Brain Mapping, Refugee Privacy & Cantonese Tones

Marcus Leiwe — Hong Kong-based founder of Leiwe and Partners, an AI and data consultancy made up of academics applying scientific rigor to commercial AI projects. Neuroscience PhD with nine years of postdoctoral research at RIKEN Kobe and Kyushu University, where his lab co-developed Technibow, a seven-color neuron-tracing system. Half-Malaysian-Chinese, half-German, raised between the UK, Singapore, and Japan.

Chapters

1. 0:00Intro — Marcus the biggest fan
2. 1:48From neuroscientist to AI data consultant
3. 2:56Academic rigor meets real-world business
4. 4:26'Move fast and break things' — Air Canada's chatbot lawsuit
5. 5:31The 4 Ds — Discover, Design, Develop, Deploy
6. 8:01Pinduoduo — 10 years of database planning
7. 13:21When chatbots leak HR data — roles & permissions
8. 14:08Branches of Hope — digitizing refugee records
9. 16:14PDPO compliance — why cloud AI can't touch this
10. 18:01File cleanup with local AI — everyone has messy drives
11. 21:04Why he left neuroscience for AI
12. 23:55Brain surgery on baby mice — skulls thinner than paper
13. 26:003D vision and Wim Wenders' dream-recording film
14. 31:15The Vedic 17 levels of consciousness
15. 32:50MATLAB and computer vision — pre-LLM AI
16. 37:46Brainbow to Technibow — mapping the brain in 7 colors
17. 39:27A week's work in 2 hours
18. 40:00Nine years in Japan — Kobe to Kyushu
19. 41:22Code-switching — Malaysia, Germany, UK, Singapore, Japan
20. 45:59The Cantonese tone visualizer — vibe coding pitch contours
21. 50:18Pure math, no LLM — running it all in the browser
22. 52:25LLM coding accentuates your personality
23. 56:46HK seen as fintech — but HKU repos go viral
24. 58:30Outro

About This Episode

A neuroscience PhD who once mapped neonatal mouse brain wiring under a microscope, Marcus Leiwe now runs an AI consultancy in Hong Kong applying the same academic rigor to business problems. From building a private, on-device AI pipeline for Branches of Hope (so refugee records never touch the cloud) to a passion-project Cantonese tone visualizer that runs entirely in the browser, Marcus shows what AI looks like when 'move fast and break things' isn't an option. Plus: Air Canada's chatbot lawsuit, the Vedic 17 levels of consciousness, and why HK is misread as just fintech.