polite nod then be forgotten about. Didn't happen; it went really well, so my agents and publishers started asking what my second book was going to be. I had no clue, so started asking everyone I knew for suggestions. While they all varied tremendously, the one thing people kept saying was 'You've just got to write about whatever makes you happy.' Turns out, I'm a very literal person.

What's next?

Hopefully, more writing, what with me having given up my day job to do it full time not too long ago. Discussing future book plans now, but one thing I've always done is not form any concrete plans. Given my background and connections, getting into university in the first place meant I was in uncharted waters, so I've learned to just see how things pan out and react to opportunities as and when they occur. Seems to have worked out ok so far, but I'm probably overdue a crushing public embarrassment, so keep an eye out for that.

What's exciting you at the moment?

As hinted at before now (and throughout my works), I don't really feel I was 'meant' to be a prominent writer/academic/scientist, and yet here we are. So what I do like doing is finding someone else with something relevant to say and helping get their stuff out there too. I find this very rewarding, so it's not exactly altruistic, but I feel like I've been let into 'the establishment' by accident, so am holding the door open for as many other misfits and oddballs as I can before they notice.

Comments

The Infinity Machine - Sebastian Mallaby ****

It's very quickly clear that Sebastian Mallaby is a huge Demis Hassabis fan - writing about the only child prodigy and teen genius ever who was also a nice, rounded personality. After a few chapters, though, things settle down (I'm reminded of Douglas Adams' description of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ) and we get a good, solid trip through the journey that gave us DeepMind, their AlphaGo and AlphaFold programs, the sudden explosion of competition on the AI front and thoughts on artificial general intelligence. Although Mallaby does occasionally still go into fan mode - reading this you would think that AlphaFold had successfully perfectly predicted the structure of every protein, where it is usually not sufficiently accurate for its results to have direct practical application - we get a real feel for the way this relatively unusual company was swiftly and successfully developed away from Silicon Valley. It's readable and gives an important understanding of...

In Seach of Sea Dragons - Matthew Myerscough ****

It's common advice to would-be authors of narrative non-fiction to open with something dramatic - Matthew Myerscough certainly does this with the story of his being trapped under an avalanche on Snowdon (while his girlfriend, also carried away remains on top of the snow unhurt). It certainly is dramatic, but seemed entirely disconnected from the reason I got the book, which was to read about fossil collecting. Luckily, though, in the second chapter we get into a more conventional 'how I got interested in fossils as a boy'. Having recently reviewed Patrick Moore's autobiography and noting that astronomy was one of the few sciences where amateurs can still make a contribution, it came to mind that palaeontology is another - Myerscough is a civil engineer by trade, but just as amateur astronomers can find new details in the skies, so amateur fossil hunters have been searching for these relics for centuries. When I give talks in junior schools, the two topics that guarant...

Robot-Proof - Vivienne Ming ****

As Vivienne Ming makes apparent, there seem largely to be two views of AI's pros and cons, both of which are almost certainly wrong. It's either doom-saying 'It'll destroy life as we know it' or Pollyanna-ish 'It'll do all the boring work and we can all be wonderfully creative and live lives of leisure.' Instead, Ming gives us a clear analysis of the likely trajectory for the workplace, particularly for the IT industry. She describes three 'equally flawed, intellectually lazy strategies' to deal with the impact of AI. The first is substitution and deprofessionalisation, using AI to allow cheaper 'AI-augmented technicians' to replace more expensive professionals, producing more low wage jobs and fewer mid-range. This does save money but leaves a company at risk of being easily outcompeted. The second is what Ming describes as the '"A-Player" Hunger Games', the approach favoured by Silicon Valley. This sees the growing rif...

Search This Blog