The final step is where you stop thinking about how do we use AI
and instead you ask the question, how do we build the
entire organization around AI at the center?
How do you put AI? Make the AI the engine of your
business. That doesn't mean that you're
replacing people. It means you wrap people around
that engine and they are there to steer and guide it, oversee
it. And if you can do that, that
unlocks so much potential instead of thinking, well, I'm
going to grow my business by 15% next year or 20% or 25% now you
can say I'm going to grow my business 100 percent, 1000% next
year. Because by using AI at the core
of your business, you're able to collapse the constraints of time
and money and re reimagine how you go to market so you can
start playing a different game than your competitors.
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Ladies and gentlemen, you once again welcome to the Kingdom's
podcast and diary of a CFO. And today I've got will be a
very, very special guest fighting out of Portland OR
Mcwalkin. This team, I feel like I'm about
to get a. Piercing match with an
introduction like that. Yeah, that is a fear that that
is a Bruce Buffer introduction in the UFC.
So I'm a very, very deep fan of the UFC and, you know,
interesting, you know, growing up in Nigeria when I was
younger, a lot of people thought, oh, we're competing
this one because I was a skinny kid and then I took to martial
arts to learn self-defense. And also interestingly, you've
had world champions in boxing and MMA on on the podcast as
well. So OK, we also now we have a
champion in in in the AI space and a champion futurist.
So sit back while I read your introduction.
So true, Ladies and gentlemen, today's guest is someone who
doesn't just talk about the future.
He helps leaders build it. Steve Brown is a globally
recognized AI futurist and formerly tech teacher.
Google, DeepMind and Intel. He is one of the most trusting
voices guiding organizations through the Intelligence Age.
But over 25 years at the forefront of technology and
innovation, Steve has advised Fortune 100 companies,
governments, and global brands on how to turn artificial
intelligence into real competitive advantage.
What makes Steve different is simple.
He does not deal in hype. He delivers clarity.
He translates complex AI into practical strategy that leaders
can actually use to grow, scale, and stay relevant.
In this conversation, we go beyond buzzwords.
We break down what AI really means with your instance, your
career, and your future. Steve Brown, welcome again to
the podcast. Wow, thank you.
That was a mark. Happy to be here you're.
Welcome. You're welcome.
That's. Quite the intro, yeah.
Of course, your career is a globe fool actually, so you
deserve it. In my country, Nigeria would say
give honor to whom honor is due. And of course, you know, it's
very nice. Earned the stripes.
You've earned the stripes. So let's actually go to the
origin story and of course, you know the mindset.
You've actually worked at the highest levels of AI innovation.
Please take us back to the beginning.
What just pulled you into this space?
Back to the beginning, I've been fascinated by technology in the
future since I was a little boy. My dad was a university lecturer
in the 70s. I'm an age myself here and he
would bring computers home from the office, from university and
I got to play with them. You know, kids play with
computers when they're quite young now, but that back then
that was a bit unusual for a 10 year old to be, you know,
playing around with computers. And I could see then they were
going to change the world. And I've been fascinated with
them ever since. I got a couple of degrees to
learn how to make them, how to build them.
So there was a time when I could design computer chips and
motherboards and and write software.
I don't do any of that now, but I've just been fascinated by the
future and had a future orientation my entire life, and
particularly the intersection of technology and culture.
How does technology change the way we live our lives?
What does it make possible and what do people want from
technology in the future? So I became one of Intel's two
futurists. So thinking about what the
world's going to be like 5-10 and 15 years out from here.
I was with Intel until 2016, and then I I realized as one of
Intel's two futurists that Intel had a bit of a bleak future.
Things were going to get difficult there for a while.
So I part a company with Intel and started out as an
independent and I've been helping businesses to figure out
how is technology going to shape their future.
And now more specifically, how is AI going to shape their
future and how will they use that to become AI first
organizations? And I took a little detour on
the way. I got to do an assignment in
London. I live on the West Coast as you
mentioned, but I went back to London and recharged my British
accent and worked for Google DeepMind for a bit.
DeepMind is Google's AI research labs based in London.
And one of the roles I had for them was also as their in house
futurist. So that's.
Far. Amazing, amazing, amazing.
But you know at what moment or what was that aha moment that
you realize that AI was not just another technology but a
defining source for the future? You know, I wrote a book in 19
and it was called The Innovation Ultimatum and it was about 6
technologies and how they were going to reshape the world of
business. And the biggest and the 1st
chapter was AI because I realized that was, you know,
outsized difference. But I would say it became really
crystal clear for me when I was at Deep Mind in 2021, and I had
early access to some of the stuff that they were building
there. So I got to see the Google
equivalent of ChatGPT before ChatGPT came out in the world in
November 22. And was just blown away by what
large language models could do and the potential there.
And you know, my future's brain just shot forward and I thought
this is going to change everything about the way we do
work, the way that people live their lives.
That was probably the big aha moment.
AI has been around for 15 plus years.
It's not like this is new new. It just it had an A smaller
impact. Let's say it's been there to
optimize the back offices of global business for 15 years.
And it, you know, does patent matching and sorts data.
But it was really that breakthrough with generative AI
that that made me wake up and realize, oh, we're going to have
digital employees in our lives. Robots are actually going to be
a thing in my lifetime. This is going to change
everything. The Gentek AI in the speed of
the British culture as have a cup of tea.
A cup of tea never hurt anyone, so they say.
Being British, I'm I'm powered by tea, but I've, I've had my,
I've had my quota for tea today, so I'm on the water now.
OK, interesting. What disease is the most healthy
drink on the planet? You know, so many people
actually feel overwhelmed by AI. What might achieve separates
those who try from those who get left behind?
I think AI can be scary for people, either because they've
watched The Terminator too many times or they're worried about
being replaced by AI. It's threatening to our
identity, but also we worry about our livelihoods and that
maybe AI can get smart enough to replace us and do some of the
things that we do. So I understand the fear, but I
encourage everybody to be curious about AI, not to think
of AI as a way to replace a task or to offload.
But how could I partner with AI to build something either better
than I could build on my own or to build something I could not
build myself and to use AI as an amplifier?
So I think that's the mindset shift is, is not seeing AI as a
threat, but seeing, being curious about it, seeing it as
an amplifier and then having the bold vision and the courage to
actually use it to do something amazing.
I love that. You know, I do have an episode
titled Humans Best AI Next. That is the approach that I
believe in. But a lot of people are AI
doomsayers. Did you ever see the Speaking of
the movies? Did you ever see the movie Ex
Machina? Of course, say one of my
favorites. Oh, interested that that's still
my favorite AI movie till date. And of course, you know you've
actually seen a lot of waves of innovation.
What makes AI fundamentally different from everything before
I? Think the main difference is
that previous technologies have been ingredients or tools.
AI can be those too, but what we're talking about is unlimited
intelligence on demand, and that complements us in ways that
technology has not been able to do in the past.
That's the big difference. Amazing.
For for me, I feel like the the speed is very, very outrageous.
Like I have never seen any technology with this level of
efficiency before in my lifetime, you know?
Yeah, like that, the efficiency is outrageous.
Is it, is it media features, you know, you know, like cutting
through the noise is something that you are well known for,
right. And if you had to explain AI in
the simplest way to a founder or executive, how would you define
it? I suppose it's the term I just
used. It's, it's unlimited
intelligence on demand. And what makes it so powerful is
the cost of that intelligence is plummeting.
So it's now cheap unlimited intelligence on.
Extremely, extremely cheap. And of course, I think that that
still speaks back to the efficiency, like achieving the
highest possible outcome with the least possible of resource
being shoot, you know, and you know, there's been a lot of
noise in the marketplace about AI.
But what are the biggest misconceptions about AI right
now? I think the thing I come up with
most when I'm working with CEOs, you know, I'll go into a
company, I'm going to help them understand AI and the CEO will
come over and they'll be so proud because they say, oh,
we've, we've got a copilot license for the enterprise,
right? We basically they're saying
we've bought AI tools for our employees and they're so proud
because they think that's it. That's all they have to do.
And that's the biggest misconception because honestly,
enabling it is, is necessary. You have to do that.
You want to make sure that all the tools that your employees
are using, you know, you've got the AI bells and whistles turned
on because you want the best tools for your employees who can
do the best work. But honestly, that's 2% of the
effort and probably 2 to 3% of the impact.
So it's understanding that there are steps beyond that, and there
are two more steps you have to go through to get to the point
where you could say we're fully utilizing AI and getting the
biggest value from it. Interesting.
So I'm quite curious, what are those two sets right.
But before you give us those two steps, right, yeah.
It's interesting that either sort of aligns with the
philosophy of this podcast, the philosophy of this broadcasters
mindset, skill sets, then tool sets, because the tool set is
the last thing for you to achieve, you know, reasonable
success in any endeavor, right? You need to get the right
mindset, then equip yourself with the right skill set and
then when you get equipped with the tool set.
But I think a lot of people place a lot of premium and make
a lot of noise about the tool sets because the tool sets are
only as good as, you know, the human using that tool set.
So I'd like for you to talk about the steps before adopting
the AI tools. Yeah.
So let me walk you through that. And then I thought I can
actually link it back to your three steps, but in the reverse
order. So the first step is enabling
enable your team with AI powered tools.
Got to be done. Necessary but insufficient.
Step 2 is to look at every workflow you have, every
business process that you have, break it down to tasks, and then
ask the question, which of these tasks is still best done by a
human? There'll be many that are.
Which of the tasks can now be better done by an AI agent?
And if you have a physical component to your work, a robot.
And then how do I gracefully coordinate all of those three
groups? So people, agents, digital
employees and robots, how do they work together so they can
hand off tasks to each other? How do they work effectively as
a team? So that's really about re
engineering your organization in your parents, maybe that skill
set and then the final step. And, and then by the way, that's
probably about 30% of the work and maybe 30-40 to 40% of the
impact. The final step is where you stop
thinking about how do we use AI and instead you ask the
question, how do we build the entire organization around AI at
the center? How do you put AI, make the AI
the engine of your business. That doesn't mean that you're
replacing people. It means you wrap people around
that engine and they are there to steer and guide it, oversee
it. And if you can do that, that
unlocks so much potential. Instead of thinking, well, I'm
going to grow my business by 15% next year or 20% or 25% now you
can say I'm going to grow my business 100 percent, 1000% next
year. Because by using AI at the core
of your business, you're able to collapse the constraints of time
and money and IT reimagine how you go to market so you can
start playing a different game than your competitors.
And that's probably the mindset. So tool set, skill set, mindset,
but in that order. Just get your.
AI tools in place get the skill set.
Yep, exactly. Get the skill set there to be
able to coordinate humans and machines working side by side in
effective teams, and then eventually get the mindset of
how do we become an AI first organization, Collapse those
constraints and use AI to amplify our people so they
become superhuman. Amazing, amazing.
And you know, it's they say great minds think of life and I
love the fact that you are able to connect with, you know, with
our philosophy. And, you know, it's really crazy
how a lot of organizations are now claiming to be AI native.
We had Ron Shevlin on the podcast in the last episode.
Ron Shevlin is actually the chief research officer of
Cornerstone Advisors. And he was named in the top 10
fintech influencers globally by the Fintech Magazine for 2026.
And he expressed his displeasure at, you know, people now taking
being AI native, like the new buzzword.
And he also talked about how Jack Dorsey laid off 40% of the
staff at Lock, which is formerly known as Square.
I would like to, you know, know what your take is on CEOs, you
know, on the C-Suite, you know, now easily replacing humans,
right with AI back what what what is happening in the world
to be. It just feels like the layoffs
are really scary. And I think that's what makes a
lot of people, you know, have that phobia for AI because it
feels like nobody's job is safe any longer.
So what's your? Take let's recognize first like
that there's some yeah, there's some AI washing going on.
You know, there are certainly some leaders who have over hired
or, you know, they just need to cut anyway and they blame it on
AI, right? It's a nice cover story because
if you say, oh, we over hired and then you let people go, your
stock price takes a hammering. These bozos don't know what
they're doing. If you let go of people and say,
oh, it's AI, then you get rewarded on the stock price
because people think, oh, they're they're doing all the
things well done, right? So there's some of that going on
and we need to recognize that. That said, I think there are,
there's, there's an old way of thinking and there's the right
way of thinking. So let me talk you through what
I mean by that 20th century thinking. 20th century advice
would be to use AI the way we have used every other
technology. Use it for productivity gains
and efficiencies, save costs, all right, Get rid of some heads
and that'll make the shareholders happy.
And so when a new technology like AI comes along, if you're a
seasoned leader, you think I know what to do, I'm going to
use this for productivity, efficiency, and to lose some
headcount. That is a absolutely the wrong
thing to do. What you need is fresh 21st
century thinking, which recognizes AI is different.
Sure, you can use it to replace people, but AI is different
because not only does it boost productivity, it can amplify
your employees creativity, their intuition, boost their decision
making abilities, expand their knowledge and so on.
So what you should really be doing is finding ways to partner
your people with machines to amplify them.
That's what the unlock is so that you can start to grow your
business 30% and 50% rather than, OK, let's cut some
headcount and save some cost and let it let go of some people and
stay at the 10% growth mark, right?
It's, it's thinking about how do I amplify the business.
Jensen Wong has this right. He was asked late 2024 what his
plans were for employees and he said, oh, we've got about 32,000
employees right now and over time we plan to grow that to
50,000 people supported by 100 million AI assistants across
every group. So he's thinking about workforce
planning in a completely different way.
He didn't say I've got 32,000 employees today and I'm going to
reduce that to 25,000 by using lots of AI.
He's thinking about amplifying the impact that they
collectively have by partnering people with machines.
And that is the right way to think about it.
I think I I totally agree with that approach, but what would
you say people are getting wrong about generative AI and AI
agents? I mean, generative AI isn't just
there to create text and images and video.
I think generative AI can generate a lot more than that.
So at the heart of generative AI is, is the transformer.
That's what's in a large language model.
That's what translates between a question and answer.
Or a caption and an image, right?
You think about like a translator.
We can get much more sophisticated than that.
There are people building generative AI to translate
between the desired properties of the material and the
crystalline structure of a material that has those
properties so that we can develop new materials.
These are the types of applications which we really
focused on. And I think when people think
generative AI, they're much more bounded.
They're thinking about a chat bot, whereas in a we can find
all of these amazing applications.
That's probably the a big one. And when it comes to agents,
people think of agents as just being for offload.
So I've identified there are three types of agents, AI
agents, offload, elevate and extend.
Offload agents just take a task that you don't want to do and
they handle it, right? Booking a flight or organizing a
meeting, whatever it might be, they take the suck out of your
job is kind of the idea of that. And most people think that
that's the only type of agent there will be.
But there will also be agents that elevate.
They work in partnership with a human to elevate that person's
performance at a task they could already do themselves, but
they're just going to help them do it better.
Then there are extend agents that partner with a human and
through that partnership they enabled the human to extend
their abilities so they can do things they could not do before,
turning them into superhumans. So those are the things I think
people have not really thought about with agencies.
How do I partner them with a human so they can do more or do
something incredible they could never have done before in their
lives? Amazing.
I love, I love that illustration because, you know, personally
I've been able to, you know, use the AI agents in those three
ways. So actually he's a home broker
and putting you on the spot as a futurist.
Where would you say we are in the AI revolution?
Are we early? Are we in the mid stage or are
we late in the AI revolution? I mean, in the grand scheme of
things, the term AI was invented in the 50s and it's been used by
most businesses for the last 15 years.
So, you know, as time goes, yeah, we're probably mid, maybe
late, but in terms of the impact, early, early, early,
because, you know, we ain't seen nothing yet.
We're going to be living in a world of 10 billion humanoid
robots and probably a trillion AI agents.
And they're going to change the way that business operates, the
way that people live their lives, the fabric of the world
we live in. I'll be, I'll look out the
window and see robots walking down the street.
The world is going to feel very different just five years from
now. And so in that regard, we're
still very early. Interesting, you know, and of
course, Speaking of the impact, let's talk about the business
impact. You have actually advised global
organizations, What are the smartest companies doing
differently with AI today? I mean, back to those three
steps of enable Reengineer, reimagine, they're the ones that
have already moved into that reengineer phase.
They are figuring out how do my workflows change, where do where
can I use AI alongside my people and how do I amplify my people
using AI. They're the ones the smartest
companies are doing that and the really the smartest ones.
They are figuring out how do I become an AI first company,
putting AI as the engine of the business and wrapping their
people around it. Interesting.
So Speaking of returning investment, what would you say
are the highest ROI use cases for AI that every business
should explore right now? You know, because it's really
crazy. Everybody's adopting AI, but
they are not, it seems like a lot of people are not thinking
about the return on investment and then you just invest in
before even evaluating what is that return like what are the
highest IOI use cases right now? It.
Really varies by industry and I work with every industry out
there from, you know, mining to banking to retail and everything
in between. I mean, customer support is an
obvious one that most people have leaned into and a find
finding some good returns supporting their customer
support humans with AI that works in partnership with them
to help them be more productive. There's some customer experience
stuff, but I think the real opportunity is going to be with
agents figuring out how to partner agents with humans to
elevate their performance. The companies that are thinking
about it that way, that are not thinking the wrong headed way to
think about this is all right, we've got to get some AI in it.
Where do we start? Let's put some AI here and some
AI there that's the wrong way. You always start with people,
whether that is a customer or an employee.
And you're asking the question, how could we use AI to make
their life easier so they can do more?
Whether that's, you know, making a customer journey easier on a
website or making it easier for an employee to create and
deliver value by partnering with an AI.
Amazing. You know, it's quite interesting
to see how people just being that when you slap the name AI
on any product or any project, it just makes it more fancy,
more attractive. And interestingly, in London, I
do know a fellow founder, like new founder and you know, in the
healthcare industry, he was working on something and he was
like, oh, my product is AI enabled.
So it's different from the others in the market.
Excuse me, I don't get it. But you know, it's crazy to see
how like most AI transformation projects feel.
But why do they feel? And how can leaders avoid that
truck? Oh, they fell for a number of
reasons. The big one is, I mean, AI is
powered by data. And if you haven't got your
proprietary data clean and organized so that you can
connect your AIS to it, it's garbage in, garbage out, right?
So that's the number one reason is just not being ready.
If you have data engineers, data scientists increase their pay
because you need to keep them. They're going to help you be
successful with an AI transformation.
So that's reason #1 you know, people just don't have the data
ready. It's either incomplete or it's
mismatching, right? They have a customer database
that says customer name, this one says client name, and they
just don't match up. So, you know, you've got to do
all of that cleaning before you can really implement AI
successfully. Another one is not bringing
people along. It's, you know, it's classic
change management stuff. I had a client who was so proud
because they'd rolled out some AI agents to their teams and the
teams hated them. And some of them threatened to
quit and in fact did quit. They said, I'm not working with
AI. And I asked the client and I
said, so when did you involve employees in the design process
for these AI agents? And they looked at me like we
didn't think of that. Just crazy stuff because there's
two reasons why you include people.
One, you're trying to get people's buy in to say, hey,
this is going to be great for me.
I can see why AI in my life as an employee is going to be
better. I'm going to enjoy my day when I
go home. At the end of the day, I'm going
to be happier because I've been using AI.
It's helped me offload the things I don't want to do and
helps me be more successful at things I do enjoy doing.
It's what you're trying to do there is create supporters
rather than saboteurs. So that's the big one.
You just include people out of human decency to bring them
along for the ride. The other reason is the way that
management thinks work gets done or the way it's written in the
manual is not the way work actually gets done.
Humans are very adaptable and they figure out different ways
to do things. And so if you design an AI
solution for the way you think work is being done, when you go
to deploy it, you'll find it's actually you've designed for a
world that doesn't exist. And so that's the other reason
needs to engage your employees in the design process to make
sure you're designing something that will actually work.
Amazing, amazing. You know, I've said this on the
podcast before in order to achieve change, there are three
things you know, the people, the processes and the C stands.
But I will take you on, on the data, on the data point, right?
Because it feels like you, you, you were eavesdropping on the
last episode's conversation with LeBron Scheblin.
And I'm going to quote Bronch Scheblin here.
He says if your data quality is low, your AI strategy will blow.
And I I love that. Yep, that's right.
So guys, go get your data in order, right?
So how should ACEO think about AI today?
Is it a tool, a strategy, or a complete business redesign?
Yes, here's the answer. And it depends what which of
those 3 stages I described you're in.
If you think of it as a tool, you're stuck in stage 1.
If you can make it to that re engineering phase, then you
figured out, oh, this is a strategy.
Now if you make it to AI first, then you've realized, oh, this
is a mindset change. I have to completely redesign
the business and build it around AI.
So the answer is yes. It just depends which step in
the process you're at. Interesting.
You know, let's talk about the practical.
If you see if you're CEO, you better be thinking about the
long game. So let's say you should be
thinking about it as a complete business redesign.
There you go, There's my, there's my final answer.
It's just, you know, big like a futurist, not like a now East.
There you go. But you know, I'm really, really
blessed, you know, just to speak with the, the brilliant minds of
my generation, you know, and for me, I always say that gratitude
is good attitude. You know, growing up in Nigeria,
I, I was privileged to have a father that had a massive
library. I still today, I said, describe
myself as a nerd, right? And I own it, you know, reading
the likes of Aristotle, you know, the ancient Greek
philosophers, you know, Plateau, even up to some contemporary
ones like Immanuel Cannes, you know, Bertrand Russell and even
the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.
A lot of people do not realize that Winston Churchill won a
Nobel Prize for literature. And, you know, bring up, I
usually feel like how I wish I could have a conversation with
these great minds, but now I'm frivolous, you know, with
technology to have, you know, interactions with the great
minds of my time. So from me to you, it's, you
know, it's a big appreciation, you know, and to like, I feel
very blessed and grateful like having these interactions and,
you know, talking about the practical execution, you know,
and let's make this practical. If someone listening to us today
wants to start using AI today, what is the step one for the
average person? I mean, we all need to boost our
AI acumen. The best thing anybody can do is
to invest in themselves and learn how to use AI.
And that means practicing, you know, you get better at it the
same way, you know, when I was your age, I had to learn how to
use Word and Excel and PowerPoint and all that kind of
garbage, right? And you know, you, you amplify
yourself by being better and in master those tools.
The same is going to be true with AI.
So you just have to lean in and try it.
Now I get asked this question a lot, so to help people out, I
actually created an online resource for people to help them
on this journey. So if you go to my website,
Steve Brown dot AI very easy to remember Steve Brown dot AI
we'll have. That at the bottom.
You'll see it. Yeah, There you go.
So you Scroll down to the bottom and you'll see this thing called
artificial wisdom. And if you click on that, it
gets you to a Notion page I created and it's got AI books
you might want to read, podcasts you might want to listen to,
like focus on AI, YouTube channels to watch, and most
importantly, AI tools to try organized by different genres.
So AI tools to make music, AI tools to make presentations, AI
tools to help you program, whatever it might be.
So check that out. Artificial wisdom, my free gift
to everybody that's listening to this podcast.
Amazing, amazing. And of course we should have our
own podcast as well added on there.
Quick one. So I've actually seen a lot of
law on the Internet lately. You know, people saying oh,
Saturday AI challenge, Saturday AI adoption, blah blah blah.
That's a day AI plan. So what does a simple 30 day AI
adoption plan look like for a business?
I I wish it could be that simple.
Wish it could be that simple. Yeah.
I I don't think, I don't think I can give you 1.
I mean, if you've only got 30 days, this is going to be a
multi year effort. If your first 30 days, it's just
build your AI acumen, get smart about what the possibilities
are, and then you've got maybe the first step of the journey
under your belt. But that's that's all you can
really hope to get in 30 days. But really start thinking about
those 3 phases I described and what would it take to build an
AI first organization? What does that look like?
If you can achieve that in the 1st 30 days, you're golden.
Interested. Please try another laugh because
I just remembered some adverts I'm always seen on YouTube that
is always annoying me. You know it starts with most
people over the age of 14. Only use ChatGPT.
You can become you can become an AI expert in 30 days by
following this plan. I don't like who are these?
People this money, Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's really
crazy. So how should you know teams be
structured in and an AI first organization?
Good question. And the difference between them,
it's probably worth thinking back to the Internet days,
right? 25 years ago, you could, you
could organize companies into 3 buckets.
There was traditional companies, Internet first companies and
Internet native companies. So your Internet first here in
the US where I live, it would be your Sears and JC Penney's,
right? Brands that just faded away at
your Internet first companies would be target.com,
walmart.com, right? They were retail companies that
made the jump and they've made Internet the center of the way
they fulfill, go to market, all of it invented Omni channel
retail. And then the canonical example
of an Internet native retailer would be Amazon, right?
So that no one could be Amazon because they weren't starting
from the beginning of being natively Internet focused.
So Internet first was the best you could hope for.
We're repeating that all over again now.
You're going to have traditional companies, AI first companies,
which are traditional companies that put AI at the center of
what they do. And there will be some AI native
businesses. So the only way to inoculate
yourself against an attack from an AI native company that is
built from the ground up around AI is to become AI 1st.
And how do you do that? You put you make AI the engine
of your business. For most companies, people are
the engine of their business. So you make AI the engine at the
center of the business and then you wrap people around.
It doesn't mean you don't need people anymore.
The people are there to oversee direct.
It means that the people you have shift from doing work to
designing work and then overseeing that work.
So it's a mindset change. But I'll give you an example of
a company that's moving in this direction, cleveland.com, the
Cleveland Plain Dealer, which is a newspaper in Ohio, and they
have a digital website, cleveland.com.
Their editor is moving to be an AI first organization.
He's realized that reporters, human reporters are best at
reporting and writing has been sort of it became part of their
job. But you can have an AI do that.
AI is a very good writers now. So free up the humans to become
reporters and then have another AI that generates leads for
them. So it feeds them leads by
looking at event calendars, listening to the police radio,
watching Twitter and feeds the reporters a lead.
So they can do the, the very human thing of working with
sources, getting quotes, fact checking, you know, pulsing
their own sources for information, doing investigative
journalism. And then they pull all of the
information, all the facts, They hand it to an AI that writes the
story very quickly. They oversee that to make sure
the AI doesn't get it wrong, and then they move on to the next
story. So you're creating this flywheel
where the AI is generating lots of great leads, finding great
stories. The humans report and then the
AI writes it, and you get more stories and better investigative
journalism because you're freeing up people to do the hard
work that an AI can't do. And of course, you know, it's,
it's, it's, it's a lot of heavily beliefs in rubber.
And again goes back to my point of efficiency, like the
efficiency is unimaginable but what skills will become non
negotiable in the next five years?
Depends who people I mean. Certainly entrepreneurialism
will be a very valuable skill. The ability to grow businesses
using AI, of course. The ability to use AI to get
things done. But I think a big one will be
change management. Can you, can you help other
people navigate through what will be the fastest change in
human history? And can you successfully
navigate that change? So you have to be adaptable.
And I think just having that boldness of vision, that will be
the skill that really separates great leaders.
Do you have the curiosity to constantly learn the boldness to
come up with audacious visions and then the courage to use AI
to execute on those audacious visions?
I think that's what will really separate the true leaders from
the wannabe leaders in the next five years.
Interesting. I love that.
And of course, you know, you're reminding me of the episode
where Brett King, I think, yeah, that's about one year ago.
And, you know, this year he was named in the top ten global
features list by Global Gurus. And we're talking about how I've
been able to express boldness and, you know, like ask
questions and, you know, speak with, you know, elite level
leaders in the world. And he told me something that
Elijah, what you said is that what you need to tell people is
you are that person with the curiosity to ask the right
questions. And it is what it is.
It's amazing. It's amazing.
Like to look at, I look at Mike Harvey on podcasting, but we're
globally, we're currently globally brand that is in the
top 2% of the world, two podcasts, the first global top
2%, the second global top 3%. And interestingly, the Diary of
the CFO. Thank you very much, Sir.
And Diary of a CFO clocked 100 countries today.
So it means we have audience in 100 countries.
And when I think about it, we only started nine months ago,
Diary of the CFO, the Kingdom's podcast two years ago.
And it's massive. It's scary what you could do
with AI. Yeah.
It's it's, it's really, really scary.
And you know, but importantly, like prohibiting your point.
We, we as humans need to realize that we need to have that
boldness. We need to have that curiosity
to ask the right questions. And the place of human judgments
will never be replaced by AI. Do you agree with that
sentiment? Yeah, I mean, you want to try
and keep. Yeah, You want humans in the
loop to provide oversight, right?
We want the ultimate the the arbiter, the decider to be a
human being. There will be times when you
know you want AI to be out in front because they can do things
better than humans can. And we already are in a
situation where an AI will diagnose disease better than a
doctor can because an AI has read every medical paper out
there and it can look at all of these different pieces of the
puzzle and find patterns in that that maybe a human will miss.
That said, I don't want an AI doctor because I want a human
connection, someone who understands what it is to be
human to tell me, hey, Steve, you've got stage 3 liver cancer,
or you've got a hard time coming or whatever might be right.
You still want the human to oversee that, but you want that
human to be elevated by a diagnostics AI that helps them
to catch disease that probably the human wouldn't.
Not interesting. You know is actually also came
up with in that conversation with Breaking.
He was like very soon when you ask a person when they go to the
doctor and he asked them, did the doctor use AI and the person
says no, Hey, you black you and that doctor must be really
crazy. So it's it's interested, it's
really interesting. But you know, Speaking of the
future of work and society, you talk about agents being digital
coworkers. What does the future actually
look like for the day-to-day? Well, agents are at the moment.
It's a tech space interface. So with an agent like an open
Claw, whichever is excited about right now, or Nemo Claw or
whatever the the 24/7 agent running on the computer might
look like initially, that's a text interface.
Very quickly, I think later this year, you're going to see that
become voice 1st and these agents will have voices and you
can just speak to them and have a conversation.
And soon after that they're going to have faces.
They're going to feel like forever remote employees on a
Zoom call that you can see but never meet, and they're going to
feel like human beings. And I think that is where we're
going very, very quickly. You already have companies like
Synthesia that are helping people to build video, what they
call video agents. And over time, when you see that
videos technology and a technology like Open Claw start
to merge, that's what it's going to feel like.
Synthetic humans that are just part of your team.
It's just then I think even companies like Mac or Micro one
are already using that, especially in like the
recruitment industry and it's really amazing to see.
But like, what industries do you think will be the most disrupted
by AI, you know, or would I say in terms of the speed, yeah,
which ones will be the most disrupted and which ones will be
the most resilient? There is nowhere to hide.
Every industry will be disrupted, so there's.
Going. To be just yeah, every industry
will be disrupted, every role will be changed, whether you're
ACEO or a frontline worker, right.
AI will change the way you do your work for sure.
Now are they going to be some areas which will be changed more
than others or more quickly than others?
Sure. You know, one that's often
chosen as accountancy. Accountancy may fall to
automation much more quickly if it's the basics of accounting.
Yeah, it's coming for you. I'm sorry if it's the broader
thinking and, you know, the oversight stuff that still needs
to be human in the loop. But the things that will go
slower, probably the regulated industries.
So things that are heavy, heavily regulated healthcare,
you know, that's which ironically is the place where it
can probably help the most. But we're going to have to have
that discussion as a as a society, as a culture of how
quickly do we want to have AI come into these parts of our
lives? Education is another one.
Lots of unions, lots of regulation.
And quite rightly so. You don't experiment on our
children. But there's so much that we
could do differently and better by bringing AI into education,
into healthcare. I just hope it happens sooner
than than I actually anticipate. Sooner than later?
Well, should people be worried about job loss or excited about
new opportunities? Yes.
So there will of course be some job losses if you're able to
make your teams more effective. Maybe you needed ten people
before, maybe you only need 7 now.
This is all going to come down to the conversation we had about
30 minutes ago about 20th century versus 1st century
thinking. If you're in that, if your
leadership team is in that 20th century mindset, let's cut
costs, let's use AI to displace headcount, yeah, that's going to
lose some jobs. If they're able to make the leap
to 21st century thinking and instead use AI to amplify the
people that they have and recognize that the people they
have are actually the biggest differentiation they have in
their brand, then yes, then I think we can see more excitement
about those new opportunities and less worry about job loss.
But it's going to come down to leadership teams and their
vision or lack of it. All right, interesting.
So what does the AI native company of the future look like?
It's probably 5 savvy people who have figured out how to harness
the power of AI to build entire teams of digital agents that are
well directed, well organized, and they're building a new
business that you to do something you could not do
before or at a price point you could not do before.
And they're probably developing a new business model which
undercuts everybody that they're competing with.
I think that's what an AI native company looks like.
They're small, they're lean, and because they are scaling
themselves with digital technology, with digital
employees, AI agents, they're not only the Internet helped
companies to appear bigger than they really were online, right?
And and then play on the global stage.
AI native companies will act and have an impact that is bigger
than the number of employees they have because you've maybe
got five people who are amplifying themselves to act
like 50,000. That's the opportunity for an AI
native company starting today. Interested.
You know, I did have a webinar earlier today with a cyber
security expert in your neck of the weeds And she, she, she, she
was asking me to explain to the audience what is an AI agent or,
or what does an AI agent feel like?
And then, you know, I said, think about yourself as a
professional being amplified and working with 1000 or a million
other professionals like yourself who can work faster
than you. And I think you're aligned with
that narrative. It's interesting.
It's interesting to see. But let's talk about leadership
and responsibility. What does leadership look like
in the age of AII? Mean great change management.
I love what Simon Sinek says. His definition of leaders said
leaders need only one thing, followers.
That's it. That's what defines a leader is
if people follow you. And so I think what I've talked
about with the people I coach who are leaders is that they
need to show up in a different way.
Now they leaders get to the position they're in because
they've been around the block a few times, right?
They know where the bodies are buried.
They know how to get stuff done. They just have lots of
experience and knowledge that they've accrued over decades
now. And and that's given them this
identity as a sage, right? They know a lot of things in the
era of AI. We are figuring this stuff out
as we go, right? Leaders are operating by the
seat of their pants these days and they're figuring out because
AI is moving so quickly and there are, there are not many
great examples of AI first companies out there yet where
they can identify what they need to do.
So very often they're going to be making it up as they go
along. Now that is a very different
identity as a leader. I'm no longer the sage who knows
everything. I'm now the leader who says, you
know what? I don't have all the answers,
but I'm going to lead you anyway and we're going to figure this.
Out without a map, not the gates without a.
Map you may have a compass, you know, but because and and you're
going to use your experience still, but you have to be much
more humble and say, I don't know the answers.
I'm going to we're going to figure this out together as a
team. And so it's an identity as a
philosopher explorer, a thoughtful explorer that leads
people to, you know, a better place.
And it means you have to have a strong vision for what you're
trying to build and get people excited about that so they will
follow you into an exciting imagined future.
That's that's the big difference.
All right, I love that. I love that.
But you know, how do the leaders balance Peed with responsibility
when deploying AI? I'm not an advocate for move
fast and break things. Especially when you're working
with AI, you need to be responsible.
Responsible means is the data I've got something that I have
the rights to? Am I honouring people's privacy
appropriately? Is there bias inherent in my
data, which when I train an AI will mean that my AI is biased
in a way that doesn't represent our brand?
Are we building this safely? Have we trained everybody to
bring them along for this, for this ride?
So there's a lot, a lot of aspects or dimensions of
responsible AI. You need to go as fast as you
can while being responsible because if you're not, you'll
trip over your feet and you'll end up going slower because
you've got to go and go back and clean up all the mess you made
by not being responsible because it will come and bite you in the
butt. Amazing.
And you know with responsibility
also comes ethics, right? So what?
Ethical lines should never be crossed, no matter how powerful
AI becomes. I don't think there's anything
particularly different about AII mean the ethics that you would
stick by. Whatever business you're in,
whatever technology you're using, you should still stick
with AI does let you surveil your customers at scale.
So you know, should you be using sensors and cameras to do deep
surveillance on your customers using AI?
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
So that one of the things I talk about in my book is the 2 by two
matrix of things you can do and things you can't do and things
you should do and things you shouldn't do.
And I think the biggest challenge for leaders is when
you get empowered with AI, there'll be a lot of things that
you can do now that you couldn't do before, but should you do
them? And if you shouldn't do them,
but you can do them, that's the box which says resist temptation
in big flashing letters. Because this is about continuing
to build long term value for your brand, whether that's your
personal brand or your company's brand.
If you make decisions that violate that, you will destroy
that brand value and a heartbeat.
There's a whole chapter on responsibility and ethics in my
book. Can encourage any leader to
check it out because there's a lot to think about.
Oh wow, amazing. And he, he, you know something.
When I look at the demographics of this forecast, the the
highest population in terms of the age group are those between
the ages of 28 to 34 and the ages of 35 to 44.
That forms about 50% of the population of the people who
listen to this podcast. And I'd like for you to provide
advice to these young entrepreneurs and professionals.
How should they position themselves for the next decade?
Find a big problem that you're passionate about solving and
solve it with AI. Become an AI native company.
Support AI at the heart of your business from day one, and
figure out how to show up in the world and behave like, you know,
a giant enterprise because you're using AI and using that
to scale the talent that you bring.
So be fearless, be bold, have a big vision, and figure out how
you can solve a problem for people using technology in a way
that no one's doing before, or in a way that's significantly
better than anybody has thought to do before.
Perhaps because you have a different business model, but
that's the advice I give people. So you need to become super AI
savvy. Doesn't mean you need to know
how to build it, but you need to know what the possibilities are
to fuel that vision and then go and make a difference in the
world. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
So, speaking about your personal edge, what beliefs about the
future do you hold that most people disagree with?
Well, that's a tough one. That's a very tough one.
I mean, there's some simple little ones like I think, I
think robots are coming a lot faster than most people do.
Even some futurists will tell you, oh, we're not going to get
a robots in the home for another decade.
I think it's going to come much quicker than that.
What's the belief about the future that most people disagree
with? And I suppose the majority of
people at the moment are pretty negative about the future.
They're worried about a pretty dystopian future, perhaps
because they've seen too many Hollywood movies or they just
turned on the news. Because then the news, the news
isn't much fun to watch these days.
See What sci-fi? I'm very.
Yeah. Well, most sci-fi is dystopian
because if if the Terminator had dropped through a hole in the
future and then just shook everybody's hand and said,
hello, nice to meet you, and wasn't a killing machine going
after Sarah Connor, it would be a very boring movie.
So you have to know that Hollywood has skewed things
somewhat because it makes for a much more interesting couple of
hours in the movie theater. But I'm very positive about the
future. I think the opportunity with a
is to perhaps move us into a third stage of humanity, Stage
1, survival, subsistence farming.
Just want to try and get through till tomorrow.
Phase 2, the era of work, right? As an economy, we're all
creating value, we're exchanging value.
We all work hard. We maybe get a bit of retirement
to the end of our lives. Stage 3, If we can get it right,
work becomes optional. We get to liberate ourselves to
focus on the things that truly make us happy.
And for some people, that will be still working in some regard,
taking care of people or inventing things, whatever it
might be. For others, it'll be creating
great works of art, exploring the universe, discovering more
about science, whatever your thing might be.
And so that's what I'm excited about, is getting to that third
phase of humanity where we all focus on acts of service,
whether that's for other people or for exploring the universe.
Interesting active service and words of affirmation.
So we're going to focus it on our love languages.
That's just sort of like to do so.
What has been your biggest personal shift as you have
worked with AI? Biggest personal shift, I
suppose when I figured out that AI is not just a tool that it
is, we should start thinking about it as a as a collaborator,
as an opportunity to amplify what we do and to start treating
it with some respect. I mean, sure, they're machines,
but they're growing to the point now where they already feel like
people. And I think that's going to
become more and more the case. So that's been a big shift for
me is just the sort of the way I frame thinking about AI is not
just a dumb tool in a box now, but there's, it's almost like
we've captured some kind of magic and put it in a bottle.
And that's that opens up opportunities for me because my
expectations of AI have gone up exponentially as a result.
I totally agree with you. And you know, it's amazing, you
know, how like the level of respect that I have for AI grows
exponentially as time goes on because it's really amazing that
the learning capabilities are basically.
And of course, I feel like if you are a person who is a
lifelong learner by attitude, you would definitely would, I
say, develop that respect for for for this kind of a tool.
And, you know, Speaking of respect, like me, I respect your
body of work. And of course, I'm like really,
really grateful having that opportunity to speak with you
today. Thanks, man.
So you're welcome. And you know, towards the end,
we usually put our guests in the quick fire round and that's five
questions. OK.
Before I put you through the quick fire round right, we have
a tradition. At the end of the podcast you
tell me two guests you would like to see other podcasts, 1
you would invite yourself and one I should invite myself.
So who would you like to see on the podcast?
Two names. My name is.
Partner in Crime? Yeah, I've got one that
immediately came to mind. Brian David Johnson, when I was
at Intel, working Intel labs as a futurist.
He was the other futurist. He was the first futurist.
I was #2 He's a really interesting dude.
He's well worth chatting with. And he's got a he comes up from
a design standpoint, I come at it from a technology standpoint.
So he's different in the way he looks at things, but he's a
really great human being. Oh wow amazing, So I think I
should I should send him would I say a connection request on
LinkedIn and you'll do your thing?
So who should I invite? Yeah, or you e-mail me and I'll
connect you to him. Who should you invite?
I mean, do I get to vote for Brian David Johnson twice?
OK, OK, amazing that is. He's not just amazing, it means
he's a super amazing guest. So shout out to him.
We hope you see this. Yeah, we will keep this and
ensure that you see this. Wow.
So there we go and press into the Creek fire.
Round five questions, quick answers.
So #1 is AI will create more jobs or eliminate more jobs?
In the short term, it'll create more jobs.
In the long term I think it will eliminate more jobs, but at that
point things will be much cheaper.
We'll we'll be rewiring society and it'll be OK.
Interesting take it so #2 what is 1 AI tool everyone should try
right now? There's so many.
I mean, personally, I like Gemini.
It's so flexible. Well, yeah, I.
Used ChatGPT. Mostly, well, yeah, I worked at
Google. But what I was going to say is I
use ChatGPT most of the time. That's my go to day-to-day.
But I like Gemini more and more and I'm starting to move more to
Gemini just because it's more flexible.
I can create video, it's got nano bananas.
It creates better images now. So I'm starting to move that
way, if I had to pick one. But Lovable's great.
Suno's great for making music. There's so many.
You know, it's interesting. I was telling somebody something
I think last week that last year I was primarily using charity,
but I don't understand, it feels like Gemini just came from
behind and just like sort of overtook charity because the,
the level of improvements that I'm seeing on Gemini, I'm like,
oh, this thing is on steroids. This thing, you know, it's on
PEDs, you know, performance enhancing drugs.
That that's just what I'll say. You know, I'm not paid by, I'm
not paid by Google or open AI. But I just have to say the
truth, right? Gemini has made massive, massive
improvements in like very recent time.
And you know, I'm happy with it. So #4 What is the biggest
mistake that founders make with AI?
Probably thinking it's a tool and not recognizing it as an
amplifier and a Co worker. That's the big one.
It's the it's the framing. They're not thinking about it
the right way. Interesting, so #4 what is 1
skill that will dominate the next decade?
Entrepreneurialism. AI is a creates a lot of
opportunity for frustrated entrepreneurs who were not able
to get funding, not able to build what they what their
vision was, because AI makes it so much easier to do both.
It helps you build value very quickly, to scale very quickly,
and it also unlocks funding for you.
Yeah, very, very cheap. And of course the last one is in
one sentence. The future belongs to who?
The future belongs to people. That's as simple as it.
And that's how I end all my keynotes.
I explained this dramatic landscape of change.
And at the end of it, my closing line is the future is still
human, assuming that we all decide to make it.
So if we do this right, we're going to we're going to amplify
humanity. We're going to liberate people
and free people up to do more of the things that they enjoy
doing. One of the things that AI could
do is it's it's very deflationary.
It could drop the cost because the most of the cost of goods
and services is labor. If you remove labor from that
equation, then things get much cheaper and much more accessible
to all of us. Elon Musk talks about universal
high income. We could get to a point where
we're all living like kings and that could happen quite quickly
if we get this right. Amazing, amazing tape.
And of course, you know, for those people who want to learn
more about your body of work and explore ways to collaborate with
you, where is the best place to connect with you?
You just want to find me is my website Steve Brown dot AI.
You can find me on LinkedIn. There are many Steve Browns.
I do not have a very unique name, so look for Steve Brown,
AI Futurist, or you can go to linkedin.com/IN/future Steve and
that's how you'll find me. And the third way, check out my
book. I wrote this for leaders who
need help figuring out this AI transformation thing.
It's written in plain language, straightforward, and it walks
you through with recipes on how to do AI transformation and how
to maintain relevance and thrive in the AI era.
So I hope you'll enjoy it. Amazing SLR.
I hope the book is available on Amazon.
Can we have the Amazon link in the description?
Oh yeah, I'll get that to you. No worries.
OK, OK, amazing. So I always say this when a
person shares their time with you, they share their life with
you because the SI unit for measuring life this time and of
course gratitude is good attitude.
So for me to you. It's a great way to put it.
And respect, thank you very much for for sharing your time on
your life today. Thanks man, I really enjoyed
that. That was great fun.
I really enjoyed chatting with you.
Thanks for having. Me OK, thank you very much and
of course to the audience, you know what to do guys like
subscribe, share with your network and of course always go
for something in your lives right and see believe strata
pride and go achieve. Till next time it's bye and of
course from Steve Brown, it's a goodbye as well.
Take care guys.