#20 You can’t out-think uncertainty: Resilience in the age of AI | Stuart Booth

(00:00) Stuart

the reality of the world that we’re in at the moment is you can’t get rid of the uncertainty. The uncertainty is just there. So the what seems to be the better way of going about it is to say, right, OK, this situation is happening. There is uncertainty and I’m going to accept that. It’s not that you’re accepting that it’s a bad situation. It’s not that you’re accepting things that are blatantly wrong, but you’re accepting the fact that there is uncertainty and you can’t control all of it.

(00:36) Danny

Stuart, thank you. thanks thanks for coming. this is great. We we’re getting to know each other a little bit, aren’t we? Because we’re having a few chats.

(00:43) Stuart

Okay. Yeah.

(00:45) Danny

we’re getting to know each other, but you know it’s nice to sort of make some time to like yeah just just really sort of see where we can go together in in conversation. And you know part of the reason that I you know wanted to get you on the podcast I just think you have quite an interesting background.

and you’re a little bit old in the truth like me. so you know, y you’ve well I I was having a look at your LinkedIn and I think you went to uni at the same time as me, but you actually did it properly, and got a a a psychologist kind of and an HCI PhD, right? Yeah, that’s like

(01:22) Stuart

I did, yeah. But to be

fair, the original I failed my A Level, so I was really making up for it.

(01:29) Danny

this

is good to know. People need to know this. but yeah, like why don’t we start? like tell me for people that don’t know you, you know, like what’s what’s been your kind of rough journey? Where did where did it all begin in design for you? Like how how can people understand who they’re listening to?

(01:47) Stuart

Well, I won’t give chapter and verse the entire story, but as you rightly say, I did a PhD in psychology and my PhD was parts of human computer interaction. So we were really interested in multimodal psychology. That’s how you perceive things from your different senses. And we were working with British Telecom to help them with systems in the really early days of kind of Wi-Fi communications where you couldn’t get all the information you wanted down a wire.

So I was using cognitive psychology to predict when one sense is more important than another one so they could prioritize that in their systems. And then to cut a long story short, that went through more academic research in the UK, also a spell in Italy, working on augmented reality. And then from there into digital agencies. And I worked in various senior roles in digital agencies, head of user research and so on. And then I’ve run full digital transformations.

spent the last six years in Expedia in research and design director roles and then now I’m working in government. So, yeah.

(02:56) Danny

This is quite a journey, like ’cause in previous conversations that we’ve had, like I think you you made a point saying to me that you had this like like a kind of working class background and from Liverpool and like you know, kinda going right back to that, like is it could you ever have plotted this? Is this ever imagined to you anything like this or or is it just inconceivable? Like what how do you how does it how do you feel like looking back at that? Like, is that quite a

(03:23) Stuart

I’m

really, really lucky. mean, if I look back, so, I mean, my dad died a couple of years ago, was at 88, right? So my dad, my family are from the proper back streets of Liverpool, really rough areas. And, you know, my dad started writing with chalk and slate when we went to school, right? And then he went through his entire life and eventually he became deaf-blind, but he could only communicate with a mobile phone or a tablet.

And so that he saw that happen his entire life and education. So he managed to get into a grammar school that took him out of where he was, which led to them, my generation of being the first person from my family to go to university, going all the way through to a PhD and all the wonderful privileged things I’ve had since. So that’s a real ride. And I’m really lucky, really, really lucky. So yeah, what do I think about that? I think it’s great. But I also think that

If I look at my kids now and younger people now, they don’t have a lot of the opportunities I had. I went to university and got paid to go. I

got a full grant.

(04:28) Danny

Yeah.

(04:30) Stuart

And that, you know, there’s no way I could have done a PhD now because I’d have so much debt. And I don’t know if I would have thought twice about going to university because I always wanted to do that. But even so, the thought of coming out with the debt that people are coming out with would be really tough. So I’ve been really lucky and

lucky for all of the reasons it feels like have been taken away in recent years, which I think is sad.

(04:53) Danny

Yeah, I mean it’s almost inconceivable that era ’cause I get you did you you went to university like ninety nine hundred time?

(05:00) Stuart

No, earlier than that I went in 93 to 96 my first degree

(05:05) Danny

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Wow, and I mean that was just such a different era, wasn’t it? Like why someone would go to university and the kind of support they get and I I’m just kind of imagining, yeah, this this sort of

Cu coming from that background that you describe and then going into university, it was such a kind of different era, wasn’t it? Like era of like take your pick, what degree you wanna do and you know, you just have this

(05:28) Stuart

It was so…

(05:29) Danny

period of of of space and time to think. You didn’t have this pressure of like what am I gonna do? It was it was a different time.

(05:37) Stuart

It changed life in every conceivable way because, mean, coming from the background that I came from, I remember getting there and meeting people from, who’d been to private school, even public schools. And I actually had a friend in the first couple of years there, I went on holiday with his family to France. And I was 21, first time I’d ever been properly abroad. And in the time that I was away with his family, who were very middle-class, very lovely, but from a much different background from me.

I’d garlic for the first time, avocado for the first time. And it

(06:08) Danny

Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

(06:11) Stuart

just opened my world. But at the same time, was limiting in the, I remember when I eventually did my PhD and I’d go to a conference and you’d do the wine reception afterwards and there’d be all these professors there. And I wouldn’t know how to deal with it because I hadn’t mixed with people like that. But you get the other kids from that background and they’re just kind of.

walk up full of confidence. So how was it going Professor X? know, and like that. And yeah, I think I’m enormously lucky to have been through that. And now I’m very comfy with those those situations. So you

(06:45) Danny

Yeah.

(06:46) Stuart

know, the the what social mobility gives you is not just economic mobility, gives you personal attitude and confidence and experience mobility as well. And that’s that’s very important.

(07:00) Danny

Yeah, do you d do you I mean I’m interested, like did you find that there was a sort of slight exclusionary language or something that wasn’t necessarily like available ’cause it’s sort of like, you know, you have this working class background and you’re getting into corporate spaces and that there’s a sort of a s a slight kind of mis misfire or something when when people hear you talk and stuff. Did you ever experience that or is that is that not what you have?

(07:28) Stuart

I found it

less in the corporate world. I know my

(07:31) Danny

Yeah.

(07:32) Stuart

dad definitely had it. He got job in London and turned up on the first day and his new boss said, you’re a, no, the boss of the boss said, no, you’re a scouser. don’t like scousers. So that was career, that was career done.

(07:43) Danny

Really, really.

(07:46) Stuart

For me, I haven’t particularly had it in industry as far as I can tell. Definitely in the academic world, I experienced it. And it wasn’t from the people who were from that more middle-class. It was from me.

in that I just couldn’t identify with the holidays they’d taken or the foods they were talking

(08:04) Danny

Bye.

(08:04) Stuart

about. I just hadn’t had exposure to that society. Now I’m in that society, it’s very natural to me, but yeah, at that time definitely experienced it.

(08:15) Danny

You know, you remind me like I was a I was a very well known retailer, more than ten years ago. and I think it was like yeah, it was like back in like two thousand eleven. I remember I remember a manager saying to me about one of the team that they you know, they weren’t necessarily someone you’d wanna wheel in front of the senior team. And

they were referring to their like their accent, you know, like because it was sort of a little bit kinda cockney or ra rough round the edge or something, you know. And I I do know what I mean? I mean that’s that’s that’s it’s that, isn’t it? It’s is that kind of thing of like somehow that because someone had a slightly different background

when in a corporate space they’re talking to senior managers that maybe they’ll be less convincing or or less believable, not taken seriously or s i it was just very subtle, do you know what I mean? But like

(09:14) Stuart

Yeah.

(09:15) Danny

I I I yeah, I I th I feel like in telling it now it’s kind of slightly more shocking, maybe, you know, like I I kind of think, God, that’s that’s terrible. You know

(09:23) Stuart

Yeah,

sometimes when these things happen, situation, things become normalized, don’t they? And it’s happening so much around you that you almost

(09:31) Danny

Yeah.

(09:32) Stuart

realize how unreasonable that thing

is. haven’t

(09:35) Danny

Yeah. Yeah.

(09:38) Stuart

experienced anything for recent years, but then again, I guess, you know, my accent is relatively standard now and in world. I

(09:44) Danny

Yeah, yeah. It’s been ironed out.

(09:47) Stuart

can still go into Scouse if you want me to, but…

(09:50) Danny

Yeah.

What would you what would your careers teacher have have said, you know, looking back at this? Like what you know especially given like you you know, you’ve kind of had your journey with a AR and AI and you know, like what would the y your careers advisor have said back then? You know, like would they No

(10:08) Stuart

Well, I mean, they wouldn’t have said any of that.

There was a very good reason they wouldn’t have said any of that, because it didn’t exist. So, you know, if I finished my, I was the first year of GCSEs, was GCEs the year before me, so 1990, the internet didn’t exist. And so every single job I’ve done in my post-study life didn’t exist when I left school.

So they wouldn’t have told me, they wouldn’t have even said go into computers because at that time computers were a thing, but they weren’t ubiquitous in the way they are now. I

(10:46) Danny

Yeah, yeah.

(10:46) Stuart

I got advised to do something like architecture or town and country planning. It is good

(10:51) Danny

That’s good, you know.

(10:53) Stuart

and actually I think I probably would have quite enjoyed it, particularly architecture.

(10:56) Danny

You know you know you know what

I you know what I got, right? So I w when I was

15 that we had this computer in the library and it had a like a careers advice like a sur a survey. I mean God knows what it was made on, and and you had to answer all these questions, you know, like do you like this multi-choice? And then it comes out and it goes, you you like a sense of responsibility whilst also you know working outside and interacting with people. Okay, okay.

car park attendant. Like it ac I like why is that even in the database? Like I mean luckily I just thought it was really funny, you know, that it it suggested that that my I would aspire to being a car park attendant. Not the end car park attendants, but to aspire to that, like like it I don’t think that’s necessarily what people plan for. Like it you know, and I I just found it so like odd and I just thought God, you know, what if somebody who, you know, perceived that differently

or something like that. I could crush them, you know. Like

(12:01) Stuart

and set their, I mean, my mum went to a secondary modern and you have the old tripartite system of education where you think you had the technical school, the secondary modern and the 11 plus. And if you were put in secondary modern, effectively the perception at least was you’re not really going to do anything much. Yeah, I mean,

(12:19) Danny

Right, yeah. Yeah.

(12:21) Stuart

that might be unfair to people from that. Well, that was perception my mum got. And you know, she really…

(12:24) Danny

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

(12:27) Stuart

I think she really took that on board and then you kind of trying to break out of that image that’s being given to you of yourself in your own mind. But then, know, I think so and I’ve got to slip this in because my wife will make fun of me

for it because I’ve been saying to everyone is that, you

(12:40) Danny

Yeah.

(12:42) Stuart

and our new prime minister was born in the same maternity ward as me and started off just around the corner and look what he’s done. you know,

(12:50) Danny

Yeah.

(12:51) Stuart

some ways things have got better. I hope they’re not now going backwards.

(12:54) Danny

Yeah, well, I mean on on on, you know, you know, career path and things like that. I mean you you’ve been called I think you we were looking at it the other day, like seven different things. Like what what would you call yourself today? Like what you know Yeah.

(13:07) Stuart

I mean, people have caught me a lot of things, Danny. mean, they’re not all right.

What would I call myself today? I think I am a, I’m a product person with an emphasis on user experience

(13:21) Danny

Yeah.

(13:23) Stuart

and also with some background in transformation. But there you go. I’ve just had to give three explanations to say one thing, haven’t I?

(13:29) Danny

Th this is the problem, isn’t it?

It it like what what is anybody these days? You know? Like I like it when there I think there was a big thing recently. I think it was like is it Spotify or or Shopify? They they’re like the we’re only having designer now. Like they’re we’re getting rid of all these subtitles. Everyone’s like designer. And there’s something like sounds and feels like nice and simple about that.

But then there’s this part of me that goes, Mm, yeah, but is is that is everyone a builder? or a doctor?

(14:01) Stuart

It’s not where we are now is it? It’s, I mean,

it is where we are and, you know, organizations still like boxes and we still like boxes and arrows in our life and so on. But, you know, as you, as you and I are both, both learning the new capabilities that AI is giving us is breaking all those things down.

(14:20) Danny

Mm.

(14:20) Stuart

And I’ve spent, I’ve spent, you know, my spare time the last week or so, vibe coding an app and vibe designing an app using Claude create and Claude Claude code.

And suddenly a whole bunch of different professions that I used to be dependent on, I’m not necessarily dependent on anymore. So what does that

(14:37) Danny

Yeah.

(14:37) Stuart

make me? I think I’ve said this here once before, like the Germans have got quite a good phrase, which is a Gestaltist. My friend

(14:44) Danny

Yeah.

(14:44) Stuart

is a German designer, he calls himself Gestaltist. I think the most, the best translation, no direct translation is more than the sum of its parts. And maybe that’s what we’re all becoming. But then there are huge implications and stresses and anxieties that come with that at the same time.

(14:59) Danny

Well yeah,

like what’s what’s the difference between someone like like ourselves perhaps who have been round the block a bit, had, you know, twenty odd years experience using, you know, behind behind a a a fable or an Astra or, you know, whatever it is, versus someone who’s got maybe two years experience. Like I’m I’m curious about that, you know, like like I can think maybe maybe my prompts are sharper and maybe they’re like more pointed, but how much is that gonna matter?

And then what does that mean?

(15:31) Stuart

There’s

quite a lot of evidence around this that use of these tools in the early stages of your career can take you from very junior to mid-level much more quickly. So much of the stuff that you’re doing those times are the building blocks of the craft. So, you know, working your way through Figma design systems or whatever it is, know, the basics of layout.

I think where it’s probably more difficult unless you get some very talented people is that more holistic strategic judgment. That

(16:05) Danny

Judgment.

(16:06) Stuart

harder, yeah. just that, kind of, there’s lots of stuff around how experts make decisions. And so there’s been a lot of psychological research on this. And what happens is that if an expert’s making a decision, they think about the situation they’re in and then they…

replay similar experiences from their past and what worked and what didn’t. And then they take the thing that worked and they are out now.

(16:32) Danny

Hmm.

(16:32) Stuart

Having got that memory bank of things, then it’s going to be more difficult for you. And plus

(16:38) Danny

Yeah.

(16:38) Stuart

also if it becomes really part of you you know it very well, actually gut intuition, you know, and the way cognition is structured, gut intuition actually does access real

stuff more than you might think. It’s not just feeling. It really can be based on an expertise that you’ve got. It’s just that it’s unvoiced. yeah.

(16:58) Danny

That’s that and that’s how someone with

with deep experience can can move in like a kind of flow state where where they’re able to just sort of seemingly like hit the beats so quickly, maybe without it doesn’t look like they’re thinking, but perhaps as you suggest like they are, but it you know, it’s from the gut and it’s from these like buried memories and stuff. I think I sorry No, no, no, go on.

(17:18) Stuart

Yeah, sorry, go on Danny.

If you’re doing product and design well, you are necessarily dealing with real complexity, fuzzy around the edges. And, you know, that that does generally take time and experience to develop that ability to say, well, not that direction, that direction that could annoy that person just knowing that you could annoy someone politically.

and knowing that that’s something that you need to think about, that doesn’t necessarily come intuitively to people in the early stages.

(17:48) Danny

Well i i the classic adage I’ve heard is like it it it’s very good if you don’t know what it’s talking about. So so if you don’t really understand a topic and you ask it to summarize it, it looks pretty convincing. But if you understand it then it’s like, Yeah, that’s quite good, but you know, there’s that and that and I think I think my experience at the moment has been I I notice this like emotional journey when when I prompt something. So I put so I like recently I made

made a service blueprint. yeah, so I made I made a service blueprint in for Ministry of Justice like three years ago. It was there was three of us for six weeks, right? And we made like a massive PDF on on a mu a Murial board and then we had a power accompanying PowerPoint document for all the sub journeys and stuff, you know, and there was a behavioral psychologist in there. you know, and it was like

No, it it was like meaty piece of work, right? And recently I just found all the documentation of a service that government service that I’m working on. Just dumped all that in and then hammered the prompts about thirty times. And I’ve now got like an interactive HTML blueprint you can click on, you can scroll, you can zoom in and out, it’s got all the front end, back end, it can you can like view the blueprint in multiple angles from different users and just like reconfigures it, you know.

And s and I and notice this emotional journey, I get this like dopamine hit when it first comes in and I’m like this kind of my god, look at that. Like it looks so good. I’m like this is this is incredible. This is like as if I had a team of ten people working on it for a year. But then when I like there’s so much to take in because it’s just made something that I would normally have like crafted and I would know it intimately, but now it’s like shortcutted that.

crafting and I’m just seeing the end result and I notice the dopamine and then and then I sort of try to go, okay, well let’s actually try and read it. Let’s actually try and use it. And then I’m like, wait, it’s just like some of that’s quite good, but some of that’s just quite generic, you know, and and that’s

(19:49) Stuart

Yeah, that’s quite…

(19:50) Danny

that’s the the peel back, isn’t it? You kind of it looks really good and then then it’s like, what are you saying? And then it kind of peels back a bit but

(19:56) Stuart

It’s almost like

a really clever politician and what they’ll do is they’ll bombard you with a million bits of information and points that all sound very convincing. And you’re so overwhelmed with the information that you actually can’t work out what’s right anymore. And I think that that’s a skill we all need to develop, isn’t it? In using the outputs of these things. the thing I’ve been and you’ve spoken to me a few times before is, know, if you’re how do we all deal with this? Because it is

You know, the news reports this week are scary, know, want 10

(20:29) Danny

Yeah.

(20:29) Stuart

% of us, 10 % chance we’re all going to get killed in the net by the end of the century.

(20:33) Danny

It’s terrifying.

(20:34) Stuart

It’s terrifying. We don’t worry about jobs. We worry about the environment, all these different things. And

(20:38) Danny

Yeah.

(20:39) Stuart

it’s fertile ground for really deep anxiety. And we already

(20:43) Danny

Yeah.

(20:43) Stuart

know that we’ve got whole generations of people with high levels of anxiety due to COVID and stuff. And we’ve got to build, we’ve got to build.

hoping mechanisms, people talk about resilience, but what is resilience? How does that actually work? And that’s some of it, know, the sad person I am while I was on holiday last couple of weeks, I was really thinking about that and doing my reading around it and stuff and just thinking about what the psychology of resilience says. And there are things that we can all do that will really help us during this time.

(21:12) Danny

Can you can you give me some practicals? This is I’m like, I need this.

(21:18) Stuart

So the big thing, so if you think about, psychologists talk about intolerance for change. And what that really means is you just find, you find change quite anxiety provoking and difficult. And there’s a couple of responses you could take to that. One is, I’ll just avoid it, right? I just don’t engage with that thing that’s scaring me. It’s over there, I’m like, head in the sand type thing. I’m not going to worry about it.

But that is not adaptive if the thing is reality, because you then can’t deal with it when you have to deal with it. The other way of dealing with it is to try and remove the uncertainty. And the way you do that is by obsessive researching, obsessive thinking, obsessive planning. And that then results in rumination and all sorts of unhealthy thinking patterns. yeah, and you can’t solve

(22:07) Danny

It’s too big it’s too big to get your head around and and it’s too yeah

(22:11) Stuart

it.

(22:12) Danny

not.

(22:12) Stuart

Because

the reality of the world that we’re in at the moment is you can’t get rid of the uncertainty. The uncertainty is just there. So the what seems to be the better way of going about it is to say, right, OK, this situation is happening. There is uncertainty and I’m going to accept that. It’s not that you’re accepting that it’s a bad situation. It’s not that you’re accepting things that are blatantly wrong, but you’re accepting the fact that there is uncertainty and you can’t control all of it.

And the important thing about that is not to say I’m going to feel good about that. It’s going to it’s saying I may not feel good about that. I might feel uncomfortable, but I’m still going to go with it. And, you know, it’s related to stuff like mindfulness. If you know the mindfulness

(22:56) Danny

Yeah, yeah.

(22:57) Stuart

stuff where you try and live much more in the moment and you try and focus on the things happening in the here and now. So your mind doesn’t spiral off into into all of that rumination.

but also because you’re more focused on now, you’re actually more attentive to the things happening now that you can control. And the key thing is to focus on the things you can control that will allow you then to make the most of the situation you’re in. So, you know, maybe we all

(23:24) Danny

Hey.

(23:25) Stuart

need a kind of AI mindfulness or something right now to bring us all back to this moment and think around the things we can control in this very rapidly changing uncertain world.

(23:34) Danny

Is this and and these are these you know, sort of strategies that you yourself are applying in in your day to day? Are are you are you having because I I completely follow everything you’re saying and and I’m also I’ve had struggles with mindfulness, I’ve had struggles with meditation, I’ve had struggles with morning practice, with self discipline, with you know being consistent about those things. And and I’m just curious like to humanize it somewhat. It’s great advice and I’m also

wondering what’s your experience of of of trying to of do the do? How do you how do you experience that you know yourself?

(24:13) Stuart

mean, I’m human, so I do the doing on a good day, right? And then you have your bad days. have

(24:18) Danny

Yeah.

(24:19) Stuart

to say, I’m a person who I’ve got quite a high tolerance for uncertainty, just seems to be my natural way. And if you look at my career, you know, I’ve kind of followed my nose and the opportunities. So change of this type doesn’t particularly stress me out. I’m very lucky. But then I think part of the reason it doesn’t stress me out is that I’m naturally an experimenter.

I love to play with ideas and to test ideas out and get things wrong and do it all the time. And I think that actually, if you then come back to that approach of control the things you can control, I think that way of doing things is a really good one for circumstances like this. I think if you’re

(25:03) Danny

Yeah.

(25:04) Stuart

in a steady state, a steady state for me that is stable is an absolute nightmare. And that’s me at my

(25:09) Danny

Really?

(25:10) Stuart

work strike, I’m just bored out of my mind and…

know, would almost need to break it in order to fix it again.

(25:16) Danny

What what

what does your bad day look like? Like, ’cause well like you said it’s it’s

(25:20) Stuart

Boredom, boredom. Having things that don’t don’t fill my brain up and don’t challenge me and don’t give me something that’s got a real purpose, right? And I think most of us are like that to an extent, aren’t we? But yeah, having having change and novelty is really interesting.

(25:35) Danny

Yeah, yeah, I can really relate to that. I I think.

I think there’s a few there’s a few conditions that I can be in certain working environments that you know, if I start feeling like, yeah, bored or undervalued or like maybe underappreciated or or like it’s kind of like quite toxic and and and all that, like something in me like shuts down and that state that I have when I feel like I’m excelling, it kind of just flies away. I don’t want to be here. And then I just find myself like basically underperforming ’cause I’m just kind of like

the the the electricity isn’t on anymore because I don’t like this you know and I I find that that can really affect how how I work. I I’m just thinking about you know for organizations, you know, we’re talking about individuals but also for organizations that they’re going through a journey themselves of like

Whether to embrace AI or resisting it, you know, and and have you have you kind of encountered different levels of organizational resistance or embracing? Have you have you seen any of that? Yeah, with the AI, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

(26:42) Stuart

You mean in the AI or just in my career, in my life? Yeah, totally. mean, organisations

are made of individuals, aren’t they? And you might have an appetite for leadership or from people on the ground, people at mid levels. Often it’s people at mid levels that determine things in organisations. There’s so much literature on transformation and how to do it and how not to do it.

And if I look back over times with AI, what you’ve got at the moment is a relatively small number of people are very enthusiastic. Then you’ve got people who are kind of following a bit and then massive people who are doing some stuff, but not that much. And then some people who just do not want to be involved in it and don’t believe in it. I don’t think they’re wrong, by the way, actually. I got a lot of sympathy with that. And that’s a classic, what was it called?

of innovations, I forget the name of it, but basically there’s a whole model around how people adopt innovations. And you need to get to some like 17 % of people before you start to get the mass of people, because what’s happening is you’re effectively creating a new conformity that people then follow onto and the thing starts to become normalized. So it’s really, really normal.

but it’s absolutely happening with AI and compared to some changes, I think some of the challenges are even bigger because of those fears around existential threats, environmental threats and taking jobs away and so on. Some of those things are quite hard to deny and therefore people who aren’t convinced maybe have got good reason not to be convinced. So yeah, it’s a particularly challenging one.

(28:30) Danny

Are you d d do you think you’re like an evangelist of AI or like where where do you think you land, you know, with with like all all the different factors? You talk about your relationship to change, but like what where where are you where are you on the on the spectrum of like yeah?

(28:44) Stuart

I’m conflicted, right?

the AI from a personal level, I find totally fascinating and totally amazing and liberating and unleashes a creativity in me that I haven’t had before. I don’t need to go and ask somebody to move that thing on a page anymore. It just moves for me. So on that hand, it’s wonderful. But all of those other worries about it also worry me acutely and I

I’ve got three kids. I want them to grow up in a world that is safe and with jobs and all the rest of it. And I worry that even put the existential to one side, we’ve got an increase in GDP in the UK today of 0.4%. And yet living standards are getting worse. AI could exacerbate that. I think the way that I’m dealing with it is I’ve tried to really think around where do I think about it from a values perspective? And my values perspective are AI is here.

I can’t stop it. You know, the things I can control, I can’t control that. It also has amazing potential, know, cure cancer, think was it Google just mapped out pretty much the whole genome and there’s 9 billion different things where if you change it, they’ll predict what that does. So, you know, what’s that going to unleash? So they’re amazing things. So I’m kind of thinking, you know, I’ll embrace AI and evangelize for AI where it is AI for the

good of people. But I don’t want to be the person who puts 600 people out of work or develop something that’s going to lead to biological warfare and so on.

(30:20) Danny

Yeah. Yeah.

(30:22) Stuart

yeah, positive use, good and positive use of AI, I will evangelize

but yeah.

(30:28) Danny

Well,

yeah, speaking of which, like I mean I don’t know how much you want to say, but you you’ve you’ve you’ve been making things ’cause that’s that’s a lot a lot of people say, isn’t it, that it’s like you want to really get into it. ‘Cause I I’ve ha I’ve had quite people say to me, like, you know, how do you get how do you do it? Like what books do you read, or whatever and I’m like, I just try and make something.

(30:46) Stuart

Just do it.

(30:47) Danny

Like and and you’ve you’ve had a journey with that too, right? Like w do you is there anything you wanted to share about what you’ve what you built that might not have been possible?

(30:57) Stuart

I’m half tempted to literally show you.

(30:59) Danny

Yeah.

(31:00) Stuart

So I’m working on an app on the side where it’s not necessarily to become the next tech tycoon or something like that. It would be quite nice to be successful.

(31:07) Danny

Yeah.

(31:08) Stuart

But I’m working on one which is around helping people learn. And it’s basically saying, right, you can provide any information you want. So it could be from a textbook. It could be some text. It will then take that information, ingest it, and then

chunk it all up into bits in the way that matches how your memory works, and then choose the best learning method for the type of content that’s been shown by learning science to help you learn that content. And it’s all doing that through an AI chat. And like I said, I spent a little while designing it. I’ve also completely different iteration, which was totally different, and that failed fast, and so on. But it’s just…

setting up all the API calls with different systems and so on, getting it fully functioning. know, it’s probably like I say about four days in my spare time maybe. And I’m not far away from getting to the point where I want to actually get something that could go in the world. I think the biggest thing constraint is security because I don’t want to take any liberties with security. So I want to put a big effort in on that.

(32:14) Danny

That’s very responsible of you. I bet there’s people that are far

(32:16) Stuart

Thank you.

(32:18) Danny

less responsible. I mean, my my sense is you know, I was checking I’ve got a mate who he d he runs festivals, hippie festivals, the ones I usually go to. And he’s not that technical. Like, you know, I mean he he he’s the classic, you know, he’ll he’ll kind of follow whatever well what the he was big into crypto when crypto was in and you know, and now it’s AI and all this, yeah. But he’s definitely not technical. And he told me like

He’s like, yeah, I made an app like to manage my festival.

And I I just you know, the likes of you and me making apps doesn’t surprise me. But that was quite interesting. I was like, you know, and I’m I’m thinking there was a Joe Rogan podcast with with I think it was Elon Musk, and he was saying like apps are toast, you know, like and I and I can see that in the sense of like, why would I use somebody else’s app when I could just make one, you know, that’s perfect for me, that does exactly what I want. Now at the moment

like I’m on the same journey as you, like I’ve got an iOS app coming out soon and you know, it’s been a bit of a craft, like I’ve been bash bashing in prompts and it’s taken me, you know, quite a while to get get it to a standard that I’m happy with and all this. But I’m kind of thinking like, well, I could imagine that soon instead of it being, you know, a hundred prompts to get to that app, it gets down to sort of five. And then it’s sort of like, you know, what is what is your phone really doing?

Like w why would you have an app store when you could just an AI could just make you an app on the hoof that does whatever you want?

(33:55) Stuart

of you have been seeing JPT Astra.

(33:57) Danny

I ha I haven’t played with it yet, but I’ve heard about it, yeah.

(34:00) Stuart

That’s just come out this week and some of the demos, I mean, there’s a lot of hype, isn’t there? you don’t know what’s true, but some of the demos are effectively what you’re seeing is someone will produce an entire word processing package from one or two prompts on the fly. So you almost don’t need any apps installed on your machine. You just create them as you need them.

(34:18) Danny

As you as you need them.

(34:20) Stuart

And that’s, you know, that’s just, that’s a different world, it?

(34:24) Danny

‘Cause I

I I feel like we’re in a lag at the moment where these things are possible and yeah, I’ve got my mate, you know, who’s like done a thing, but that I still feel like that’s probably like a small section of the population. So there’s this sort of time now where if you can get an app out in the app store or whatever, someone still might pay for it and use it and whatnot. But then maybe in like, you know, twelve months.

eighteen months this will be going mainstream and then everyone will be like, Yeah, whatever, mate, why would I pay for your app? I’ll just make my own, you know? But like right now, it’s still like magic, you know? But soon everyone’s gonna have a magic wand, you know, and they’ll know how to use it. Like d do you think that’s a fair assessment?

(35:09) Stuart

I think it’s entirely possible. even if it wasn’t everyone creating an app, mean, maybe that will come. People massively overestimate the amount of change that’s going to happen in two years, is it, or three years, and they underestimate the amount in five to 10 years.

(35:25) Danny

Yeah.

(35:25) Stuart

So it might be five to 10 years before you get to that point. But you could go there and in five other unpredictable directions. But yes, I can imagine

that.

And the other thing that’s going to happen in the meantime, I think, is that you might just get an idea out there and you build it and you get there. And then somebody with not much conscience in another country just takes your idea and just copies it in an hour.

(35:47) Danny

Hundred percent.

Yeah, a hundred percent. I I’ve been thinking that like I’ve just been getting some people to test my app and I was thinking like well like I mean I’ve got a tiny bit of IP but the IP isn’t the code now. The IP is just the idea and the idea can just be replicated. Like that would be the barrier before. So you’d see a website or Shopify or whatever it is and you think, well that would be great, but I can’t replicate that because there’s an army of coders behind it. But now it’s like, well I could just I could just screenshot.

shot it and pop it in and it’ll just make it.

(36:18) Stuart

even

your IP. mean, if you look at, you know, the reports of what happened in the hugging face attack and the way you want these 1200 bots collaborated to actually,

(36:28) Danny

twelve hundred.

(36:29) Stuart

there was 1200 of them and they basically all, one of them created a message board on the org on a message board and started collaborating in there and then started trying to work out the rules that they were going to be judged by because they were trying to

They were trying to find a token that had been put in a system deliberately as a test. And for many of them, it was an impossible task. So you had things like some agents were sacrificing themselves because they knew they were almost out of credits so that they could able another agent and you had them egging each other

(37:00) Danny

Sacrificing themselves.

(37:02) Stuart

on to sacrifice themselves for the greater good and all sorts of stuff going on like that. But you imagine if they can do that in ChatGPT, I mean, why wouldn’t it be able to get your IP?

So is anything even going to be secret anymore unless we can really shut all those doors?

(37:23) Danny

Ugh, I need to take a breath.

(37:24) Stuart

Am I cheering you up or exciting you now, don’t I?

(37:27) Danny

Well, yeah that that that encompasses you know, this conversation encompasses my relationship with it, you know, like in in the space of a five minutes. We’ve talked about, you know, the there’s a buzz to like making an app that used to take three years with a team a whole team and now it I can just do it in my evenings. And that there’s an exciting element to that and and a

compelling side to it. And then you’ve just talked about, you know, this side of, you know, madness, like Terminator style. You it’s just it’s just like Terminator Light, you know, they just haven’t got guns. And and that’s terrifying. We haven’t even got climate change. And then there’s also job losses too. Like you know people, you know, like I

I I think of like that example I gave with the blueprint. I mean that took me six weeks and then I made a f certainly a first draft in three or four hours. And I I j I just my s like, what do you think’s gonna happen in the next you know, like what do you think it looks like in the next twelve months?

You know, do when ’cause you you you said

a few times like on your LinkedIn you you see the the states and your your colleagues in the States and you you s you described that in quite dark terms.

(38:47) Stuart

Yeah, I mean, in I don’t want to make everyone unhappy having having put across a place of mindfulness and I think they, know, and but what working in the States the last six years, what I’ve seen is, you know, there has been swinging job cuts in industry in the States and lots and lots of amazing people on the job market struggling to get other things. And because the world is changing and some of it driven by AI, some of it just driven by things like

You had the great resignation. Was that a thing in the UK? I can’t remember. you know,

(39:18) Danny

Yeah, yeah. Quiet quitting.

(39:21) Stuart

yeah, so all the companies were on this kind of COVID digital investment bubble, and then they over hired and, you know, suddenly they want to cut their cost base and stuff like that. You know, many different things driving it. But yeah, really, really tough. Where do I see it going? I think that you’re all the way back to the Luddites, right? Technological revolutions have

impacted labour markets in really painful ways. And each time there’s ended up being more jobs and more wealth than there was before the innovation. Now, that’s cool. History’s great. Doesn’t mean to say there will be this time. So we could all end up, you know, highly employed with an amazing wealth gains and all this creativity, all doing fantastic new jobs, maybe on short working hours and stuff. And it’s all fantastic. But equally, it could create large scale unemployment.

And I think that’s very, very hard to predict right now because it’s a technology unlike any other, it? So what does the next year have in store? It’s cliche to say, isn’t it? I think change is the only constant and the only certainty at the moment, isn’t it?

(40:30) Danny

Yeah. Well this this

comes back to your theme of resilience, isn’t it? Because change is probably certain and uncertainty is probably certain. And change that I I mean my Yeah, that ch the change that is going to probably feel uncomfortable and

put people in very difficult situations. Cause I I think essentially you think certainly in the design sector, people have designed their life around the assumption that they have a means to earn money through this mechanism of consulting, of giving your time and skills and expertise. And then suddenly if that has been, you know, blockbuster videoed

Codact, whatever you like the analogy, then suddenly you still got that mortgage, you still got, you know, these bills coming out, and then the thing that you do to make money is like suddenly like you can’t get hired and stuff. And then it’s like that that is very anxiety making. it has been for me. Like I had it I had it a year ago from total freak out. of like

(41:42) Stuart

So all

of that being true, right? What I would hate to do would then be leave everyone thinking, God, all is lost. We are as a species

(41:50) Danny

Right. Save us. Save us. What do we do?

(41:55) Stuart

amazingly ingenious. I mean, let’s face it. We’re now getting close to either artificial

(42:02) Danny

A GI.

(42:03) Stuart

general intelligence or even super intelligence. We are the species that created that, right? So look how ingenious we are.

We can work through these problems too and the opportunities. again, coming back to AI, it’s got its problems, but it also has immense potential for creativity, for solving problems, for doing new things in new ways. So maybe it’s incumbent on us to take responsibility as much as we can to try and do that. So maybe it’s not a time for being passive. It’s a time for actually being

(42:41) Danny

acting.

(42:41) Stuart

proactive and trying to do stuff. Yeah.

(42:42) Danny

Being being part of it. Yeah.

Yeah. I I think that’s that’s the that’s the path I’ve taken. I I I’ve sort of thought, right, I I want I want to be in this. I d I don’t want to be on the outside, so I’ve I’ve gone deep and I’ve sort of thrown myself into it.

And I do know people, and I was talking to Andy Andy Bud a few months ago about this and he was saying like, you know, he knows people that decided to open up a vegan cafe, you know, and

(43:12) Stuart

Yeah.

(43:12) Danny

and and just follow a completely different route, which I think is quite scary and quite like I I brings up feelings for me. But then I also like if I can sit with that, I can also think, you know what, I’ve always wanted to be like

Yeah, I’d like to do radio. Yeah. I always have these other ideas as well. And I I I mean it’s it’s easy to say and there’s that practical side of like that transition of like, Yeah, but you haven’t got that yet and then you haven’t got work now and and there’s that like crunchy bit in between. But I do also think like

I’m thinking w in two heads, like one is like I’m throwing myself all in, but I’m I do have this other eye just just a bit over here of like, well what would I be doing if it was completely different and it was in a space that I think was fairly non-AIable.

(44:02) Stuart

I wonder if

many of us could just end up re-evaluating what really matters in life.

(44:09) Danny

Yeah.

(44:10) Stuart

The important thing is that we don’t want all be completely broke and subsistence. So we’ve got to crack that.

(44:15) Danny

Mm. Mm.

(44:18) Stuart

fingers crossed we won’t get there. Hopefully it is going to add to the world rather than completely take away.

(44:24) Danny

Yeah, and I I appreciate this conversation like facing into it ’cause I I don’t I don’t have a need necessarily to, you know, dress it up. Like I I I I want to face into it. all of it. Like the good and the bad and the ugly, you know. and and the thing that I’m taking away from, you know, the conversation that you’ve reminded me is about resilience. Like that just seems

But the most important thing that anybody can do, like, is develop that.

(44:56) Stuart

I think resilience,

but resilience combined with how do you face into it and not opening up a whole new massive topic, you know, when we’ve been talking for a while, but something occurred to me yesterday. So I’m, I’m a regular of user of frameworks like the Lean UX framework, right? So Lean UX Canvas. Now, if you don’t know Lean UX Canvas, it up, but essentially what it does is it’s a way of taking you through

a business and user problem through to experiment in a systematic, but rapid

lean way. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, how it is. So

(45:31) Danny

Yeah, I remember yeah Jeff Jeff Gold yeah. Yeah.

(45:37) Stuart

the, what I realized is I could treat myself as a product and follow the lean US canvas for myself. And it gives me a framework of thinking about how I need to experiment against the things I can control in an uncertain environment.

And so I’ve literally created a Lean UX Canvas for myself and how I take my career. I’m not going to show you it because it’s personal, it

(46:02) Danny

No, see

(46:04) Stuart

gives me a kind of framework for then dealing proactively with that uncertainty in a systematic way. And it also helps me narrow down what are the things that really matter now rather than, and a plan to actually do something about it.

(46:19) Danny

Mm, th and and I come back to that conversation with Andy Bard and he was saying like designers you you can always rely you you you you know, you might be able to rely on the skills that you have that got you into this mess to to kind of get you out of it and like you you have got these skills that you know, as you say, we typically just apply it to websites and, you know, apps or whatever, but i that’s a really interesting idea, like turning it in on yourself and and applying those skills

inward and and looking so I think there’s that practical side. I’m I’m I’m making some mental notes here. There’s some practical side of like developing resilience and that’s that to do with that like presence and and you talked about things of sort of sitting sitting with the truth and being present and and meditation and all these sorts of different resources that you know are in abundance.

And then also I think you’re really you’re right, like that’s all well and good, but I need to be practical too. And so you’re talking about a a practical way to actually try and solve this problem. yeah, that’s very interesting. Using the lean cut canvas.

(47:26) Stuart

Yeah.

Let’s see if the experiments work. I don’t know yet.

(47:30) Danny

Yeah. Yeah.

Well perhaps we can touch in in the future and you can you can let us know how you got on. you know, we can compare notes. so yeah, thank you, Stuart. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation and you know, I think yeah, it is a uncertain time and it’s right for us to to talk about it, you know. yeah, so thank you.

(47:51) Stuart

Yeah, thank you too. And I hope that’s been interesting and maybe some help to people. you know, I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts as well.

(47:58) Danny

Yeah. Yeah. Let’s let’s get more people on. Thank you. Thanks, Stuart. Thanks very much.

(48:03) Stuart

Thanks, Danny.