Get to know Colin Hayhurst, Brighton businessman and founder of Sussex Data Science tech meetup group. We caught up with Colin to find out a bit more about the talk he delivered for the group, and some of the twists and turns he experienced that shaped his career.

Can you tell us a bit about you and the work that you do?

I’m the CEO at Mojeek. It is a web search engine that provides unbiased, fast, and relevant search results combined with a no tracking privacy policy.

What was the inspiration for your talk?

To educate people about how chatbots are built and how they relate to search engine indexes.

Any key highlights / takeaways for anyone who missed it?

All Large Language Models underneath Generative AI chatbots are trained using search engines indexes.

Did you come up through a “traditional” techie route or has your career taken twists and turns along the way?

First stage of my career was as a design and safety engineer working on things like the national grid and seismic design.

Is there a moment that helped define your career?

I was the first person to successfully develop and commercialise software which could model space debris impacts, and as such contributed to the International Space Station design.

What piece of advice would you give your younger self?

Be more confident in everything you do.

Silicon Brighton wouldn’t be here without people like you giving back to the community so… what does the word community mean to you?

It’s a community that embraces diversity of people and thinking, on both technology and society.

Anything else you would like to share?

Check out this website:

https://worldethicaldata.org/

Missed Colin’s talk or want to watch it again? Check it out here…