Simon Willis
The Pioneer
The frontier and an appetite for the unknown, goes first.
Simon Willis leads Heidelberg Materials UK through one of the hardest transitions in heavy industry, and his profile reads clearly as The Pioneer.
“One as well, because we're seeing a lot of this in the wild, and it's just incredibly frustrating for maintainers because there are these people who don't know what they're doing, who are asking ChatGPT to find a security hole and then reporting it to the maintainer. And the report looks good.”
“Think something people often miss is that this space is inherently funny. Like it is ridiculous. The fact that you could trick ChatGPT into telling you how to make Napalm by saying that your grandmother worked at the Napalm factory and you missed her and all of that kind of stuff. And I like leaning into that.”
“Settle hidden bugs, but generally you can tell if the thing actually works. If it writes you an essay, if it writes you a prepares a lawsuit for you, it's so much harder to derive if it's actually done a good job to figure out if it got things right or wrong. But it's kind of happening to us.”
“Pattern I've been, I plan to write the chapter about soon is to start new projects with a really good template, a sort of starting template. And the reason for this is it turns out coding agents are phenomenally good at sticking to existing patterns in the code.”
Pull up a Chair with Bina Mehta: “In conversation with Bina Mehta, Chair, KPMG UK”
LISTEN AT THE SOURCE ↗THE RECORD IS CHECKABLE