The future doesn't just happen. We are building it, and we are building it all the time.
I certainly think there are some skills we'll lose as we hand things over to automation. I can barely remember my own phone number now, let alone the long list of numbers I used to know, and my handwriting has completely gone to pot.
People are often quite lazy. We like taking the easy way out - we like handing over responsibility, we like being offered shortcuts that mean we don't have to think.
As the law catches up and the battle between corporate profits and social good plays out, we need to be careful not to be lulled into a false sense of privacy.
We're living in an age where new technology offers gigantic upsides - artificial intelligence has the potential to diagnose cancer, catch serial killers and reduce prison populations.
At some point in the future - possibly the very near future - Britain will be hit by a deadly pandemic, and its impact could be utterly devastating.
You can harvest any data that you want, on anybody. You can infer any data that you like, and you can use it to manipulate them in any way that you choose. And you can roll out an algorithm that genuinely makes massive differences to people's lives, both good and bad, without any checks and balances.
I'm a mathematician. I can trade in facts about false positives and absolute truths about accuracy and statistics with complete confidence.
I'm writing a book called 'The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus' about the maths of Christmas: how to set up a secret Santa so it's totally fair; how to decorate your tree mathematically; how to win at Monopoly.
Algorithms and data should support the human decision, not replace it.
The Gottman Institute's study about arguments in long-term relationships concludes that couples with the best chance at long-term success are the ones with a low negativity threshold: if something's wrong, they speak up about it immediately. That's something I've taken on board.
Every time you shop online, every time you sign up for a newsletter, or register on a website, or enquire about a new car, or fill out a warranty card, or buy a new home, or register to vote - you are unwittingly handing over a small clue as to who you are and how you behave.
The weather doesn't respect political or geographic boundaries: we're all living under the same sky. And so weather prediction has been a marvel not only of technology but also of international cooeperation.
It's true that you can't take an individual rain droplet and say where it's come from or where it's going to end up. But you can say with pretty good certainty whether it will be cloudy tomorrow.
Because for me, equations and symbols aren't just a thing. They're a voice that speaks out about the incredible richness of nature and the startling simplicity in the patterns that twist and turn and warp and evolve all around us, from how the world works to how we behave.
When you don't have diversity in the creative process, you inevitably end up with a single, narrow perspective in the output.
There's actually an awful lot of mathematics that goes into designing a railway, keeping it running, making sure everything runs optimally. Every time you need something to be optimal there's going to be some mathematics at play.
In medicine, you learn about ethics from day one. In mathematics, it's a bolt-on at best. It has to be there from day one and at the forefront of your mind in every step you take.
We have this imbalance where the people who are making algorithms aren't talking to the people who are using them. And the people who are using them aren't talking to the people who are having decisions made about their lives by them.
So my favorite online dating website is OkCupid, not least because it was started by a group of mathematicians.
