Fat Tony's Podcast
Captivating conversations with amazing experts. Inspired by the works of Nassim Taleb, amongst others. Hosted by Sebastian David Lees.
Fat Tony's Podcast
Chris Rawlinson - 42: The Answer to Everything (Including Education)
Ever wondered why traditional education still looks largely unchanged since the industrial revolution? Chris Rawlinson, founder of 42 Courses, takes us on a fascinating journey from his days as an Ogilvy advertising executive to revolutionising online learning through behavioural science.
Rawlinson explains how applying advertising principles to education led to a breakthrough approach - creating bite-sized, engaging content with immediate feedback rather than simply digitising academic lectures. This cross-industry innovation forms the foundation of 42 Courses, which partners with thought leaders like Rory Sutherland to deliver learning experiences designed for how people actually absorb information. The discussion reveals surprising insights about educational psychology, including the counterintuitive discovery that higher-priced courses are actually valued more highly by users, creating a tension between accessibility and perceived quality.
The conversation shifts to exploring how artificial intelligence is transforming personalised learning. Rawlinson shares how 42 Courses already uses AI to tailor content to individual learners' needs and industries, while acknowledging both current limitations and extraordinary future potential. Both host and guest share optimism about technology's democratising effect, not just on education but on entrepreneurship itself, as tools for creation become increasingly accessible to everyone. They envision a world where robotics and AI will do for manufacturing what digital tools have done for software - creating near-zero cost entrepreneurship opportunities across all industries.
What skills will matter most in this rapidly evolving landscape? According to Chris, critical thinking, curiosity, and an entrepreneurial mindset will be essential as we navigate a world of increasing technological capability and complexity. For a fascinating glimpse into the future of learning and work, this episode delivers powerful insights about how education is being reimagined for the digital age.
Chris has generously agreed to give Fat Tony's listeners a discount on any of the courses offered on 42courses.com - Use the code 'fattonys' on checkout.
Fat Tony's is more than a podcast - it's a community. Join our community at FatTonys.net.
Welcome everyone to another edition of the Fat Tony's podcast. I'm your host, Seb Lees. Now, regular listeners of this show will know that I usually do a concise introduction to the episode's guest before I introduce them. However, with today's guest, while I was trying to do some research on him, I found so much information that I struggled to weave a coherent narrative. I strongly suspect, because he's one of these people who lives far more interesting lives than most of us. But I will say in his own words he has designed and sold intelligent homes, learned to fly commercial aircraft in Africa, started a wine farm, looked after innovation at Ogilvy, also at WPP and most recently and what we'll be talking a lot about today is the founder of 42 Courses. Now, with a background like that, I already know this is going to be a super interesting conversation. So all that's left to say really is Chris Rawlinson, welcome to Factonius.
Speaker 2:Sir Seb, what an honour. Thank you so much. Welcome to Taptownies, sir Seb. What an honour. Thank you so much. Yeah, I struggle to weave my own narrative too. So bravo, you did better than I do. You can be my hype man any day.
Speaker 1:I think all the best people have these kind of. I've been an ice cream salesman, sold surgical gloves, started a software company. It's all fun. I'm going to ask you it is kind of a softball question, but I think it's crucial to ask this just to frame the rest of this episode but you know, you spent a lot of your career as an ad man and working in the advertising industry. You've segued into founding what I would call an ed tech startup. You might disagree with that definition. Could you tell us a little bit about that personal journey and and how you went from one to the other?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. I think the fact that I've had so many different careers in a way possibly comes down to a couple of things Probably strong influence from my father, who is a very creative soul and always was pushing me to do new and exciting things, always was pushing me to do new and exciting things. He sadly passed away a couple of years ago but, yeah, he left a profound impact on the way that I look at life and probably my career, and I think I've been lucky enough to have parents who have always said you know, don't worry, if it doesn't work out well, you can come back and stay with us or look after us. And so, in the back of my head, I think, whenever I was approaching a new challenge or taking a big leap from one industry to another, the way that I thought about it was well, what's the worst case scenario? The worst case scenario is I maybe have to go and stay with my parents for a little bit, and obviously you don't want to do that when you get too old, but as far as like bad things that happen in life, it's actually that it's not too terrible. And then you know, you obviously always learn something. Thankfully, it's a touch wood. It's always been working out. So you know, as things do in life, when you try something new, they always tend to find a way.
Speaker 2:But your question, I think, specifically, was how you got from advertising to developing an e-learning company. So I'll try and get back to the question you actually asked. That was relatively straightforward, to be honest, my role when I joined Ogilvy. I was asked to join to try and help bring the agency into the digital world and make the integration of the agency. At the time this is sort of 2010s, I guess you had traditional advertisers and then you had digital advertisers and at the time, all the big ad agencies were buying digital agencies and integrating them and then finding that often that integration wasn't going so smoothly. And that's the same with any industry, in any career. Often when you merge two companies, there's a culture clash and it just doesn't work. The key, generally speaking, seems to be to get the two different groups together and get them to solve something, work on something together, and then they get to form friendships and it's all sort of, I guess, behavioral science, psychology stuff really, because my background was from the tech side, but I loved advertising. At the time I was running a blog about advertising, which was very, very successful. For a long time I wasn't earning money from it, but I was getting hundreds of thousands of people visiting my website every day seeing what ads I was going to write about. It's probably stupid to stop that in hindsight, but anyway, that's a different story. What happened is I ended up designing a bunch of education programs with friends and colleagues to help train and upskill ogilvy staff.
Speaker 2:We call it the ogilvy digital marketing academy. We launched it in south africa and then it it ran in a bunch of other countries as well. We we did some stuff in the uk and australia and asia. I think there was some stuff we ran in the states very briefly as well, but it was some stuff in the UK and Australia and Asia. I think there was some stuff we ran in the States very briefly as well, but it was always great fun and, being dyslexic and not having been to university, the training that we developed was quite collaborative and quite fun.
Speaker 2:We'd get people to go on treasure hunts and say we wanted to teach someone about how to use QR codes, for example. We would get them to go on a treasure hunt around either the agency or the city that we were in and they had to use Google Maps and QR codes and Bluetooth or Wi-Fi whatever it is that we're trying to get them to get comfortable with to find an endpoint, and at the endpoint there would be a talk from someone brilliant, like it would be a Rory or someone like that, and it just it was fun. You do it as a team and and it it was very much not like traditional learning and people started saying, oh, can we, can we do this? And they were the. The people who were asking me were not in ogilvy, they were people from other agencies and uh and so credit to ogilvy. They actually sure, if other people want to join, they can. So we actually started holding in Ogilvy classes that people from other agencies would come to and get their Ogilvy certification. And there are a few things that came through my mind when that happened. One of them is wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:There is a value to learning from a brand as opposed to from a traditional academic institution, to learning from a brand as opposed to from a traditional academic institution, and when we chatted to customers, that seemed to be because you're learning directly from the people who are doing the job day in, day out, so they know what it's like in the real world versus academia, where often you're learning more theoretical and when reality hits and you start your job, you're like, oh god, you know, this isn't what I was prepared for at all. It's very different. So when you're learning from a brand, if done right, you can kind of bridge that gap. The second thing was oh my word, wouldn't it be great if we could put this online so that more people could get access to it? And then when we looked at online learning and I think this is still true today, right now and this is, you know, I registered the company I started 10 years ago, 42 courses, so in a couple of months time we'll be 10 years old. Even back then and I, from what I can see, still today for the most part, e-learninglearning is very formulaic. It's done in a sort of here's your university academic lectures or the PDF, and we've digitized it and maybe edited it a little bit, but that's kind of how it is. Or it's just here's a long TED talk, and I was just like there must be a better way to do this.
Speaker 2:And when you look at the people who have created those, pretty much all of them were started by academic professors. I don't have anything against academic professors Some of them are my best friends it's just I think most people in life aren't natural academics. They're just people who do a job and whatever that job is and whatever the industry is, I think we're all still naturally curious and certainly I think the most interesting of us are probably naturally curious. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably among those naturally curious people. But I just wondered well, maybe I just need to start my own thing. And because I knew lots of people in the tech world and because I'd been around people in advertising for so long by then, I just thought well, maybe I can use the lessons that we've learned from things like behavioral science and from marketing and apply the principles of that to e-learning. I think with hindsight now, having now created courses on innovation, that seems to be a similar thing.
Speaker 2:If you want to innovate in an area, often taking lessons from a different industry and applying it to yours is a really quick way to innovate and stand area. Often taking lessons from a different industry and applying it to yours is a really quick way to innovate and stand out, and that's essentially what we've done. So all of our courses are kind of, you know they're gamified, they're done in a very specific way that you know they're written in an entertaining way. They're written by advertising copywriters, not by sort of we're not copying and pasting a pdf, an academic pdf on a whole load of theory. And we we try and find really interesting people to partner with. So our first supporter was was rory sutherland, who you'll know most of you all know if not, go watch his stuff. He's hilarious and he was very kind to lend his, his time and his support to us and and, yeah, we still do some things with him and he's lovely and it's kind of grown and grown from there. We we partnered with canline, so we most of our subjects are around the, I guess, sort of creative entrepreneurship space and and 42.
Speaker 2:I think, seb, you were saying you're a massive sci-fi fan. Oh, yes, I was also a big sci-fi fan. So the 42 courses comes from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. So it's sort of the ultimate answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything. It was the way I got to the name was I actually had a whole load of different names that I really wanted to call it that were much more easy to understand ie they related to education and learning as opposed to a number. But when I looked online, even 10 years ago, I couldn't find ones that had the Twitter handles and the URL. The com URL wasn't available. And a friend said, oh, why don't you use a number? And I was sitting there I thought, well, if it's a number, it's got to be 42. And sitting here I thought, well, if it's a number, it's got to be 42. So, yeah, that's a long-winded way of how I transitioned from advertising into 42 courses, love it.
Speaker 1:I love it. I think, yeah, huge sci-fi nerd. I maybe mistakenly just assumed that 42 would be self-evident to everyone, but maybe I underestimated how much of a nerd I am.
Speaker 2:The best I've had is someone. They said hey, what's the name of your company? I said 42 courses and they were like, wow, is it like a big, is it a catering business where you do really really long meals?
Speaker 1:I was like wow, 42 courses would be impressive. I hope you made a restaurant at the end of the universe joke. Uh, we're too well. Yeah, what I love about that as well the naming is I'm rory would love this, because it's that classic thing of taking a convention and turning it on its head. And one of the big no-nos in domain selection is never have a number in your domain name and just taking, flipping it on its head. And with Pat Tony's I almost did a similar thing, where you know you always go for the com or net. I almost said what's the cheapest, most horrible domain extension. It was biz. So, you know, it looks like some kebab shop off the a40 or something, but I I kind of wish I'd gone with it now.
Speaker 1:Um, there's a few things in there I've been taking notes. Firstly, you know that that concept of you know what's the worst that could happen, I love that. It's what carl sagan would eloquently call the long astronomical perspective and I think what richard branson will be less eloquently but maybe more effectively call our screw it, let's do it. And um, yeah, you know just that attitude of taking a leap, the, the, the thing about other courses, sort of just mimicking the traditional academic approaches. I find this fascinating because as a developer, software developer, designer you see this a lot, where whenever there's a paradigm shift in an industry, the first thing that always happens is you just lean heavily on the use of kind of skeuomorphism. So to shepherd people into this new paradigm, we just mimic old, either visually or graphically or procedurally. And you're right, a lot of these courses are. You know well, we had a blackboard and a lecture theatre, so we're just going to film someone in front of a blackboard or we're just going to film a lecture and publish it, which works to an extent. But some things I would argue that certain topics might lend itself, certain subjects lend itself a little bit more to that than others might lend itself, certain subjects lend itself a little bit more to that than others. Um, but you kind of preempted one of my other questions, which was I was going to ask you about that and ask if that was something that was a learning process for you with the altitude courses, or if you went in with that intention from the get-go to not mimic that and be different. And what's wonderful from your story is, like all the better things, it's something that grows organically and it's it started here, yeah, and it's iterated and grown, so, uh, yeah, I think, think that's absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1:Um, I suppose you know talking a little bit about creativity and entrepreneurship you mentioned, but these courses kind of lean heavily on that. I saw a quote which isn't yours but you did say was used a lot in your industry and I'm going to quote it here. The best design and creative work is normally a process of reduction, not addition, and this links into a lot of ideas that I like around Nassim Taleb, this idea of via negativa, which is kind of what I would call a subtractive epistemology, like the process of obtaining knowledge via subtraction, and what I love. You know I did do the Rory course on 42, a long time ago now actually, but what I loved about it is this bite-sized approach. It sticks with you and I think five years later I can still remember the stuff I learned on that course, whereas you know the corporate training courses I've had to do hundreds of two weeks later I can't remember a bloody thing about them because I just switch off after five minutes.
Speaker 2:You talked about the process of not mimickingicking traditional method, but this bite-sized approach did that evolve or is that something that you you had in mind from the start we had it in mind from the start and to be honest I hope this doesn't get me into trouble, but I I've to test it we well, I was still at ogilvy, or I think I was a nice, I can't remember whether it's more wpp or ogilvy at the time but we a really good friend of mine was head of innovation at a big bank called standard bank and they wanted to identify entrepreneurial people within their organization so that they could stop them from leaving. So it was early, very early days of fintech, so what they were finding I'm sure it's still true today a lot of the big execs would get to a certain level and then they're just like I can't be asked with all the corporate bureaucracy, I'm just going to leave and do my own thing, and they would go into the, mostly into the field of fintech. So what the company wanted to do I think it was very smart of them and it and it did seem to work was identify these entrepreneurial types and then sort of almost give them a bit more freedom and leeway to work on projects that they had much more authority over, so that they you know, it's kind of that classic, what is it? Master, autonomy, purpose, that kind of stuff Anyway. So, yeah, it just gives them more freedom, so they don't feel like they want to leave the company and instead they stay. And so the question is, how do you identify these entrepreneurial types in an organization of tens of thousands of people?
Speaker 2:And so we were tasked with developing a program that would help identify these entrepreneurial types, and there are several things that we did, and one of the key stages was to create a course on fintech. That was kind of quite short and quite fun, but that would gauge people's understanding of that industry at the time. Again, this was when it was very, very early stages, and that gave me an opportunity to use someone else's money to help develop a piece of software that otherwise would take me a long, long time. And as soon as you start thinking about who the audience is for for this and you're like, okay, well, these are people who work in banking, you're like, okay, well, much like a lot of industry.
Speaker 2:Nowadays, you know, work is no longer so much nine to five, it bleeds into all sorts of hours, so they're very time pressured. And particularly when it comes to taking a course, like who can be asked in the first place? Normally you have to whip people in order to do courses. It's sort of mandated and you lock them out of their computer if they haven't done it. It's kind of barbaric stuff. So that was one of our first big things was like, whatever we do, it's got to be short and easy and and quick for people to take. So that was it.
Speaker 2:And the other thing, the other realization, was people don't want to take something and then find out one week later whether they passed it or not. Yeah, that in an online world, we're so used to everything being immediate. You know you, you click a button and something happens right away, and our brains love that quick feedback loop. So our other realization is whatever it is that we're doing, we've got to ask them stuff and give them immediate feedback, and so that's what we did. And I mean there are a couple of other things like we realized. Okay, well, it's when you're taking an online learning course.
Speaker 2:Lots of people mostly feel it's a very insular, lonely thing, which is one of the reasons why they often quit, because there's no one to hold them accountable for. They just feel like they're just doing something by themselves. So like, how can we give them a feeling that they're doing this with other people and so that that way it keeps them a bit more motivated to carry on. But we also knew that not everyone would be taking this at the same time because there's different offices all over the world. So what we did is we created something where, with a lot of the answers I mean sorry, I know this is there's lots of caveats here, I'm like, but there's that. What we realize is that in traditional courses you. The other thing is that it normally the answers are right or wrong. It's very clear. But in real life very rarely is it as simple as you're right or you're wrong. It's often something in between. You know, rory always says you know the opposite of good idea is another good idea. And so what we did is we created these questions that were much more open-ended and just got them to think and try, work something out in their brain in a safe space where they could give it a go and try and answer something and suggest a solution.
Speaker 2:So in a behavioral science course we might say how could you use framing to sell more electric vehicles? There's a million different ways you could do that. When the person puts down their answer and presses enter, they see everyone else's answer in the world, so you get that feeling that you're learning from others. But the other nice thing is you actually do get to see another perspective. We all look at the world with a certain lens. There's nothing wrong with that. That's who we are. We all have our own biases, and so being able to see what other people think with their own biases is actually really helpful for us. It helps us come up with more creative solutions to problems. It helps us come up with more creative solutions to problems.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the things that we ask in our courses now from this original study that we found are all around how do you give people that sense of community, even though they're doing this on their own on the phone or on their laptop? How do you give them this quick feedback so that they maintain interest? How do you get them to see things from another perspective and feel like they're learning with a group of people, even when they're sitting on their own again? So, yeah, a lot of those things came from that side of stuff, and you mentioned something just before you asked your question and it made reminded me of something you were talking about a different e-learning courses in and and popularities of things, and it's education, I think, is it's one of those products where it's kind of a bit of a veblen good I the more you pay for it, the more you value it and in a way I I find that very sad because I want education to be really accessible.
Speaker 2:When I first launched the company, we actually made the courses super affordable. I mean, that was my whole thing. I just wanted to make it really affordable. But people actually valued it less, or they basically didn't value it less. They kept on writing me emails going I can't believe that you're doing this training for this amount of money. You're crazy. And so we ended up I think we tripled the price or something. And then people still email us and say like I can't believe that this isn't like thousands of pounds, but I don't want to increase the price anymore. But the price point thing has been a fascinating journey.
Speaker 2:If I took my own personal desire, I would make this, I would make our service, yeah, like as free as I could. I would try and make it for I don't know, like 50 quid or 40 quid or something per, per person, per course, but because I think at scale, you know, we, we, we obviously try and we've been. Well, I'm sure we'll get onto it, but we've been messing around a lot with ai. There's definitely ways that you can make it efficient at scale. I mean, you do need that scale so you could. You could potentially still make a profit with that.
Speaker 2:But the realities of the market is that with your target audience, with the kind of people that we have, it actually makes more sense to make it more expensive. It's this guy is crazy and people love it more for it. They love it more because it's more expensive. It's so counterintuitive. But and I understand it and it's, it's a, it's actually a battle I have with our team. We have arguments about it. We know that we should increase our pricing and I really don't want to, but I know that it actually works, as though people will love the courses more and we'll have more customers. So yeah, but it's a real conflict in my brain.
Speaker 1:I don't know what that's called it's almost not quite sunk cost fallacy. But yeah, once you you pay for something, you certainly value it more. And you're talking about education becoming a vape and good, and I think not just education, or you know where you went to university. For example, I think there's a brilliant story rory told me once about and I think he's mentioned it before about getting a windbreaker from Harvard Business School and he said the value of it for doing a talk where we're going to an event and the signaling value of wearing this assuming that you went to Harvard was worth a quarter of a million dollars for this free windbreaker. But it's a problem, and I think not just where you went to school, but also what grade you got, like the status signaling.
Speaker 1:I really hate this. Oh, you know, I got 10 a's at gcse or four a's at a level. Therefore, I can go to this university a because I firmly believe it doesn't really tell you very much, and I'm not just saying that because I wasn't a student, but but also I really like this idea. I think again, it's talib who says this. But you know we should grade things like we do a driving license in the real world or a driving test there's a pass and a fail. There's no a, b, c, d, e, yeah, and all that matters if pass and the fail is that the pass line is sufficient enough to guarantee a basic level of competence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in that area makes sense and I think it will cause a crisis for for hr hires and stuff. How do they weed out the I? I think its main purpose, honestly, with the a's and the b's and the a stars, might just be because there's, you know, a thousand graduates per per graduate scheme course it's to allow cvs to be easily weeded out. But, um, there's a lot of psychology going on there with all this stuff. That's way beyond the utility, value of learning or the love of learning for learning sake, which I think, which what universities were originally meant to be about, people who were just interested in learning for learning's sake. Now it's about getting the piece of paper you know, rather than it's tough. It's tough because you do need it, even to get your foot in the door these days.
Speaker 2:So it's catch 22 yeah, I think I do see sort of little little instances of this perhaps changing. Um, you know, over the last few years that the requirement for a degree to get a lot of jobs has dropped. So I think companies like google are doing a lot of progress, making a lot of progress in that area, and they're instead doing their own internal training courses which help weed out these people. And some of these courses you take before you join, some of them you take afterwards. But and I think that's kind of right, you know, the responsibility should probably more be on the employer to to find the right people, rather than just doing the lazy thing which, as you say, is like like how many a's did you get? What kind of degree was it? Where did you go? Where did you go to school?
Speaker 2:By doing that, you, you just you stop yourself from getting access to a whole load of absolutely incredible people that you, because they're just overlooked or they didn't go to the right school, they didn't get the right grade, but they may be absolutely the best person in the world for your company. Um, maybe there's a whole nother business in that. I mean, we need to create, put our heads together. You can use your software, developing skills to create something that companies can use that's tailored to their industry and it. It identifies that the golden, the golden nuggets from everything else.
Speaker 1:Do you think this is going to continue, this trend of online learning, open access to courses, kind of chipping away at the traditional university monopoly?
Speaker 2:Yes, because of affordability, and I think the world is changing quite rapidly right now. So, like you, I'm a bit of a nerd. I love reading up on all the tech things. We've been doing lots of AI integration stuff with 4D2 courses, which has been great, because if I want to try something, I don't have to ask a team of people. I can ask myself and go, yeah, let's try it. Quick decision-making process. But yeah, the main thing we're doing with it at the moment is personalising the courses. So if you actually go back into your course that you took with Rory, you'll see there's a pop-up now which says you know, where are you in the world, what's your job, what are you trying to get out of this, and then, at the end of each lesson, it will give you three or four ways that you can apply that learning in behavioral science to your industry, and it's super good. I think for that, we're using, I think, the latest model of CLAWD for that, but we're constantly trying to use all of the tools.
Speaker 2:Going back to your question, though, which is, I think do you think e-learning is going to continue to chip away at traditional education? Yes, if I remember rightly, the. The other reason why I think yes is is that because and and everyone, hopefully everyone who's listening to this, would have realized this or will notice this, if they haven't already they'll, they'll start to notice it the barriers in order to start your own business and sell whatever it is that you want to sell are disappearing so fast. Yeah, wherever you are in the world, I think inevitably there will be a lot more entrepreneurs in the world, because the reason why, you know, if you take a group of 100 people off the street in a city like london or whatever, and you ask them whether they love their jobs I don't know whether I'm being pessimistic, but I would guess a lot of them would be like, well, it's okay. Yeah, I don't think you get loads of people like, fucking, love my job, this is the best thing in the world ever. Yeah, um it. It's that they, you know, they're bored of corporate bureaucracy. They've, they've. Maybe there's like some, you know, maybe they wish that they, you know, they're bored of corporate bureaucracy. They've, they've. Maybe there's like some, you know, maybe they wish that they were doing knitting, I don't know. Like, we all have our own thing. We all want something slightly different, and we're fast entering an area where, whatever that slightly different thing is that we want and we like, we'll be able to do it relatively easily.
Speaker 2:You don't need to be necessarily a developer. You can. You know, even right now there's vibe coding, which you know. It's still a bit geeky and you've got to. You've got to know your stuff, and it's much faster if you do know your stuff.
Speaker 2:But I'm not a massive developer and I can get away with building my own app right now and that's bonkers, because I couldn't do that a few years ago. Um, I don't need a designer to do any of my images anymore, because there are a kajillion tools that make that really easy. I can make, you know, very short form video snippets. I can make any voice of any person in the world I can. I mean the tools available to you, for you know, pretty much as little as five pounds a month or three is mental, and it's only going to get cheaper and more accessible.
Speaker 2:One thing, though, that all of these people will need to know how to do is they do start their own side hustles, which then maybe gradually come into their own businesses, and whatever else happens is they will need more of the tools that you need in order to run a business and to grow whatever it is that you need in order to run a business and to grow whatever it is that you do. And so I think you know these kind of short entrepreneurial courses that are accessible, I would hazard a guess again to become more and more important. Because, yeah, if you take, if you read a lot of the research reports at the moment in chat to I don't know top like execs at google or microsoft who are, you know, doing crazy stuff with ai, all the time you know they're, they all hypothesize that the cost of everything is going to go down and we're going to be in some utopia where we can all afford whatever. And look, we're gradually in the modern, most advanced modern nations. That that is true. It's been happening slowly over time anyway. I think we're gradually in the most advanced modern nations. That is true, it's been happening slowly over time anyway. I think we're about to hit another big leap where things do become a lot more accessible.
Speaker 2:I think what a lot of people maybe don't realize is how close we are to a lot of advancements in robotics and AI combination, because that then solves a whole other area right, like, at the moment, all the AI tools that we're using are just kind of basically from a laptop screen. They can do coding and stuff like that, but they can't physically do much, because robotics has been basically held back for years because you didn't have the compute power or the scale in order to get it to do fine motor movement and all that kind of stuff. Like chatting to friends who do robotics, it sounds like we're really close to all that stuff being sorted and that's gonna be a massive game changer because suddenly factory stuff becomes like zero cost. You know, even building and things start becoming zero cost and, yes, we're a way away from it. But if you think that you know everyone in the uk, like loads of people have more than one car and they're pretty expensive things I would imagine robotics.
Speaker 2:If you wanted to look at a similar industry, I would imagine robotics will follow the car industry as far as, like you know, we'll all have one at some stage and we'll have second-hand ones and there'll be a trade for them and I mean that it's going to be a you know whatever a trillion dollar industry and it's probably coming our way within the next 10 years. I would guess possibly five.
Speaker 1:Um I, I've had similar thoughts. I must confess there was I can't remember where I saw it was over on reddit, oracker News where someone had already developed about the size of a microwave, maybe a little bit bigger with two of the robotic arms in it, but it was essentially a micro factory where a very small, but you could essentially teach it using AI, a basic manufacturing process, whether that's a single step or multiple, and it would just go ahead and make those all dead. And what's interesting is, for the last, we've gotten used to, I think in the last 15, 20 years in the software world, this idea of what I would call zero or near to zero cost entrepreneurship, where if you can code, you can do something at very minimal cost and try that idea in the marketplace. Take, take, take these little, what I call um tinkering with convexity, something that has a low, low risk but high convex payoff if it works right. And I think we're going to see that move out of purely software now and we're going to see low to zero cost entering manufacturing, which great. I mean, we've got, we've got. We made a lot of progress with globalization for that, not to zero cost but to a lot lower.
Speaker 1:And now I think you're right. Robotics is going to be the step to to almost zero cost manufacturing and that's going to open up just this explosion of creativity in the same way that YouTube did for entertainment. You know I often say this but YouTube is my favorite streaming platform because I know whatever weird hobby or interest I have, that's niche. There's a guy out there who's done almost production studio quality recording on it, has done almost production studio quality recording on it and it's fantastic because you know you never 15, even 15 years ago, you never, ever would have got that. And I've got more enjoyment over the last few years from YouTube channels like Rate my Takeaway, which a guy goes around the UK, than I have from any Hollywood big buster that's cost, you know, several hundred million dollars to make. So I can't wait for that to bleed from software entertainment digital realm into the physical realm with robotics. It's going to be phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, it's going to be nuts. It reminds me of the modern equivalent of in the UK. There was always that thing around. The UK has always been very good at making inventions and innovations and they were always saying it's because there's always a. The uk has always been very good at making inventions and innovations and they were always saying it's because, you know, there's always some guy tinkering in his garden shed. And I think this, this is the modern day equivalent of a guy tinkering in his garden shed. He's like look, I really love trains or planes or whatever it is, and so I've made a five-hour youtube documentary on, like, how the sopwith camel became invented and whatever it is like, and I love those kind of things. I, I like, I. It's so good and it's self-selecting. I love the algorithm just finds these things for me as well. It's it's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it, I agree I'm gonna I'm gonna send you a few of my um favorite obscure youtube channels. I suspect there may be some strong overlap here, so I want to. I did listen to a couple of interviews you've done in the past and I think one of the things that come up a couple of times was about how you became obsessed with this TED Talk video which is called Hill Creativity, and was it Ken Robinson, if I remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ken Robinson yeah.
Speaker 1:And you have talked in the past about how that was a major inspiration and I think in one interview said you were essentially watching on loop at one point um, pretty much.
Speaker 2:They used to show it to dates when they'd come around to my house, that's how bad it was. Uh. I don't know whether it ever worked probably not but uh yeah I was going to ask you know that's in the public domain.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to ask you about that again, but what I am interested in because that's a few years old now are there any new things or any modern talks or any modern people that you find yourself obsessively looking at right now?
Speaker 2:I haven't had a ted talk or a similar talk. That's hit me like a ton of bricks, like the sir ken robinson one did, and I think it related to me on a whole load of levels because, yeah, I was sort of dyslexic and so, you know, kind of struggled at school and there was that kind of stuff and I, much like him, I think I've just always really loved learning, but never loved learning in a very traditional academic way, yeah, but you know that's like we were just talking about. You know, watching very funny things on on youtube. You know that there's a form of learning. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's not necessarily. You know you're not going to earn your mba by doing that, yeah, but in a way why not? You know, like you could, you could learn just as much from watching these things as as anything else. The there is, I mean there's one other the the normal people who I love listening to at the moment are, I mean, it's, it's still. You know, I love, I love still listening to things from rory he.
Speaker 2:The people who I love listening to are often people who spend their time talking with lots of other people from various different industries and then drawing some lines between these different things that they learn and sharing them with people, and I think that's what Rory's so great at doing. He's one of the reasons why I think he's not retired and just doing stuff himself and why he's still at Ogilvy I would guess is because he's surrounded by so many smart young people. Keeps him young, keeps him fresh, and it's a beautiful routine, right, you're just going to keep finding more and more incredible, diverse links. He gets to network with incredible people from all the top businesses as well, and and so because of that, it's fascinating, which is why, when you listen to rory, you ask him a question and he goes on a total tangent most of the time, and then you basically never hear the podcast interviewer talking again.
Speaker 2:I think for the rest of the show, like that's it, it's. It's pretty funny. There is, yeah, but there was, um, there was a lovely, there's one. Let me just try and look it up. There was one ted talk, but not necessarily a new one, while you're looking it up, I will just share.
Speaker 1:I must confess I haven't seen the ken robinson talk, uh, but uh, there's an essay by paul graham know, the founder of Y Combinator and he talks about schools. It's a brilliant essay and he talks about how schools are an incredibly unnatural environment to stick a bunch of hormonal teenagers and this never happened in history.
Speaker 1:You would have teenagers learning an environment where there were people aged from 11 to 80. And they'd be interacting with different people. So when you stick a bunch of hormonal teenagers in this environment, you kind of get this Lord of the Flies tribalism that's created and it's just a very, very artificial environment, and one of the main reasons they persist is they're essentially daycare for people who have to work nine to five jobs and they're a communal way to look after children and the census is being upended as well. A little bit going forward, maybe we will return to the traditional methods.
Speaker 2:I hope. I mean, I've got a one and a bit year old son and I am petrified about his future education because I don't see it being fit for purpose. It hasn't been fit for purpose for a long time. I mean, if you think of the modern education facility pretty much anywhere in the world, it hasn't changed that much since the industrial revolution. The UK created the modern day education system in order to be able to churn out hundreds or thousands of people that they could pick up from the UK, put on a boat, send to India or wherever else in the Commonwealth they needed to be and they could crack on and do their managerial or whatever role that is they needed. So you needed people who conformed to all thought the same, which is why all the tests are done the way that they were and for some odd reason, we've not changed that. And that's fucking crazy, given that as fucking ages ago, you've got all these modern tools and technologies. But we treat, unfortunately, most children the same. So, yeah, you have special needs or suffer from dyslexia or whatever, are often put in a very terrible situation, especially if their parents don't have lots of money. It's horrendous and I think the teachers do the best job that they can. I think that they're just working in a terrible formula or framework and there's not much leeway with it. I mean, in most places in the world the public school sector is quite underinvested in which, again, is nice. You know, it's the general thing of you know who who should be paid the most. It's probably the people who are trying to to up, upskill and inspire the next generation of humans, but we pay them some of the least amount and they work terrible hours and we put more and more pressure on them to not only look after the children and teach them, but suddenly teach multiple subjects and then deal with all sorts of other stuff that isn't in their job profile. I think again, with the way that technology is going and again we're going through another big leap much like the internet was a big leap, ai will be another big leap. It does fill me with hope that we'll be able to give children much more personalized education that fits them.
Speaker 2:Because if you have a classroom, whether you're at university or at school or whatever and you're teaching 10, 20, or even 100 students, you can't afford because of time and everything else, just practicality you can't afford to treat each one and teach them where they are individually. You have to just pick a middle ground and then go there, or you pick the lowest and go from there. But none of those are perfect scenarios. In a perfect world, everyone would have their own tutor who's working with them at their level, progressing, teaching them in the way that they like, because we all learn in a different way. There is no single right or wrong way. I think that's going to become possible.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of hope, but I'm also a massive optimist, so who knows where this goes? But yeah, I think that'll be amazing. I think, also, as a parent, there's a lot of stuff, obviously, that you can do. That's not necessarily costly, but maybe just take some of your time to help upskill your kids. I'm looking forward to that. I kind of want to try and create my own curriculum. I know super wealthy people seem to do this as well. I think Elon Musk's got his own school now. He's got basically a school of children himself anyway, so he probably needed to and while I remember the talk that I was going to say, which changed, changed my life, but I I think when I'm sometimes when I'm feeling a bit low and I need a bit of a perk me up or pick me up. I, I, I sometimes watch this video and it just, it's one of those things that motivates me but also just makes me feel happy, which we could all do with a bit more happiness in our lives.
Speaker 2:There's a wonderful chap called Benjamin Zander who's a classical musician. He's a very famous conductor and he did a TED Talk. It's not new, it's actually from 2008. So it's a long time ago, kind of like the Ken Robinson talk, but the talk's called the Transformative Power of Classical Music. Marvellous talk, very little to do with classical music, but a marvellous talk. It has a lot of classical music in there and the point is related to classical music, but it's more around leadership and hope and aspiration. I think it's an interesting talk. So if you're looking for something to to pick you up, that's a bit different and a bit interesting. The transformative power of classical music, benjamin zander wonderful.
Speaker 1:I'll definitely find that and I'll link below what on all the platforms we distribute this if anybody's interested. And also, of course, uh, the original can talk about. That's great, lovely. The AI stuff, definitely one of the most.
Speaker 1:I'm AI agnostic, I'm cautious of some of the hype, but one of the interesting, most interesting areas in the edtech space for me is definitely this idea of personalized learning and being able to. I see it as a curve. You're in this Goldilocks zone of you don't want it to be too difficult, but you don't want it to be too boring. You've got to keep this arc of interest, whether it's kids or adults. And one of the big problems in schools is, you know, kids it's not that they don't want to learn, it's just that they come across a roadblock, normally outside of our arc, and then just give up because they don't have the tailored support to kind of bring them back on course within that goldilocks zone.
Speaker 1:And you know, I, I know this person, I went to an absolutely terrible school, by all accounts, really, really failing in a city school and you know, I saw it first hand lots of very, very good teachers doing the best they can with with limited resources and also just trying to fit within the limits of a. I would call it a procrastinant bed. Another idea Talib introduced me the procrastinant bed of the national curriculum. So the idea of these AI startups I'm seeing one of them I'm aware of actually came from SpaceX. It was an AI teaching thing. You mentioned Elon Musk and I think someone has now spun that out into an independent company and they're now offering it to to other people, which is fantastic and, you know, absolutely wonderful. Can't wait to see that. I think unlocking in the way that, in the way that social media and gaming has been the greatest psychological experiment and we've learned how to hijack attention so effectively, I think AI is going to do that for education, which will be fantastic.
Speaker 2:I agree, I mean the experiments. So there's a few things that we already use with AI on 42 courses at the moment, and then there are lots of things that we're trying in the background and sort of almost waiting until the technology gets good enough until we can launch it. So the things that we do right now, where we do the personalization so it looks at the way that technically that it works is you write in a little bit about yourself and what your goals are, and then it runs a script which looks through the entire course that you're taking and then, based on that material and obviously some of the AI's own knowledge, but with a heavy amount of filtering from us in tonality style and exactly what it is that we want them to do it then creates recommendations for you at the end of each lesson and what we found is, at worst they're okay, but at best they're incredible. And that's kind of where I'm happy to launch it. If at worst, it was a terrible result, I almost don't want to launch it because it then provides a negative experience. I think that the next thing that we're kind of very interested to get to launch is getting the difficulty side of things correct.
Speaker 2:So, as you say, everyone's coming at it from a different point of view, a different level of standard knowledge. If you're a company like Duolingo, in a way I feel quite jealous, because when you're learning a language or when you're learning something that's to do with maths, like if you're learning coding, there's quite a clear linear pathway. If it's a language, you start off learning a few words, then a sentence, and there's a line that just gradually goes up. It's very continual progress. It's clear. It's a linear pathway. If you're learning a subject such as behavioral science, there is no clear linear pathway. Yes, there's maybe a couple of places where you can logically start at, but each time you learn about a different bias or a different principle, you're starting from scratch. It's not building necessarily on what came before, it's just.
Speaker 2:This is another thing, and that's what we're trying to do with 40-Decores is all of our subjects are like that. So what we find is we make our difficulty, we try and go in curves, so it's sort of we start easy and then you get some more difficult stuff, and then it goes easier again and then you get some more difficult stuff. It's still not perfect because, again, some people will always have a lot of prior subject knowledge, and so they actually want it to be a little bit more advanced. And that's where I think AI will really help us. It will help us ask more challenging questions and perhaps change the lesson content to adapt to their level of existing knowledge. What we found so far is we still get too many false positives or just basically too much junk that comes back from the AI tool. So, yeah, look, holy grail is you press a button of whatever it is that you want to learn and a perfect course is created for you that's taught by your favorite teacher or in a style that you want, and it's just made for you. That's taught by your favorite teacher or in a style that you want, and it's just made for you in a few seconds or the blink of an eye, and then, bam, you're there. I'm sure that we will get to that. The problem is we're not there yet. We're getting very close to it.
Speaker 2:If you look at the most recent results from all the different AI tools, they were saying that factually, I think it was sort of. If you look at, let's use chat GPT because it's the most common one Factually, if you were looking at the original 4.0 model, that was. I think it was around sort of 60 to 70% factually correct, which is not terrible. But the newer models like if you look at 4.1 or 4.5, or even if you use 03, they were much more around the 80 plus percent accuracy with FACTS, and 80 plus percent accuracy in FACTS is probably better than most humans. It's not perfect but it's pretty good. So even if you just look at OpenAI again, they've got their next new big model that's due for release before the end of the year. It wouldn't surprise me if, before the end of this year, there is a model that is factually accurate enough that we will be able to use it to help alter the course material in a way that we know is pretty much certain factually correct, is pretty much certain factually correct. It's difficult and it's going to be a risk for us to do it, because if it does personalize the lesson text, there's no way that we can have enough people to manually check it. So you've got to be really careful when you do it. But I hope that we'll be able to do that at some stage and every day using it, just it sort of blows my mind finding different tasks you can do.
Speaker 2:It's my wife's 40th coming up in a couple of weeks time and I I used um I think it was 03 to to try and get it to help me with suggestions of places to go and things to do in a particular city, and it was really good. I know that's a very common use case, but I spent a lot of time on the prompts to get it to give me answers that weren't like go to the number one place on TripAdvisor. It gave me really good stuff that a good hotel concierge would suggest that when slightly off the beaten track, they're not stuff that you find super easily online, but you can see when you delve into it that they're not stuff that you find super easily online, but you can see when you delve into it that they're all uh, they're all fantastic places to go. So, yeah, it's uh, what a time to be alive. And and nasim is hilarious, by the way I remember when I'm when I first met him, he, uh I was wearing a pair of really red trousers and all he wanted to know is where I got my red trousers.
Speaker 2:I think I spent like a day going. It was at, oh God, kilkenomics. So I spent a day going around Kilkenny trying to find a place that sold really nice red trousers so I could help him find a pair. Found a pair in the end for him, but yeah, I thought it was brilliant I think it's this idea.
Speaker 1:I've done this before. I build up my image of these kind of intellectual people, people I greatly admire, and then when I meet them, the conversation is so casual for you have with them and it's wonderful. It's really really wonderful, and I had similar experiences. And, yeah, ai, you know, going back to what you were saying, absolutely, I think personalized AI is definitely the future. I did not realize, by the way, that I had lifetime access to my 42 courses course. I think it was about five or six years before I did that course. Yeah, so I'm definitely going to log back in.
Speaker 2:We've updated it as well. You'll see a whole load of new videos. So we update all the courses pretty much each quarter. So if there's something new, we'll do it. If a video is bad, we reshoot it. So yeah, go for it.
Speaker 1:Awesome, I definitely log back in. This hour has gone so incredibly fast, which is always the curse of the best guests Too kind. We've got five minutes left and I might have to try and grab your bag for another hour at some point. But the what we traditionally do at the end the fat tones community post questions. It's a rapid fire. Very weird and wonderful questions that the community posts. You never know what you're going to get asked. Some of them are a bit eccentric, but just do some quick fire ones to finish it off and let's see where we get to. Um, okay, what have we got on this list? Um, if you could create a course with anyone in the world, alive or dead, who would it be and what would it be about?
Speaker 2:carl sagan something on life in general, I don don't know, learning, I don't know. He'd be fascinating to chat with. Oh, I mean, that question is actually brilliant, because there was a guy who I was thinking about last night and I have totally forgotten his name. But you know how, there are these people who were super part and when they were alive and they, like he never wrote any books and uh, and so you, you know that they've got all these incredible like it's like sort of not marshall mcclern, it was someone like marshall mcclern, but it was someone who, maybe george bernard shaw, I can't remember. Is it one of these people who kind of that area, rough area or time time zone, amazing, you always see lots of quotes for them, but they never wrote any books and the blogging wasn't a thing, so they didn't have their own podcast, uh, but yeah I'd love to go back and get some you know, interview on those people and make something with them.
Speaker 2:That would be incredible. I mean obviously a steve jobs one would be pretty mega too. Sorry that's. I've given you like 5 000 answers, but no, no, that's great.
Speaker 1:On the carl sagan front, there is a wonderful website and youtube channel called one of my personal favorites, which is what I listen to when I'm feeling a bit down or want a bit of motivation, which is called the sagan seriescom. A guy called reed gower. I've seen it. Yeah, you know it yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:I love it. I do every now and then I'll listen to lectures or stuff from him. Yeah, it's brilliant Mind-blowing.
Speaker 1:Really, for those listeners that don't know, he's kind of done a composite bits of Carl Sagan's various recordings over the air and created these kind of three to seven-minute long videos with just some beautiful visuals. Really really good, going back to that person tinkering in their bedroom with, with modern tools, what you can do. This is long before ao. This is 10, 15 years old now, but really really wonderful there's some great lectures on the the royal society as well.
Speaker 2:If you go to them that you can look at past lectures, there's some amazing stuff from there, sorry I do, obviously, growing up in the 90s, to christmas lectures on the real set.
Speaker 1:We're always, yes, love the christmas lectures, a big thing in my household and, uh, really looking forward to them and it was always on my bucket list as a child to go, but I don't know if you can go as an adult we'll make a plan, we'll go this year seven high five, let's go.
Speaker 2:We'll do it.
Speaker 1:There you go excursion to uh, christmas lectures. All right, what else have we got on this list? Okay, which skills do you think will be essential in the next five to ten years?
Speaker 2:anything that that teaches you curiosity and critical thinking particularly things like critical thinking is that I think there's going to be so much stuff out there where it's impossible to know what's right and what's wrong, because the authenticity will look incredible. Having that lens is going to be really important. I do still love behavioral science and I think it's such a helpful subject for life in general. The other kind of critical thinking side of things I think you're going to have to learn how to use way more different tools. I think you're going to have to be in a way like if you want to really take advantage of life, you're going to need to be a bit more entrepreneurial. I would say I think we tend to get quite comfortable.
Speaker 2:If I look at the, I've spent a lot of time in the UK and I've spent a lot of time in South Africa. I've spent some time in the States and Australia and lots of other countries, and if I think about that, there are some fundamental differences culturally. I think in the UK and then to some point in the States, I think we're quite comfortable taking a traditional job and then just going down that pathway. Yes, maybe if you're young now you have more jobs than you used to, but you're still going down quite a traditional pathway. Now you have more jobs than you used to, but you're still going down quite a traditional pathway.
Speaker 2:When you chat with people in South Africa, I find them generally tend to be much more entrepreneurial. I see way more people going off the beaten path, which might be why you see so many CEOs of big tech companies in the States or actually South African are actually South African. I think that they have a kind of can-do spirit and a screw it, let's do it kind of attitude to life, which I wish we could get back in the UK, and I think we will. I think we are naturally that way inclined and I think it's going to take a bit of a push and I think this next revolution might provide that push. I hope I'm a fan of our country. That's really interesting.
Speaker 1:Really interesting. I think that push I hope I'm a fan of our country. That's really interesting, really interesting. I think about two or three episodes ago, one of the guests we had was emmanuel dermon, who's uh yeah, from cape town and then went on to be a huge success on wall street, and we're talking about his new book, my life as a cape tonian, which is his early memoirs of cape town. I'm definitely going to raise that with him because I would love to get his and his dad was very entrepreneurial in Cape Town. Okay, I think we've got time for, sadly, only one more from the community. So Chris makes videos about okay, let me paraphrase this so Chris makes videos about online courses in bite-sized chunks, but what is the one failure or mistake that has taught him the most?
Speaker 2:where to begin so many failures? Just no one that tends to spend too much time on them. I I think if I could start the thing again for our particular company, I would spend more time building a community up front and then launch the courses, rather than doing it the other way around. I think it would make my life much easier. Another quick I know it's quick fire, so I'll try and be quick with things. I think launching this at a much higher price point would have been a much better thing. I think we've talked about the price thing. I made it too low. It should have been higher. Probably should still be a lot higher. I just don't want to do it. Maybe I'll get over myself.
Speaker 2:The other big thing is, when working with partners, particularly big partners, make sure you have something in writing that means that they will actually support you in some way, as though, yeah, we've kind of been burned by that quite a bit. It's it's, and I don't think any of this is ever personal. It's just corporate bureaucracy, bollocks um, if you're not a kpi, then surprise, surprise, not much is going to happen. So, yeah, you, you kind of either need the, the cover fire from someone really, really high up in the in the company who you're sure is going to be there for the next few years, or have something in writing that that makes sure that kind of hold it holds them accountable to, to working or helping, helping you grow things. Yeah, that would be another thing. I wish I'd done all those things, but you never knew that. Yeah, I still enjoy my life, so it's fine yeah, I think many, many failures.
Speaker 1:I think everyone, I think all the best people you know have them in their employment, but um lots around hiring and firing as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the kind of I mean we. The stupid thing is we write, you know, we write all these courses and we tell people all these things and so often, often, it's like the cobbler's shoes you forget to do them yourself when you're hiring people. If it doesn't work out very, very quickly, you should let them go and change it. But it's always easier said than done, particularly if you're an extrovert chap like myself who loves being around other people. You're like I just want everything to be nice and wonderful, positive, yeah, uh. But uh, yeah, there are all those things that I'd.
Speaker 2:I'd say it's, you know some in business. It's sort of one of those cruel realities is you need to be a little bit ruthless sometimes in order to be successful. The most successful ceos rarely are, you know, maybe they are lovely people, but they're rarely sort of known in the public as being, you know, the rainbows and unicorns hugging type and they're normally a bit more like brutal, and I think there's a reason for it. Whether that's right or wrong is debatable, but yeah, I mean, that's another topic it's a whole other tangent we could go off.
Speaker 1:I think one of the very first guests we had we discussed was a psychologist, Sarah Lovesley, and we talked about the high incidence of sociopathy, kind of C-suite levels in big corporations. But that would be a whole other conversation and they're brilliant.
Speaker 2:I mean my wife's in the HR, I think, like yours. And so, yeah, we end up having arguments all over the night and I'm like, yeah, there's a reason why you traditionally haven't seen many women in C-suite levels. It's not because they're not good enough, it's because we've created an environment where it's very difficult for that to happen because of what we respect or not even respect. It's just how the thing works fucking terrible. Yeah, we're getting moving in the right direction, slowly but surely yeah and again.
Speaker 1:Well, I will say you know we're coming up to time. But firstly, I always love finishing with a rapid fire because it seems to be a way of getting amazingly distilled wisdom. I say wisdom is fractal. You can compress it enormously if you have and it always brings out some absolutely brilliant tips or pieces of advice distilled wisdom. I say wisdom is fractal. You can compress it enormously, and it always brings out some absolutely brilliant tips or pieces of advice or wisdom at the end. I really want to get you back for another hour. I'd love to do an AI retrospective, maybe in a couple of years, so we can see how our predictions went. So maybe we can do an AI retrospective, yeah.
Speaker 2:We'll be spot on, seb. We'll be spot on, seb. We'll be spot on. We won't even need to do it, we'll get the robots to do it for us One of the dream tools that I'd love to make.
Speaker 2:As I was saying, two or three years ago, I was like, oh my God, it wouldn't be cool if you just had an app on your phone that you just consented to just recording everything that you say for about a year. Just give it a year's worth of training data. I reckon, with the current models, if you just gave it a year's worth of your data, of every single telephone conversation, all the chats that you had it was listening in the background, you know all the stuff that people are petrified about and you just use that as training data, I think it would have a pretty amazing replica of yourself and your ability and the way that you would approach problems and and suggest things. And I mean, imagine how amazing that would be if you've lost a loved one. You can kind of I mean it's a bit freaky, but my god, you could you could ask your dad that question there's some.
Speaker 1:There's a black mirror black mirror episode, I think. That uses a similar concept to this, where you, you have a digital replica of a deceased loved one through all the training data, and I mean it's Black Mirror, so it takes a slightly spookier aspect of it. But yeah, absolutely. And who was it? We did have a guest, lila Johnston, who is a freelance writer and works with the wonderfully named Library of Mistakes in Edinburgh, which is a wonderful institution. But she was saying she did a lot of ghostwriting in her early career, wrote some books under her own name as well, and she was saying when she asks ChatGPT certain questions related to what she's written on, it answers back in her voice and style of writing, and it's really spooky to see that coming back through chat GPT. Anyway, I digress. I digress for the umpteenth time Very, very quickly. Finally, obviously, 42coursescom. But is there anything else you want to give a shout out to or promote or talk about or anything at all?
Speaker 2:I mean, if anyone wants to take a course, I'll make a use the code fat tony's, all one word, no, like you know, squiggle or anything, just, or just the letters fat tony's and uh, I'll, uh, I'll make sure that you get a a nice surprise discount at anything you want to take.
Speaker 2:But, uh, yeah, thank you for being here. I really appreciate your time and, if you're still listening, I really appreciate your time as well. I know we live in a crazy world where there's lots of different things coming on, so, uh, yeah, I I appreciate the time and thank you very much for listening to me ramble on with seph.
Speaker 1:It's very kind no, no, I, I loved it. People ask me why do you do the podcast? Because it's certainly not the monetary game and I always answer answer the same, which is really it's just an excuse to talk to people. I find incredibly interesting and just have diverse conversations. And if you were to send someone a message that you don't know saying can I talk to you on the phone for an hour, most people think you're a bit bonkers, whereas you say come on my podcast, like yeah, sure, and if I would call back and other people in the community get benefit, then that's brilliant as well. But, chris Rawlinson, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, lots of love. Have a wonderful weekend. All the best, cheerio.