U N D E R T H E M I C R O S C O P E

OF CAPGEMINI ENGINEERING

On the lighter side of things, we ask Keith Williams, Chief Technology Officer at Capgemini Engineering, what makes him tick.

What would you describe as your most memorable achievement?

One of my most memorable achievements came last year when we partnered with the America’ s Cup, the world’ s oldest international sailing competition, to develop a way for TV viewers to visualise the wind over the race area – making the invisible, visible!

Drawing on our expertise in technology, engineering, data and design, we used LiDAR( light detection and ranging), sensor fusion and scientific computation to reveal the wind in augmented reality( AR) and virtual reality( VR) graphics. The technology, WindSight IQ, achieved a first in the history of sailing and broadcast television, and I couldn’ t be prouder of the team who made it possible in just seven months!

What first made you think of a career in technology?

Early on I became interested in safety critical systems. These are physical systems with computing as a key element, where failure can result in injury or loss of life. For example, it might be radiotherapy machines, railway signalling, air traffic control or helicopter landing systems.

I loved these projects because of the need of uncompromising quality and engineering precision to ensure maximum reliability and safety. I wanted to work on the most extreme engineering problems, so that’ s where I gravitated.

What changes to your job role have you seen in the last year and how do you see these developing in the next 12 months?

Of course, AI has changed all our jobs in the last 12 months. But at the same time, it’ s important to understand that AI is not new. In my first ever project back in 1994 I was using AI based image recognition techniques to process cervical smears using functional programming. That is still a trendy combination today.

So, what has changed? The ChatGPT moment was important because it made AI and Gen AI accessible to your average person on the street and it put AI on the radar of CXOs. The current noise around AI is partly justified because it’ s effectively solved the problem of communicating with AI. For the first time, it’ s enabled a high level of interaction between people and machines.

However, from an engineering standpoint, AI on its own is still ultimately making educated guesses, which

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