AI Special 1#: Priya Lakhani OBE, CEO of CENTURY Tech: “Living with, working with and building AI”

0:00I always say separate the artificial intelligence from the human intelligence. AI is a technology, it's a tool. You're going to use it. How can you use it to augment the HI?

0:13Welcome to the Tech Leaders Podcast AI series, Is the Hype Justified? In this captivating five-part podcast series, Professor Karenza Jennings and I will deep dive into the recent hype behind AI technology and seek to challenge how profound its impact on society and business really will be. Throughout the series, we'll be joined by five leading experts, including industry pioneers, visionaries, and entrepreneurs who have been at the forefront of AI advancements and have real-world insight into the deeper implications and possibilities that AI is bringing to our world. And for this one, we had to bring in the cavalry.

0:55I am joined by none other than the magnificent Professor Carenza Jennings. For those of you who are not familiar with this name, Carenza was a guest all the way back in episode 21, back in December 2020, and then co-hosted our successful Women in Tech series last year. We had an absolute blast collaborating, and we couldn't be more thrilled to have her join us once again. Carenza is a best-selling author, an amazingly talented storyteller, and has worked for the likes of the Royal Family, the Royal Household, BBC, Sky, and currently BT, where she is the Group Director of Data Platforms. I am so looking forward to this one, and what a guest we have to kick things off.

1:41Priya Lakhani, OBE, is the founder and CEO of Century Tech, an artificial intelligence education technology company. that develops AI-powered learning tools for schools, colleges, universities, and employers across the world. In 2008, Priya left her successful high-flying career as a barrister to become an entrepreneur, to start a cooking sauce business, something totally unrelated to the legal profession. Fast forward to 2023. Priya is now a seasoned entrepreneur and an ambassador for the AI tech innovation world in the UK. Fast forward to 2023 and Priya is now a seasoned entrepreneur and ambassador for AI and tech innovation in the UK, especially within education.

2:31Priya is a really big personality, is a fantastic advocate of AI and education. Just an all-around great person. we really enjoyed talking to Priya. What an incredible way to start the AI series. It's Priya Lakhani.

2:51Priya, we are so excited to talk to you. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. I'm so excited to be here, Gareth and Carenza. Yeah, lovely to have you. Absolutely. Carenza and I have been so excited about this. I know you guys know each other. So this is a bit like a reunion for old friends. We'll be stuck in the middle. But Carenza and I and our team have been talking about doing an AI series. We think you're the perfect guest to open up this series. There's so many issues, things we're excited about. There's lots and lots of things to talk about around the evolution of artificial intelligence technology and the impact on society.

3:25And I know education, which I know is something which is very close to your heart. There's loads of things to talk about. Let me just open with this big question. What are you most excited about in relation to artificial intelligence and where it's going, Priya? It's such a good question. And rather than giving you a more technical answer, I think what I'm really excited about is the fact that the masses, the public, have all become engaged with it in some way. But that's what I'm most excited about because, you know, prior to ChatGPT's launch in December, there were many entrepreneurs who were building artificial intelligence technology, developing the technology and talking about it and its application.

4:07And, you know, when you're when you're talking to people, obviously, you have the usual suspects that are very interested in what you're talking about and how that can change the world, whether it's in education and health care and security, just in retail and as a consumer. but it was always a little bit difficult to cut through if you like to to the wider public let's look this is how this technology works and this is how it's going to transform the way in which we live in which we you know we work and so the thing that i'm most excited about because it's so recent is the launch of chat gpt meant that in one morning the social channels were going absolutely wild what's also happening is there's a debate about artificial intelligence with the wider the public.

4:49This sort of technology that captures the imagination of more people will ensure that there's a bigger and a better debate on things like the ethics of AI, you know, how we can use the technology. And in order to be better consumers of artificial intelligence, we need to understand it. And so that's what I'm most excited about, because being in education, and I know it's slightly different in terms of what I've been doing in the last decade in AI and education, but being involved in education is not just for for children right it's about lifelong learning it's ensuring that we all understand all of the relevant issues and artificial intelligence is definitely one of them so so gareth that's what excites me the most is the fact that it's become headline conversation it's the fact that you decided right we're going to do an ai series and it's going to be specifically on this subject the fact that you're doing that the fact that the mass media are talking about it the fact that headline news means that now we can have a really big conversation about the technology and its future and its opportunities but also you know what are the risks how do we mitigate those and i think that's really important and so when when you started out doing century tech you did this thing you had this incredible vision it's almost i always see it as bionic technology because you are leveraging the power of the human and the technology.

6:05So you've got the human and the machine because you combine neuroscience with artificial intelligence. Just tell us a little bit about how it works and how you got that vision off the ground. Because at the time it was so extraordinary and so peculiar for people to get their heads around. But then look what you've gone on to do. You say it really nicely. I think it was more like, I thought it was extraordinary and everyone else said, what are you thinking? Why are you there? You're crazy. And actually there are a lot of tech leaders and people who have ideas that they would really love for those to come to fruition who they're in that point right now you know they're at that juncture where you have this idea you understand technology you understand you know whether it's ai whether it's the blockchain whatever it is you know this amazing product or idea and how many people will come to you and say that's absolutely crazy so so look how it came about was i have two young children and um so at the time i had a two-year-old and a newborn and they were at preschool and i was really really interested in you know, what they were doing at school.

7:02I was interested in education. While this was going on, I was sitting on the advisory board for the former Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable. And on his advisory board, there was a meeting where Matthew Hancock, who used to be the bridge minister between Department for Education and Biz, he came into a meeting and he said a number of students, he gave a number where those students do not get the required minimum grades in maths and English at the end of formal education to get a job, right? And so at this point, you needed a C. You needed a C at GCSE at 16 years old to then go on to do an apprenticeship, to go and, you know, do vocational training, to go on to any university, to do any sort of form of qualification afterwards.

7:48And the number was 20%. So 20 % of our country cannot read, write or do maths well enough to get a job at the end of formal education and that was really shocking to me it was shocking to me because I was busy doing something else at the time I had a different venture I was running a food company called Masala Masala which was a fresh sauces company in supermarkets and we with every sauce that we were selling we were feeding a homeless person a hot meal we were providing vaccines pentavalent vaccines through the Gavi alliance and we were building schools you know in slum areas and so the idea was because I'm East African Indian I want to provide health care education and nutrition to people because if you have all three then there's a chance at least that you can you know you can go out there you can leave that sort of poverty trap that you're in take your family out of there but you see I was doing this and building schools in commonwealth countries and commonwealth countries tend to follow the British model and so it was a real shock to the system that day that the minister walked in and said 20 % of our nation you know are not getting these required grades because I thought if it's not working here there's no way it's working where I've been working for a few years trying to change things and sitting there you know really naively sort of thinking oh look you know this is changing the world and so it was a real wake-up moment and I thought okay how can we solve this problem now fortunately I was sitting on this advisory board and so I was able to ask lots of questions why are 20 % of children unable to pass what's going on you know because I remember going to school and thinking hang on we speak English and how we're taught English, maths and all of that at school.

9:22And so what was so interesting was not many people had a direct answer to the question. So I went to schools, I went to some of the most challenged schools in the country, and I went to some of the most, you know, sort of best performing on the league tables, if you like, in the independent sector. And although every school was different, every child is different, every teacher is different, I could see the delivery of education hadn't changed much from when I went to school. So there was very much sort of a one size fits all. teachers would say you know we're going home at the end of the day from our day job and we actually feel slightly disheartened because we know we could have maybe differentiated a little bit more for that other kid over there we don't have the time and the resources to personalize for every single child in every single period throughout the day and when you've got 20 to 30 kids in a classroom and so I thought firstly personalization is really interesting and people are talking about that and they're talking about AI at the same time think about a decade ago right so think about your phones what was on your smartphone yes think about choosing a film think about shopping on amazon think about the web basket think about recommendations and nudges think about investing what might you want to invest in everything that we started searching for as a consumer we were being recommended items and i thought well hang on we're being personalized in all these very consumer type ways what about our education being personalized and there's this weird thing there's this big thing called ai and big data that lots of clever people are talking about i don't know anything about it and so why don't i go and see if that can help and the second issue was really interesting by the way because it sounds very unrelated but it's not so teachers would say they spend more than half of their time marking assessing and doing admin than teaching there's lots of reasons why we've recently had teacher strikes right and and pay is obviously a very very big deal but what's so interesting is that well it was no surprise that these teachers are tired and exhausted because there is no other industry where you have an individual think about a salesperson for example right where you say here are your kpis for the end of the year but then you don't give them the tools to achieve those kpis whereas we're sending teachers into classrooms every single day to do their jobs their kpis aren't revenue their kpis are you know opportunities for the children right and their education much bigger much more important and yet what tools are we giving them and they said our workload is huge and so I thought okay well hang on that's related because when the devil's in the detail right they're spending a lot of time data gathering if we think about it really simply they're giving you a test every week they're now marking that test 30 times and then the teachers by day and then data analysts by night because they've got to sit there and figure out well who got the test wrong and why did they get something wrong so the idea then came about as to look what is this technology and how can we then use and leverage this technology to solve these problems and it was very much a problem-oriented approach yeah which is the best way of doing innovation actually yeah and so many of us have those ideas right which is really really interesting and so you know we're often in a situation where we think okay there's a service or there's a product it could be better right or actually there's a gap in the market i mean i do think every company is a technology company and every company is a data company and somebody once said to me what do you mean you know I run a hair salon and I said yeah you're a technology company because you've got a website you've got a booking system you know you're using a CRM probably you've got loyalty things you've got all sorts of things you know that you can think about using and leveraging technology and data in terms of you know this is not an audience where I need to explain why data is important I think but you know all the reasons to make your business thrive and for you to actually enjoy your business more really really interestingly, I find as a business leader, we enjoy our businesses more when we are better informed, right?

13:04In terms of what's happening and how customers are behaving. So can I ask you, Priya, you've done a lot in your career, but you were trained as a barrister, you set up an FMCG company, and then you kind of found your why. I've heard you say that you want to change the world quite a few times, which I think is brilliant, by the way. Which is so naive. No, I think it's fantastic. I'm still trying. Look, I think there's not enough people in the UK who think like that. I mean, it's very much a Silicon Valley line, isn't it? But I think it's absolutely fantastic. And I think you genuinely will. You clearly found your why and you got to that journey then.

13:36You got to the end of that journey with Century Tech. Can you tell us about that journey? Why did you move away from being a barrister? Why did you set up your FMCG company? And then why did you ultimately move into AI and education? Yeah, you guys are being really polite about these questions. Most people are saying, that's crazy. How are you? It makes me like, what do you mean you're a barrister? So actually it all makes sense with this why. So I'm from Cheshire, from a very leafy part of Cheshire in the northwest of England. But I spent all of my long holidays, if you like, in parts of East Africa.

14:07So my father's from Nairobi, my mum's from Kampala in Uganda. And so on a lot of these holidays, we would go and see my father's family. His mother, my grandma, was in Nairobi. And it was just really, ever since I was very, very young, I remember being about five, six years old. and you know you're from this leafy part of cheshire and then you turn up in nairaby and you've got a house with your family and then in the house you've got servants and the servants are living in servant quarters and you call them your servants and you can just imagine now putting yourself in that situation even now as an adult that just feels very very wrong and i was around lots of children just sort of when you're walking around the streets etc where you know we have a white mercedes with a driver and then there's a nanny and then there's chefs and everything in nairobi if you are if you're able to afford it this is how people live but then around the corner there are children begging on the street and they have no idea if they're getting fresh water tomorrow that they're smiling and beaming and and that just really affected me you know it's a very very simple story so a very very young age i was in nairobi i was with my parents my mum remembers this and I said mum I know why I'm here and this sounds really stupid I totally get it and I said look I'm here because I want to try and change the world for these children and give them everything that I've got because I felt really spoiled and I was and I am really spoiled and I said I have all of these things if I want anything you know I was also wearing a ridiculous dress the day that I said that when my mum put me in this dress and I hated wearing dresses so I looked even more like princess like you would ever you know and I was a real tomboy I used to want to wear joggers and a hoodie and follow my brother around and and you know and so it just felt wrong it just felt really wrong to me and so I grew up thinking that that's what I want to do you know and so I was very lucky because how many people go through their entire lives and can look back right at the end and say every single moment was spent with this kind of drive and this purpose and the reason why that's really important is that and it sort of comes into leadership in a sense is it actually gets you through real times of adversity you know when there are massive challenges and you've got your north star you've got your direction it can help you build that resilience so throughout school I said that's it you know I mean when you're a kid what do you think of when you think of equity and justice right you think law that's what I'm gonna do you know I'm gonna wear the wig and the gown I'm gonna be a barrister I'm gonna change the world and so that's what I did and I was told there's no way I'd be a barrister.

16:41And it's because you're female, you're from an ethnic minority, you're brown, you're not smart enough to go to Oxbridge. I mean, I didn't want to go to Oxbridge anyway, but, but, you know, that was literally the party line was look at barristers, they're white men who go to Oxbridge in the eighties and early nineties. So you're never going to make it. But my parents really, really fought for my education. My father would argue with my school and say, you know, she wants to be a barrister. And he'd do this accent going, you know what's wrong with that you know we're Indian Indians are all doctors lawyers and accountants like what do you mean my daughter can't be a doctor a lawyer an accountant and all of that led to me me going I went to university I practiced I loved I loved it I really really loved it I did not leave because in any way I didn't enjoy the profession but what I realized a few years in was that I just wasn't moving the dial you know it wasn't a career where as a junior particularly that I was able to move the dial as much and I used to do things like when I was a lawyer I remember receiving letters from there was a charity called Action Aid you sponsor children in parts of Africa and so these you know I was using my salary to do these little sort of charitable efforts if you like that's not really what I thought my purpose in life was so I was working late nights as a lawyer and I was unable to cook and find time to cook fresh meals because I was just working so hard and I spotted a gap in the market there were no Indian ethnic fresh sauces in the supermarket and when you go to the supermarket one of the most popular things to buy is pasta and pasta sauce you know from the fresh aisle right and if you want Asian food you have to go to the ambient aisle the room temperature aisle and they're all pasteurized right and I thought given that curry is the nation's favorite dish Jamie Oliver's just won some Ted prize right for saying everyone should eat healthily which is absolutely right and he was changing like school meals and I thought there's a drive to healthier eating these things are all pasteurized curry's the nation's favorite dish that doesn't exist on the fresh aisle I'm going to create the country's first ethnic fresh sauce company and um and I'm going to sell it into supermarkets and for every pot of sauce that I sell from the revenue model not from the profit model we'll feed a homeless person a hot meal we'll provide the meals and we'll build the schools right and so in August 2008 I quit law thought right I'm going to start the food company and that was it and say masala masala was born and um it was a real learning curve you know into business because I'd never done it before and I said to my family and my husband I said look if I don't have a supermarket deal by Christmas I'll quit and go back to law and it was so interesting because at the time I was being laughed out of the door by everyone.

19:20The manufacturer didn't even want to make the sources for me, even though I had the money. I didn't even want credit. Right. I was like, I'm going to pay you. Nobody wanted to work with me. They said, go home. You know, is your sibling a buyer at Tesco? Is that why you think you can get into supermarkets? You know, and what was so interesting was I was meeting the naysayers. Right. And and in technology, we often, you know, because lots of people have ideas and they're pitching constantly, they're meeting venture capitalists, they're meeting investors. You have to build resilience when it comes to hearing no, because no is never.

19:53What I found is it's really binary, right? It's either, yes, I think that this would be great. Off you go. I might not give you any money, but off you go. Well done. Congratulations. Good luck. Or it's no, this is a rubbish idea. It's not going to work. And when I started Century, I remember in Cambridge, an angel saying, go home and stop wasting everyone's time. You know nothing about AI. Right. And this is, you know, after me doing like six online degrees in artificial intelligence. So yeah. Yeah. And then so anyway, so that was the Masala Masala story. And it was great. And then it leads to what we spoke about earlier, which is a few years in, you know, millions and millions of meals later, nine schools, 35 ,000 vaccines later, I was in this meeting and that was the wake up call.

20:38I was thinking, oh my goodness, you know, there I am thinking that this food company that I've created is doing all this good. But I just don't believe that the school side, the education side is achieving the aims that I had set out for them to achieve because it needs to work here. And if it can work here, then we can get it to work here for every child. If we can level the playing field, then we'll have learned something fundamental to change things long term elsewhere. but you need to do the work and not just you know I needed to not assume that just having what looked like a replica little school was simply just going to get the outcomes that I'd hoped for I love the fact that in in both of your business ideas they both stemmed from problems that you personally were facing or had come across like you'd actually heard about problems that you wanted to solve and get going with that.

21:32So that was a huge driving force. But what you do that most people don't is you actually dramatically changed your own life in order to see those dreams, push those dreams through to fruition, which I think is incredibly brave. And I don't know if many people have quite reflected that back to you, Vria, but just how incredibly brave you are and that resilience that you hinted at. I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about just how hard it has been, particularly in the AI field? It's not been easy. And I know a fair few people, I think all entrepreneurs change their lives radically because entrepreneurship is not a rational choice.

22:08It's not an easy choice. To leave a nine to five or whatever it is, with a stable income to quit and to go into something actually really risky. If we look at the stats of how many startups fail and then of those that succeed, how many within the next two, three years fail again. you know, and people who switch into companies as well as an employee, but into a maybe a more risky environment. These are all kind of bold changes that I say that people make. But yeah, look, on my journey, it's not easy. And I'm not going to sit here and pretend to be one of those people that's like, wow, look what I've done.

22:41It's been really hard. It's really, really hard. And there are moments where, you know, I often say, look, there's two feelings that entrepreneurs feel at any one time. And there's nothing in between. You either feel euphoria or terror. Right. And the euphoria is really easy. And actually, you forget those moments very, very quickly. It's when you're in the terror moments. So you're, you're, you know, you're doing a funding round, let's say, and you don't know if you've got the ability to pay salaries in two or three months time. You know, you've got term sheets signed by investors, and then they renege on the term sheets that have been signed just before completion.

23:19All of the sorts of issues that I think actually many of the tech leaders have been through and either as the entrepreneur, as the CEO, as the founder, or as a member of the senior team, or as somebody who's about to embark on that journey. But it's about persevering, right? So it's about continuing. That sounds like a really simple thing. But what's really great actually about many entrepreneurs is that they don't give up. You know, they're so, we're so wedded to whatever that purpose or that ambition is and that vision that we've seen you know because we've seen it the point is you see it it's not like some abstract descriptor you you visualized it you know what the world looks like with your solution whether it's a change the world thing or whatever it is and you kind of can't imagine life without it right that keeps you going but yeah it's just it's look it's not it's not been easy it's not been easy being a female in technology either and I think that I started and karenza i must have said this to you maybe seven eight years ago but i started absolutely saying i don't know what you mean when you tell me that i'm a female in tech why does that make any difference i'm sure that i said that in fact i'm pretty sure i've said that on stage somewhere i don't care okay fine i'm i'm a female i'm from an ethnic minority it doesn't matter actually after a decade it really does and i've really learned that it's not true what i started out with in a sense that's how I felt and I think actually it was really important that I was naive and I felt that it wouldn't make a difference because that kept me going for the first five years you just think you're trailblazing through um this entire sector and you're building something and and you're defying anyone that says no to you and anyone that says that you can't but you know a decade on after 22 million pounds raised all from high net worths and angels and a couple of different types of institutions like mit for example invested in century but i've had no venture capital and that's not because i haven't tried either right it's also because i haven't succeeded in getting venture capital and maybe that's down to me and and whatever else but but some of the comments that you come across particularly if you're in artificial intelligence and so just last year i have a i have a company that is serving organizations across 55 countries in the world, 56 now.

25:45And just last year in Los Angeles at a conference, there were lots of people pitching, you know, in a sort of small, kind of not a round table, but sort of like a, you know, around a coffee table. And this investor, and I'm listening to all their pitches as well. I'm the only female with an AI company. There are a couple of guys with AI companies. Mine's serving 55 countries at the time. Theirs are startups. They have no traction whatsoever and they're talking about AI. And at the end of it, this investor turns around to me and says, sweetheart what do you really know about artificial intelligence can you explain it to me and and you know and so you're sort of sitting there and obviously what you do is you walk into every room as the chief exec of your company you don't walk in with your emotions and that's really controversial some people won't like that but when you run a company and you've got 120 people relying on that company in terms of your staff and then you've got millions of people relying on your company in the world who you serve um you know the best thing is really not to sort of try and scream at the person because it's not going to get you anywhere and i just you know i've always learned don't burn bridges right it's just it's just a lesson in life but the thing is those things happen i think that things are getting better karenza from your question for women it's just it's a slow journey it's not exactly where i'd like it to be i've got a daughter who's 13 and i'd really love that we can sort of push on and and get rid of some of the bias and discrimination but it definitely exists the most important thing for for any gender listening to this is to just be really conscious of it in a sense really open-minded because the more women who run AI companies you start to chip away at that bigger problem you know you're you're going to fight that battle by having more successful role models in place and one thing I'd love to draw attention to because I know it's about AI today is who's the CTO of OpenAI?

27:36A woman. A woman. Right. And it's phenomenal that actually only in the last few weeks that's been viral on social media. She's done a lot of media. She's done media before. But I think that that is really, really fantastic. She's there for her talent and for her skills. But it's about highlighting those sorts of people and their skill set and their achievements. And I think that then will make the world an easier place for the next generation and the next people who want to go and set up AI companies. Yeah, 100%. Just wanted to maybe talk about your book for a little bit. How did the book come about?

28:11Where did that opportunity come from? And what did you set out to achieve with that book? Yeah, so the opportunity came about by the publisher asking for coffee and then saying, we've heard you speak. We've heard all about you. Would you be interested in writing a book about education? And I said, sure. And the coffee was about half an hour long. and then I went back to the office upstairs and was like oh we're writing a book now and my team did the usual which is oh great Priya's got another project and you know that happens whenever I go on holiday they're just thinking oh no we're giving her time to think and think of other things to do so yeah so that's how it came about and then what was quite interesting was that I think actually though the original in the original coffee the book was about ai technology and education right so we've built a technology company in education it's it's an ai platform true ai i say that you know because i think it's important you know after the financial times reported that 40 percent of companies that use the term ai use it as a marketing term so i think it's important and particularly in education where it's a pretty nascent field so i think that was the original intention but what was the how the book actually then was written and came about and the sort of themes of the book was that we'd at that point I think spent six years, six or seven years speaking to educators all around the world that we had been serving with our platform and they kept talking about the same issues over and over again and some of those issues are nothing to do with AI technology and education they're to do with mental health the mental health and well-being of of teachers of students uh the pastoral care and actually i'm a huge advocate for systemic change in education um and i've been talking about that a lot so instead of writing a book there's only one chapter on you know technology if you like per se like as in here is ai and how it might change education but actually nine chapters out of 10 are about essentially you your children and why this needs to change this is actually what's going on in schools right now and it doesn't matter if you're it doesn't matter which school your kid's going to here are the biggest problems and it's because I wanted to give a voice to all of those opinions really that I'd heard you know all of the concerns that I'd heard from educators around the world and what I had pieced together as what is needed and also the fact that education is just really slow to change and all of this really comes from and it's very related to AI but in a different way if we look at artificial intelligence and actually just what happened in the last few months and GPT 4 is a fantastic way to look at this look at what that technology can do after only let's say months you know in the field right if you like i know we've had access to gpc3 for example since the licenses were available but if you look at chat gpt and look at what it can do now think about what it's going to be able to do as it just gets better and better and better think about you know bard from google think about stability ai's products these are just going to get better every second anyone's on those technologies it's being trained it's getting smarter now what those technologies can do very well yes they make mistakes before everyone shouts at me i know they make mistakes i know they make up store sources i've written all about this stuff and yeah i get the issues right now but what they can pass and examine because they have passed they've tested them on the u.s bar exams on the sats they've tested them they pass all of those exams is they're great at recall and regurgitation and so that's not a human skill that's going to be as valued it's still very important because you can't build many skills if you don't have the ability to recall initially right but the point is is that our assessment systems and our education systems and this is gareth kind of where it all kind of pieced together the uk the us australia there's a bunch of countries that absolutely ace the oecd you know on their report we ace memorization strategies so most students use memorization strategies to pass exams and they do they can do very well in those countries now relevant to ai is as ai grows as you know data across all sectors becomes more and more important then what skills do we need these children to leave school with in order to have opportunity and choice when they leave school and so you know there's a big connection actually between artificial intelligence and the technology and where it's going other technologies looking at For example, the metaverse, as that grows, you know, as people start to experience it more and more and as our digital personas take more of a percentage of our engagement time than our physical personas in the physical world.

33:05And thinking about where our children will be in 10 to 20 years time and then the education system. So the book is actually about the system and why these skills are so important and why focusing an education system, mostly where it's accountable for memorization in terms of exams, is the wrong thing to do. And so really, it's a call to action. And it's written for parents, not necessarily for technologists or entrepreneurs or anyone. I mean, you know, they're welcome to read it, but it's really written for the masses. Yeah, sure. I mean, ChatGPT changes everything. I remember when I first saw it, Carenza, we were talking about this when I first saw it.

33:41I remember my heart rate just raising, just elevating. I was like, wow, this is it. This is it. This is what they've been talking about for years. It's actually here now. And I just think it's an incredible tool. But it changes so much, doesn't it? Carenza, you and I were talking about this in the context of the labor market, where different things will become valuable. Do you know what I mean? So the guy you can ask ChatGPT the right questions to write good blogs is more effective than the good blog writer do you know what i mean because it so what will this change our value you know our perception of what value is you know what i mean it commoditizes new skills doesn't it well it does i mean if you think about for example when i look at our head of marketing and she's absolutely brilliant uh she's brilliant at all the sort of when i was 20 20 years ago 30 years ago when i thought about someone who was a great marketer she encompasses all of those skills what she also is is incredibly data driven because you don't have if you think about it right 30 20 30 years ago so I'm thinking about when I was a bit younger I'm 42 next month when I looked at somebody who was fantastic at marketing and it was you know they were focusing on for example print media they're focusing on you know advertising campaigns etc because of the way the internet has evolved and these tools have evolved and data collection has evolved at the time marketers skills were very much in sort of the writing it was very difficult to measure ROI when you were marketing right I remember those sort of famous phrases about yeah I'm spending like 30 million pounds and three million is effective but I don't know which three million or whichever whoever said that and whenever one of the numbers it was I remember that being kind of like a big thing whereas actually there isn't a marketer out there now who wants a very very serious job in a serious organization that is not very very proficient in terms of understanding roi as it you know in terms of measuring that with data so data has become important and so you'll see that these jobs will evolve these roles will evolve and these careers will evolve because you have to be able to understand those tools for example a marketer who doesn't understand digital marketing and social media is a very very difficult idea concept for any company right so these will evolve And it's really, you know, I always say to people, we are living with, working with or building AI, right?

35:54Anyone with technology who has access to that, to smartphones, that is what you are doing. You are living with, working with or building artificial intelligence already. And so that's going to grow. And you need to think about, you know, how am I going to evolve my skill set with this technology? if I'm a leader in an organization how is my organization going to leverage all of these tools be part of all of these different conversations be more efficient because of these technologies and that is not you know people often talk about oh I've got to digitally do a digital transformation project in my big company I'm a tech leader in this huge organization and we've got to organize that and I think you know what that's completely wrong digital transformation is not a project it hasn't got a beginning and an end it's got a beginning there is no end it's like it's an evolution you know you've just got to carry on with it it's like it's part of your culture and you have to invest in it properly what do you think are the new human skills that are going to become really important in the in the next few years karenza that's honestly it's like the golden question i'm not even sure about new human skills i think it's just actually what we've got to do is focus on you know what we already understand that humans are brilliant and the way that I think the best way to think about this is separate the AI and the HI right I always say separate the artificial intelligence from the human intelligence AI is a technology it's a tool you're going to use it how can you use it to augment the HI and so there's no simple answer to that question that you asked because there are many many human skills that that are that we need to nurture and develop and where we can leverage technology to make us even better at what we do and it will be different depending on different use cases and different examples but critical thinking and being able to to think and analyze and question exactly yeah is the single most important skill that we teach ourselves and our children and the reason why is because is and this is something that I'm just really passionate about and AI very much plays into this is that the foundation of a of a democracy relies on for example a free press right the press of the eyes and ears of the public forensic journalism investigative journalism is incredibly important now when you have people receiving their news and their media no longer from these larger news organizations and you have your you know the ones that are impartial you've got whatever you've got but the point is you know where it's coming from but it's coming from trained journalists who are trained to source you know have sources as to what they're writing evidence what they're writing again we're going to get comments on not everyone does that i get it but you know generally i'm thinking in principle and in theory yes if a trained journalist has written a piece they're going to be thinking about it from a completely different way than a citizen journalist yes now when most of us are now receiving our news from citizen journalists and from social media channels but from persuasive technologies that then nudges as to more and more of what we prefer more and what we like where we kind of go down this rabbit hole of our preferences and maybe there's a bit of bias in there and you can see how that can create an issue this inability for many people to be able to analyze to think critically is a real problem because what happens is you start to trust and we've seen this for example in other countries where there's propaganda where there's people talking about elections being rigged people spreading untruths if you like that becomes a real problem sure and this is one of the issues with ai technology this technology that can recommend that can nudge that can learn about you learn about your behaviors and when particularly those organizations are very much judged by their investors on engagement time you know on keeping you hooked on not really wanting you to log off then that human skill is more important and it's incredibly important for for children and for young people as they grow up to understand what is the difference between fake news and fact how do you know have you questioned this and chat gpt is a really good example you know when it first came out and you had these children and these young well even not even children just adults everyone asking questions just relying on the answers it was making up information and sources uh one of the teachers in there in my organization was absolutely horrified it made up a quote from Othello when asked it some question about some Shakespeare thing and then and then another teacher was absolutely mortified when it stated that William the Conqueror did not win the Battle of Hastings and he was really upset about that I've apparently written a book that I haven't well there you go and I think the thing is is that over relying on this uh you know the output if you like of um of these systems and not being able to uh to judge the source and you know where it's coming from again that sort of critical thinking set of skills it's going to be incredibly important that we nurture those and so i think that's the fundamental one when we're talking about artificial intelligence what's the one human skill that we need to develop to defend ourselves against some of the negative things that can come from this technology is incredibly important but obviously if you have that skill set you can allow yourself to further thrive with it as well right so there's a positive side of things as well yeah absolutely do you know what i did a history degree and history is just all about analyzing biased sources and trying to get to the bottom of what the truth is and after i did it i'm like well i'm never going to use any of this any of these skills in the real world i just did it because i like history but as i get older it's like the skills i learned analyzing sources is getting more and more relevant to everything as we go further into this digital world is amazing yeah as a lawyer it's the same with me I just think you know whenever you read anything it's about what are the facts behind what you're reading I was in this article recently and in the comments section it was extraordinary how many people just suddenly rushed and one person said oh look she didn't get into the university of her choice so she's doing you know and I said but and in my head I thought but I didn't ever want to go to Oxbridge I mean why would you assume that There's nowhere in the story that said I wanted to go there and that I applied and I didn't get it.

42:19You see what I mean? So I think what's quite interesting is people read things sometimes how they want to read things. And there's lots of different forms of bias and confirmation bias. But then can you imagine? Sadly, that's something I think that all of us do. You know, I'm not perfect. You're not perfect. We all have these biases that come in the way in terms of how we're taking in information. But now couple that with a persuasive technology that's feeding it to you. right so so so that that becomes a real issue and if we want to be living if we want to live in a world that is less polarized than where it is now then this is really really important and policymakers really need to take this seriously and they need to ensure that there is time and resource available in formal educational institutions to be able to focus on those skills and that particular skill set, you know, across the board.

43:12I think this is fundamental. And actually, the book does cover this, but it's become even more relevant in the last few months, given that we can now even show how this technology is able to do that. I mean, yeah, there's so many directions we could go in here, but I wanted to pin on that. And I know, Carenza, this is something you're involved with in relation to policymakers. What sort of role do you see governments, for example, playing in regulating AI and its impact on things like jobs and societies? So on regulation, I don't know if you're aware, but I received a request from Sir Patrick Valance just before Christmas to be involved in the review of regulation across every sector, but as it relates to artificial intelligence technologies and sort of broadly digital technologies.

43:57And so we were asked to help with that, myself and Matt Clifford, who's the chair of ARIA in the UK. And the review actually just published and the chancellor in the budget accepted all nine recommendations in the review. And what was really, really interesting in that review, the recommendations, there are several recommendations. Two really interesting ones are the generative AI recommendation, And that is for policymakers to give clarity in terms of law on the input and the outputs of generative AI. And then I think one of the most important sort of regulation recommendations, and this is all came from stakeholders.

44:36So just so you know, we spoke to many, many stakeholders across industries to understand what they needed, because it was really about speaking to the CEOs, the heads of policy, the founders, the CTOs and saying, you know, where are you stuck you know where could you thrive in the uk being an ai technology company and and where are you stuck because of regulation or do you need regulation do you need clarity and so we asked all those questions and the most interesting one was a sandbox recommendation so a cross-sector sandbox where companies can apply to be in sort of a safe environment if you like work with regulators on innovative technologies and there's you know this could relate to medical devices it could be generative ai generative ai there's this really interesting debate at the moment about watermarking technologies but that's not quite fully developed yet so you know but is there a regulatory issue that's related to that and the idea is they would apply them be in a safe environment working regulators and then work with regulators to develop that regulation as the innovation develops if you like so there's there's always work to be done in regulation it's difficult because it's always chasing innovation um and um but but i really really welcome the review that was conducted and the fact that all the recommendations were accepted by government because what it did was it it really demonstrated support from policymakers about artificial intelligence technology and the fact that they wanted to support the growth and the innovation within the united kingdom within our ecosystem and that's an important message for entrepreneurs because if you're thinking about building a company if you're thinking about building a product and leveraging gpt4 then you need to do that in a country where you know that you understand the laws and the regulations and so it helps to do that because it puts us on the front foot in the uk alongside some of those countries that have already been quite clear for example japan has been very clear on how regulation you know applies to these technologies and then obviously the us is it's evolving you know but i think there are some there are some interesting court cases that are out at the moment um where we're going to have to watch what the outcomes are to try and understand where the law sits when it comes to the output of for example generative ai and the best regulation i think acts as both enabler and boundary setter so it helps clarify those boundaries but yeah it's about safe it's about the safe use exactly exactly yeah exactly and that's what we all want i mean you know all of us just if we all take our technology hats off for a second we're all people we're citizens we have children some of us we have elderly people vulnerable people that we're you know in our care we we want to use technology for our benefits we want to use it safely yes we don't want technology to be um dangerous in any way you know i think i think that's the thing is that sometimes when you've got the entrepreneurs and and the sort of technology industry people look at it and say well hang on you got you guys just want to go and build all this stuff that you know and it's like well actually I don't think that's the case you know I don't think I've ever met a technologist where I've thought wow you know this person's awful they just want to build technology in a really unsafe way and I think that there are entrepreneurs that will sit there with their sort of the other hat on and think how might what I'm building how might there be bias in the algorithms how can I mitigate against that and so you know I often meet people who are very very thoughtful about these things they want to innovate as you said and they want to move the dial and progress but at the same time yes they want to do it safely but that is regular regulations there for that right it's to capture capture those areas where actually there needs to be a boundary as you said and a safety net and to ensure that um there is there is uh essentially what they want is no harm done right you talk in your book about potential for bias in relation to ai and education don't you?

48:30And you loosely touched upon this there, but do you have any specific examples of how this is being addressed at the moment from a regulatory or a company standpoint in terms of governance within companies who create AI technology? What is being done to ensure bias isn't an issue right now from what you're seeing? So that's really interesting because I think that's where this has to develop further. I think that there's an example of a company in the education space that recommends careers, but because I understand how this technology has developed you know one of my first questions was how is how do you do that where's your data set from and the CEO said from you know we just trawl LinkedIn and we trawl all these sites and and I thought to myself but but there's bias inherent in that data you're talking to somebody who was told she couldn't be a barrister because she's female brown and not smart enough to go to Oxbridge so I'm just sort of you know and I think that what is there in place that is stopping that company from creating that application to recommend careers to people you know if you're if you look like me or you know whatever it is your background your demographic where you live what you look like is not common in a certain career and this is a real problem in technology for example where you know we don't have um there's not exactly there's not gender parity in technology and in lots of different careers it's just gonna it's just gonna end up making the situation far worse so there is you know that that there is is a real example of where you could see a problem now this is why sort of getting full circle as to how we started and what excites me about chat gpt is because the best way to stop that from happening is for consumers to be more understanding and wary about how these technologies are built because then they won't use technologies like that yeah if you have a career recommender that is where its entire trading data is actually current careers, it will be wrong.

50:26I mean, I just think that's wrong. So this is where consumers need to be very aware of what they're buying and what they're using. Is there a regulator where that exists right now? I'm sort of scratching my head trying to think about that. Well, I don't think it is, is it? It's just such a new space. That's the issue. And you've got this regulation chasing innovation. But I think it's really, really important you know there's a gap in the market here for for people to create mass kind of public education if you like on this area you know but how would that work how would it be deployed are people interested is it the media's responsibility to draw attention to these things but there's all these questions that we need to ask but again i just think the biggest defense the best defense is for the mass public to be aware how many people will look at two systems and understand which one is sending you recommendations based on what, do you know why versus another.

51:18The problem is that some organizations are not clearly explaining how their recommendations are made. So for example, for our technology, we go through schools and on your website, you can quite easily say, this is what it's doing. You can use the term artificial intelligence. And I think that that's just about being really, really clear about how the technology and the platform works. Yeah, I tell you a really good example of this, Priya, is the insurance sector in terms of how insurance premiums are, quotes are made. There was an issue a couple of years ago where if you had certain surnames from certain areas, from certain backgrounds, you'd have a more expensive premium, you know?

52:00But like, even if you had a better record as a driver, you know, which is obviously ridiculous. There was the gender one as well, right? So there was the female drivers would have higher premiums as well at one point. And so, you know, there has been public backlash in situations where companies have operated in a certain way where it is clear that they are discriminating against a certain category of person, right? If you want to call it that. And there have been. And not just in AI and technology companies. Where is that when it comes to these platforms? You know, when there is a platform that exists and it's very, very clear, actually, that there's probably that there could be bias in there.

52:41What have they thought about their training set? But the only way that this is going to work is if, again, the consumers of technology, which is all of us and those people who might not be the core demographic, for example, even this podcast. Right. But are you aware of how this is built? Are you aware of how it's making those recommendations? because that is absolutely essential for us to be able to defend against bias in these sorts of systems if entrepreneurs ceos and as great as some of the intentions are but it is known that okay well if that's the way you're going to build this people won't buy it then no one will invest in it and they won't build it but there needs to be that knowledge and that is again education it's education for all of us as to how these technologies work and so this is why I think education is so it's obviously fundamental but we mustn't just think of formal education you know primary secondary schools colleges and then universities we've got to be thinking about education lifelong education for all of us as these technologies rapidly advance and develop which brings us back to critical thinking absolutely absolutely Priya one question we always ask our guests is looking back now at your career what what advice would you give to your 21 year old self knowing what you know now my 21 year old self my gosh just have another cocktail and enjoy yourself now it's one of those funny things i just uh my father's always sort of brought us up to say look don't live with any regrets you know and that's why sort of when we've got an idea it's sort of built into my me and my brother that you know just go for it and and try your best and work really hard just carry on I think the most important thing is just kindness I think it's how I was raised sometimes I do sit there and I just think why particularly because social media gives a megaphone to certain people or particularly when you're putting yourself and you're putting yourself out there and you put yourself in a very very difficult position you're pitching and you're doing and you're talking about ideas and you sit there and just think I don't understand why can't everybody who wants to challenge and disagree which is that absolutely fine just always still do it with with kindness and respect i think that's really important and so and and you sometimes question what's going on in the world and particularly when you see sometimes global politics you know what's happening but no it's just to remind my 21 year old self that that those values are still fundamental and nothing has changed and although life is always through ups and downs and we all have that both personally and professionally just stick with the purpose it's like an armor it's an armor that takes you through the tough times it helps you ride through the great times and stick with the fundamental values of being a bigger person be kind be decent all of that because the thing is and gareth this sounds mad because maybe you wanted some tech and ai thing but the fact is is that it doesn't matter you know what really really matters is those fundamental values because if you have those and you can stick with them no matter what you see and what people say then I think it's really about living that fulfilled life and and you will then trailblaze you will try and solve problems you will try and move the dial in some positive way and that's really all that matters that you know with with social media I think there's so many benefits to it that even I don't sometimes appreciate that I hear other people talking about I really welcome challenge and particularly with artificial intelligence it's it's controversial there are people who are very very worried about sort of dystopian future and and as you should be you know you should ask those questions and you should challenge and you should talk about the ethics and we all should and and that's incredibly important but but treating each other with kindness is surely given everything that we're saying in the world just the most important thing that we can do absolutely agree brilliant Priya I really hope you change the world well no thank you I'm gonna try but I'll die I'm sure you will well thank you so much for coming on it's been a it's been a privilege and a pleasure thank you

56:51so karenza that was that was amazing priya is such a such a character isn't she and such a brilliant communicator and she's such a driven person and you know because because her core her core purpose is trying to make the world a better place she is relentless in her focus oh yeah it's just it's such an inspiration i think it's such a treat for anyone listening to hear her it's it's just fantastic to hear her journey and i genuinely think she will change the world i think she is uh just a vibrant character someone i'm not going to forget interviewing her in a while it was a joy to chat to her but you know in terms of things that really stood out for me personally karen so i'm not sure what uh what stood out for you but i think the question you asked around new skills i thought she answered that brilliantly and also as well the bit around citizen journalists and the inner trust is such a huge problem a huge problem in this world of technology and artificial intelligence isn't it and knowing what sources to trust and all that kind of thing and uh obviously you know priya was talking about how a how ai potentially can help us with that being more data driven and stuff like that i thought that was a really positive contribution and something that i hadn't really thought about ai in those terms yeah i would agree with you and just the emphasis on data and the the need for humans to be able to know how to use data and be able to employ those critical thinking skills that for me really punched through as a central theme but also just her personal resilience I think that was it's fantastic fantastic role model you know she's a working mum she's changing the world she's done it with food she's now doing it with education so she's kind of nutrition education she's she's changing lives and the fact that she's had to keep bouncing back when she's facing bias and prejudice and all sorts of things, but she keeps going because of the sense of duty and responsibility she has to her team members.