In this insightful episode, host Nadio Granata sits down with Andrew Grill, futurist and author of the upcoming book Digitally Curious, to discuss the growing influence of AI in education. Key topics covered include:

• AI and Dissertations: Educators are waking up to the fact that AI is now being widely used in dissertation writing. Should this be embraced or banned?

• AI in the Workforce: Grill argues that students should be encouraged to use AI, as it is becoming an essential tool in the professional world.

• Reinventing Student Assessment: Andrew suggests moving beyond traditional essays by using AI to conduct scalable, viva-style assessments to ensure students genuinely understand their material.

• The Future of AI in Education: Hyper-personalised learning, AI-driven teaching tools, and a shift in how we educate and assess students are discussed as the future of education.

• AI’s Role in Productivity: Andrew shares how AI has revolutionised his own professional workflow, including helping him write his book Digitally Curious, saving him significant time.

• Ethical Considerations: The episode also touches on the concerns around bias, transparency, and the importance of diversity in developing AI systems.

Be sure to check out Andrew Grill’s book Digitally Curious, available now, for deeper insights into the digital landscape and how to harness AI in both education and the workplace.

00:00 - Nadio Granata (Host)

And what happens is they're now waking up to the fact that all these dissertations have been handed in. Dissertations are different to assignments, but they have got a massive chunk of AI in them.

00:14 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Let's talk about that because I think in some ways you actually want students to be using this new technology because when they go into the workforce they're going to have it available to them. So one school of thought is an educator says no, no, you can't use that, it's cheating and we'll talk about in a minute. The other side is use all the tools you've got, but actually mention that you've used them. So the first line in my book says this book has been written by a human. Now I've used AI massively throughout it. I had about a hundred different podcast episodes that I've recorded, so I'd used Otter AI to transcribe them. I then went through and worked out about 60 were useful for the book. So am I going to listen to 60 hours of podcasts? Put them all into Otter, and what I only discovered about three months ago? You can actually it's a GPT in Otter. So you go at Otter, give me five soundbites from this podcast that talks about this, and so I remember writing the book in a cafe and I had all these different scripts lined up and out of that I had all the insights and it saved me a massive amount of time. So I've used AI for the book because I haven't got time to go through all that. So my point there is the educator should say I want students to use the technology. I want you to disclaim that you've used AI. But then I'm going to jump straight into it.

01:26

The problem with education I am passionate about education and I've been an educator, I'm an educator is that the way we assess students today is broken. And the reason you've got a problem and you mentioned before with educators saying we're getting all this AI produced stuff and it's essentially cheating, is that the way we assess is we basically say here's a bunch of knowledge. The way we assess whether you know it or not is by you writing about it and there's an ability to cheat. When I failed a maths exam back in my engineering days and I had to have a viva. Now, a viva is when you are face to face with the educator and they ask you questions, and that is the time when you can't lie or cheat.

02:04

So I thought the other day, what about if we used AI to actually assess students? And then I put that to an educating friend of mine. I said well, we couldn't scale that. I said yes, you can, you can use AI. So imagine me sitting here with you, but I'm actually a GPT and I'm giving you a viva on all things you're supposed to know. A viva on all things you're supposed to know that turns the night the button because, yes, I could have written a beautifully crafted essay using ai, but when I, when I, the rubber hits the road and I have to basically prove that I know what you've taught me through a viva yeah that's AI delivered.

02:36

That could be scalable. So, whether that's the right answer or not, I don't know. And most educators are saying that's not the right answer, Andrew, because we want to stay employed as an educator. But I think education needs to be changed because they're our tools. And, going back to what I said before, if you're making these students fit for higher education or the workforce they're going to be given those tools at work. There is no company in the world that when you join them, they say oh, do you know how to use excel or powerpoint and outlook? Do we need to train you right now? I think the assumption is, if you come and work at some of these companies and co-pilot or GPT is available to them, they might need a little bit of training, but in five years time, who's going to turn up to work going? I don't know how to use an AI system.

03:19 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Yeah yeah, I, I think you're absolutely, absolutely. And I think this generation of school leavers, university graduates when I say the generation, they've got a massive opportunity this year. I've missed it slightly because ChatGPT 404 wasn't released in the UK until mid-May. By mid-May, most of my students from my experience were already still only using 3.5 and using it very badly. When we go back in September any time now, as university graduate students tend to go back towards the end of September in the UK over the summer a percentage of them will have picked up ChatGPT 4.0 and they will have learned to go into the back end of it and look at custom settings, as we talked about the other day, and they can put instructions in there that will make it nigh on impossible for even the most savvy of us to be able to detect whether they've used AI or not. So let's assume it's used. So we have to burst through that.

04:25 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

But disclaim it and say that I've been so smart, I've learned how to do that and the whole reason I wrote this book Digitally Curious. I've been talking about the notion of needing to be digitally curious for years. I'll give you a good example. That's quite recent. I gave a talk at the Savoy Hotel in London in the ballroom it was lovely to a group of Brazilian investors and I came off stage and my clients are there and they're saying, oh, thank you very much. That was an amazing talk.

04:45

Now, what I generally do is absorb that because I think I'm a good presenter. But I then said to them so what will you do differently? And they're like oh, some of that stuff you. I said I want to show you something you can do differently. I literally took my camera in the ChatGPT app picture and I said to the ChatGPT what am I looking at? And it came back instantly and they're watching this as it types it. Obviously in a ballroom I can see the words AI conference. So you're probably at an AI conference in a large ballroom.

05:13

I then said which hotel am I in? And it gave me one of four options. One of four was the Savoy Hotel. Now what that did the clients watching this in real time. They're going oh my goodness, I didn't know it could do that. So my passion is to say to people it's not just about playing with the tool treat it as an intern, push it to its limits, ask it questions until it says no, I can't help you. So in looking at a subtitle for the book, I use ChatGPT. I know that you prepared questions for me today using ChatGPT. Yeah, it saves me a massive amount of time and I'm telling people I'm using AI, but I'm always trying to infect and I use that word deliberately infect people with passion to go.

05:52 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Just give it a go but you get away with this because you are a futurist and you are well recognized, well respected globally. But there's a bunch of us out there. If I put something out on LinkedIn, I get a number of people. If I put a thought piece out on the team, quite often I'll get people ask me did you write that our GPT? I've sort of got to point now where I'm thinking does it matter? Because I've, I've instructed my GPT is anyway. So they're, they are a reflection of me and my knowledge. But there's still a lot of cynicism out there about if you use AI, then this is not an authentic piece of work and I'm not going to read it, but you seem to have got beyond that.

06:37 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Well, I think the notion of cheating is if you pass off something as your own work and you don't check it at all, you basically give it. Now what I say in my talks is basically you should never just give what comes out of a GPT system to a client or publish it on the internet, just as if you give a real world intern that job. He or she comes back with their work. You would check it. You wouldn't say, oh, I'll just publish it unseen. So there was always an element of what I call critical thinking. So is what I'm reading right? Based on what I know, what I've read, you still need that last mile human to say this is my work. I don't think it's wrong at all because I use a dictionary, I use Grammarly to correct my grammar, I make spelling mistakes, and so I'm using all the tools at my disposal to be as smart as I can.

07:20 - Nadio Granata (Host)

You remind me, I didn't go to university until I was in my 30s, late 30s. I left home and school on my 16th birthday, which is not the smartest way of going about things With three children, two businesses. I went to night class, huddersfield University and I got my Master's in Marketing and the very first essay I handed in I got a C and the lecturer, when we were doing a feedback sessions, he said why is it? You know, c minus? You know I was quite generous with that, actually not you. I said you know it's not a particularly good piece of work.

07:58

08:57 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

I think people are scared about AI, so I get this all the time. Andrew, you seem quite positive about it. I was on BBC Radio last week and the presenter had heard about this is interesting, a bit of a rabbit hole. The presenter had heard that M&S were using AI to provide fashion choices it's not new and so they got a fashion expert on, and the fashion expert actually scared the presenter. He said, oh well, they collect all your data and they build a profile of you. And so he went okay, and 10 o'clock in the morning I got a call from a producer, “Can you come on at 12.45 and talk about this?” And I dissected and I said well, this is not new, this is data scraping, and basically, this is not new that building profiles on you.

09:34

What AI will do, though, when I did my marketing degree, we talked about the power of one day having one-to-one marketing. Now we know at the moment it's not possible, because you buy things in personas and so you're in a probably different persona to me, and when they want to sell things to you, they bid on a keyword and you see the ad. What we know now with generative AI is in real time as the email's going out the copy, the photographs, the tone could be absolutely matched to you. If you give away some first party data, it then means that you're getting more personalised advertising or content, and I think that's a positive.

10:07

But a lot of people are scared by it. And so to your point there is it cheating? I don't think it is, because, let's say, you give the work to a physical intern and that intern gives it back to you and then you give it to the client. Is that cheating? Are you saying I use my team of people that I pay a lot of money to to give me the best possible answer to delight the client? It's not cheating. But I think you need to be open to say I've used all the tools at my disposal.

10:36 - Nadio Granata (Host)

I haven't handwritten a letter. I've used Microsoft Word and I printed on a laser printer. That's not cheating. We need to get beyond this notion of cheating and I think the good thing about how efficient AI is now, or ChatGPT. When I talk about AI, I default to ChatGPT. So do you default to ChatGPT? No?

10:49 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

11:04

I've been talking about AI for so long, and the problem was to show someone an AI model. To lift the cover up, I'd have to have a COBOL program and an audience, a business audience. They haven't got time to wait for that, but now I do a show of hands in my talk. Who's played with ChatGPT? Most hands go up. I then say leave your hand up. If you use it every day, most hands go down.

11:23

The great thing is, people have touched a GPT model, most probably ChatGPT. The problem, though, is that's not AI. In fact, AI I do this in my talk. Ai is so broad. It's got machine learning, deep learning, there's artificial general intelligence. I think it's a nice nomenclature.

11:38

If you search on the internet, you say you're going to Google something. You could use Bing, you could use Yahoo, but Google is easier. So I'm not disagreeing that. That's a great way to summarise it, but, in a way, if everyone sees that AI is ChatGPT, at least that's the portal into understanding the power of AI because they can touch it and play with it my 87-year-old father in Adelaide. They've actually pre-ordered the book, they've seen it, they've printed it out and bound it, which was beautiful, so they've actually played with it. So, yeah, we're using ChatGPT for the newsletter that I run. We got in trouble because we were posting links to articles that other people own and so we can't do that anymore. So we're getting chat GP to summarise the article and then put it in the newsletter and I thought one that's genius, too good on your dad for actually being digitally curious and actually trying these things and seeing what it can do for him well on that point of chat, GPT and Claude and Bingham.

12:29 - Nadio Granata (Host)

So we go back to Betamax and VHS. Do you remember? Yes, I do. I think one of the first case studies that was presented to me in university Consumer Behavior I think it was was Betamax was well known to be a better product. It was, but VHS was better at marketing itself, and that seems to be a similar case with ChatGPT. Now I'm going to. I built a GPT for this. Of course you have what GPT? Now I'm going to, I've built a GPT for this.

12:56 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Of course you have.

12:58 - Nadio Granata (Host)

What GPT haven't you built and it was number 179, I think I can't remember now and so I've said I've got Andrew Grill coming in here's a copy of his book because he kindly have given me a PDF of the book and said you know, help me to quiz him. So I'm going to put it to some cost. So these are AI-generated questions. These are AI-generated questions on the back of a GPT. That's got my CV in it, it's got my chapters that I've written for books, et cetera, et cetera. So it's got my influence in it and it's also got your book as a as, um, um, uh, an upload, if you like. So, um, let's do the. Let's just go through some of these questions here because because I think that they're pretty good.

13:44

So first of all and I set it off, I said to it look, these are the sort of questions I want to ask. I want quick fire bing bing. So government intervention good or bad? Now let me just pre start this. We've just got off a call with my ex MP for for Huddersfield and and we're talking to him about introductions to an APPG for government, about education might be so. So it's a bit of a loaded question. But if you look on the BBC breakfast this morning, if you look at TV on a regular base, look at question time probably tonight is it, or whenever. Whenever it's on, there will be references, no doubt about education and the new government in the UK. I'm talking specifically, but this is global as well. Should governments be so involved in our education? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

14:36 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Are you asking about education or AI, and education or AI?

14:40 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Start with education, and then it falls into AI.

14:43 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Let me ask this in a slightly different way and answer it.

14:46

So 10, 11, 15 years ago, social media came onto the scene. I was one of the first users of Twitter and those sort of things and we started playing with it and we now know that there are some bad things that happen. It's impacted youth concentration and there are issues around mental health and those sort of things. About a year after ChatGPT launched, there was an AI safety summit at Bletchley Park. So my point there is it only took 12 months for the government to go whoa. This has the opportunity to go the wrong way and we need to have some oversight on it, or at least say that we do. If we'd done that with social media year in, we probably wouldn't have the same issues because we would have gone. We think there are some negative issues. We need to regulate that. Now what I've seen more recently and it's in the book the EU AI Act has been ratified. Why it's interesting. It took more than four years for all the member states to agree on it. In that period of time, ChatGPT came along and had to look at that. There is now a blueprint. A lot of countries around the world are going well. Let's actually look what the eu negotiated, because it basically says if there's a higher risk, there should be more regulation, which I agree with. So, if I answer your question about education, looking back, I wish we'd actually done the same thing around social media. It may not have been as dangerous as it can be now if treated incorrectly, and the spread of misinformation, all that sort of stuff. So I think there should be some oversight. Should government regulate it so that every query is no, but I think they should care about it and they do. What they're going to do, and what the new government's going to do here in the UK will be interesting. Will they look at what the EU have done? And initially, probably 12 months ago under the previous government, they said we'll have an innovation first approach, and then, as the models got smarter and smarter, they went oh, hang on. The challenge is, though and they're not people, not my view that AI is to become a sentient rule of the world. I think we have a role in that, because guess what? Humans program the machines.

16:37

Now, what I say on stage quite strongly is that, because you've got human beings training these models, you need to have diversity in the teams that train the model. Famously what OpenAI did before they launched ChatGPT 3.5, they went on to Upwork, which is a freelancer website OpenAI did before they launched ChatGPT 3.5, they went on to Upwork, which is a freelancer website. They found 40 people with a diverse background and they got them set to work on the model. They basically had them ask a range of far-out questions to do with religion and politics and all those sort of things and had the GPT fire things back at them. They wanted to see, with a diverse audience. Did they have the guardrails?

17:16

Now you'll argue they didn't get it all right, but what they did is they made sure they had a diverse group of humans that were training the model. So that's important and when I say that to companies, ago we hadn't thought about that all their programmers are of similar demographics. So if they're training the model and famously years ago it was either Google or HP that program the model that identified humans, but it didn't identify humans of colour because they weren't trained, because they weren't humans of colour to do that. So long-winded answer to your quickfire question yes, because we've seen what happened when they don't regulate technology.

17:46 - Nadio Granata (Host)

You've turned me around there, so thank you for that, because I think government intervenes. I think government sticks its nose into too much stuff, slows things down and things like that. But I'm gonna.

17:59 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Let's have digitally curious members of Parliament. They should all get my book.

18:02 - Nadio Granata (Host)

18:30 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

You need diversity in every process to make sure that you are responding to the community you're selling to.

18:34 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Yes, and AI seems to have got it in the neck for that and it's taking it for everything else in society. I often say to people AI may have some bias in it but that's reflective of what's going on in society. But it doesn't have prejudice and I can tell you now I've been in many a boardroom and there's a lot of prejudice in that boardroom and I'd much rather be in front of an AI GPT than a prejudiced boardroom making decisions in that sense that's a whole other podcast we know that we have to do at least another podcast, so leave that one out there.

19:07

So next one teaching or learning? What comes first? So, in terms of AI, if we're going to bring AI into education, do you think that, um the powers that be, whoever it's going to be? If it's, if it's a university acting on its own or if it's a government acting for a country, should the focus be on bringing AI into the teaching, um um part of learning, of education, or should it be tailored towards the learning and the learner?

19:38 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

See, I think at the moment, the learners, the students, are far ahead of the educators because generally they're younger and they are more curious. It's ironic this glass of water has the words two tribes on it. Let me just riff on that for a second. I think in every organisation, every committee, there are two tribes. There are the born digital, the first toy. For a second, I think in every organisation, every committee, there are two tribes. There are the born digital. The first toy was a smartphone. They live and breathe this stuff. They're playing it all the time.

19:59

Then there's the going digital, and generally I present to a lot of going digital people and they self-identify. Yeah, we're not quite sure about this. The two tribes actually need each other and in a corporate situation, the way you can set that to work is with a hackathon. You get the born digital, going digital. Let's solve a business problem, let's actually work out what AI means for our organisation, and in that example, the born digital are way ahead of the going digital.

20:23

And so I think, if you superimpose that, you've got the students who are the born digital, and the going digital, the educators, the smart educators, and I'm going to call out one of them, dr Lynn Gribble, who is one of my long-term friends in Australia. She works at the University of New South Wales and this is her area of specialty. I think she's probably already building GPTs. I mean, she's playing with all this stuff. She wants to be ahead of the curve, knowing what the art of the possible is. For her students, that means she gives a better educational experience. But I think we should assume that the learners are already at this level. Yes, and the teaching has to come up this level as well. Within an environment where you have to bulk educate, you can't have one-on-one.

21:03 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Yeah.

21:03 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

And I wonder, in 10 years' time, what education will look like when you've got all these AI systems that I mentioned before about the Vivo. What's going to happen there?

21:10 - Nadio Granata (Host)

So you talk about bulk education. I talk about hyper-personalization, hyper-segmentation. That's where I will work.

21:16 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Because the way I learn will be the different way that you learn. The subject matter and the understanding of physics, chemistry, electronics is the same. How I learn is different to how you learn and that means I could have that one-on-one. It may take the pressure off the educators because they design the course. Then the AI goes well. Nadio needs it delivered in this way, Andrew needs it delivered in this way. The way we assess it may be different, also because I might be really good at practical experiments, whereas you might be better at writing about it. We both have the same level of knowledge, but it's a different way of assessing it. I think AI is going to be huge for education, but you need someone now who goes. I get this.

21:54 - Nadio Granata (Host)

So you're right. I could go on for ages about this. I talk about education traditionally, since man was born, or whatever the phrase is, was linear. So my four-year-old self was, let's put it, arguably half as educated as my eight-year-old, which was half as educated as when I was 16. And that worked because that meant that when I was at prep school, whatever it was infant school, then junior school and then senior school, my learning was tailored towards my progression in age, and so was the rest of the class.

22:32 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

But imagine the five-year-old who was a whippersnapper doing I'll give you an example Terry Tao, who actually now has a masterclass series. He's probably 30 or 40. He's a brilliant mathematician, probably won Nobel Prizes. He was in my first year maths engineering class at Flinders University and he was eight or nine years old and I was 20. And we're like this kid is a genius and he, he is a genius, yeah, but he was, you know what he was doing lecturers doing this on the, on the chalkboard, and you know, excuse me, um, that's wrong. Yeah, and like, how does this nine-year-old know that? So that's an example of someone who is breaking this the mold because they're so early in their development now and he he's.

23:12 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Is there a theory about red? Uh, uh, red, um, pebbles or something and white ones or something? We're very good at managing the white, but if you're a red, if you're, if you're either, um, a slow learner, let's say, or if you're particularly advanced, the education system doesn't care particularly well for you. But I think that I haven't yet found anybody, and I don't think I can articulate it well enough yet, to describe how linear education has we've got away with it so far. University comes after college, which comes after school, and it makes sense. But that's not going to make sense. Anyway, it doesn't matter what your age is. What's going to make more sense is what your capability is. And, as you're saying, I mean I.

23:56

I was in a restaurant the other week with my family, my, my little granddaughters, three and uh, we're, we're talking, we're waiting for ice cream, and uh and I, um, I think she had got, she got a spider on a t-shirt or something, and I said oh, let me, let me see if I can draw this spider. So, on the back of a napkin, I drew this, but I'm rubbish at drawing, by the way and I said what's it missing? She said, oh, granddad, it's missing a belly button, it's got a jewel in its belly button, it's got eyelashes, it's got curly hair. So she gave me about five or six things. So I said as you said earlier, took my phone out, took a photograph of the napkin, put it into I've created one called my meme maker and storyteller. Put it into there.

24:36

I said can you make me a short story for my three year old um granddaughter called Bob-e, and it knows a bit about Bob-e and it's a beautiful little story. Can you now create an image for this story and can you now create a little movie for this story? Now that child, by the time that child is seven, eight, nine, ten, if she's growing up with that sort of capability, why wouldn't she? She'll be creating stories for her younger brother.

25:09 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

I hear this a lot. My friend, Rob from PwC actually got onto BBC Radio because he had created a story on Chachi PT for his daughter to put her to sleep. So if you're a parent out there watching or listening to this but here's the thing I'm sure someone has just gone. I didn't know it could do that- yeah wow that that saved a whole lot of time and that that explosion I know when.

25:29 - Nadio Granata (Host)

25:51

So I sort of turned around. In the end, I'm thinking, okay, this is a positive, not a negative, but I think there's going to be a lot of people out there that now, for me, the one message we should get across is the ability to write something, take a photograph and then make sense of it through chat, GPT, because for somebody like me, whose attention span is not brilliant, who's drawing and writing is not very good, and I could take a photograph of a blackboard now, my teacher used to write history. I asked me anything about history. I know nothing, because all we got was two hours of a teacher writing on a blackboard. What if that happened to me now? I'd take a photograph of it.

26:35 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

I'd be getting a's all the time if I was back at university, because I would be using all the tools to accelerate my learning and understand that um. So you know, if I had my time again, I would have been probably a more um digitally, a better student, right? Let's get back to some of these questions. So teaching or learning. So you know, if I had my time again, I would have been probably a more Digitally A better student.

26:49 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Right, let's get back to some of these questions. So teaching or learning, what comes first?

26:54 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Both have to happen at the same time, but it's a different audience.

26:56 - Nadio Granata (Host)

We've got to speed up on the teachers. They've got to come to the party, yeah, and they've got to be less cynical about it. And I think we've got to stop accusing our students of cheating. That is not fair.

27:10 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

They're smart. They're using all the tools available to them.

27:13 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Yeah, I agree, Traditional learning in classroom. Is it still relevant? Should we change that classroom?

27:21 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

For me. I don't have an answer yet, because the way we educate today, the way we put people in a room, the way we charge for that, has been there for a long time, and also, I think, the notion of tenured people are tenured. I mean, what's the reason for them to change what they're doing if they've got a guaranteed career path? I think what we will see springing up, though, is accredited universities that do it differently. I liken this to the challenge of banks. So all the big banks in the UK, everywhere else, they have legacy systems, both processes and technology. A challenger bank like a Monzo or an N26 or a Revolut, comes along with a brand new tech stack, and they can do different things. And if you're in the UK and you're aware of the Monzo brand, they have a very fluorescent pink card, so when someone presents that to pay for something, it almost is flagging. I'm a bit different. I've not gone with the high street. I've gone with someone different. I think what we'll see popping up are challenging universities that don't have to spend a lot of money because they can use tools to educate. They do all that. They'll be accredited because they have the same authority and level of standing, and they'll be faster. Maybe we'll learn faster. So this might be radical and my educator friends will probably hate me for it, but I think we'll see some challenging universities that will use different techniques and different educators.

28:35

When I did my engineering degree, those who are engineers will know that we have a thing called first principles. We are taught the basics and so when something is broken you go back to first principles. If all of a sudden, this light that's in front of me stopped working, the first thing I would do would trace the cable back to the powerpoint to go. Is it plugged in? And often people say just turn it on and off again. The it crowd is a comedy show in the uk. It's famous for that. Why is that? Uh, sometimes the the way to solve it because you then power down and you refresh all the capacitors and it boots up again. So I've learnt in from engineering training everything in life for understanding what are the first principles. So you have to learn things from first principles. But then how you extend that, I think challenges universities could have a place.

29:17 - Nadio Granata (Host)

I think you're absolutely right and I hope well I know universities will be listening to this, because I'm going to post it out to them. I'm open to all.

29:24 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

I'm not saying one is worse than the other. I'm just saying you need to keep up, and those academics that are already playing with these tools are doing your students such a positive service academics who are playing with tools and, like me, in the building GPTs.

29:48 - Nadio Granata (Host)

I think that's great. My concern is that we're going to end up with a, with a, an institution that might have 20, 30, 40 different GPTs being used in different scenarios, whatever. Now, that could be a good thing, but it could be a bit of a wild west sort of thing, so I think that it needs to be a universal understanding of how to build a GPT, branded GPTs for universities and with responsible links in them. Taking you back to the website.

30:15 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

So guess what? You use AI to audit all the things you have there and look at what things meet the standard and what don't, use the tools available to you.

30:23 - Nadio Granata (Host)

It's doable, isn't it? I know a couple of guys I'm working with, some professors, have developed a sprint mechanism, um, and the print. I'll be interviewing them in here shortly. Uh, and the book is called cycles, uh, by brian cassidy. I'll send you a copy of that and it's all about this how to use a sprint to take AI into an organisation predominantly universities is our prime, primary target. Because it's it, because it takes a bit of thinking about it.

30:50 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Any new technology needs some hand-holding.

30:53 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Coding should it be mandatory?

30:56 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

No, because, as you know, a GPT can do the coding. And I then wonder well, what happens to people that are coders? Are they out of a job? No, the coders become product managers who actually sell what it can do into the organisation. So you then have to change your skills. So if the coding can be done, and well, I think coding should be taught first principles. But given it can be done by machine, it's going to get better and better and better until it'll rival the humans. How do you then sell that concept to someone?

31:25 - Nadio Granata (Host)

I think that will require a different set of skills knowing how to code but then having the machine do it for you if I was a gambling man which I'm not I would have put money on you saying yes, coding, it's a definite, but that answers brilliant. I think you're absolutely right, because I expect the unexpected but, and it's a bit what's what's word?

31:45

not you serve, but it's something like usurp, isn't it? If we're not careful, we are going to be changing what we teach and how we teach, and so, for example, not if we're careful, I'll go out on a limb.

31:59 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

32:18 - Nadio Granata (Host)

But and let's not, let's not panic and teach students how to code when actually the next iteration of chat GPT removes that I talked about in the book.

32:30 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Everyone was saying, oh, the new jobs will be prompt engineers. And if you scroll on linkedin or or instagram, there are all these people who want to sell you all these prompts. Well, prompt engineering is dead because the AI will do it for you. At the moment, AI doesn't have a lot of memory, a lot of context, but it will, and what we saw coming out of Apple in the last six months or so with Apple Intelligence now your device has all the context it needs, with permission. It knows that I'm here with you right now, it knows how I got here, it knows my bank balance, it knows my next meeting, all those sorts of things.

33:00

If I give it permission to have access to that, it then has context. So I don't need to write a prompt. It's written for me and executed by my AI, who is my digital assistant, my digital AI, digital agent. I called them years ago. I think we're not far away from having a digital agent, and Apple Intelligence and others will help that. That actually preempts that and does the prompt for me. So, kids, don't be a prompt engineer, because it'll be usurped by the AI very soon.

33:30 - Nadio Granata (Host)

I can show you how to build GPTs. It doesn't take you all day to build one. Okay, so I know that we're going to have to wrap up, and I've still got a bunch of other questions here.

33:41 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Give me a quick file. I'm going to give it right.

33:44 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Teachers could or should AI replace them.

33:48 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

No, they should use the tools to make them better, because in a sentence you still need the critical thinking, the delivery from Humans, like being around humans.

33:58 - Nadio Granata (Host)

And the pastoral care. They still exist. Yeah, use the tools, online degrees or traditional.

34:04 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

These challenge universities will all be online and I'll have in my phone. I will have the accreditation that I can then upload onto LinkedIn or show an employer. The whole notion of self-sovereign identity which I cover in the book will have that accreditation in a digital format.

34:21 - Nadio Granata (Host)

STEM or arts.

34:23 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Why can't we have both? Okay, I am a STEM baby. I learned stem. I have a creative streak. I went from engineering into marketing and business development and creating podcast. Why can't we have both?

34:38 - Nadio Granata (Host)

what did you say? You're a stem baby. I see a t-shirt coming on for that. Honey and myself are writing an album using AI to write arms and I write a lot of poetry, so we're converting. But but I see as a new song about stem baby, you can do, you can be the lead singer on that. One high purse, hyper personalised learning versus is it realistic or not?

35:02 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

yes, so we're touching this earlier, so it is coming in.

35:06 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Okay, so that's good Influence. Tech companies, right? Should we enable tech companies to influence education and if so, should it be more or less than it is at the moment?

35:18 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

That's a good question. Let's answer that quickly. Tech companies we should reduce their reliance on them. Again, back to self-sovereign identity. The reason that Facebook and Google are so powerful is they trade off our data and there's no value exchange. When we get to the point where governments and companies and individuals can own their own data like talked about this accreditation that I have in my wallet they won't be as powerful and they won't control what's happening. We'll control it, but it'll require technology and acceptance of me owning more of my own data and companies ascribing a value to that. I could talk for hours on that.

35:51 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Wow, that's a massive subject.

35:53 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

There's a whole chapter in the book on that. Marie Wallace from Accenture was one of the main people that I interviewed for that part and she explains it very well. She talks about the Spotify of data. You only rent the track you want. On Spotify, you don't give all your data away, whereas with self-sovereign identity, all I give is a token to say that, yes, I'm of drinking age or I've worked at IBM.

36:12 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Right, I can't even get my tongue around some of that Job ready. Is education preparing our kids for the workplace?

36:22 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

They're giving them the basics. Let me give you a quick example. I'm a member of Speakers for Schools. Robert Peston's charity that goes out and puts people like me in front of fourth formers and sixth formers and gives them things that they should do, said to the students, was amazing. Can you tell all the teachers? I said here's what you need to do. You need to make your students work ready, and I've actually had a discussion on stage with some educators and also some employees about this. Work ready means that have you actually put them in an environment where there's a disagreement in a meeting, have you? I gave this example.

37:02

I work with someone once where they disagreed with me in front of a client and I didn't say anything at the time. And when we were in the taxi away from the meeting, I said can I just pull you aside and can I give you some feedback on the meetings? You shouldn't really disagree with your boss in front of her. And they said I didn't know that and no one's ever taught me that. Now that was obvious to me. So I think some of these the basics, but can you run a meeting presentation skills? I love being in front of people. Not everyone enjoys that. But you're gonna have an opportunity to sell something in front of a small group, a tutorial group or a client wanting to buy your product. So those sort of skills are important and I said that to these teachers and they went yeah, we should probably once a month do mock interviews or mock meetings, because you know these Millennials, they disagree or there's an, there's some tension and meaning on a hand to handle it, even small talk.

37:51

When I started my career in business development, I've gone from an engineer. We are working on soldering irons and I'm in a meeting about a big, huge fibre-optic project in Australia. How much small talk do you do before you get down to business? If they've had that at school, before they go to university or the workforce, they know what to do, they know how to behave. Ai can't teach you that. Educators can.

38:13 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Interesting. Well, I'm starting again at Roehampton in a couple of weeks' time and I'm going to be doing much more. Put the desks away, sit around in circles, chat, chat, chat, chat. But Put the desks away, sit around in circles, chat, chat, chat, chat.

38:27 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

But in a scenario you're going to find yourself in a year's time, how would you handle that? I? Want you to go through that now in a safe space so that when you're exposed to that in the real world you know how to handle it.

38:34 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Build resilience into the personality Critical thinking. So we've got to wrap up Now.

38:39 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

I've asked you nothing about your background and your expertise so anybody listening to this show, I think they're gonna know about you already. And with the book, just Google digitally curious, you'll find my background, you'll find the book, you'll find the whole notion of why I think it's important that people are digitally curious. The reason I wrote the book was I've been talking about it so much. I had all access to hundreds of people I've interviewed. I want to put that on and in the book. What I found, though first-time author, when I'm talking about things, I'm always referring back to the book. What I found, though first time author, when I'm talking about things, I'm always referring back to the book. Not that I want to sell it, but it's like I know that stuff and I've spoken to someone who knows that stuff and now it's in the one place. And so you, thankfully, have helped me create a GPT.

39:18

So once you publish a book, the moment I hit send on the manuscript to my publisher, while he was out of date, especially around ai. Yeah, so we met and we said why don't we create a GPT? So the book has been loaded into the GPT and as things change, as ChatGPT launches, ChatGPT 5 and those sort of things, the GPT will be updated. So you actually go to the book, inside the back cover is a qr code. You can scan that and it will take the GPT and then say well, this is what's happened since it's published, which means it prolongs the life of the book. And when we talked about this we said surely someone else in the world is doing this. No one's come forward to say, yeah, I'm doing that already. So I'm using the technology I'm talking about in the book to not just sell the book but to give it a life beyond the page.

40:04 - Nadio Granata (Host)

And I'm so proud and privileged to be working with you on that and I look forward to that. We know there are limitations with GPTs. We know there's new incarnations to come as well, so, if any.

40:15 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

We've made a start and we've tried something, until the machine says no and just by putting the PDF in there, you can actually ask her. What are the key highlights of the book? It reminded me things I'd forgotten, I'd written about and how can you apply this in this scenario?

40:29 - Nadio Granata (Host)

Last one I think you mentioned Google. Right, I'm going to do one quick fire Google or perplexity.

40:36 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

I've now moved to perplexity. Yes, that's now my go-to for search. It's brilliant.

40:41 - Nadio Granata (Host)

I've got the Pro version, pro version is absolutely awesome so you haven't got the um perplexity pages yet, though, have you? Yes, got a lot oh, so you can build pages.

40:49 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Oh, man, I need to right I've got the pro version if you're a linkedin um paid member, they give you a year's free. It's actually only 200 quid anyway. It's quite, quite inexpensive. Yeah, perplexity is brilliant, right, fantastic. Don't tell anyone yet, because it's a game changer um, I think that's a wrap.

41:07 - Nadio Granata (Host)

I think you've talked about the book, so we know that's coming out on the 25th.

41:12 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Well, by the time you hear this, it'll be in shops digitally. Curious from Wiley, buy it from Amazon or where great books are sold.

41:21 - Nadio Granata (Host)

I think that that needs to go from blue to red to yellow to green. I see four more copies of that book coming out in the next four years. That's the speed at which we're moving up. Thank you, Andrew, it's been an absolute delight. We've got more on here to talk about than I started off with, which is good. So thank you and all the very best for the book launch.

41:44 - Andrew Grill (Guest)

Thanks, Nadio, thanks very much.