Weeknotes: 8 April to 12 April 2024
Bigdecimals in Ruby, debugging strategies, database choices, coding a prototype, AI in healthcare, and fostering diversity in AI design.

What I have found gripping
In Ruby, using the class Bigdecimal for currencies can be useful for precision and rounding up numbers
When debugging, if the documentation does not include a piece of information, it's worth looking through the codebase
Creating a new version of a project using a tool also providing detailed documentation means being able to tweak a prototype while coding it
It's better to opt for a database other than sqlite if a deployment is planned
What I have read
Database Scaling Strategies, Codecademy Team
Prototypes, production & fidelity layers, Trys Mudford
5 Ally Actions - Apr 12, 2024, Better Allies
Who’s at Fault when AI Fails in Health Care? Dylan Walsh
What I have watched
I Want to Belong - Creating Environments where Women Thrive, conversation with Dr Cat Hicks and Special Guest Interviewer Dr Jennifer Pierce
Featured quote
If AI is to serve the collective needs of humanity, it must incorporate an understanding of what moves us — physically, intellectually and emotionally. It is critical that we design machine intelligence that can understand humans, and interact with nuance and in multiple dimensions.
To achieve this, the creators and designers of AI must be broadly representative of humanity. This requires a true diversity of thought — across gender, ethnicity, nationality, culture and age, as well as across disciplines. — Fei-Fei Li and John Etchemendy in Letter from the Denning Co-Directors, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI
Further reading and resources
In English
Where we're going wrong with developer productivity (slides in pdf), Dr Cat Hicks
Where Generative AI Meets Human Rights, Dylan Walsh
In French
L’AI Act, ou comment encadrer les systèmes d’IA en Europe, Antoine Boutet (Maitre de conférence, Privacy, IA, au laboratoire CITI, Inria, INSA Lyon – Université de Lyon), Juliette Sénéchal (Professeur de droit privé, Université de Lille), Margo Bernelin (Chargée de recherche CNRS, Université de Nantes) et William Letrone (Chercheur post-doctorant en droit de la cybersécurité et droit de la protection des données personnelles, Université de Nantes)
You just read issue #32 of Sandra's Weeknotes. You can also browse the full archives of this newsletter.