Neil Lawrence is the inaugural DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge, Senior AI Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield and the co-host of Talking Machines. His main interest is the interaction of machine learning with the physical world. This interest was triggered by deploying machine learning in the African context, where ‘end-to-end’ solutions are normally required. This has inspired new research directions at the interface of machine learning and systems research.