In this episode of 'More Than Work,' Rabiah sits down with Dave Birss, founder of the Gen AI Academy and LinkedIn Learning instructor specializing in AI and prompting. Dave shares his fascinating journey from musician and recording engineer to BBC comedy performer, then through a 20-year advertising career before becoming one of the leading voices in AI education. They discuss his unique approach to teaching AI that prioritizes human thinking over technology, the ethical concerns around AI including environmental impact and copyright issues, and his vision for the future of humanity in an AI-driven world. Dave also opens up about his philosophy of leadership, his concerns about workplace engagement, and why he believes companies need to put humans before shareholder profits.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction to More Than Work

00:34 Meet Dave Birss: AI Educator and Former Creative Director

00:57 Dave's Background: From Scotland to London

02:07 Edinburgh Fringe and Early Performance Days

03:19 The Unexpected Comedy Career

06:11 From Music to Advertising

10:43 Philosophy of Servant Leadership

17:24 Leaving Advertising to Start Teaching

19:41 The Power of Sharing Knowledge

25:07 Introduction to AI and ChatGPT

30:42 Creating the Most Popular AI Course on LinkedIn Learning

31:27 Founding the Gen AI Academy

34:34 Ethics of AI: Copyright, Environment, and Humanity

42:18 Energy Consumption: Putting AI in Context

45:02 The Future of Humanity and Brain Atrophy

50:00 Mind Gyms: The Next Fitness Revolution

51:41 Teaching Management Skills for the AI Age

56:10 Rethinking Capitalism and Corporate Structure

62:08 Advice and Mantra: Leave the World Better

62:48 The Fun Five Questions

70:40 How to Find Dave and Closing Thoughts

Note from Rabiah (host):

I first wrote to Dave as a fan of his LinkedIn Learning courses. I was hesitant about using AI for some of the exact reasons Dave talks about in our chat but he made me want to push myself. Plus he was very entertaining which is unusual for skills courses! He wrote back and we ended up having one of my favorite chats. I was slow to edit and publish but am excited to finally share this episode with you, the listener. Thank you for being here and giving me your time! Enjoy.

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Find Dave

Website: davebirss.com

Gen AI Academy: thegenaiacademy.com

LinkedIn Learning Courses: linkedin.com/learning/instructors/dave-birss

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More than Work Social Media: @morethanworkpod (Facebook, Instagram) and @rabiahcomedy (TikTok)

Please review and follow anywhere you get podcasts. Thank you for listening. Have feedback? Email morethanworkpod(at)gmail.com!

This is More Than Work, the podcast reminding you that your self worth is

made up of more than your job title.

Each week I'll talk to a guest about how they discovered that for themselves.

You'll hear about what they did, what they're doing, and who they are.

I'm your host, Rabiah.

I work in IT, perform standup comedy, write, volunteer, and of course, podcast.

Thank you for listening.

Here we go.

All right.

Welcome back everyone.

My guest today is Dave Birss.

He's the founder of the Gen AI Academy and a LinkedIn learning instructor on AI and

that's how I first saw him and contacted him and asked him to be on the pod.

So, first of all, welcome to the podcast, Dave.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for, for inviting me.

Yeah, I'm excited to chat with you.

So first of all, where am I chatting to you from?

I'm in southeast London in my little film studio that I've got where

I, I record my courses and, yeah.

But I'm, I, I'm a foreigner here as well, so I'm a Scotsman, living in London.

At this point, I need to cut in and just say that we are going to talk

about Edinburgh Fringe a little bit, and that's because at the time this was

recorded, which was before August of 2025, I was going to head up to Edinburgh

Fringe soon, but it took me way too long to get this edited and shipped,

basically live to you, the listener.

So I'm leaving it in, even though it's December now, knowing that this

happened a long time ago, just because I like where the conversation with Dave

goes, talking about his early career.

So just enjoy.

But don't look for me at Edinburgh 'cause I'm not gonna be there

at the time you're listening.

Yeah.

Cool.

Yeah, and I'm in Camden, and I will be up in Edinburgh, like in about less

than a week actually, to spend time.

Up in Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,

so I'll be spending time.

Yeah.

Are you from that there,

I, no, with the other side of the country.

I'm from Glasgow.

But I used to, I used to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe, and I've performed

there usually as a, as a musician.

So the bands that I played in, we would, we'd play over there and, and

I, I used to a session musician, so, I, I played for quite a few bands on a

record label, and we'd end up sort of playing the Fringe as well very often.

And I did it, I, I did comedy at, at Edinburgh at one point as well.

I did a comedy gig in the Fringe as well.

But not like you, you're going for it big time, aren't you?

Trying to, trying to.

And where are you performing?

so this, I'll be at a place called Bar 50.

It's run by a Laughing Horse.

There's a, there's several major like companies or, or organizations

that run venues and Laughing Horse is one of the two free fringe ones.

And so, yeah, they gave us a spot for five days.

So a friend and I are gonna do a split bill up there, so it should be fun.

Yeah.

good for you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

But, so when, at what point in your career, because I'm gonna talk about your

career and how you've gotten to where you are now and doing that, At what point

in your career were you doing music?

Music?

When I left university, I did, I, first of all did a degree in computer

programming and advanced mathematics.

And then I did a degree in degree in marketing and

management as a postgraduate.

And I did it with the idea that, education was going to be my fallback

if I didn't make it as a musician.

But as I finished my second degree, a record label came to me and, I'd

already played some session stuff for some of the bands on their label.

And, they said, well, Would you like to come and work for us?

And we'll train you up as a recording engineer and you

can help us with marketing.

And, so I, I did that and I used to go to the studio.

I'd be there at, nine in the morning, cleaning the tape machines because it

was the old days before digital and it was like two inch tape and a one

inch tape machine slaved together.

And I would go be in there cleaning it all.

And we had an old desk, I think it was at Abbey Road or something

like someplace like that.

And it, it, great big dials on it, this desk from the 1960s.

And so I would be there like occasionally soldering things that went wrong.

So I did some, I did that in my early twenties and I was, I was

a musician for a few bands and, a lot of the people I played with

went on to become very successful.

And, I decided to quit and I get into advertising instead because I'd

kind of had a little bit stint in the middle doing standup for the BBC.

And then, I got my, I got offered my first job in advertising the

same week as I offered my first TV show, and I decided to go to, I

decided to do advertising instead.

Wow.

So what was, wow, okay.

So as far as, as far as that goes, I mean, were you doing, like, were you

warming up for the BBC, like warming up crowds or what were you doing?

I, I, I closed the show, so, so there was, there was a

sketch comedy show in Scotland.

okay.

and I was, I was a musician for the, the theater version of the show.

So we would do incidental music and we would sort of play after the show as well.

And one night I was getting drunk with the writers of the,

of the show after we'd done it.

And they were, they were the folk who wrote Rab C. Nesbitt, which

was a sort of very popular comedy show in, in Scotland at the time.

And I was getting drunk with them afterwards.

And I was just making up these stupid songs on the guitar, and they were

drunk, so their judgment was impaired.

And they said, do you want to close the show next week with half an hour standup?

And I was drunk and my judgment was impaired.

And I said yes.

And I woke up the next morning going, oh, "What have I done?"

Only one week to write half, half an hour of standup.

I think I got to about 20 minutes worth of standup, but still, my

goodness, it normally takes months to get to 20 minutes of standup

Yeah, at least.

I just had to write it in a week and go for it.

And I mean, I was pretty terrible.

And doing like character comedy where I sort of made up this

stupid, annoying character.

And then I would sing these songs and because I went on after the main show, the

first gig that I did was to 4,000 people

Oh my gosh, that's insane.

Like you jumped in.

And I, I went on stage and I, I, you know, my goodness, I was

absolutely terrified.

I went on stage and I did my 20 minutes.

The show was happy and warmed up for me, so it went down an absolute storm.

But the last night of the tour, the show had been an absolute disaster.

And every, you know, the, the audience in Glasgow, my hometown

of Glasgow, were aggressive.

And I then went onto this room of angry Glaswegians and the, I started

to do my stuff and, and there's heckler in the audience is "get

off, you're shite", you know, and

the sort of usual, yeah, thanks for coming, dad.

All that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah,

it was just like this guy wouldn't, wouldn't stop.

He just, he was drunk, he was angry and he just kept shouting.

So I nodded over to the bouncers to sort of deal with this guy and they folded

their arms and turned their backs on me.

And I thought, alright, I'm gonna have some fun here.

Sir. Sir, I am clearly, I'm shy.

does anyone in here disagree with this gentleman that I'm shy.

And they're like, it's like, okay, no one's disagreeing.

So I think we're all on the same page here.

So, sir, please, you must be better than me.

"Ah, yeah. I am." Come up on stage.

No way.

And I brought this guy up on stage and you know, I sort of gave him

the microphone and he's there.

He's got a microphone stand and he is holding onto the

microphone stand basically to, to stop himself from falling over.

It's, it's his third leg as he's standing on stage and he just starts

laying into the audience and just insulting and swearing at everyone.

And while was doing that.

I walked out.

I took my stuff, went to the box office, got my money, and then the following

week I got a phone call from the BBC saying, oh, we really loved having

you on the tour, and, we've just been commissioned for another series and we

wanted to offer you five minutes of the show every week to write a topical song.

And it's like, okay, that's a lot of work to write a topical song and then sort of

shoot five minutes of video or whatever.

And, and it's like, okay, how much are you, how much are you paying?

And they told me how much it was, and I just burst out laughing

and said, no, but thank you.

It's nice to be asked.

And I said, no.

And yeah, I then started my first job in advertising instead.

Wow.

Wow.

See that, I did not expect all that.

That's, that's so crazy though.

I mean, just what a, like what a start and end really quick to a standup career too.

So do you still play music?

I don't perform anymore.

I've got, I've got an issue with my, my hands that, I sort

I of can't play very long.

So I, I sort of play for fun, you know, when I am, when I'm on stage, I'll

very often have like a harmonica in my pocket in case the tech goes down and

then I'll, I'll get the harmonica out and I'll, I'll sort of entertain the

audience while the tech gets fixed.

But,

cool's cool.

I don't have the hunger to, to go out and play.

I mean, I'm an old man now.

I'm in my fifties, and I don't have the need to, to, to go out and play, gigs.

and nobody's really interested in the kind of stuff I would

want to play anyway, so, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and so then the advertising, so yeah, you went into your first job in

advertising, so did you, did you enjoy it?

You did that for most of your career until you did what you're doing now, right?

I, I did that for about 20 years.

and I went from being a, a writer, I was an art director, and then I became like a

head of digital because I, I was known for the sort of stuff that I would do, online.

And then in 2010, I was, I was a creative director at one of the big ad

agencies and there was politics and I couldn't be bothered with the politics.

And I, I, I quit and I was getting interested.

I'd set up this division within the company, which was education.

And what I'd been doing was I'd, it'd be like mandatory education

for the creative department

where they had to come along.

And I would, every two weeks I would do a lecture explaining to

them where the good stuff was.

Because as a creative director, your job is to direct people creatively.

It's kind of clue is title.

And people would come with ideas and I'd go, that's shit.

That's shit.

That's shit.

Ooh, there's something in that.

Could you push it in this direction?

And then inevitably they wouldn't quite take it where I

was hoping they would take it.

So instead of doing the, that push approach, I decided to try the

pull approach and instead I'm gonna show people who the good shit is.

And it'd be like, okay, here's social movements, here's what we

can learn from social movements.

And then they would get a cheat sheet of stuff they could do

to try and understand that.

Then, okay, here's the next thing.

This is internet things.

Let me explain how that works and here's a cheat sheet for that.

So, so each two, every two weeks I would do a lecture on a different topic, which

was a lot of work, but it kind of was where I learned that I love teaching,

Yeah.

the whole seeing that sort of epiphany happen to see the,

the impact it has on people.

And that was really where the teaching thing came.

So when I then quit in 2010, I quit to start an education company for

the ad industry at the exact time that the financial crisis- crisis

impacted the industry, and the first thing to be cut is training.

, so, so I ended up sort of traveling around the world, teaching at universities.

I wrote some books.

I did a TV series.

I wrote, directed and presented a documentary series and yeah, it's

just been a, a, a weird journey that I've had, and I've kind of got this

corporate attention deficit disorder where something shiny comes along and

they're like, Ooh, let's look at that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and so with the, with the teaching too, I mean, you kind of said at the

start that you you know, had you had things not worked out, you could fall

back on education and you end up, you know, doing that and educating people.

Did you find that you were a better boss at all when you started having

the approach of teaching people versus kind of directing them, I

guess, for lack of a better word?

Yeah, I mean, it's always been part of what I did when I first stepped

into like management positions.

I was, I was promoted to a leadership position at a stupidly young age.

I think I was 27 or 28 when I first found myself, in a leadership

position in a creative department.

And that was too young.

And, so, so I ended up running the, the department and there was like 20,

20 or so creatives in the department.

I was the second youngest and I was running the department.

So at that point, you can imagine there's politics that, you start to get so.

There's like two approaches I could have had.

One is to try and lord it over everyone and be the typical arsal, creative

director with, with the, the big eagle.

But that's not really the way I work.

I'm more interested in people and growing people and helping them.

So instead, I saw my role as being below them and helping lift them up.

So what I would do is I would go around the department in the morning and just

go, right, what are you working on?

If you get anything to show me.

I would give them feedback and stuff they showed me.

I'd say, is there anything, this is, this is my deal with them.

Is there anything stopping you from being excellent?

Is there anything stopping you from doing the best work you've ever done?

And at that point, they're giving me excuses.

So they've, they've got no excuse.

And, and what I would do is they, they'd say, all right, this person's

harassing me, or I've got this stupid little piece of work on.

I'd say, alright, I don't want you to worry about that.

I'm gonna take that, i'm gonna sort that out.

And I would go and I would, I'd tell people to stop harassing

them, or I would take away the crap work and I would do the crap work.

And I spent a year and a half doing the worst work of my career,

because I was taking away the awful soulless jobs, so that my department

could do the excellent stuff.

And the deal was, as they understood, is that I would take away the crap so

that there was no excuse for them to not produce the best work they'd ever done.

And it worked.

The work that I got from that department was incredible.

They would, without me having to ask, they would work evenings, they

would work weekends, they would do anything they could to produce

the best work they possibly could.

And it was one of the, that was kind of like the best

period in my career, possibly.

And it was, yeah, at that point it was one of the hottest agencies in

London, which was, which was great.

Yeah.

And that's, that's cool.

And I mean that's, I've studied servant, I've studied

leadership in different forms.

but one of them is servant leadership, and that's like, almost like taking it

to a whole different level really of actually literally serving the team.

But I think that the best leaders do that.

The best leaders know what, what leading doesn't mean, just standing around

and barking orders out at people.

That's not like the, that's not what leadership is.

That's just telling people what to do so that was really a big insight

to have at such a young age too.

Yeah.

I think I, I'd also experienced really bad bosses and, you know,

I just don't want to be that I don't, I, I, I care about people.

I, I want to see people do well, and, you know, I'm not a

confrontational person in any way.

And, and I didn't want any of, I didn't want any of that.

I didn't want to be the artsy arsehole.

well, so then you, so you did, you know, you said you, in 2010, you, you know, left

your, left your job, and you decided you were going to start teaching, and then

of course the what happened happened with financially, so the financial crisis.

So then at what point did you what were you teaching then

when you were going around?

You said you were teaching, basically advertising, right?

And things like that.

But what were you, like, what were you teaching then, and then when

did you kind of end up being able to establish more of a home base again

and, and your own, you know, business?

Well, I was, I was teaching, I mean, there, there was, there was stuff that

was very advertising kind of stuff.

So, for example, when, advertising agencies are doing campaigns that go

across different media channels, what they tended to do was absolute crap.

So they would do a television ad and then they would take an image from

that and put it in a poster and put it in a press ad and put it in a

banner ad, you know, and it'd be like, oh, geez, that is just brainless.

That's shit.

It's not understanding the moment that humans are in

when they receive the message.

It's not understanding the strength of the media that you're using.

So I developed a way of, sharing my approach to the

way that I would approach it.

And I ended up, running courses for, , all sorts of organizations, some universities.

There was like the trade body for advertising in the UK is called the IPA.

There's like an awards body called DNAD.

And I would, I would do training for them.

I would conduct training on behalf of them, and then.

I got called on by a lot of companies to teach them creative skills:

How do we come up with ideas?

How do we communicate effectively?

So all the stuff that I learned in my career, I would then share.

And from that, that some of that stuff then sort of led into, you know,

writing, writing books and stuff.

So this is like one of my books here.

And, and, so I've, I've written, I think in the last 15 years, I

think I've written nine books.

I think five of them are available to buy.

My whole thing is about finding out stuff, working a, a way of

simplifying the communication of that and then sharing it with others.

So whether that's through books, whether it's through courses, whether it's through

workshops, to me, it's all the same thing.

It's all just about, I get information, I try to simplify it, and then I share it.

Mm. Yeah.

And, and I think there's something I, I learned in my, earlier, in my career

earlier than I am now, but I think a bit later than I wish I would've, is

just how powerful it is to share ideas and to share knowledge and information.

Because in a way, and I don't know if it's, I mean, you were in advertising,

so it could be kind of very similar to like what you end up with in a lot

of organizations in the states where you try to become almost the linchpin.

I think Malcolm Gladwell even talked about the linchpin, but you try to become

the linchpin, like you're the person who has the information, so you're the

most valuable, but that ends up not being true eventually, and, and you

end up, you know, hurting yourself in the process when really other people

having the information is valuable.

So everyone can learn, and everyone

can share, and the team can do better.

And.

And so have you, did you kind of, did that come naturally to you too?

Like, especially I'm thinking now with AI and the fact that you're teaching

people really valuable information about using AI, when really you could

maybe keep that to yourself and just become this expert that goes around

making a million pounds at each company

Oh, if only.

I've done, I've done it wrong.

Rabiah.

You did.

Well, I don't know.

You know, I'm, I'm the visionary here, obviously,

but you know what I mean?

Like, people, people think that sharing knowledge and information

like isn't, isn't valuable sometimes, but you, you do it.

I guess from the, the, there was kind of this, my approach when it came to,

doing things online, when I was doing digital stuff was, you know, my philosophy

came from the Red Hot chili peppers.

You know, What I've got, you've got to give it to your mama.

Give it away, give it away, give it away now.

And, and, and

Oh my god.

the whole, that, that whole approach of, of, of just when you've got it,

just, just give it away, the value will return to you in some way.

Now, it took years for the value to return to me, and I spent a lot of my time

and I still do just giving stuff away.

So, like my website, I have got a stack of free web tools that I've

coded and they've been useful to me, and I just give them away.

Anyone can use them for free.

And like, there's one tool on there that I, I, I coded, I coded

it over a weekend for my daughter.

And 'cause she was into story dice.

You've got little pictures on dice.

You shake the dice and then you get random pictures and you stitch them into a story.

so I created an online version of Story Dice just so that we could

take it where we go and I could just get my phone out and she could play

story dice on the phone with me.

And it, gets about 2000 hits a day.

Wow.

This, this tool.

And it is just one of these things.

I just give it away.

I get nothing back from that.

Nothing.

But it's something that, yeah, I've, I'm very much, if I've got

value to share, just go for it.

Just, just put it out there.

And it's like, it's almost like, you know, writing books, you don't

make money from writing books.

You know, I, this, this book here, I, I haven't had a royalty

check for this book in years, but.

Yeah.

Mean, I, I don't know, maybe, maybe my publisher's scamming me, but, you

know, haven't, had it's, I've not had any money from this in years.

And, book here that I, I self-published and, and this book

here, I priced it in a way that I make virtually no money off this.

Right.

So when people buy it, I think I might make less than a pound.

And so, so from this, I've had,

I dunno when I last got a check for that either

I need to, I

what are the books

things.

and what?

Just state the name of the two books in case someone wants to know.

Because if someone's just listening and if I don't edit

video, which is highly likely.

is

yes, of course.

there's my bestseller is How to Get to Great Ideas and

available from all good Amazons.

and then there's, a User Guide to the Creative Mind is another of my books, and

this one's got lots of little pictures.

I drew draw lots of little pictures and things in here.

And even at one point, I, I even put some, I even put some Sudoku in the middle.

There you go.

Just, just in case you get bored.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Perfect.

That's great.

So in doing all this then, at what point did you decide you were gonna like, go

into AI and like you were gonna look at AI from the perspective of teaching

people how to use it and, and, just, we talked a little bit before the call,

but my, I mean, I've definitely been a skeptic personally and I've been slow

to use certain things and I still try to like, challenge myself not to use it, use

it, meaning probably ChatGPT most often.

I have an Echo, you know, in my house.

I'll set the timer with it.

I know that, you know, is even partly there, but, what, what

brought you to AI first maybe as a consumer and then professionally too?

Yeah.

I mean, as, as a consumer.

Yeah.

I've, I've got an Echo.

I, I occasionally put music on it and I use it as a timer.

That's the main thing that gets used 90% of the time.

It's just saying, Alexa set a five minute pasta timer.

That's, that's it.

Sorry, if I just set off your,

No.

You know what?

I realize I had headphones on, so it's fine.

I just,

I panicked for a second.

For other people who are listening to this all online, we can cause mayhem with them.

Alexa play atomic kitten.

let's see.

So with, um.

I'm just imagining people at the moment.

Now it's going shut Alexa, stop.

, yeah, so, so with with AI, I've, the first time I saw AI was in the late 1980s

mm-hmm.

I was going round universities and then University of Edinburgh

had a stand, an education fair.

And I was just about to finish school.

And they had something that they said was AI and it was very old, rudimentary AI.

We would look at it now and go, nah, that was rub.

So I've, I've kept an eye on it because I'm a nerd and I then, um.

You know, I played with a little bit, sort of early versions of AI, like 2017, 2018.

kind of thing.

And then in 2022 was when ChatGPT was launched to the world.

In November 2022.

And I'd already been out doing some talks on, AI image generation.

So I, I do visual art as well.

So I'd created this series of visual art where, where I do, like woodblock

prints, wood cuts, and lino cuts.

And I'm sort of, I, I, I love that kind of stuff because it's

very slow and meditative and my, I live my life very fast and I

need these moments to slow down.

So, I was doing this and as I started playing with AI image

generators, I, I would say, right, give me a, a lino cut image of a

bald man with glasses and a beard.

And I thought, I wonder if it can come up with an image of me just by

giving it such simple instructions.

And it never did; it never came up with anything that, that really looked like me.

But it came up with these beautiful, beautiful lino cut images that

had been digitally generated.

So I thought, well, I actually want to see what would happen if I

take those straight out the image generator and I transfer them onto

a piece of lino and then I cut them.

Because in that way, I'm doing the opposite of what artists tend to

do, which is the artists will come up with the idea in their head, the

visual idea, and then they will use technology to help make it happen.

I'm doing it the other way round.

Technology is coming up with the image, and I am doing the

hard work of making it happen.

So by turning it on its head, I was, then I would do a talk and I would

sort of showcase my art and I'd be saying to people, so is this art?

Is this art that I've done seeing is we've switched it around?

Like 90% of people were like, yeah, this is art.

but it, it was interesting.

I'd wanted to start that debate and that was before ChatGPT came out.

So when ChatGPT came out, I started to see, well, how do you use this thing?

Well, and I was, I was looking at what people were saying online.

I was looking at forums, I was looking at YouTube videos, found that what most

people were saying was absolute bullshit.

And that the issue when it comes to getting the most out of AI

tools is not about nerding out over technological features.

It's actually about structuring our own thinking,

mmmhmm

and about making sure that we are taking the information that's in our heads,

the ingredients that we would need to solve the idea, and we're getting all

of that stuff and structuring it and presenting it to the AI in a way that the

AI understands the context, understands the specific problem you're working on,

understands what you think good looks like, understands the, the output that

you want things to be delivered in.

And I started to work on frameworks roundabout this.

And within a couple of weeks I came up with something

that I was pretty happy with.

And at that point, LinkedIn Learning came to me, because I'd already done

courses on teaching people creativity, and they came to me and said, have

you got any other ideas for courses?

I was like, yeah.

I've just been playing with chat GPT over the last three weeks or so,

and I've got a way to write prompts.

Would you be interested in a course which is actually showing people

how to write prompts effectively?

So I, I did that, I did that course and got it up on the platform really

quickly and it ended up becoming the most popular AI course on the platform.

It's what they told me.

They then told me, I'm not allowed to say that.

But they told me at the time it was the most popular, I dunno how they

measured that, whether it was by views, whether it was by ratings.

I think it was actually by ratings because it was getting like 4.9 out five.

It was like super high rated course.

And , that basically, that was two and a half years ago.

And since then, I think I've created another dozen AI courses

and I've, been not out of choice.

I've become the person who's sort of known for AI and for particularly

being a specialist in prompting.

You know, I'm just riding that pony because that's

what people are looking for.

I enjoy doing it.

I still do lots of research to try and break the systems and, yeah, I've, in,

in that time, in the space of just under two years, I taught over a million people

wow.

How to do, how to improve their AI skills.

So that, that was what my I'd said very ambitiously that I wanted

to teach a million people, and I did it in just over 18 months.

Yeah.

Amazing.

Yeah.

That's so cool.

And then now you've recently though, started something else

that the Gen AI Academy, right?

So what, what is that?

I kind of came from the fact that when I was doing the the LinkedIn stuff,

because I was, my courses were quite popular, I'd have companies that would

come to me and say, can you help us?

Can you do training for our teams?

Can you advise us?

And, sort of realized that there was some stuff that people were asking

for that I couldn't really deliver because I didn't have that, the

particular perspective or the particular industry knowledge they wanted.

Mm-hmm.

And my assistant is, she's phenomenal.

She was, she was far too smart to be my assistant.

And we were talking about how, you know, there's a bigger opportunity

here, there's a bigger possibility here.

And she ran a couple of like communities of people who are interested in AI.

So we thought, well, can we get a bunch of experts together and

create something that's much bigger?

So we launched this a couple of months ago.

Mm-hmm.

And, what we do is we've got, we'll very soon have 20 courses up on

the platform from lots of different experts about lots of different things.

And these experts, we then, companies can basically subscribe

for a package so that they can get these courses for their teams.

However big the company is, you know, we will basically create an education

platform for them with all the AI stuff.

We, compliment that with live workshops and even mentoring and advising for the

companies themselves with these experts.

And, and these experts are extraordinary.

We've got neuroscientists, we've got someone who's one of the,

heads of ethics for Google.

You know, we've got absolutely incredible minds on this platform,

and we're, I feel very lucky that they're trusting us with this.

And yeah, so, so, so we're offering this to companies at the moment,

and companies of all sizes, we can we can help with this.

Great.

And just I think you mentioning to the ethics person that you have

with you and, and just in general, I mean, a, a big conversation is around

the environmental impact of, of AI and really the servers around AI.

But then there are also like the, you know, copyright of people's work.

And I, like, I use WeTransfer and I love WeTransfer, and all of a sudden

now WeTransfer's like apparently gonna use our audio, which I send comedy

stuff, so I don't really want that.

And like, and so there's different things that are happening, but what, how do you

feel like when you look at the ethics of AI in general and, and your own use, but

also your kind of, even if you're not evangelizing it, you're teaching people

about it, which kind of it probably makes people think, oh, he loves AI.

Yeah.

No, I'm, I'm, i'm, I'm total skeptic, about it.

I've got, I've got a lot of ethical issues roundabout So for example,

Meta, it was discovered that they'd basically stolen millions of books,

Hmm.

Using something called, I think it's LibGen or something

like that, which is, which

yeah.

pirated library of books.

And Atlantic did a, they, they did an article exposing this and they created

a tool that you could check to see if your books were included in this.

Three of my books are included in this.

included in this.

Yeah.

And no, and no check?

No check.

Absolutely not.

No.

So, you know, I, it, it impacts me and I've got, I've got a problem with that.

Yeah.

If they had asked, I would probably have said yes.

But the fact that they, they've just taken it and the fact that,

you know, US government is basically saying that you can do whatever

the hell you want is problematic.

I'm sorry that that growth first is not, is not an excuse for this.

So, so, there's lots of ethical issues and we can sort look at

the ethics of sort of art as well.

And yeah, that's problematic.

But a lot of the stuff that artists say is that it's stealing work for them.

To be honest, it's not really.

The people who would use stuff that comes out of an image generator are people who

wouldn't pay for art in the first place.

So you've not really lost much, if anything, in that sense.

But one of the things we're going to see with humanity is that we're going to

be looking for, transparency, honesty, humanity, all of these things because

AI is going to strip a lot of that away.

I believe you're going to get a return to in-person events,

which is good news for you.

Yeah.

Yeah,

totally.

but also for like conferences and things like that, because if you can't

have 100% faith in the information you're getting out of a tool, and

you are losing out on a lot of human interaction because you're interacting

with a computer a lot of the time,

Mm-hmm.

I believe that people are going to want to meet in person and we're gonna see us

at rise in, in-person conferences again.

Yeah.

which I think is a great thing.

We need more humanity.

But when we start looking at the power consumption and water consumption,

that yes, that is concerning.

It is concerning.

And I, I was asked to speak about it, a month ago at an event, and I was

like, okay, well I'll go away and I'll do my research and I'll look at this.

And I thought, well, let's put it in context.

Yeah.

So, a standard AI query is about 0.3 kilowatts per hour.

0.3 kilowatts of energy.

Now that's about the same as a Google query.

Yeah.

Obviously when we start to use more and we start to use deep thinking and we

start to use agents, which ChatGPT just released their agent last week,

when we start to use, that uses a lot more processing, significantly more.

But, but still, when we start to put it in context, it's like, okay, well let's put

it in context for, devices we're using.

So for example, running a laptop all day is about 400 kilowatts.

So we're going from one prompt to 0.3 kilowatts to 400 to

600 kilowatts for a computer.

And then we start looking at, alright, uh, a, a, a tuna sandwich.

How much is a tuna sandwich in terms of energy use?

Is it about 300 kilowatts?

Okay.

What about a cup of tea?

a cup of tea is I think just over a hundred kilowatts.

And we start to go, oh, shit.

There's so many things that we do

Mm-hmm.

uses an unbelievable amount of energy that when we start actually putting

it into context, it's only when we start getting to video generation does

it start becoming really concerning.

And we find out that getting five seconds of video is over a thousand kilowatts.

And at that, now, anyone who's listening to this, you, you want to

double check these figures because this is me trying to remember from

a, a presentation a few weeks ago.

but if I remember correctly, that was for about five seconds of video.

It's over a thousand, uh, kilowatts, which means that to get that five seconds, it's

two days worth of your laptop being on.

Right.

but the thing is that you get that video back and you go, oh, it's not quite right.

I'm gonna re-roll.

And that's the thing.

That we start to, it then starts to mass, and, it starts to add up.

But generally using like ChatGPT for prompts, I'm not seeing that as, as much

of a concerning thing as other people are.

I'm looking at the other uses of AI tools of image generation and

video generation are the ones that absolutely, you know, they, they,

they're so hungry for, uh, for power.

That's the stuff that concerns me a bit more.

Yeah.

And I think that's great and I didn't, I've looked at it just,

at work just to kind of help frame things 'cause people have concerns

at, at where I work, you know?

'cause we're just, you know, we're doing more, I mean, we have a

development team and various roles that could benefit from using AI

in some ways or be more efficient.

Yeah.

And so I looked at something, one thing I saw too, I didn't see, I

didn't do the research you did to get those figures, so they're awesome.

And one thing I saw that was encouraging was the how, like China, for example,

is really growing their use of solar and just doing so much solar installation

and just of course bypassing the US which is basically, you know, I think we just

heard yesterday how, again, windmills are ruining, ruining every lives at

Yeah.

And that that's why we need to dig for more coal.

Exactly, because the windmills are ruining lives.

But anyway, but the solar, and there's a lot of, a lot of, really good

stuff happening around that though, and like the creation or the, not

creation of energy, but generation of power from different sources.

So that was kind of cool, I guess to see, too, just to kind of offset some of it.

Yeah.

I'm gonna ch Oh, go ahead.

It reminds me a little bit like, Las Vegas.

I remember the first time I went to Las Vegas.

You see all the lights and you're like, oh my goodness.

So much power consumption.

This is crazy.

And then you discover that Las Vegas is actually, it's almost entirely powered

by, is it the Hoover Dam that's close by?

And it, it's relatively sustainable.

Yeah.

it's just coming from the dam and that's where the power comes from.

And they end up creating more power than they need, from that.

So, so I, you know, there are some great things in the US when it

comes to that kind of stuff, but,

thing that we do know is the people who are in charge of the AI companies, all of

them are investing in, uh, nuclear fusion.

So the idea of fusion reactors and fusion reactors, I mean, I think the most

ambitious people are saying we're about 10 years away from having fusion reactors.

a lot of realists are saying we're 20 to 30 years away from

having sort of fusion energy.

But it's, you know, it's because they know that energy is such a big problem.

These things are so energy hungry and yeah, energy is an, is an issue.

It is a big issue.

I'm concerned about it, but I'm also, I want people to be realistic

and contextual about their approach.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I agree.

And, and you know, just using things in moderation, I guess, too.

Like don't ask if you don't need to ask.

It's kind of, sometimes I think about, people will ask me a question,

I'm like, can't you Google it?

But now I'll be like, you know what, I'll answer it and I'll save a little bit,

a little bit of energy, maybe instead of being a jerk.

I saw a LinkedIn article, LinkedIn post last week of a guy.

He had taken a picture of a drain in the street and he said, yesterday I

dropped my car keys down the drain.

And the first thing that I did was I opened up my iPhone, went to ChatGPT,

and said, "I've dropped my car keys down the drain. What do I do?"

And he is like, he then realized, whoa, I am, I'm not even thinking anymore that

I'm just, I'm using ChatGPT as my brain.

I'm, where's, where's my intelligence gone?

And, and it's like, oh yeah, that's what a lot of people will be doing.

And that's one of my biggest concerns is people losing the power of their brains

because they outsource their thinking.

And, and I sadly believe that that's what's going to

happen to about 90% of people.

Wow.

I'm, I'm a nerd, so, I've got, you know, like my sort of brain models here.

My, my kids, my kids love taking these things apart and putting

the brains back together.

But one of the issues we've got is, is that when we look at engagement in the

workplace, every year Gallup do a study, the workplace engagement survey they do.

And in the US I was speaking in, in DC a couple of months ago, and I was talking

about this and I, and I said like, in the US you know what the figures are they're

that 32% of the US workforce is engaged.

And people are like, oh.

I said, yeah, it's worse than that though.

About, about 15% of them are actively disengaged.

That means that they are sabotaging shit.

That means that they're working against the company that's paying them.

So, so, so it was like, oh, oh, that's awful.

And I said, yeah, well, let me tell you about the UK.

In the UK 10% of people are engaged.

Wow.

And about 12% of people are actively disengaged.

More people working against the companies than working for them,

Wow.

going the extra mile.

So

So,

we're, that's a good, a good indicator, a good analogous kind of

indicator for intrinsic motivation.

Mm.

So that those 10% who are engaged are people who tend

to be intrinsically motivated.

If you're intrinsically motivated, you don't tend to be that

disengaged in the workplace.

So, so if we look at that as intrinsic motivation, think about how somebody

who's intrinsically motivated will use AI.

They're more likely to use it to grow their own brand, to reach further,

to reach higher, to do better because they're intrinsically motivated.

That's what's built into them.

They're gonna try harder and they're gonna use this tool to achieve more.

Mm.

What about the 90% who are disengaged?

They're gonna use it to simply outsource because they don't give a shit.

So they're going to be going, well, ah, just get AI to do it.

Now what happens when you do that, even if it's stuff that you don't find

that interesting, is you start, your brain dissolves the bits you don't use.

So it starts to dissolve certain pathways, which means that not only

do you lose that skill, but you lose the ability to develop that skill.

And also we, it's really important throughout our lives that we

develop new neural pathways.

Yeah.

Our brain need to have this plasticity that they, they can

develop new neural pathways.

And through use you then myelinize, these pathways, making them stronger and faster.

Yeah.

now if we don't do that, That makes us more susceptible

to Alzheimer's, dementia.

Now, when we start looking at that as a pattern, and this is what I

do a lot, a lot of what I do, I'm looking at this kind of stuff.

I'm looking at the future of humanity in a way that is skeptical.

In, in a way that I am trying to look at potential outcomes.

And then work out how we as a species can mitigate them.

So when a lot of people look at me and go, oh, he's just an AI evangelist.

He's excited about this stuff.

No, I'm a, I'm a human lover.

yeah,

I, I love people.

I'm interested in the future of humanity, and it scares the crap out of me

that if people are going to use AI to shrink their brains, to atrophy their

brains, what does that do to the future of humanity and has humanity peaked?

Hmm.

So that, that's kind of where a lot of my thinking is.

Wow.

Yeah.

And well, again, you look at like, so I, so I have MS. So that's, a disease

where the demyelination occurs just based on your right your white blood cells

attack the myelin and you lose things.

You lose this, you lose this in your brain, in your spine, different places.

And so one thing that people like me do and people with other degenerative and

neurodegenerative conditions is like they try to continually like build those

build pathways, but also like try to prevent this from happening or try to

rebuild it and try to do things that help.

And so it's just interesting even you saying that and then thinking about also

all the articles now about here's a good diet for, you know, to prevent dementia.

Here's a good diet to prevent Alzheimer's.

Here's stop doing, stop using these products or use, you

know, eat this, whatever.

There's all this stuff people are, are doing and finding out to kind

of fight this, but then, then, yeah, there is this, this thing that people

are probably doing inadvertently not even thinking about that.

Yeah,

which is.

how much, how much broccoli do you have to eat before you can

like for each Chet GPT query?

You know what I mean?

It's just like.

That it's, it's, it's, that's really interesting.

It take, this is another sort of thing that I've been thinking about is, when

we started to sit down for a living.

Like three generations ago was kind of when we passed that point where people

mainly sat down for a living we've had an epidemic of heart disease since then.

We've had, people's arses are shaped differently than they were 50 years ago.

Huh.

so it, it's, it's having this impact on us because we are not used to this.

We are, we're building up fat in places we never used to build up

fat, on the inside of our ribs, not on the outside, on the inside.

So that, so, so because of that, gyms became popular.

And we saw that in the 1980s the rise of the gym.

And even, even now, there's this still this push, strong push

towards exercising physically.

Mm-hmm.

I believe that one of the big growth areas in the next, 10 to

20 years is going to be mind gyms.

Yeah.

It's going to be ways that we will try to combat the atrophy of our brains.

And in exactly the same way as people will buy a physical gym

membership and not go along,

but, but it kind of like, it, it kinda like sets that need within

them that I was, I'm doing something, it's costing me financially.

People will do the same and we'll end up with membership

services for, cognitive exercise

that people that people will pay, but they won't really use as much as they

should and these still will decline.

And as much as, you know, in, in my, at my age, exercise is all

about staying mobile for longer.

Mm, yeah.

And it's the kind of thing that we need this as well for mental

exercise to remain cognizant for longer, to remain salient for longer.

And this, this is going to, I believe this is gonna become a big thing.

Yeah, I can see that.

And I think even now, like just New York Times games app, for example.

I think all those games make you think and promote that versus like

probably Toon Blast or whatever I play, which doesn't, and you know,

But yeah, I'm, I'm a, I I still do Wordle most days, you know?

Yeah, I started doing it late and so my nephew and I sent it to

each other every day, and that's kind of like our touch point.

But yeah, it's, it's good.

Oh, yesterday's was a stinker.

I can't remember.

Oh, I can't remember what it was, but

I, know what it was.

It was savvy.

That was, oh, that was a couple of days ago.

Yeah.

oh, that was a couple days ago.

That one I got wrong.

I got so angry and I was telling my nephew what I guessed.

But yeah, I always, I I am not doing them as well, like as I

was for some reason, you know.

Yeah, I got, I got savvy a couple of days ago, and then I think it was, um,

I'm pulling it up.

remember what yesterday's was, but I, I didn't get yesterday's and that was the

first one I haven't got in a long time.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just, I don't know, it's crazy.

Well, so when we look at your teaching journey, basically, for lack of a better

word, I could ask for a better word, but I'll say journey, and we look at,

you were teaching advertising, what you knew and what you were working with

in creativity and now generative ai.

Is there anything else that you, a topic that you would like to teach?

I mean, we just talked and you talked quite passionately about

just humans in general and how much you, you care and love humanity.

So what, what else do you wanna teach or what do you see yourself

doing when you're kind of

done with the

Yeah, I'm finding myself concentrating more and.

More on humans and it's, I, I've just finished a course,

just finished filming a course.

I'm just hopefully finishing editing it tomorrow.

And it's all about how everyone is a manager now.

And it's the managerial skills that we all need to develop

when we're working with AI.

So, for example, you know, most, most managers are terrible at being managers.

I think because they didn't want to be managers.

they, they were promoted to that position, which takes 'em away from

the stuff they actually enjoy doing.

And, but I think everyone is a manager now.

And you need to, certain management skills that everyone needs to

develop regardless, even if they're, if they're internal level.

When you're working with an AI, you need to be able to develop vision.

You need to be able to communicate your vision clearly.

So like writing a brief, that's what your prompt is really is writing a brief.

you need to be able to, understand what good looks like so that you

know how to judge the feedback.

Then from that, you need to know how to give constructive feedback.

You need to know how to persuade people because everything you do, even more so,

I think with AI is an act of persuasion.

You're, you're selling.

Then we've got critical thinking skills.

So all of these things are, are really important and it's one of the things

that I'm very passionate about just now, is teaching people the skills that

they need to develop in the age of AI.

And I'm also finding that, a lot of, I think a lot of businesses are run

in a way that I don't agree with.

I think that the, i, I, I, it is gonna make me sound like an anti-capitalist.

And I'm not necessarily an anti-capitalist, but

I'm a capitalist skeptic.

I'm a skeptic about everything you see.

And, and I'll question, I'll question everything.

so for example, we, we, we ended up, creating the stock market.

I think the stock market was maybe the biggest mistake ever in the history

of humanity, where what that did was it ended up creating, businesses

that puts, shareholder profit before social contribution, before care

of humanity, developing society, before looking after the vulnerable.

All of this stuff, which is really what humanity should truly be all about.

And I think that this nonsense about, delivering shareholder value has got to

such a level now that companies cannot be truly responsible or truly human.

And all we're doing is creating a sticky plaster approach to humanity.

So let's, let's do a CSR thing here.

Let's, let's support this charity.

let's, let's try to get more diversity.

And even, although in the states, that's dead.

Yeah.

That's gone.

So, but the problem is that that was always really just a sticky plaster

on top of something which is an organization that is run sociopathically.

It does not care about humans.

A corporation would happily run without any humans being in it at all.

And the decisions it would make would not be in the best interests of humanity.

And that's what we have at the moment, is organizations that make decisions that

aren't in the best interests of humanity.

So that's one of the things that I feel as if is, is like growing inside

me as something that I want to address at some point, and probably will be

a course that I do about maybe sort of rethinking capitalism or, or, or

rethinking, uh, priorities in business.

And trying to do that in a way that isn't about totally dismantling

business, but is just about adjusting the focus so that humans

Yeah.

are the first consideration, when it comes to decision making

rather than shareholder returns.

So that, that's something that, that that's, it's really growing inside me.

And part of it might just be my age and wanting to leave this world better than

I found it, or maybe it's just having seen it so much through my career and

being skeptical, I have shaken that tree and found it to be rotten to the core.

So I, I actually think that we're, we're seeing the decline of, We're seeing

the decline of that whole corporate, uh, movement as well these days.

And I think in the, the next 20 years we're going to be looking

at, corporate structure and capitalism in a different way.

And we may see it as a failed experiment rather than something which still a lot

of people think that it's basically, it's the crowning glory of humanity.

And I think it's possibly the, the, the largest failure of humanity.

Yeah.

I mean, well in the US you're getting really on the edge of like

post-capitalism and, and just the billionaires and the billionaire class

kind of owning the power politically and otherwise and, and the wealth.

I mean the majority of the wealth.

And I think one thing that might be interesting, just when you were

talking, I was thinking about how some companies do start out with humans at

the center and at the core, and they're the companies we respect and love

and then they change, or they sell.

They sell to Amazon, they do something right.

And, and that's an interesting thing too, like at what point do

they shift and say, well, now it is profits over people and not, not

both are not sacrificing some profit.

And so I think, yeah,

that is a really big thing that you could unpack.

I'd, I'd be interested in that book.,

Yeah.

I, I think, I think, uh, and societally we've also got the, this sort of

poisonous belief that what you really want to be is a multimillionaire or

you really want to be a billionaire.

And it's like, why?

Yeah,

Why would that be something?

Having more money than, than, than you can spend, why would

that be something you would want?

And, and I think that we're, we're finding that the younger generation,

my, I've got a daughter who's 25,

and I think that her generation.

Don't look at this the same way that my generation did of this desire to be.

Well, in those days growing up in the seventies, it was the

desire to be a millionaire.

Being a millionaire is nothing now.

But they just don't seem to have that desire.

And it's more about experience and, and the riches are what you can, uh, what you

can grow in your, in your brain and your memory, and in your human connections

rather than in your bank balance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is a great, I think a great place to be and definitely not so-something

like some my age, I'm just about, I guess probably a little, little under

10 years younger than you, who too, like there, there wasn't that idea you

were working for something and, and, and it wasn't just having the experiences.

Like the fact that I don't own a home makes me kind of a

failure to some people, right.

Where I'm like, well, yeah, but I've traveled and I've lived in different

countries and to me that I value that, you

know?

So, Yeah, that's an interesting one.

So, well, one thing that I like to ask every guest is like, do

you have any like advice or mantra that you wanna share with people?

I, I guess it's from a, a Tom Waits song, which is, it's a Tom Waits song

that if I, if I tell the title of the song, it's gonna make it seem as

if I'm not an atheist, which I am.

but the, the song is, uh, Jesus gonna Be Here.

it's just the lyric in that is just, "I wanna leave this place

better than the way I found it was."

And, and that is very much my, my mantra.

And it's something that I use to sort of judge decisions that I make,

whether it's, uh, business decisions, things that I'm, I'm doing generally.

And it's why when I'm looking at, AI, I'm so concerned about

the potential damage it can do.

So I make sure that when I'm teaching it, I'm encouraging people to keep

using the nugget between their ears, and to keep growing it and to, you know,

I want people to be engaged in life and, uh, I think the world would be a

better place if, if more people were engaged in their, in their own lives.

Yeah, I agree.

And I just, uh.

I think, just one, I mean, one reason we're talking is because I

did your, your courses on LinkedIn and they were completely different

to anything I've ever done.

And I really admired the way you were doing it and, and the

passion you were bringing and the humor, especially the humor.

I was just impressed.

And, but also just now talking to you, like that's just been so authentic

and, and real, and that's awesome.

So you're, I think you're doing it, you know.

I think you're, at least you're working to, you're doing, you're, you're

doing the work that you, you want basically to do based on that mantra.

So,

thank you.

yeah.

Well, thank you.

And anyone who wants to watch your courses will have links to them in

Yeah, that's, they're, they're, they're riddled with dad jokes.

Yeah, they are.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's good.

But they're to keep me interested 'cause I'd get bored if I wasn't doing that.

Exactly.

Uh, one, one thing I do with every guest is I ask a set of

questions called the Fun Five.

Uh, they're fun for me.

I don't know if they're fun for the guest, but it, it varies.

So the first one is, what is the oldest T-shirt you have and still wear?

it's, it's an AC/DC T-shirt.

I was a massive AC/DC fan, growing up in my teens and still just

think they're an incredible band.

So, yeah.

my AC/DC T-shirt, it only gets better with age as it develops

holes in it and as it fades.

It's all, it's all good.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Alright, so, if every day was really Groundhog's Day, uh, which it, there was

a point during the pandemic when I wrote this that it seemed like it was, but they

can, days can still seem all the same.

what song would you have your alarm clock set to play every morning?

you know, it may be, it may be an AC/DC song.

You know, I, I think like Back in Black's probably a, a cracker to, to wake up to.

But I think actually something that maybe reflects me a bit more and, and

my, uh, my, my sickening positivity is, Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles,

which is an absolutely perfect song.

And it's a song that still, when I hear it, it just still puts shivers up my

spine for how beautiful and perfect is.

But I think that that also kind of just reflects my, my, my, my awful

sickening sunny outlook, outlook in life.

Well, I mean, typically someone needs to have sun, uh, where we

live, but, all right, the next one, coffee or tea or neither?

A few years ago I had to move to decaf because it's just caffeine

just tied my gut in knots.

So because of that, when I'm at home, I've got some really nice

decaf coffee and I will have that.

But if I'm out, I can't trust the crap that they will, they, they

will put into a cup and call coffee.

So in that case, I'll have tea.

So if I'm at home, it's coffee.

If I'm out, it's tea.

Nice.

That makes sense.

I think actually.

Can you think of a time that you laughed so hard, you cried, or just something that

always cracks you up when you think of it?

And this is just, I don't know, I just like to know what makes people laugh.

Yeah, well, as a teenager I was such a fan of Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Okay.

And that, to me, that kind of like off the cuff, uh, comedy was,

was, was really what I, I admire.

That's what I really loved.

But I guess when I've, when I'm looking for comedy, I'll, I'll, very often I go

old school and I'll try and find some Mitch Hedberg or, uh, some, some Bill

Hicks and I never get sick of them.

Yeah.

I just, love Mitch Hedberg, particularly.

His, his weird take on things when he, you know, he, I went into a

shopping center and there was a escalator and it said out of order.

He said, I thought he should just say temporarily stairs.

it's just like, just genius.

Just genius.

So, so, so Mitch Hedberg for me, I absolutely love Sad

he's, he's not been with us for a long time, but I loved

his, uh, his sense of humor.

But these days I kind of, I go for like, clever comedy.

So I'll listen to, like the, the Radio four news quiz.

And I, I love, uh, QI is one of my favorite things as well.

So I go for sort of more cerebral, intellectual, uh, comedy these days.

Yeah.

Nice.

Uh,

that's that, that and fart gags.

Yeah.

and there's a,

Yeah.

well, yeah, there was, my friend and I, that's pretty much, we're

in a WhatsApp group with him, his partner, who is also a friend of mine.

And me.

And me and my friend just send each other like videos from

Instagram of like farting stuff.

And I think his partner is just, she just goes like, ignores

everything we send basically.

That's great.

But she's living with him, so she's like living with basically that all the

Oh no.

You know that he's just letting it off underneath the sheets.

Well, yeah.

He like texted me one morning, it was like super early in the morning.

He's like, I'm at the gym and I realized how much I fart in the

morning and I was like, great.

It's just like such a ridiculous, yeah.

It's like, thank you so much.

All right.

So actually shifting the, I mean, maybe someone, the person

who inspires you farts a lot.

I don't know, but, who inspires you right now?

Uh, Donald Trump.

I, I would say that he inspires me to not be arsehole.

he inspires me to, to live with integrity, transparency, honesty, love for humanity.

Maybe, maybe he "unspires" me if, if rather than inspires me, but, um.

Well, you know how he said the power of positive thinking that people

do that, but he does the power of positive unthinking, things.

Did you hear that?

Of not thinking?

Yeah.

That's great.

But if there was a human, that actually does inspire me, actually, uh, be one of

my friends, Professor Shafi He's the only guy I know who was nominated for a Nobel

Peace Prize because of the work that he did in Palestine over the last 10 years.

So, setting up hospitals in Gaza.

And he has been so inspiring, in being outspoken for the people

in Gaza over the last year.

And, and he speaks at, at protests.

He shares information about what's happening.

he has lost so many friends who are people that he worked with

through the conflict there.

And the fact that he can talk about these things with clarity and

without bringing hate into it, is something that I admire so much.

So as, as one of my friends, I'd got to say that he, he really inspires me.

He's an amazing person.

I'll have to, I'll have to check look, look him up and I'll link to him too.

But, yeah, Well, thank you for both of those answers.

I don't think I've ever actually like spit at my camera during a

recording, so you, so, thank you.

That might be the time I edit video now.

all right, so Dave, if people wanna find you, and I'm sure they do, and

I mean online, not go to your home,

uh,

I've four people hiding in my bush right now.

How do you want them to find you?

What do you, what do you want them to look up?

I

am,

I'm sickeningly Googleable, if you spell my name correctly.

there, there are apparently about four Dave

Birss' in the world.

We all got together about 20 years we, we all got in touch with each

other and, I won the internet.

So when you, when you Google Dave Birss you'll tend to find me and my stuff.

but you, so, so you can also find, like Dave Birss.com (davebirss.com) is my

website, and you'll find a whole load tools and things up there and resources.

But, check out the gen ai academy.com (https://thegenaiacademy.com/).

so the Gen spelled GEN, not JEN as in Jennifer.

It's not Jennifer's AI Academy, yeah, so Jennifer Lopez's AI Academy.

No, it's, it's the gen ai academy.com (https://thegenaiacademy.com/).

Uh, again, check that out.

Thank you.

All right.

Awesome.

Dave, this has been so good.

Like it's been great to chat with you.

So, uh, thanks for doing this.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Rabiah.

I'm, I'm very, I'm very flattered to have been asked.

Uh, it's been great.

I think we've got more chats to have in the future.

I hope so.

Alright.

Thanks for listening.

You can learn more about the guest and what was talked about in the show notes.

Joe Maffia created the music you're listening to.

You can find him on Spotify at Joe M-A-F-F-I-A.

Rob Metke does all the design for which I'm so grateful.

You can find him online by searching Rob, M-E-T-K-E.

Please leave a review if you like the show and get in touch if you

have feedback or guest ideas.

The pod is on all the social channels at at More Than Work Pod

(@MoreThanWorkPod) or at Rabiah Comedy (@RabiahComedy) on TikTok.

While being kind to others, don't forget to be kind to yourself.