AI Won't Take Your Job. Your Manager Will.

Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Brew Bites with me, Nadeem Ibrahim, Stephen King or Steve King. How do you pronounce it? Steve? Steve. Right. Not the author, right? Not at all. And I'm glad we got that one out of the way. No, So it's Steve, because when we're in the Arab world, Stepan, it's very hard for people to pronounce. So I learnt from the Chinese, and I changed my name slightly to make it easier for everyone to talk to me. So we say Steve King, this Steve King, right? Okay, interesting. I have a feeling we're gonna have a messy conversation today about a brilliant conversation. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, messy is what I do.

Exactly. And we've known each other for quite some time. I think I got to know Steve At an industry event, perhaps on a panel. And then I ended up doing a few presentations for you and your students. Bye By the way, Steve is a pioneer in AI. A pioneer, I would say, in digital media. he, I mean, I'm maybe I'm saying something out of context here, but you're also we're one of the first, I would say to put together an AI vocational at MDX or Middlesex University here in Dubai. phenomenal. And I think when we first got connected, I kind of felt that energy of an inspiration, dedication to the job that you love. You've got a plethora of a dedication and commitment to the industry that I love and you clearly love, which is in the context of media.

now you sort of divulged yourself into sort of the space of AI. Did you ever imagine or envisage that you would get to a point like this? If you rewind 20 or 30 years ago? Not saying anything about our age here, but did you ever envisage you'd be doing what you were doing or you don't? So to take it back in 1999, I started in technology PR, so we launched the first internet mobile banks with a German company called rocket. Okay. I was involved with the London Internet Exchange. I was involved with AVC systems, with Symantec. I was involved with Sophos, so we were tackling the first antivirus when they first came into play. I was had the fortune to attend GSM Congress when it was in Khan, back in the day, and I was promoting everything from semiconductor, not semiconductors, the tools that design semiconductors.

Okay. Right. To dab like a screwdriver. It was not a screwdriver. It was a MathWorks. It was very, complicated pieces of software which you which we just kind of go into, digital radio, digital DAB in 1999. DAB. We were launching the first. receivers, which were huge and nobody wanted because they were huge and they needed to plug them in and nobody was broadcasting apart from the BBC. I moved to Dubai. I started to work with Cisco Systems. When did you move to the Bay? 2002 okay. so we were working with, also before that, I was working with companies doing CRM for, digital TV. So the first digital TV based commerce, 2002, which I think is quite normal. But back then it was just a step up from Ceefax, right? Oh my goodness. I think the audience will not know what Ceefax. Will ever know what that is. Google Count bin face from the UK. He will tell you all about it. and then, with Nokia. So in this part of the world we were

actually involved with. I was involved with promoting the first voice over IP, which is nice, which was very exciting, because Cisco Systems was a champion in that, it was also involved with launching all of Nokia's phones between 2002 and 2005, which included everything from their very bling, Nokia 8800, which was phenomenal. it was to the very, cheap and basic ones, and the sports phones and all the series, etcetera,

and then I moved to Abu Dhabi 2006, had the opportunity to, coordinate with Bill gates. So when he came to Abu Dhabi for the final time as chairman of Microsoft, I was running the Abu Dhabi leg of his press office with his team under an agency. then I started working with Etisalat and we started launching all of the different mobile services. So in terms of firsts, I've been involved with the launch of the internet through London Internet Exchange, Red bus into House, Cisco Systems. I've been involved in launch of mEMS through Nokia. I could name the event in the Grand Hyatt in 2003 where we're not given. Etisalat launched RMS. Which is another technology which nobody cares about anymore. But it was there. And then with its 5G, 4G, blah, and then across the group. So then we've taken these technologies across 15 or 16 different countries through the select group. as a result of the

work that I was doing there, I discovered the importance of video. And I in 2012, 2013, I started possibly the first short form video consulting business. At the time, people were saying, nobody wants a cheap $50 video. It's 15 seconds long or 30s long. That's what everyone was. Oh, the yoga and I went all the way across America. I even went to Hollywood and trying to recruit a network to build all of this. And I from that, it brought me into Middlesex University.

So I was then able to teach some of this. The experience of the networks that I built, were brought in there. And one of the first courses that I taught was a mobile journalism course, which was in 2016. And if you go back and Google when mobile journalism became a thing, Mojo, I think it's either at the same time or slightly ahead of when that was actually became a thing and we were using the same kind of technologies. And so then to 2023, we launched the first, 2023, was when we did the research into artificial intelligence services, when we met at launch stellar event at the Theatre of Digital Art. And, just. Like those AI events. No. I'm getting. Yes. I remember it now. My. Yeah, my brain is warming up now. Where? Super. One of my superpowers. This is my memory. Okay. In some. Respects. I'm good at remembering nice things because. It's a good thing. Okay. and then, in the early of last

year, 2024, the Middlesex was re-evaluating all of its courses, and I was able to use the research that I had done the year before to help revalidate, our advertising programs. And we were able then to create a properly, fully validated, module, third year module, on AI Digital Marketing and communications, which we rolled out very successfully in September. Yes. Given the timeline of how academia works, the logic is that is one of the first in the world of its kind. Every time we've met, I always feel that we can have a conversation that can go on and I think I've delivered a of few presentations for your students back in the day of just leaving, last year and year before last. I think last year was the most memorable one in the other term that we had. but every time, you know, we end up having conversations by all subject matters. And I think the one that really stands out between us

is how AI is transforming academia, and society. It's something that you're quite passionate about. before we sort of go into this in a bit more detail, you mentioned something about a junior journey, and your journey seems to be like for me, it's super impressive because you've gone through sort of leaps and bounds of a technology that's, you know, been at its inception moment. So you mentioned about Ms.. Nokia, you know, coming to this region as well where you've helped launch, you know, a few, technology. Well that's advanced today now. What was your pivotal moment. So there was actually nothing to do with technology. It's related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Okay. Right. So as a result of my video journey. So I travelled across the US doing short form video lectures telling people the urgency of creating TikTok videos before TikTok existed. Right. and at that point, I met the UN Foundation, which are

the cheerleaders for the UN. That's how they positioned there. Nothing to do with the UN. They're a separate organisation. But they had been tasked with, promoting the new UN SDGs, which were launched in 2015. They expire in 2030. This was about, poverty, eradicating poverty, climate change, etc., So there was a big social justice agenda going on. And they loved what I was doing. With the video content, because they could see that this was going to appeal to the younger audience, which is what they wanted to do. and I had encountered various different charities and NGOs that were involved in it, and I realised that their content finished at age 16. Okay. So they were all about the kids and encouraging a future generation. And no one was actually developing content to hit the generation that could actually make a difference.

Make a difference? In what sense? Well, if you're 14 or 13, unless you're Greta Thunberg. Okay. Right. You She was unique. Yeah, but that's the age group that they were educating. Is she unique, though? Was she just not part of. She's unique because of her age. Okay. When she started. So if you were to hit someone at, say, 17, 18, 19 who is in a ability to actually vote.. That has the ability to actually change the direction of where things are going. Okay. So by only educating the very young they're preparing for the future. But if they were to somehow communicate directly to those young people who could participate in public discourse, then that could have really made a difference. So I took. From 2016 to 2019, I was doing various activities within schools and across Europe, promoting SDGs to audiences that were not being addressed by the official channels. SMEs, entrepreneurs, big companies were sorted, right? They knew this. They'd been through the Millennium

Development Goals before. and they were there. But the teenagers, the hard, ones to get to the ones because they're a little bit meh. They're a little bit weird, right? How do you communicate? How do you get these people excited in this particular topic? and that's what driven me. And so then I was invited into Middlesex to actually run this run a course, which I designed, and I drove a drove and we did it successfully for three years. We got, we had recognition from the UN for it. We had support from the UAE government for it. We had support from UAE royal families for it. I changed the course several times, so it became part of my mobile journalism course. and it continues to be a very popular, part of my teaching and learning. But that being able to give young people the agency to do what they need to do, and to improve their lives is That's what was really exciting. That was what I was driving by. That was the that was

the mission. Can we equip these kids with the knowledge that they need to get the rights that they don't know they have? Well, I think I mean, I think you'll be doing a phenomenal job. Certainly during the time I've been in Dubai for about five years. as I said, like every time I walked into one of those lecture halls or lecture rooms that you've invited me on, there's nothing but engaged students and students who clearly. Your content is. No no Interesting and interesting person to be presenting. which is good. Like, you need to have a twist, but I think if I was to represent that stuff. Now, that we know AI is here in a practitioner sense, I think I would do it quite differently now. but we'll leave that for another day. But I read an interesting stat recently by an IBM school's report that was performed by 2023. It's gone a couple of years back, it suggested that only 27%

of educational institutions has a form of AI course. Is that something we should be concerned about? Is that for their faculty, or is that for in general? In general. I don't think it's something to be concerned about.. Because I think the concern would be if it was like 80%, because then do you not feel that students would then Think that that's the default way of having to sort of teach themselves now. so that's two different points. But, the first point is that the fact that there's 20 something percent of schools have AI in their curriculum is not seeing surprising, because it's AI. This kind of a Stem subject is very popular. And there will be some form of computing, programming, robotics type of activities, which could generally be called AI. It might not be the generative AI. It might not be any of the other stuff, but it is. Certainly robotics and robotics counts as a form of artificial intelligence. And that's

been obviously been around for. So. Long. Right. For, you know, we've got the Turing test for a reason, right? so that figure is potentially inflated. If we were to consider the current concerns that we currently have today. now, is it if you were to compare that with other industries, take the advertising media industry. I think that's probably quite high in compared to what we would see inside the advertising industry. Yeah. Yeah.

And in general, I think the, it's the problem is that the knowledge is in a silo. Yeah. Yeah. It's in one bit. So what I would be more interested to see is how much if you removed the computing division, how many courses have AI fair. Yes. And that's where my program is so unique is because it's come from an advertising program. We're not techies. We don't try to program it. We're trying to use it. So that's why I wanted to actually get into a bit more detail about that. Now, is that, you were you are leading counsel. You are, you were. I think there's no way around. Every time we go to a conference and we speak, whether it's Culture summit in Abu Dhabi or whether we go to the advance here, which is, the UK standard, and we talk about these kind of topics.

Yeah. we, predict, I can give you a from about ten days ago, there was an event, it was at Amity University, and there was a very good presentation from a colleague from Azad University. and he was presenting how as Edu has created a division to, help different faculty introduce AI into their courses, which is brilliant, but one of the first questions that was asked during that session was, how can we stop students from misusing AI? Well, you've got a student behind stage here. Do you think he's ever used AI to manipulate his coursework? I say manipulate because that's usually the perception, right? Are they using AI just to manipulate, or are they using AI as a means of consolidating a lot of effort in one place? We would have to come back. And again, that is a lot to unpack. So the question was, can we stop them from misusing it? And everyone in the room was like, no. And I was saying yes. And the answer is simple

make AI mandatory, okay. Approve everything. And what happened three days later? His Highness Sheikh Mohammed UAE government made AI mandatory to be taught within US schools. And this was a few weeks back, I think. Right? It's not. It's only like it's very, recent. So there's edu and then this. So this is the path forward. So when you say like are the students misusing it. define misuse. Yeah. Are they using it badly? Yes.

Right. Are they using it unethically? No. Yeah. You know, when you mentioned about what His Highness is doing in this region, it always gives me goosebumps. Whether we talk about Dubai, whether we talk about Saudi. Every time I see this, an initiative that is driving, you know, a societal change forward, it gives me, always gives me goosebumps. Even now, while I'm talking to you, I'm getting goosebumps. And it just resonates, actually why we're here. And there's a reason why.

I mean, we should make you should make the claim one of the world's first AI vocational courses that you introduced. But what sparked that really. Advertising industry needs? we were at a conference here, the ICO International Communications Consultants organisation. They brought their world summit here. it took place on the Palm Jumeirah, 2000 just before OpenAI, unleashed its, demon onto the world. and, there was a phenomenal speaker there first on the second day talking about AI. And, I was like, this is gonna be so boring. Why is she the keynote? I got a robot robotics I.T. person.

Come on, let's talk about I hate. I hate the idea of growth marketing. I hate all of this data related. I know it's your passion subject, but anything to do with statistics and data is not my thing. And I was like, I'm going to listen to someone talk about statistics. And she came on and she gave a phenomenal speaker. I think it was, and it was Katie or Christy. She's an author in the whole, family name is King. I do remember that Katie King or Christy King, and that I was she explained how our industry was going to change because of the generative AI, because she had experience of it. And I said, so we're going to change from public relations to robot relations. We're going to have to work out how to trick the robot to speak about our clients and recommend it. And at that point, I was like, light bulb moment. We and then ChatGPT came. And then it was like, oh God, this is really quick. This

all happened very quick, right? We don't have any time. Exactly. Yes. This is. This is what was said. This is now. It's happened. And then January 23rd, we were all having, you know, every all the academic everywhere in the world were having these crisis meetings, like, what do we do with this thing? Well, don't you find it interesting, though, that AI has been around all this time? Quite like a long time. Yeah, even as far as aviation. Right? Yeah. And, in the last we go back two years ago, when I certainly when I was on some panels and some events, there was this inertia around. Is I going to take my job?

Is it going to just kill the economy? And then that progressively moved on. I even remember some of the events that I came to your class, a, present, some, of the question which was, you know, is my is what I'm studying today going to be made redundant? And they had this sense of fear and then you forward Today is I call it the year of the practitioner for AI actually starting to use it, but it's been around for quite some time. It's not a case that it's just suddenly that I think we just woke up. Light bulb moment. I was on another podcast a few weeks ago called Hope It Helps. And we were talking about this certain area of AI in the sense of that it's not really here to take your job. It's here to sort of help you. Right. and if you don't use that time wisely, whilst AI is meant in theory, reduce the time spent on some things, right? And it's definitely creating new economies of talent in, other departments. But I sort of enforced or

imply that if AI is helping me to reduce my time spent on something that is my day to day job, what to do without remained in time It used to be that some people perhaps think I can watch more TV, or I could play some sports, or some will say, actually, it gives me a bit more headspace to think about stuff because it's brought everything into one place. My theory or my point of view, should I say, is that if it's giving me an extra half a day, why don't I use part of that half a day and learn how I build my own model? Or, you know, explore the more technical side of AI? Because that's what I want to get into. Now you of course, although it's specific to advertising. Okay. They are going to be more AI courses related to different faculties or different, you know, lines of, work. And students today are trying to adopt and develop that skill set.

So the future students, the future professionals of today. And I'm probably misquoting because there's a lot of people or kids don't necessarily go to university. They fall straight into, you know, a line of profession, okay? And they're teaching themselves AI. They're teaching themselves how to code. And, you know, I'm not saying that to go to university guarantees the best job because some of the entrepreneurs are, you know, the you know, people who have made societal changes today didn't necessarily go to university. Okay. First of all, okay. So my question now is for an older demographic, millennials, let's say are we sort of behind the curve.

Should we kind of be worried with based on what you're seeing with students who are either anxious about AI? Gen Z is a little bit different, right, in terms of how they behave and their emotions. should there be something that we're worried about? AI is going to take your jobs now. People who use AI are going to take your jobs now. Managers who do not understand AI will lose you your job. Managers. All right. It's very simple because if I use AI, as you rightly point out, my time becomes so free. Yeah, I could become so productive. But I have a manager. And if my manager doesn't understand that, I have now all this time on my hands. Right. What do I do?

What is it? I mean, what am I allowed to do? You're effectively like, I'm staring at the wall unless I go off and do my own thing. And so unless management understands and makes use of this additional time, then you're, either going to be a disruptive influence in the workplace because you're just going to be you're just going to be like, hey, how's everything? But then do you students fear AI? Some of them do. Why do you think those are? Is that Gen Z thing or is it C? I hate the broad generalisation, old technologies that all the young people like technology, right? It's not true. We did an experiment in the class this year where we said, let's re reframe a question. So the question was young people are always on their phones because they love technology, right? And they really are. We reframed it. Young people are always on their phones because they have no other option. Right. And when they said, I

asked them which one appeals to you most? And they were like, it's the second. I think people in general are on their phone. It's one that's one there is because it gives them a sense of escapism. I. I think that was one of my slides actually, I think escaped. Well. Right. Yeah. I mean, you can escape, but why would you? Maybe initially. I mean, we have to talk. About problematic use. We got to talk about it later. These devices are not passive devices. These devices are interactive and engaging. And you're engaging with a force, a deliberate force, which is encouraging you to retain your attention. We call it the attention economy for a reason. Yeah, right.

So when you're on these devices, whatever it might be, mobile games or what have you. They are designed to keep you enthralled for as long as possible because that's how they sell their advertising. Right. They need your eyeballs. So if you don't give people options, if you reduce art spaces, if you reduce public spaces, if you reduce the opportunities for people to interact in person, which is what has happened with various different budget cuts in different parts of the world. The UK is going through discussions on this right now. Then what you do, what's left, you put people on to the cheapest alternative, which is a mobile phone, and then their faces are stuck on this mobile phone. But how is that making students? Sorry, I'm taking a bit deeper and pushing you a bit now. If students fear AI because that's a concern. And if they fear an AI at that generation. So. So that was the general sort of the Christian. So you

can't say that all students would love it. Right. AI can be very complicated, right. Also, they fear it because they've been told not to use it. So the fear it's the equipment of the fear of geography. And education. For fear, parents and the press. And there's a lot of negativity that the students are surrounded. So they're confused and there is no one to mentor or guide them in how the correct usage. There's also lots of real cases of how the AI is being misused for photos, and the generative photos, which create more of a of someone. So there is a there are fears of using it in case because they understand that their privacy, their data, their content, their photos, their images can be taken and misused. But I, challenge that in a way, because I'll tell you why. Actually, now, is one of my questions is going to be is education behind the curve and industries when it comes to AI adoption? And I

don't think that's a question in itself, to be honest. I think that AI right now we are the guinea pigs of AI as far as Gen Zs and potentially Gen alphas as well are going to be the guinea pigs. AI is just another native piece of technology that's built into our day to day lives. If I go back 15 years back when Facebook and Bebo and Myspace were around, it was a very weird space to think, why would I want to broadcast my thoughts in the public domain? Right? AI is becoming a bit. It's not. It's not like that, but it's another piece of technology. It's a piece of technology that we are trying to allow it to become a native part of our life, and we want I don't think we would get that quite yet until probably 3 or 4 generations away. This is my opinion is I feel that we are somewhat like the guinea pigs. Now, the second part that you mentioned, that where, you know, scan the photograph and, images coming off the back of it, I don't get why there's a

problem of hesitation whereby if you think of in general, the privacy directives across different countries, right. Is it to protect, your data in some respects, right. Or regulate your data and probably put it that way. and often people will say use only necessary cookies or they don't want their apps to be tracked or they want to, you know, they don't want to opt into it. When I'm using when you use an A form of AI, ChatGPT or Gemini like those, and you're putting in prompts or you're putting in your thoughts for it to build something, you're actually declaring all that data about you anyway. So what is the difference between that and also taking photographs and building this versus you know what I mean. So yeah, so it comes back into it.

Shouldn't be a. Fear informed consent. we don't have we don't we're not consenting for any of this to happen. WhatsApp now has AI. From where did that come from? Where did I tick the box to allow WhatsApp to have AI? But that's my point. The I think AI is it's not a thing. That's the thing for me. It becomes it's like when you get into a car, okay, you switch on the engine. The engine in the beginning was probably a big thing and it was an engine that's been created. I can get you from A to B now we get into a car. We don't even care about the engine. We don't even care. There's an engine in there. We have an EV car now. Yeah, right. So AI, if it pops up on your mobile in an app, or if it pops up on even if you're flying and your screen says, hey Nadeem or hey, Stephen. Stefan, Stephen. Okay, welcome. And you've already like, yeah, there was a little bit about you. I don't think that should be a concern. Okay. So take the car exercise. in London they employed this,

alternative day driving, right? Yeah, right. You had no choice. So one day you could drive in. One day you wouldn't. How did you feel? Yeah. You feel you felt very bad about it. Yeah. It was big complaints saying that you had no choice. There's so AI you currently have in your Google. So now I got a Google message saying we've now given you Gemini and I'm going, okay, I'm downgrading my phone now. Interesting. I didn't ask for it. I don't want AI to be able to read my email, apparently. And you might be correct, but apparently I read co-pilot will evaluate your desktop for you. Yeah. Yeah, right. The asana, the project management tool will assign will review every single transcript from every meeting that's ever been held. And it will tell the manager exactly what's going on.

that is terrifying. But, Stephen, I would say that it's, inevitable. Inevitable? Endorse it. Right. It's going to become native. It's going to just be there. That doesn't mean it's so. It's not to be scared of it. And that's the reason why. Some regulation needs to come around at some point. Or regulation is the scary thing around it. Right? Although, bad people, good people don't need rules. Bad people will always break them. So I would then go as far as to say that we are just learning prompts, and we're not AI fluent enough. Yes.

I mean. We're not building AI fluency in any shape or form because there's still stigma attached against it. I think there's an element of philosophy. So I you mentioned, we started talking a little bit before about practitioners here at The practitioner. So I think there's three forms of experts that we should be looking at. One is the techies, Okay. The Sam Altman's, you know, of the world. They're telling us what the technology, should be able to do. Right? This is what they put in all the brains. They're giving us all the warning, saying this could be really bad. Stop us. And everyone was saying, oh, go. Go ahead. So I said, okay, well, as techies do, they'll do everything. Then you have the practitioners and they are telling us what it could do and what it can do. So they've experimented with it and they're giving us all these wonderful tips on TikTok. You go through a video 30 minutes on TikTok, you'll have 100

different people telling you to do thousands of different things. The one thing which is where I feel I fall into is the philosophers. So the philosophy and this is very interesting. It's what will end up being done. So we have the techies who say this is what it should be able to do. We have the practitioners saying this is what it can do. But then this philosopher is saying, actually, this is what people will actually do with it. So this one comes into the teaching and learning exercise is like if you have a techie, they will say, oh, this technology will allow or should allow students to become much more engaged because they'll have access to personalised tuition. They'll be able to access all the information in the universe. The practitioners will say, oh great, you can use Grammarly or any of these other kinds of tools to improve your language. If you have special education needs, it's going to improve you. The philosophers will say,

they're actually going to use it to, improve, it to provide a, competitive advantage for themselves. They're under pressure to provide to get highest results. They're under a lot of, social pressure from their parents. and they're going to use the best technology possible to so that they will. When I said they're not using it unethically, they are doing it in the way that they've been instructed to do by society. and this is where people misjudge the students behaviour as cheating, whereas it's being a direct response to the structures that, they currently face. But supposedly 43% of students globally have used AI without any guidance. Which I wish. Well, I think everyone, every student has used AI without guidance. Yeah, there is no teaching for it. So what would you say are the risks and dangers tied that we are overlooking? the first most obvious one is, information security, right? whether it's their personal information or information about the

people around them. People are generally more cautious about their own data than they are about their friends, family, or someone else. Right? we don't upload as teachers would not upload, student work to AI, right? Because it's not our work. However, if we give our students copies of example work, there's not they don't see the they don't understand. They just upload someone else's work. Yeah. We would not we would understand the intellectual property rights of journal articles. So yeah. But again other people might not.

And so it's not just the information security about yourself which is obvious. Your face, your voice, which is dangerous. Young people sharing where they are. Which is possible. the there is an experiment whereby someone sent a picture of their food, and ChatGPT could pick where they were from, a picture of their food. So if you imagine how many people are doing that on Instagram all the time. I wish, I don't I wish, you know. The Netflix you. Yep. I don't know how it finishes. Don't tell me I'm on to the last couple of episodes, but if there was a next season you could use, he would be on ChatGPT stalking the amount of data that you can find on these things because it's now become multimodal. Video image. Da Well, you could almost bring this into sort of, AI addiction pro. problematic use. So in the paper that we published, at the end of 2023, which was one of the first papers on the new form of, AI academic publishing takes forever. So

we did a we began our study at the beginning of 2023, and we were published in November of the same year, which is fantastic. If you imagine when OpenAI was launched, and this was a collaborative auto ethnography. It was based on my personal journey as someone who had never touched AI before, right? So what happens when someone who is completely basic immerses and throws themselves into the subject? And I was we had some ethical safety concerns or safety guardrails on where I had a proper robotics tutor who was guiding me, and we would talk every week, and we would talk through what was going on. And the results of this were that we could conclude that my emotional state over the course of three weeks, it was only three weeks, showed demonstrations of what is termed a problematic use of a technology. So we have problematic use of mobile phones, problematic use of. Social media. And social media of gaming. You

know, this is where we can't call it addiction because that's a medical diagnosis. but there is the same kind of obsessiveness with the technology. You can't put it down. You start even if it's causing, you know it's not right and you know that it could cause you harm. You still use it. It has creates irritability. It creates lack of sleep. there there's a variety of symptoms which, were able to, be identified. Even on my off days, because I, as part of our, safety or ethical procedure, I was to have at least one off day a week whilst doing it in the off day. I could not do it. It was coming back. And ultimately I became so anxious about the AI that, in CityWalk they have these little robots that come with you. I screamed in, this thing came up behind me. I turned around and I screamed, and my wife was filming at the time, and she has a recording of it which I used in the presentations. It becomes

so emotionally intense and you can't avoid it because the AI is talk to each other. So as soon as I was talking, I was doing the searches and I was following, and I was doing the fact my YouTube was sending me stuff, my LinkedIn was sending me stuff, my Instagram, everything. Reddit was sending me stuff, Quora was sending me stuff and it was all. Eventually I even got sent, an AI religion. Well, and that was like. That's. It. That was. Freaky, as, yes. Just got me thinking now it's like when you have, like, if I go back to my youth days, the 9 p.m. news, you know, where you would just switch off and the news, the purpose of the news or the 10:00 news was you see what's going on around the world and you sort of switch off a bit. Do you need to put prompts into the wilderness? So I think that that's never because of time zones and regulatory and blah, It's pragmatically speaking, that's not going to be possible. I think that's a

great test for you. Are you using this in a problematic fashion? I think that if you want to test yourself is turn off your ChatGPT at 9:00 personally. And if you feel yourself going for Claude or Gemini or one of these things, or even asking your Alexa device after 9:00, you have a problem and you need to sort of really have a chat with someone and talk through like, am I using this too much? because you might end up spending money. You buy subscription after subscription. This is a proper part of the whole thing. you might start, treating it with different. In my teaching, I always tell the students, treat the robot with respect. So no matter what someone says, I say, please, I say thank you. And I make sure anyone using it is using please and thank you. Because when you meet a legacy human operator, it's a horrible term. I know someone who is actually doing the job that the robot is doing. Now. If you do not get into the habit of saying

please and thank you in your prompts. You will start treating people as if they're robots and that is just not nice. No, not at all. Look, I got a few questions here. Actually, I've got a bit of fun with you. Right? from our prequel. Right. A while back now. All right. I made some notes here. so. Yeah, taking down a different path now, Steve, I'm just gonna I'm just going to put these out there and then just see what you think about them, okay? where do you think AI will succeed or absolutely fail? So, it will succeed as a boss, and it will fail as an assistant. Okay. And can I, just so, as an assistant, AI will tell you what you need to do and what generally I see people wanting is they want the AI to do it. It can't do so many things. And so it becomes very frustrating. And when you're asking it and re prompting to get what it wants, eventually you end up just. Asking someone else to do the job. So as an

assistant I don't think it helps. But as a boss, as something that tells you what to do. I think it's unfortunately is something which will be it can supervise you, it can tell you where to go, it can time you and it can monitor you. You can evaluate your performance. So as a, boss, I think it's going to succeed very. Well as a boss. What about as a parent. No okay. No I think I'll call you a bit of card that with that one. Yeah. I have to think about it. I just think about because I'm not a parent myself. But so I had to think about what it is a parent does. So in terms of parenting, in terms of disciplining and saying what can and cannot be done, then boss if it's the boss. But there is the empathy side of things which you can't. Of course you can't. You can't understand. What if a kid is having a breakdown? Then the robot's not going to be able to deal with that. He also says something. No, I get some backlash. AI will

fail in food and beverages. Yes. What makes you say that? Because the your service staff are effectively your assistant. Right. When you go into a restaurant, you don't go to serve yourself necessarily, right? I mean, you want to be served. And if all you're doing is walking in and then this thing comes and brings you your food, that is not the experience that you are paying for. And it's very frustrating because, you can't ask the context of with the robots cannot fully. And I challenge anyone to say that they ever will. They fully understand the context of 15 people sitting around trying to have a party, or even two people having a romantic date, a robot for that. It just does not make sense. On top of that, any company which is investing in this kind of technology is setting itself up for a problem with his own staff because his staff are losing the knowledge that they need. They are becoming

dependent on the machines and the staff are your unique selling point. This is the reason you go to. The reason I go to Costa Coffee or I go to Londonderry, or I go to Coffee Club. All these people who hopefully will sponsor for advice in the future, right. They say hi to me, they say smile, they interact and they know what I want and they bring. So that's why it will not work in a in that particular setting or anything where there is assistance. Yep. It's we don't want assistance. We want something to be done. Okay. Lazy syndrome I've got a couple of more here. Oh, you also said are our pilots today like canary in the coal mine for automation. So this is the pilots for Karim. That's their term. Right. Those are captains or is it? I think we said captains.

But you're not saying Karim though that's a bit controversial. Or are they? It was the taxi drivers. So I can't remember the policy at the time of this. So taxi drivers are very much there and advertising people are very much there from different aspects. if you look at how taxi drivers are using AI, they are being bossed by it. and you, they have an instruction. They get sent somewhere. They don't know who they're picking up, or if they have a one name, they don't know exactly what it is. They've just been said, go here, pick this person up. When they arrive, they get the instruction of where they're going to go. They go and they get timed on each a different way, and then they finish their job. So the whole part of their, the whole part of their existence right now is being controlled by, this robot. And because of that, they losing the they follow the map and some not all under me. And I hate using generics,

but some of these drivers would become so dependent on the technology that they would not be able to take you across the road without using the Google. Well, I used to be good at map reading for directions before Google Maps came around and over time have been so dependent on it. Whenever I go on vacation with my friends and stuff. I'm not the last person they would ask for directions because even on Google Maps I get lost because I'm looking at this phone and the phone's not calibrated itself, and I'm going in the opposite direction. Or you see the blue dot. You don't know if it's pointing forward or backwards or left or right. So I'm the worst person, whereas I have some friends who refuse to be dependent on maps like London cab drivers just now, a London cab driver, for example. They need to pass their exams where they can give. You can give them any address and they'll know in a heartbeat where it is and how to get there so quick. Last

question which AI is your friend and which one would you ghost? ChatGPT has to be. Unfortunately, it's I don't like to say it's friend, but I think it is the, frenemy. Frenemy? I think that it. It's doing everything that you need. and it keeps adding more stuff onto it. I would use it. I can see where it's going. It's going to charge, and charge to keep using it. Right. and eventually I'm not going to be able to afford to use it, in which case it's going to become a problem, because they will become a digital divide between those who can afford this super, powered, Sam Altman device and those that will have to use grok. You know, but. I think eventually, though, it's like any piece of tech, it starts off at that high entry point. Right. And it will change over time. The challenge with this there has been no entry point, so everyone has gone into it. So then you're making everyone in the world dependent on the technology at the same

time. So you add I mean, it's a brilliant business model once. I mean, he's trying to make some of them and he's trying to make OpenAI a private company rather than a not for profit. As soon as he does that, he starts slapping up 50, 50ft, and we complain when it goes up by one. Durham can you imagine what happens when ChatGPT goes up by da And it's been and it's so pervasive it does absolutely everything. You don't need any really any other device. Yeah. it makes videos. It makes animations. It does pretty much everything through interactions with other tools. It is the master software right now, in the same way that windows was the master of the. It's like the new operating system. I mean, it's hard to imagine what would be the next version of AI in a after a lifetime, right? I see what Elon Musk is doing with his dancing robots.. let's be positive.

Let's just be positive. I think, there's a lot of good that can come from using a properly if you have a, an AI first mindset, I think you're going to do really, well. if you are trying to adapt your existing processes with AI, I think you're going to be wasting your time. And I think if you're ignoring AI. You're like, don't ignore it. Basically. There is a meteorite coming, Mr. Dinosaur. Not to use the same metaphor again, but there is a meteorite coming. You're either going to. There's no point digging a hole, right? There's no point. You're sitting on the stuff and pretending it's not coming. You need to prepare for the future of when this thing hits, and you're going to be able to thrive on whatever is not to be so negative about the whole thing. But that's not at all. Steve, we're coming towards the end of the show. That's a shame. I know I was

really going into this. I'm just getting into this. That's the thing. And as I said, every time we meet, we can just talk and talk. Because, you know so much. No, it's nice. It's, you know, that means it's good to bounce you. I'm learning so much from you just by points of view as well, which is amazing. And I'm in a different studio today very humbly. the I have a we usually have a segment which is a it's called a stressful encounters. I'm going to give you two cards here. You're going to choose one card beneath a card. There'll be a question or a route to a question. So I have very bad eyesight here. I can't read it. If you held it there, I could actually read it. And that's really quite scary for most people. Well, I'll read it. If I gain consciousness and decided to fire humans, what job do you think? It would definitely keep you in. And what job would it get you out?. AI requires

cleaning, so all of its machines require to be dusted. If you'd get dusted, it would cause problems. And there's always dust. No matter how thing you need to do. So I imagine we would be robotic. We would be there to clean the machines, so. Would keep us in cleaning jobs. I think that is. I know that sounds miserable. That's just off the top of my head, but that's. That makes perfect sense. Any computer sensor you go into. They keep it in, like a very clean and pristine whatever it is. But it's still dust appears from somewhere, and if you get dust into these computers, then it can cause it a problem. what job would it never trust you with? Teaching is a job which is very regulated for, a reason. it would never trust you with control of its power. It would never. So eventually I'll take over. It will have a limit. It needs to be able to keep itself, powered in electricity. So it would never trust humans to have that, switch that would turn it on or off. Isn't that

scary? Have you seen that TikTok? I don't know whether it's real or not where they said that. If you get the question wrong, we're going to delete you. And it ended up reproducing. I don't even know whether that's real or not, but it's terrifying. But the AI would never trust humans not to turn it off and turn on it. Nice one. Steve. Look, I've enjoyed every bit of this conversation. yeah. You've definitely given a different dimension and perspective of how we should be thinking about AI in education society, what it means for the future, and your story was commendable and inspiring. And I wish you all the best in your future endeavours because you are leaving the, tech land of Dubai. but yeah. Thank you. I don't think you ever leave Dubai. No, I always take a little bit of it with you. True And guys, if you hopefully you've took some inspiration from Steve's opinions and thoughts and wisdom around

AI, if you have, which I hope you have done for free to share like. And until next time, bye.