Alexander Gammerman is a British computer scientist and Professor at Royal Holloway University of London. He is the co-inventor of conformal prediction. Alex is the founding director of the Centre for Reliable Machine Learning at Royal Holloway, and a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He has published 9 books and about 200 research papers. He ranks amongst the top 1% researchers in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Alex’s work spans two countries (the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom) and two centuries: the second part of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century. It has been an extremely interesting time with the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, the Internet and the Large Language Models. How are these discoveries, inventions, and developments influencing the life of an academic? I have known Alex personally for many years. I first came as a PhD student to Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, in 1988. I then worked in various places before arriving at Royal Holloway University of London as a Lecturer in 2002. Alex has been more than a mentor and colleague to me—he has been a guiding figure and a close friend, with his pioneering work continuing to inspire both me and my PhD students. The following conversation, which took place both face-to-face and remotely in July–August 2025, offers a glimpse into Alex’s remarkable scientific journey, his reflections on decades of research, and his perspective on the ever-evolving world of Artificial Intelligence.