SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Welcome to Digitally Curious, a podcast to help you navigate the future of AI and beyond. Your host is world-renowned futurist and author of Digitally Curious, Andrew Grill.

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

Welcome to a very special episode of Digitally Curious. Today we're joined by the team from the Somewhere on Earth podcast for a pod swap. I'll let host Gareth Mitchell explain more.

SPEAKER_01: 0:26

Hello folks, it's Gareth. Welcome along to Somewhere on Earth. It is Tuesday, the 14th of October, 2025, and we're in London. And guess what? We have a special co-production for you.

SPEAKER_00: 0:37

I'm Andrew Gruhl, and I'm from Digitally Curious. Stay tuned.

SPEAKER_01: 0:47

There you go. So you're going to hear more from Andrew as we go along, folks. Also with us is Ghelen Boddington. You all know who Glenn is by now. So Ghlen, um usually I'd say hello, how are you? But how about a much more searching question? Are you digitally curious?

SPEAKER_03: 1:02

Oh yes, I'm digitally curious and I have been for many decades. And my fascination, of course, is um this balance, the constant questions in my head every day about the balance between what the digital can do to complement and enhance us humans and our lives. So there's my curiosity all the time going on.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25

So coming up today. Welcome to the Somewhere on Earth Podcast. And welcome to Digitally Curious. Yes, folks, two fabulous tech-centred podcasts have joined forces for this special edition at what we in the trade call pod swap. At Somewhere on Earth, our take on tech is to dig out, you know, those unloved tech stories from around the world and we talk about how they affect people's lives. How about you, Andrew?

SPEAKER_00: 1:55

Well, on Duty Curious, we provide anyone who is curious about technology with some actionable advice for the near-term future.

SPEAKER_01: 2:02

So in this edition, AI really it's not the future anymore, is it? It's here. So how is it changing the way that we all think about the technology, you know, in a really practical, down-to-earth way? You know, big picture, but also down-to-earth. So whether you're a big business or an everyday curious amateur like me, what does it mean?

SPEAKER_00: 2:22

We're also going to examine the impact of AI on society and how we can live with it rather than have it take over our lives.

SPEAKER_01: 2:28

Yeah, so that's all right here on the Somewhere on Earth and Digitally Curious Podcasts. Right then, so let's get to know each other a little better. Now at the top, we've already given a kind of one-sentence outline of our podcast. So, Andrew, um, our Somewhere on Earth listeners may not have heard Digitally Curious so far. I'm sure some of them have, because if they download digital podcasts, they've probably found yours. But for those who haven't, what's your origin story and why do you think the world needs your podcast?

SPEAKER_00: 3:02

Really good question, Gareth, and thanks for having me on the pod swap. I've never been on a pod swap, so this is the first for me. But Digitally Curious started because I noticed a massive gap in boardrooms and businesses between the excitement around these emerging technologies and actually knowing what to do with them. I spent decades working with Fortune 500 companies, and there's a pattern where everyone knows about AI, quantum. They know it's important, but they're paralyzed by not knowing where to start or importantly, how to make it practical. So my podcast bridges that gap. It's actionable futurism, not just fascinating speculation, but real-world guidance on how to prepare for and implement what's coming next. So, Gareth, for my listeners' benefit, how about Somewhere on Earth? How did you get started?

SPEAKER_01: 3:45

Yeah, sure. So hello, digitally curious listeners. Thanks for having us, by the way. So, yeah, our kind of origin story is that uh a while back we were a technology program on the BBC World Service called Digital Planet, and we ran for many years, and then that show ended. And then because we loved doing it and we loved our listeners, we took it outside the BBC, and here we are, uh somewhere on Earth. And uh I suppose the clue in many ways is in the name. You know, we are interested in those sort of global technology stories like anybody else. Of course, we're going to look at what's going on with the usual suspects in Silicon Valley and um, you know, all the biggest of tech headlines. But we also like to do those stories that perhaps uh many other tech podcasts might um might gloss over, so they could be stories to do with oh I like anything. But you know, digital literacy, for instance, or any kind of literacy or technology helping in vaccine rollouts in the global south. Um so yeah, we like to think about technology and think about it in a global context. And I guess actually, but one thing we definitely have in common on our podcast, Andrew, is you know, you talk there about yes, you do some bigger picture stuff, but you really want to get into how this stuff affects people's lives. And that's very much our tagline as well. We can talk about it, but how is this stuff affecting our lives? So that's uh who we are as well. And um, Ghlen's been with us for years and years. Have I said it all, Ghlen, or did I miss anything? Is there anything you want to tell, tell the podosphere about who we are, what we do, and why we do it?

SPEAKER_03: 5:15

No, I think that's great. I think what has been really good coming into somewhere on earth from the BBC podcast is of course we've worked together as a team a lot. We really enjoy working together, and we've brought a whole load of network contacts with us who are continuing to move forward with us and listeners too. So it's very positive community.

SPEAKER_01: 5:34

Yeah, absolutely. And it's quite good to, I suppose, think about what differentiates our various approaches to talking about technology. And listening to I've listened to a load of your auditions now, Andrew, on digitly curious, and you have quite a business focus, don't you?

SPEAKER_00: 5:48

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I've been in business for a long time, but uh I'm also a public speaker. The wonderful serendipity of having us all on the show today. So Ghlaine and I keep bumping into each other at these AI and technology events, and uh it was just fantastic to have that sort of synergy there. But I've been asking the question of digital curiosity for some time. I'm a public speaker, not just a podcaster. And what I do, I bound onto stage, and rather than saying it's great to be here and wherever, I ask a cold open, I say, Are you digitally curious? And the audience looks at me and says, What's going on here? And then I I play a game. So I'm very keen to understand how digitally curious my audience is. But when it comes to the podcast and my approach, I think what sets my approach apart is that I come from the technology side uh with that business implementation rather than just the innovation side. I'm not just talking about what's possible, but what's practical. How do we actually make this work? I've been in those corporate meetings where someone says we need to quote, do AI. Everyone nods, but no one actually knows what it means for their business and where to start. So I start and I focus on translating future possibilities into action plans for this week and next. How about you, Gulen, then?

SPEAKER_03: 6:57

Yeah, I think I'm I think I'm working more on the multiple little niche innovations and how across the last decades they've kind of clustered and become um collective in their impact over time. So my background is actually arts and humanities and particularly dance and performing arts. And um, I spent a couple of decades as a creative studio director doing participatory public projects involving telepresence and sensors and early digital interactions of all types. It's all now known as immersive experiences in today's world. So I was in the early pioneer waves of the immersive experience sector. And I guess my knowledge base coming from dance as well is really much about how humans behave with the technological tools. So today I am mainly working as a researcher, thought leader, do a lot of speaking and consulting and conferences and gatherings around the world. What I'm really doing is putting out there and exploring, creating debates in a wide variety of sectors about the future of us as humans and how we will work positively and what is possibly negative for us as humans about today's technologies.

SPEAKER_01: 8:08

Nicely put, folks. Um, so I suppose just widen this out a little bit then, you know, the global perspectives that uh that we both have uh on our podcasts and that we bring to our audiences. And um, you know, Andrew, if we could come back to you, often speaking to enterprise audiences, so how do you feel that all these different insights, you know, some global insights, how do they complement each other and tell a story for the digitally curious?

SPEAKER_00: 8:33

What I've found is that enterprise adoption often follows the global trends, and AI is certainly the top of that at the moment, but there's a lag and a lot more due diligence. When I'm working with multinationals, I'm constantly drawing on examples from different markets, what's working in Singapore, with say smart city initiatives and how Nordic countries are handling AI, AI ethics and those sort of things. Or how Japanese companies are integrating AI into manufacturing. The global perspective prevents you from getting trapped in your own markets' assumptions, whilst enterprise insights show what actually scales, what doesn't, and who's willing to pay for it.

SPEAKER_01: 9:04

Yeah, and I can imagine there's some fascinating sort of cultural aspects there as well when you think about different different business practices between, for instance, Singapore or Japan or Europe and what have you. Um, Galen, how about you? Where does the global perspective come in?

SPEAKER_03: 9:17

Yes, I think for me, the fascinating side of that, um of a global side, is actually seeing the effect that um different cultures and religions, different politics in different countries have on how our digital technologies are coming into use today. I mean, I'm very interested also in the difference between cities and rural environments and what what the access points are. And of course, a lot of that ends up being about the ethics, for example, how our biometrics are being used in digital identity around the world, um, which is really topical focus, because I'm working with the body, that's a big part of my work. Um, how people use technologies to support their lives, or how technologies are being used to negate or misuse people, yes. So I think we need to constantly remind ourselves over so many people still don't even have digital access at all. I think it's pretty much three billion people, it's not that far under half the world, don't actually have the infrastructure or data access or skills there. Um consequently, I'm fascinated by with Somewhere on Earth and the other work I do, being able to delve into those different global perspectives from different countries where we are at different points in time.

SPEAKER_01: 10:27

All right, so I think that sets things up beautifully. But just in a final few words then, give us the the elevator pitch here, Andrew. Um why why should our audience now um switch to not switch to um compliment the somewhere on earth listening with Digitally Curious? Uh why would they do that?

SPEAKER_00: 10:45

I think they actually fit well together. If you're listening to somewhere on earth, you should be listening to Digitally Curious and vice versa. Uh but I suppose if I was to uh give you the pitch, in fact, Digitally Curious isn't just a podcast. Uh it spawned a book. So if you like what you've heard, you can buy the book. Um but if you're curious about technology and frustrated by either overly technical jargon, who isn't, or pie in the sky futurism, digitally curious is for you. If you're running a business, working in one, or just trying to understand how these changes affect your life, I and my guests break down complex tech trends into practical insights. And my guests range from AI researchers to retail executives to academics. They're all focused on one question. How are we able to turn digital possibilities into real-world benefits?

SPEAKER_01: 11:26

And I think similar um benefits uh for your listeners, if they'd like to, Andrew, to coming to Somewhere on Earth. You know, we we like to be grounded, uh, we like you to go away with something a little bit tangible that um, you know, you can reflect on. And um we don't have a book, but we like to think we have a splendid listener community, and we'd like to include the voice of our audience whenever we can as well. So you'll be with friends um if you join us here on Somewhere on Earth. Okie dokie, now um, I'm very interested in like the tone of AI discussions. And it's partly because I have a background in science communication, so I think a lot about the way that messages are framed, about how discussions are are framed and uh given a context. So we talk so much about AI, don't we? But I I'm gonna put it to you, Andrew, and Galen will have a view as well, that the tone of the discussion around AI, I think it has shifted even in the last year. And I wonder if that's your experience as well, Andrew.

SPEAKER_00: 12:38

The thing is, AI's not new. Uh only two weeks ago was the fifth was not the fifties, was the 75th anniversary of when Dr. Alan Schoing wrote his white paper, Consume Computer, Machinery, and Intelligence. And the first line of that research paper asked the question, can machines think? So we've been asking that question for 75 years. Only nearly three years ago when Chat GPT bounded onto the stage, was everyone then able to remove the friction and start playing with an AI tool? So it's it's fascinating. I'm on LinkedIn a lot, and you see people that were social media experts, then they were cryptocurrency experts, then metaverse experts, and now they're AI experts because that's the flavor of the month. And they all tell us that we're all going to be out of jobs and everything's gonna change and the world will change. The world will change, but not as fast as some of these air quotes experts expect. I'm in the trenches every day. I've done probably since ChatGPT came out, 200 talks around the world. I'm speaking to real-world companies that are saying, we can't change overnight. We have policies and processes and shareholders, and it's gonna be very hard for us to change very quickly. And then it's amplified around the world. So what I'm finding is you're reading about AI changing the world, but actually it's gonna change quite slowly. A year ago, every conversation started with AI will change everything. Now it's AI is changing everything, and he's specifically how we've moved from theory to now implementation. But again, if you read a LinkedIn feed or read the news, a lot of surveys are saying AI projects aren't working. And here's the secret a dirty little secret. Why they're not working is basically people have run into them, they haven't thought about reimagining the business processes that are currently broken, and they're trying to fit this very smart technology on top of an overly broken human process. And so that's what's not happening. And everyone wants to know ROI, and the other thing I talk about when you talk about return on investment is the way we measure return on investment today with technology investments is actually very different to how we'll measure it in the future. So it's very confusing. And I think what your podcast and my podcast are trying to do is peel back those onion layers and make sense and say, what do I really need to understand and what's important now?

SPEAKER_01: 14:43

Yeah, and of course, you know, there's the monetary capital, monetary return, but then the kind of social value as well, you know. So um, wow, um, Glenn, because you're interested in in education amongst many things, aren't you?

SPEAKER_03: 14:56

Yes, I am. I've um education access. I I work in universities a lot. I'm at the University of Greenwich as a senior researcher and uh do a lot of my work out from that. It's part-time, so I can take it out into public engagement. Um, but I've really been interested in the shifts and the debates within the university sector and in education as a whole about the shifts in um the we're gonna we're going through it in how we teach and how we learn. Yeah. And I think it's um it's going to be a massive shift. I mean, really incredible shift. Um, and of course, some educationalists are battling with that, but there's a lot of very good debate going on about it as well through the university systems and different um academics finding different ways to use it, students adding into that and complementing it. I really agree with Andrew, though, it does take much longer than we all think. Yeah. Um I was very early working with telepresence um with stage, remote stage connectivity from the from the early to mid-90s, linking up dance stages actually with full-bodied Zoom, really. Um, and of course, you know, the three, three or four hundred of us that were working on that in the 90s across across the world, we all thought that it was going to be coming really soon. Everybody would be doing this kind of communication, and definitely by the year 2000. But in fact, as we know, it's it took um a lockdown and COVID and people having to use it that actually, you know, pushed that out to into mass usage. And we can see the same with um many other things like Avatar creation. Andrew's right, until it actually hits the shelves and it's there for mass use, yeah, it's very hard to get anything moving that fast. We we see technology as this very fast-moving thing, but I think if you're in it like every day like we are, it's not. It's actually quite slow to get itself going. Um, even if every day there is some kind of mythical or spectacular new headline around another shift in AI or whatever. So very right about the the the what comes out on LinkedIn. I think people are grasping around for for new stuff actually. And um, finally we're seeing a lot more about trust and and transparency and um the words that link into governance but which are coming from a more human base. I was surprised that didn't get there earlier, but we're we're getting there now on some of those debates.

SPEAKER_01: 17:16

So, Andrew, what surprised you about how people are actually implementing AI day to day?

SPEAKER_00: 17:22

Well, they've all played with it. Four years ago, if I was doing an AI talk, it'd be very hard for me to demonstrate how it actually works. But now that we've got ChatGPT and other genitive AI tools, if you can send a text message, you can engage an AI platform. So everyone's at least played with it. But often people haven't found it very useful. They haven't had what I call the aha moment. I'll give you a really simple example. Uh a few months ago, I was up in uh Newcastle talking to a family-run business that provide industrial tools and and uh things like that. Um and I I showed them something quite simple. They before I met with them, I said, Can you send me some more information about your company, what your challenges are? They said, We've just done a SWOT analysis on the whole company. 17 departments. We'll send you an Excel worksheet. It had 17,000 cells and about 6,000 rows. It was an incredibly large document. I put into an AI tool and I said, What are the opportunities for AI for this company given this SWOT analysis? And in two minutes, it basically spat out department by department, what they can do. In the meeting, I said, Can I ask who was responsible for doing the SWOT analysis? And Chris put his hand up. I said, How long did it take you to analyze this? He said, It took me 10 days. So I shocked him. I said, Well, while I was ironing my shirt this morning to come here, I put this into the AI tool, and in two minutes, and then to test it, we spent the next two hours going through department by department, what the AI had suggested we could do, and they went, Oh, hadn't thought about that, hadn't thought about that, hadn't thought about that. So it actually was telling the right thing. Now, it even surprised me that from a very little, uh very small prompt to an XOR spreadsheet, that was an aha moment. And the CEO, who I was told before I got there, was a complete skeptic. I had him at the coffee break, he had nine or ten pages of notes, and he said, We've got to do this. You need to have that aha moment where you go, I didn't know it could do that. And so what I spend my life doing on the podcast and in front of corporates is bringing them to becoming digitally curious, to trying that at that senior level, and then that then the sparks fly.

SPEAKER_01: 19:15

The first time um yeah, Chat GPT did a spreadsheet for me, I was like, that I think that was an aha moment for me. Like, wow, does spreadsheets as well, my goodness. Um, yeah, Galen.

SPEAKER_03: 19:25

Yes, no, and I think that for me links into um the debate about kind of a derobotization of humans, which we've been caught in for the last 20, 30 years, where you know a lot a lot of people out there suddenly ended up just gradually, but ended up as jobs where they were literally just robots putting data into into cells, like you're saying, and spending 10 days analysing data, yeah. And that's not that's not the good use of the human brain at all. It's not good use of someone's life, yeah. And um, and um, so I think it's great the day-to-day data um is kind of being pushed out the way for us and dealt with by this special tool that can analyse and do the analytics so fast for us. I think also it's interesting that we take it to an individual basis, getting help and advice and guidance. What we are seeing coming out from the facts are that ChatGPT and various other chat tools in AI are being used massively by individuals for mental health, for relationship health, for just advice before they go into a difficult scenario, whether it's a home one or a work one, yeah. And um I read something about two days ago that said that suddenly they've realized in the travel industry that most young people are doing all their travel s on these chat uh interfaces because they can do special personalised itinerary creations much faster than they're going to get through a travel agency. So we're seeing a very different kind of uses be being uptake at a very fast level where people go, Oh, I know, I'll just go there and get that sorted. I just did a travel list of packing because I'm just off to Brazil next week for a set of talks and conference things. And because I haven't been very well, I just did my travel and I'm like, oh, I'm doing this again. This is so much easier. I put the itinerary in, the weather, the where I was going, what what do I need? You know, and it's just come out the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01: 21:22

Yeah, but buyer beware, folks, that the technology doesn't actually pack your suitcase for you.

SPEAKER_03: 21:26

No, I wish it did.

SPEAKER_01: 21:28

Well, give it time, give it time. Um but but I guess you know, in all seriousness, what you're talking about there, Gillette, is is a form of digital literacy that is emerging. And Andrew's just given that example about going into businesses and saying, hey, you know, you could just crank out a spreadsheet in two minutes, and that's going to really help your business. So and I think all of us and and businesses are on different sort of stages, I suppose, of digital or I should say AI literacy. But Andrew, that surely places some very big responsibilities as this AI literacy emerges. Um big responsibilities on communicators and and educators, people like you, I guess.

SPEAKER_00: 22:07

Absolutely. And so what I'm seeing is that the leaders are actually saying in an organization, we're going to bring everyone up to the same speed, the same speed, the same level of AI literacy, because all these things get bandied around. So the leading companies I'm seeing, they're putting everyone through a basic level of training, they're putting the executives through day, sometimes multi-day level training to get them to that level. It's not just about prompt engineering, it's about bringing them to those wow moments when they go, I didn't know we could do that. This is how we're going to actually automate a really boring part of the process we're doing. Um, and that comes back to education as well. What alarms me a bit, I'm hearing time after time that school and university students are seeing AI as cheating because their teachers are saying, don't use it or you're cheating. I think they're missing out because then they come into the workforce and they say, Oh, we haven't used AI much because it we've been told it's cheating. Um I use a spell checker, that's not cheating. I draft um second drafts of my emails and those sort of things with AI, that's not cheating. I'm using all the resources that are available to me. So what worries me is some of us are uh itching for a level of AI literacy and I'm reading all the things that I can. Others are holding back because they think they're not ready for it yet, and that that concerns me.

SPEAKER_01: 23:19

What about you, Galen? I'm thinking about the generational side of things. It's the usual trope in force this time that it's the young people who get it and the old people who are still, or the older people who are struggling, or no, not necessarily, says Glenn.

SPEAKER_03: 23:32

Necessarily, because it, you know, however much we say it, it is slower than we want it to be, or feel it actually is changing day to day. And um, if you uh follow the whole area of prompt engineering, for example, we know that that will look what we're doing today is actually quite naive and quite inefficient. Um and that will change rapidly in the next few years with different tools coming out that need different ways of prompting to actually be more conversational with you alongside you, your code companion kind of side. And I think in definitely in my university in Greenwich, and many now, not all of them, Andrew's right, and schools are probably struggling a bit more, but we have a very clear um uh AI uh use guidance now. And students, students, staff, and researchers are allowed to use AI and a certain rule, some simple rules, but you have to you basically you have to do documentation to prove what you used it for, and you have to be able to produce your prompts and the pr and the printouts, and you can use it as a resource and source alongside it. So um, and I think that we are particularly in design and the humanities area, that's also been quite ahead in using AI anyway, in music, in design, in animation, etc. These are quite often. I mean, for me, I've been working with generative AI since the mid-90s, yeah, in terms of audiovisual work, yeah. In various, you know, we called it advanced machine learning, yeah, but basically that it's generative AI now, yeah. Um, so I think that say for an young animator, it it's at the base of all of six or seven softwares that they are learning, and they have to have those skills. Andrew's absolutely right to go out into the workplace and say, yes, I do have these skills behind me. So to the young marketing lot and the advertising, young advertiser, creative advertising. So we're seeing it shift. It is redefining how we learn and how we're creating and how we're teaching and exchanging, but that's going to continue to shift. Um, and I think there's some core skills that we will always retain as humans alongside AI, which include reasoning, critical reflection, um, the wisdom that humans can add to it. Yeah, it's it's about it's about togetherness, really.

SPEAKER_01: 25:48

Yeah, exactly. It's not like AI substituting us, and that's always been your line. Gilem, every time you know, right years ago we were talking about this, and you always said that, you know, it's a collaborative thing between the the human and the machine. Um, and I really love what you were saying there about um the the guidelines at your university. We have similar ones uh at the university where I work, about transparency, really what we're talking about. You know, show us your prompts, show us the outputs, show us how you and the um AI at the chatbot got to this particular um outcome. And I think inculcating that accountability and transparency at the educational level is just one of many good practices that um learners can take with them out into the world, into which, of course, they'll be going into careers where they're going to be using these tools, so they may as well have been using them while they were at college. Um, Glenn, while you have the floor, I want to go now to more towards the body as well. You know, this is very much your work. The body in the digital, it's a lovely phrase. Tell me about how that whole idea, the body in the digital, applies to um AI-driven creativity and interaction.

SPEAKER_03: 26:59

Well, it's been an interesting um journey for me because coming from dance background and the body side, of course, that is my first concern is the living body, and I that's what I love is us as living beings and presence and you know, our our heartbeats, our sweating, our emotions, everything. That's the important bit, yeah, for me of life, you know, life together and and meeting and connecting with people. So I've been working really since the early 90s, looking at how the digital technologies that we were building were going to interface with that in a virtual physical blending way. That's been my core work. And um, and I think that really looking at how we build trust and intimacy and into that connectivity, yeah. So it's been complicated because in the 90s it was, I think people thought I was a bit mad, yeah. Maverick, very maverick, and it was quite ignored in in many sectors. But in fact, it's come right through to the forefront. And I I'm glad I stuck to my beliefs because of course it's right there with HealthCheck, with the whole areas of the um telepresence, the way that we build up is connectivity across the world. So, so um I'm mainly looking at that, how we represent ourselves as digital human digital humans out there, and at the moment working on the speculative um research area, which people love talking about, which is what if you had your own digital human twin from birth till death, and what would that mean? And talking a lot with very different sectors, because I work across a whole range of sectors about how would you work with a digital human twin throughout your life that was yours, that was your large language model, which was your your co-creator, and how that would be personalized. I mean, the most obvious example is health, because we all understand that a bit from the fitness sector, how we actually work and start to see our data telling us predictive data, telling us, oh, well, you could try and prevent this if you start now, you know, by cutting down on the nice things like chocolate and wine. But anyway, putting that aside, it's about how we'll learn to work with, and again, going back to that word, co-creator companion, with our digital human equivalents.

SPEAKER_01: 29:13

Yeah. I I certainly don't intend to give up chocolate or wine anytime soon. Uh um, Andrew, you look at this trust gap, don't you? This phrase, the trust gap between humans and machines. So, what kind of attitudes do you see? And I'm I'm interested in how they vary between, for instance, the corporates and um consumers.

SPEAKER_00: 29:32

Well, one thing we're gonna hear a lot more about in 2025 and beyond is the notion of agentic AI or AI agents. And this is where they can autonomously perform things. So Ghlaine was talking about how she's doing a packing list. While we can't have the suitcase packed yet, we could be at a point where the travel uh agent, the AI travel agent, basically books the flight for you and everything else. That's gonna require a lot of trust. So right now I trust an AI agent to book a calendar event, I trust an AI uh agent to To start up a podcast. Do I trust with my bank account just yet to actually pay for the not just yet? And so we need to have a high level of trust between people and machines. And I think that's where we're going to see people really step back and say, I'm not quite ready for that yet. It can do menial tasks, but if you're trusting me with money or a job on those sort of things, and I think consumers are a little bit more open to that. When it comes to corporates, though, GDPR and those sort of things, if you do the wrong thing, you can be fine a lot of money. So I think at the moment people are holding back because they don't trust the machines because they're essentially black boxes. They don't know what input will actually uh generate which output. And that's I think a big issue at the moment.

SPEAKER_01: 30:41

Yeah. Which is probably quite a good thing, isn't it, Andrew? You know, I mean we should probably be reassured that corporates aren't just saying, oh well, we'll just there's an app for that. We'll just throw it at the machine and everything will be okay. You know, a certain amount of things.

SPEAKER_00: 30:52

I think the legal and compliance departments have a lot to say about that.

SPEAKER_01: 30:55

Yeah, I can imagine. Um, like can we keep our jobs? Um, so much food for thought there. But let's kind of get into a bit of a kind of wrapping up phase here, if we may. And I'm just interested, coming back to you, Andrew, about say one upcoming tech development that you are especially curious about, you're digitally curious about.

SPEAKER_00: 31:16

Or remain curious about this notion of agentic AI or AI agents. And they're not just chatbots, they're AI systems that can actually take action on your behalf. So imagine having this AI system that doesn't just answer questions, but books for travel, negotiate with suppliers, manages your calendar and all your life admin by coordinating with other people's AI agents. I think we're on the cusp of a world where AI doesn't just inform decisions but actually implements them. That's both exciting and terribly uh and a little bit uh terrifying as well. I predicted way back in 2018 that one day we'd be marketing to AI agents and marketing to robots. We're getting very close to this today.

SPEAKER_01: 31:51

Oh, they don't call you a futurist for nothing, do they? Um good work, Andrew, on that 2018 prediction. Um Galen, do you have anything to add to that? Anything that you're looking at? I know in in the world of body tech, for instance, it's a huge field. Anything that you're either predicting or curious about or worried about as we uh face the future?

SPEAKER_03: 32:13

Well, I I think I'd you know follow through on that because the digital human twin work I'm doing is entirely around the AI personalized agent, basically. And um I really can see what Andrew's saying there um around the marketing to the AI agents. I can see that discussion starting up in uh in the marketing sector, in the job descriptions, in the how we're gonna write, how we do this copy. What comes up in my research, in the market research groups I do, and the um one-to-one interviews of experts is some very interesting discussions about, but what what if my digital human twin, yeah, actually is talking to your digital human twin and making decisions between them, which neither of us are involved in. Yeah. And um, you know, it becomes more complex than that. You know, I mean, some of the younger one students will say, what if my digital human twin decided to date your digital human twin and didn't tell us, yeah? Or what if my digital human twin carries my biases and takes that through and it uses my bias against your digital human twin? Yeah. So these are very they become very psychologically layered because you basically you're dealing with uh the physical self and the virtual self, which are personalised. The marketing will be highly personalised into those scenarios, and actually all the actions from it can get will get very, very complicated. So I think we've got a lot further to go looking at that trust and transparency side that Andrew's mentioned, and also to make sure that we are getting the psychology, we're going much more into the humanities discussion now about AI. And people for two, three years ago were just batting it off and going, oh well, we don't need you creatives anymore, we don't need the humanities discussion. In fact, it's going to end up, I think, within a year, much more um human-led. What is this going to be? How is this going to be for us humans and how can we make this safe and positive?

SPEAKER_01: 34:09

Yeah, but it has to be front and centre, absolutely. Um, so just before we leave it then, I think we should set our combined listeners to these two podcasts a little bit of homework. So is there any suggested reading or suggested listening from you, Andrew, out of your uh different episodes? Then uh do you have one that, you know, that would be a good gateway into Digitly Curious?

SPEAKER_00: 34:30

I have one favourite, uh, I think because it's a little bit different from just talking about AI, it's from Karen Jacobson, who was the Aussie Karen, the initial first Australian voice for Siri, way before AI cloning happened. And she talks about the day that she had done some voice samples, and then years later, someone called her in the car and said, I've just heard you on my iPhone. And she talks about how that happened. Now it wouldn't happen today because you have voice clones, but she's made a whole career out of that, and it's just a fascinating human meets technology story from the late 90s.

SPEAKER_01: 34:59

Yeah, it's a lovely story. There's a brilliant bit in the podcast where Karen talks about how um her son, who was six at the time, said um it's something like you're in everybody's phone, aren't you, mummy? And and assume that uh everybody else that she was in everybody else's phone or something, you know, it's really brought it home to her. There's a lovely edition, so go go ahead and listen to that. Um, and uh I was gonna say, digitally curious listeners, if you are now curious about somewhere on earth, if you're looking for somewhere to start, you might want to go back to around the middle of the year, maybe a bit earlier, where we uh did a special edition from the Web Summit in Brazil, and we had Brittany Kaiser on the show. Um, so she's of um hashtag own your own data, and um, she was also like a whistleblower around Cambridge Analytica, you know, became quite big, so quite notorious around that. Brilliant speaker. So Brittany's on the show. Um, and also we had uh Roost Edge, um, who were very, very good also on that idea of data ownership and data generation and so on. It was in front of an audience, it was a real vibe, it was really lively, great fun. Um, and that might give you a bit of an idea of what we're into. Let's talk about empathy and understanding. Because Andrew, when these ideas, you know, the nice stuff, empathy and understanding, it bumps up against cold, hard data and corporate algorithms. Does the empathy get lost somewhere along the way?

SPEAKER_00: 36:20

Really good question. I get asked this question probably all the time in my QA, and I'm very fortunate on my podcast that I speak to some of the world experts and thinkers on this. And the two things that my AI expert guests keep telling me is that AI will never be able to feel empathy and love. And some out there may disagree with me, but but work with me here. I have a lovely partner called Carol Ann. I love her diggly, and the moment I knew that I loved her, it was a funny feeling in my tummy, and and I had butterflies. But if you asked me to describe that and write it down and explain exactly why I fell in love with her, I'd find it very hard. So if I can't explain to another human being why I did that and what this irrational feeling was that led from like to love, how can I possibly program it? So I think we're gonna be okay that the humans can look after the empathy and love, the real stuff. Now, having said that, AI can cheat. I can tell you that I love you and uh I'm empathetic, but I I won't be genuine. Um, so I think it can it it's a difference because generative AI is based on something it's seen before. So the this concept of falling in love is not something a human can describe rationally. So, you know, how can you program it? The whole empathy thing, um, you know, AI can enhance empathy from humans by helping us process and understand different perspectives at scale. I've seen AI tools that help customer service reps better understand emotional context or translation tools that preserve this cultural nuance. But AI empathy is ultimately pattern recognition, not genuine emotional understanding. It can amplify human empathy by giving us information insights, but it cannot replace the human element of truly feeling and caring. And I'm yet to be told that I'm completely wrong with that, but I'm gonna stand by that in 2025.

SPEAKER_01: 38:02

Ever the futurist again. Um and yeah, of course, people do fall in love. And this is a real worry, people who might be vulnerable, for instance, psychologically vulnerable, do fall in love with chatbots and go through some really hard times around that. So um, but nonetheless, your point still stands, Andrew, that you know, that's different from saying that one of these chatbots can demonstrate love or be in in love or show real empathy. Um, Galen, um how about I'd memory preservation? Perhaps there's an element here that you know that AI can do that. I mean, it AIs repeat ourselves back to us, don't they? You know, they can bring our memories back to us, which might give us some feeling that we are having something approaching a relationship of empathy with them. Does that muddy the waters or not?

SPEAKER_03: 38:51

Yes, I mean, uh overall I completely agree with what Andrew said, and I do think that we need to remember these are algorithms, they're machines, they're tools, they're things that we are very advancing massively in terms of their ability and our ability to work with them in this positive complementary way to make human life better, we hope, rather than worse. Yes. So um, but I do um in my uh no niche innovation work, I'm I'm very much in touch with the um the development of these uh areas around uh mind and memory and around uh legacy and legacy sides. So so what we are seeing at the moment is a lot of some of them quite questionable um experiments with e.g. taking um brain waves, um, and going, look, you are feeling joy, you're feeling angry, you're feeling you need time off, you you know, you need to slow down, telling us back to us what what what we we are feeling, yeah, telling us our thoughts and our feelings. And also with um large language models of of memory being used, particularly around digital legacy projects, where you know, really quite fascinating projects where you can hold on to somebody well beyond death. Yeah, and and we know that you know the more money you've got, the more you could possibly have a hologram that speaks out the memories from somebody who died um last year or even 50 years ago, yeah. So um, so I think we've got quite another psychological shift to do here in actually how we understand what it is, and it it relates actually to all of the discussion about um social media and truth at the moment, you know, what how we learn to relate to the physical person and how we learn to relate to the virtual equivalent, and what what what we start to understand as as the source, yeah, whether the source is truthfully physical, with intuition, with reasoning, with um the experience that you bring to life, you know, especially as you get older, what you add in, your critical reflections, your wisdom, and how we learn to understand what's uh uh a source which is virtual, um maybe a digital human twin or uh an agentic AI, which actually is maybe feeding us what it possibly thinks we want to hear, which is what we're seeing at the moment. So, but I'm keeping my eye on the E C E G stuff. My a lot of my colleagues around the world, they know I'm quite um uh not sure about this yet. You know, there's a long way to go, and there's a lot of claims being made which aren't necessarily true yet. The the mind is a very complex thing, and the feelings in the bot, the body-mind interface that Andrew described, the feeling that you get from, you know, uh maybe falling in love or whatever, yeah, we're a long way off that.

SPEAKER_00: 41:40

So I've been using AI for language translation. I've spent a bit of time in France and uh talking to people that are not great with English and vice versa. You can actually hold the phone up and have a conversation that is interrupted by a translator. What happened the last few months is that Apple released a new version of their AirPods, which will actually do live translation, and that's good as well. But I think where AI will really help is by creating an AI that doesn't just translate language but translates context and cultural assumptions. So something that could help a British something that could help a British executive understand not just what their Japanese counterpart is saying, but the cultural context behind how they're saying it. We could preserve the nuance and emotional content that gets lost in translation uh literally, helping people communicate not more accurately but more empathetically across these cultural divides. And understanding other cultures is really hard, but an AI system that has has learnt about cultural differences can inject that in real time. And I think that might be something that's that's AI for good.

SPEAKER_01: 42:38

And I'm just thinking here, Galen, coming to your work with body data, wouldn't this kind of lead potentially into um maybe it is already into AIs that can help us interpret um like body language, for instance? And we all know, for instance, if you nod your head in one culture, it can mean something very different, maybe even the exact opposite in another culture, or if you shake your head, or you know, even like the handshake, for instance, is completely culturally unacceptable in in other cultures. Perhaps um the machines can help us with that. Or are you about to say then? Sorry, I don't mean to to delay your long anticipated answer. Is an answer, another answer. It's like for Christ's sake, we're all human, we can figure this stuff out. We don't need the machines to help us with it. Let's just be more empathic, normal human beings and stop trying to outsource it to the machines. I don't know, you pick that up.

SPEAKER_03: 43:27

The body language um side is very interesting, and we are actually seeing the um evolution of new um gesture notations coming through very fast. We've got quite a few already, as we know. We've got really quite a lot of different sign languages in the world for people who are partially or deaf, yeah. And many people in different jobs use sign languaging, like emergency services and you know, referees, and it's really quite significantly part of a lot of people's jobs. And now we're seeing all of the gesture stuff start to come in linked to uh the VR and XR headsets with these hand, you know, wristbands, and gestures are going to become much more um commodified in a sense, yeah, where you, you know, you will definitely do this, then this, then this, you know, whatever different gestures of your hands to make various things happen in your AR glasses, yeah, to enable you to move forward in the world. Um, and I think we'll sit with there's some nice jobs out there. I kept keep thinking, oh, without a job had been around in the 90s, I'd have loved that job, yeah, because it's like, you know, really working as kind of dramaturgical choreographic experts within high big tech companies, yeah, to actually start to get these body integrations into the the the tools, yeah. So, but I do think um the issue around cultural translation is still going to be fairly much learnt by the real body, yeah. And I think um uh an example will be I Andrew mentioned the um at the translation ear pods, yeah. They are they get a really good reaction from younger um people, and they definitely will be taken up, whether they're apples or whoever's doing it, yeah. And um uh I've seen um my my younger ones all going, yeah, we want those, you know, etc. And yeah, I've got one, one of my stepsons is in um Beijing this year for his year learning Mandarin, his third year at university, full-on Mandarin training. Um, and every weekend, every every weekend, they're going off on some major trip around China to different cultural experiences and different um, he's going to a lot of theatre, he's going to, you know, etc. He'll come back in nine months' time, and there's there's no way that can be other done than through the physical body. Yep. And the body-mind interface is I I think one of the most fascinating things in the world, one of the most complex and still one of the least looked at areas that we don't understand enough about how what we take in through our heads actually, what that how that talks to our bodies and vice versa, how our bodies talk to our brains. Yeah. I always say body-mind, everyone says mind-body, I think, is body first leading a lot of this. So, so yeah, I think some of this will get sorted, you know, through AI and through various things. It's but we're still like with the neurology side and the mind reading side, I think we're still quite a way off. It's more complicated than the technologists would like to think. It's there's a long way to go, and the scientists know that, and the the biologists know that, and the medicine lot know that, yeah, the body experts, yeah, and the social scientists and behavioural scientists, but the technology sector tends to be rather shallow about it all, which is partly why people like my work has taken so long to come through. Yeah, it could have easily been picked up long, long, long before.

SPEAKER_01: 46:48

So sure. Okay. Well, we'd better begin to get to a little bit a bit of a kind of end stage here. Um Andrew, though, what is this the end of the podcaster? Are you are you are you getting to the point now, do you think, with your podcast, with your workflow, you just press the auto podcast button and it just happens.

SPEAKER_00: 47:04

And well, let me give you a long-winded answer to that question because it's actually available today, but let me get to that in a second. Um, you know, I use AI for podcast production, I use AI tools for transcription, for sno for show notes, even identifying you know key quotes for social media. But what's really exciting, what's coming next, I think, is AI powered personalization. You know, imagine podcast apps that don't just recommend shows, that actually create personalized versions of episodes based on your interest and knowledge level. We could see AI hosts conducting interviews or AI systems that help podcasters identify what topics their audience would like to hear. So here's something you can do to experiment. I want everyone to try this. There's a free tool, it's been out for a while from Google called Google Notebook LM. It's notebooklm.google. What I did to try it out, this is last year, I uploaded the PDF of my book, Digitally Curious, and it created a 31-minute podcast with two AI-powered guests. It was so good, I actually published it as a podcast with a top and tail to say this is AI generated. But wait, there's more. You can actually now click a button that says interactive mode and you can ask it questions that go beyond the script of the podcast. So I've done this live on stage. I've actually played the podcast and I've hit the button that says interactive mode with an audience full of me saying, I'm in a room of 200 people that are digitally curious, where should they start in the book? And they come back going, that's a really good question. They should do this. So it's almost like choose your own ending from the content you've given it, and that's what's available today. And I encourage people to play with that. In the future, could we actually have the uh Somewhere on Earth podcast that is built for me because I want a specific topic you've covered months ago and I actually want something built? It's a bit far-fetched to think about that, but if you go and try this Google Notebook LM, you will then realise we're on the cusp of something quite interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 48:51

I know it it is freaky. What I would say though is you can you can I you can tell that it's the training data, the training audio has been a lot of kind of American podcasts. Nothing, by the way, against American podcasts. In fact, most of my listening is to American podcasts. It's probably because I listen to so many of them. I hear so many of those sort of stylistic elements in what this AI produces. Uh so it's freakishly good, but I suppose there are only a few sets of training data away from making it kind of mimic or become like in the style of the BBC or ABC Australia.

SPEAKER_00: 49:27

Watch this space.

SPEAKER_01: 49:28

Sure, yeah. I get it. Yeah, I know. I it's it's happening. Um so alright.

SPEAKER_03: 49:35

Well, um I think uh I just was gonna say I think um we I I like this like choice of endings, and we've seen some experiments with it in the film world, yeah, already. Um complex but very very exciting. But I think actually, if we do get to a much more personalised digital human twin, which a lot is reliant on data ownership and data sovereignty, yeah, um, that that will be a very easy weekly output from your digital human twin will be my podcast for the week. Yeah. So we I think um we will see um a much more personalised scenarios on an individual level from me, but also maybe what you two want to hear from me, yeah, from my week or whatever.

SPEAKER_01: 50:15

Sure. Okay, one more from you, Andrew. I'm gonna give you give you this one for the just just to finish off with. Um you'll quite like it. I think give us a bit more homework then. So um one of your human-created podcasts, if you will. Do you have another one from one of your many seasons or series that you'd like to recommend?

SPEAKER_00: 50:33

Well, there is so much I I often at the end of a year, end of a season, I take a breather. So there's a lot on AI, there's a lot on self-sovereign. That in fact the book has 60 podcast guests in it. But there's another one I'd love you to listen to, it's from my dear friend Deborah Humble, who's a Menso Soprano based in Sydney. She has an amazing story where she had literally two hours to get from Brisbane to the Sydney Opera House to sing an opera that she'd never sung before because the other Menzo Soprano was taken ill. She had never told this story end-to-end before, so I got on the podcast. It actually is a heap of learning for resilience, uh, training, practice, rehearsal. It brings it all together. So it's not actually about technology, um, but it is a brilliant human interest story. And I just say that because it's just a little bit different. I'm actually seeing her tomorrow night singing Handels of Messiah uh here in London. But uh I just love those behind-the-scenes stories that you never really would expect uh from a from a.

SPEAKER_01: 51:29

It was phenomenal, yeah. You know, that she was given just hours' notice, having had three hours sleep, and I read in between the lines, maybe a little bit too much wine the night before. All these things that Mezzo Sopranos shouldn't do. She says that's a good thing. And uh yeah. And then she goes on stage at the Sydney Opera House, and then and then dot dot dots to be continued. No more spoiler alerts, otherwise you won't go and listen to that uh episode on your own. But what um you uh do very nicely is then actually pull out from that, okay. Well, what can we learn then about resilience? What can we learn about dealing with unplanned situations? What can we learn about um feeling confident in in difficult situations? So there are a lot of kind of real take-homes, even if you don't happen to be a Mezzo soprano, which I by no means am. Um okay, that'll do us very nicely indeed. Um, Galen, thank you very much indeed. I know you're about to go on some travels, so have a great time and bring back lots of digital gossip for us that we can enjoy on somewhere on earth. And Andrew, it's been an absolute pleasure and a privilege working with you, sir. Let's do it again.

SPEAKER_00: 52:28

Thanks for having me on and stay curious.

SPEAKER_01: 52:30

We are part of the Evergreen Podcast Network. A huge thanks to our sponsors, Roost and Sazience. Our production manager is Liz Tuey, the editor is Anya Vitarovich. You've also, of course, heard from Ghlenn Boddington today. And um Andrew as well, we've been hearing from Ben. Andrew Grill, who's with Digitally Curious, and I'm Garrett. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_02: 52:51

Thank you for listening to Digitally Curious. You can find all of our previous shows at digitallycurious.ai. Andrew's book, Digitally Curious, your simple guide to navigating the future of AI and beyond, is available at digitallycurious.ai. Until next time, we invite you to stay DigitallyCurious.