The Sh*t Show: let’s get this party started

It’s time to get The Sh*t Show on the road, with a goal to untangle the polycrisis and make sense of the complexity. We’ll look at the polycrisis from all angles, including the vast issues under the umbrella of the planetary crisis, geopolitics and war, technology risks, societal collapse, mis- and disinformation, propaganda, lack of trust in institutions, economic risks, inequality and poverty, equality, all the way through to the global mental health crisis – just as a taster. This show joins forces between The Know Show and Climate Courage, and while we appreciate some think the “swearword” inappropriate, the truth is - we ARE in a sh*t show, and facing up to this time is important. 

The show will take different elements of both shows, with three core discussion areas, and in our kick off episode, we are going to discuss what’s really keeping the sh*t show on the road. Is it business in all its forms, OR is the “forcing” coming from governments and Boomers in OECD countries? 

Our second topic is AI. Everyone is either excited by it or terrified by it, but the societal implications are becoming clearer – what does it mean to us and how can we prepare? Equally, can earth deliver this promise?

Our final topic is the planetary crisis. We’ll discuss recent news and research, explain why it’s important and what we can do about it. All three areas will have actions we can take, whether as individuals, societies or globally. We’re not just going to focus on problems, because if we’re not offering solutions, we’re not helping. There’ll be a lot more to discuss, but this is the core focus for this week. 

Why not come and have a listen and get involved in the conversation? We’d love to have you. Join us Friday 6th June 2025, 8am UK, 9am EU, 2pm TH, 3pm SG, 5pm AEST. Streaming in various locations. 

The Sh*t Show is a Livestream happening every Friday, where Andrea T Edwards, Dr. David Ko, Richard Busellato and Joe Augustin, as well as special guests, discuss the world’s most pressing issues across all angles of the polycrisis, working to make sense of the extremely challenging and complex times we are all going through, plus what we can do about it. Help us move the needle so we can change the name of the show to something more genteel when (or if) it is no longer a sh*t show. 

#TheShitShow #UncommonCourage

To get in touch with me, all of my contact details are here https://linktr.ee/andreatedwards

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar

Transcript

Unknown: 0:03

Welcome to the shit show. My name is Andrea Edwards. My name is Joe Augustine. I'm David CO and here you have me this time at the bottom end. Richard Bucha, welcome. We've changed places. Yeah, welcome. It's a brand new show in the sense that we've we've evolved from the shows that we've been doing, like, separately, but now all together as one. And, yeah, this is called the shit show, and we'll talk about why it's called the shit show. But in the meantime, before we get going, my usual thing to ask is, why don't you give this a chance? You know, like, subscribe, do all that kind of stuff you usually do when you like something, because just in case you like it, just keep it as it is, and if you hate it, well you can take it away. And now we can talk about what the show might be about. Now the shit show's goal is to untangle the poly crisis. You may have seen that my wife asked me, What is a poly crisis? So I think we should start there. What is the bollock crisis? Wow. So I'll start. So I, I've got a visual that I use regularly to demonstrate what the polycrisis is. And it's, it's basically when you've got lots of extreme things happening all at the same time. And you know, while this is a lot to take on board in one look. We all know that there's multiple things going on, from geopolitics to global economics, food security and inflation, social cohesion, the lack of trust, all the way through to the planetary crisis. So a lot of people only talk about climate change, and climate change is just one pillar in the mix, you know, biodiversity loss. I've got, I'm going to share a pretty horrible story about that. I should take the banner off so we can actually see the things at the bottom. Yeah. So it's all of these things all happening at the same time, and that's what makes it a polycrisis. So I'm happy to share this visual or people want to know more so. And the reason we're calling it a shit show is because it is literally a shit show out there. And when we all woke up and saw the news today, I think we can all agree it's definitely a shit show. Now, I don't know about you, but my husband wasn't so keen on the name, especially out in Asia. Swearing isn't something you try, you try and reduce your swearing. But I think one of the things that we've all seen right across the world, including in Asia, is there's a lot more foul language being used by people who probably wouldn't normally use it. But Joe, I know your wife wasn't so keen either, right? Yeah, no, it's one of those things, as in, like the she's concerned about the signal it gives like she seen the other shows, and she said, You know, it's kind of a good show. Why would you call it the shit show? Which is a valid point. And I thought that the, you know, the dissonance of it might have at least some impact. People might go like, Oh, okay, what's that? But yeah, we hope to pay off on it in the sense that people tune in and go like, Okay, this is something that they buy into, the idea. They agree with the concept. And as I shared on my post, I mean, the name of the show is a protest, right? Hopefully what happens is we get to fix things, and we can change the name, however, ambitious, ambitious optimist. Yeah, name will be around for a while. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But so last week on the no show, um, Tim said, are David and Richard okay with his name? And I'm like, yeah, they're fully embraced it. So what about from your perspectives? The thing is, it's self defines. So my wife asked me, What's the poly crisis? My kids asked me, What's the poly crisis? This is the shit show. Just have a look. Yeah, exactly. It's an easy way of saying it, yeah. So it's a very direct way of saying it. And then, of course, when they say, Well, what? What does that mean? What is the poly crisis? So it kind of makes you think, yeah, right, yeah, yeah. That's, that's yeah. It's the simplest way of explaining it, right. What about you, Richard, well, you know, having spent virtually all my adult life on a trading floor, My language is not the greatest in most situations of life, which you need to be very careful, particularly when children are around and young adults, etc, because you don't want them to get the wrong idea. But to be perfectly honest, in my category of swear words, I'm not shit doesn't qualify. I'm sorry, yeah, yeah, right, yeah. So yeah, totally fine with it. And I liked the more modest name we decided to go with, because I could have think far worse. Well, and they're on book covers and podcasts everywhere. Now those sort of words, right, exactly. So yeah, I think it's actually it describes perfectly well, like David says, the situation we're in. And yeah, I think it's important. Don't we kick off with the poly crisis, because it will not be an intuitive word for most people to understand, and I'm certainly not someone who can say all the things. But the map you showed, I think, is very good, because it really highlights all the extreme pressures that are affecting people in the planet at the moment that are pulling in very different directions and affecting us very, very differently. But none of those are for any good. And going back in time, you know, it's it's very, very hard to find any time frame where actually we were in such a perilous state because of the multitude of factors that are literally sucking us down for a better word. So yeah, I think it's very important to start there, when you're actually going to describe what the poly crisis is to most people, and being able to link it all together, I think is something that we really want to achieve, because, you know, I'll see people voting in elections because of inflation or the housing crisis, and they're not sort of putting two and two together, that all of these other aspects are actually impacting those crises. It might be helpful. I just realised that we're going to have some people who are on the podcast who haven't heard or seen the chart that you're talking about. So just talk about it broadly, about the poly crisis. It's planetary, planetary issues, geopolitics, war, technology risk, societal collapse, misinformation, disinformation, economic risks, inequality, poverty, equality, all that kind of stuff all happening at the same time. And I think one of the things that's very interesting about this as well, people talk about the crisis that they tend that tends to move them when they're when they're when they're when they're voting. People are only aware of the thing that is that that is apparent to them, or it's most apparent to them. And what this show is trying to do is is take you a bit further out and go like, you know what? There's there's a there's a bigger picture to all of this. You are experiencing, all of what you're experiencing, and it's all important to you, but at the same time, there's a bigger reality to be aware of as well. Yeah, yeah. And I do find that, you know, if you're a bit nerdy like me, and you like digging into things, a lot of these things are actually interconnected below the surface. Yes, there are some things that come from diametrically opposite directions, affecting us or sucking us down. But when you scratch and dig a little bit deeper, you will find that a lot of these courses are actually interconnected then and then they express themselves in different ways. You know, it's like war is effectively only the extension of a political argument. And I think that's playing out rather brutally around the world at the moment. Yeah. So there you go. The shit show is the polycrisis. The polycrisis is the shit show. I like that, David, I also, I also think we should say at this point of the show is not just to point out that there are these problems or these issues to look at. We're also here to provide, or at least offer up some solutions. I mean, look in a hubris, maybe somebody who can do something might be listening. Somebody knows somebody who knows somebody who might be listening. So maybe some of these ideas that we're going to come up with today, or at least offer up may go somewhere as well. So this is not only about feeling depressed about things, it's about looking at the other side and going like, okay, there's something that we can do about it, and part of it is talking about it. So this is what we're doing in this particular show. But before that, I think we're going to do something that we've done in the previous shows start off with things that have been getting our attention this week. So what, what has that been for you? Andrea, well, I mean, there's no, there's no other plus place to start right than what's sort of come to light today, the the bromance is over, as many people are saying. And it was funny as as we were going to bed last night, and we're all excited because today, my son, Lex, graduated from national service this morning. So it's been a exciting day for our family. But as we were going to bed, I started to see what was happening and how it was sort of escalating, and seeing people's views and opinions on it very, very quickly. Of course, to me, it was just, it's just another distraction, and, and this is obviously Trump and musk, right? It's just another distraction, because there's other things that are going on right now in the world that are that are really requiring people's attention, especially in the US. But the other thing that I've been, you know, this, Joe, I've said it from the start. In fact, David and Richard, I've said it on climate courage as well. There is, there is a there is a mission underneath the surface. And I've always said that Trump is the distraction and the goal is to get Vance up. And I saw this one tweet, which I'll share here from I don't know who johnia askila is, but he says. In his tweet. In the coming days and weeks, expect more calls from musk and other techno fascist oligarchs for Trump's impeachment. This is part of a broader strategy, as they own JD Vance and are positioning him for the presidency to complete their takeover of the United States of America. Now some people might say, come on. You know that? You know, I think we like imagination. There is a very clear play at hand. It's there for anyone who wants to see it, and I think that that's actually the bigger risk that we're seeing right now. So there's another piece that I saw, somebody who writes a piece. It's called the psychological war on democracy by Jim Stewart stewartson, and his suggestion today was that Donald Trump should impeach JD Vance and move very, very quickly. So that doesn't happen. So it's going to be interesting, no question about it. But I think JD Vance is a much worse option, because if Trump has to impeach JD Vance, then he has to get the Democrats on side. So he's going to have to change a lot of what he's doing. So yeah. Anyway, interesting that you know the reports I read this morning and this from The Times of India, interestingly, is the commons, is the poll Musk has put out about whether there should be a third political party. And obviously, you know, the intention is sort of saying, Look, we're going to get there. And the interesting thing is, if the big, beautiful bill, beautiful, big bill, whatever it's called, fails to pass. Is Trump going to put musk in jail because Putin does things like that, or kick him out of the country like Steve Bannon once? Right? Yeah, as an illegal immigrant, we've got Sammy PASI, what a great name here from Nairobi, Kenya. Thanks for joining us, mate. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's very, it's very complex, right? And, you know, kind of intermixing game theory with political reality and some pretty huge egos out there, that's, it's not that easy to foresee what's going to happen. I think the connection between Vance and sort of, let's call them, you know, foreign born techno billionaires in the US is very clear, and has been shown a number of times how much influence the vice president can actually exert on someone like Trump. I'm not sure we're talking about pretty huge ego here that has kind of actually revolutionised American politics the way he he hijacked and took over the Conservative Party, and there will be strong elements of the Conservative Party who will curse the day they didn't go ahead and impeach him last time round and clear the deck to a new policy. And now they're getting squeezed from a lot of angles, and they also have some pretty heavy demographic factors against them going forward into the next couple of elections. So the conservative Republican Party in the US is not in a great place to play from Play offence from here in terms of how they tackle these issues, because at the end of the day, for most senators and congressmen, their overriding concern is to keep their place, and you have elections in a year and a bit, so it can become incredibly messy, for a better word, how this plays out, but round one clearly was won by Trump because we destroyed Tesla's stock market value yesterday on the back of this very public spat. Uh, however you you cannot underestimate, I think, the forces that musk, more or less represents, and I would assume they have actually more power and muscle than than Trump and the extended family has at the moment. So there will be a fight back coming and how that plays out. Yeah, yeah, super interesting, yeah. I wonder from when you were talking about demographics, right? So I always say, you know, maggots, like 30% of the voting public in the US, and you know, to get trump the win you got about 20% of the tech bros, the crypto people, young guys, the manosphere. So that, to me, is what won the election. Yeah, but the Democrats, you know, and I mean, you know, they've, they've, they've lost a bit of, you know, flavour, I suppose, in the US since, since the election, will they maintain that sort of close to 50% It, you know, cut or will they lose it? So if Musk sort of brings in another party, are they big enough? I don't know. And then you kind of the whole Palantir teal story that's been breaking in the last week of, you know, Americans, data is going to be put into one place. And, AI, you know, it's going to know everything about every single person in the US. I think that's that story which has been sitting there in milling and in the UK. You've got Palantir in the NHS and in the government seems to be behind it. It's not just the UK, it's other countries as well. Yeah, so those the techno fascists or the tech bros or the nerd right? There's all sorts of names from current Carol Cade, wallada, you know, the UK journalist who, who broke the Cambridge Analytica story. She's, she's on a tour of the US at the moment. I don't know if you've had a chance to talk about anything, she is terrified by what's going on. And you know she, she gets it, Joe, yeah, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just watching out for the listener right now who's trying to catch up with everything that's happening, right? So the volunteer thing is, it's basically this, they're processing all the data from very, very wide sources, and it's basically intelligence about the population, which, for some countries, may not be as far out or different. I mean, if you've been living in China all this time, it's been happening for you all this time. Anyway, I'd say in Singapore, pretty much so as well, in terms of how the government handles data and information. But I think for countries where they talked about freedom and the right to privacy and all those different things, that's a significant aspect of it. So just wanted to bring the audience in on that particular aspect of it. And the name Peter Thiel, right? It's a name we brought up before one of the big techno players as well. He's very much or he is behind, behind this. And there's a lot of suspicion, obviously, right? Because it's, it sounds like a very powerful tool, and it sounds like you shouldn't have it in the private sector. Yeah, I think that's the key right now, when you talk about Singapore, like we know that our data is here, but we trust the government, right? The Benevolent sort of approach in commercial hands, it's a different story, right? Yeah. And I think what makes it for me morally quite opaque and in this grey zone of stuff that I'm not sure I'm totally comfortable with, well, I'm not, and I can see what people at large will not be is when you start blending private and public data, right? There's public data which needs to be available. It's like, I come from Sweden. You know the equivalent Freedom Act there means I can find out most public data about people unless there are very good reasons for them not to have their addresses published, etc. If you come and you ask for the address, I need to be able to contact someone. When you take the public information and you clearly start blending it with privately obtained data about what websites do you visit, what subscriptions Do you have, etc, it becomes kind of very Orwellian very, very quickly. And I think for most people, they should be really uncomfortable with that, for many good reasons. Well, people got angry about Cambridge Analytica, right? Should I mean this, this is, this is two and x or 10x kind of a level, because it's more than just about your expressed opinions and what you've said before. It's now compared and can be compared to your actual behaviour. So it'll pick up data like maybe how much money you make, the jobs you've had, you know, the way you live. It's a lot more complex. It's not just about the opinions, but the the background information as well. So it gives a strong foundation for somebody who is doing things like projections based on the next step. So you know how Amazon kind of gets an idea what you would like to buy next right? Not just from the little data you give it. Imagine that 20 times bigger as it now understands about your life, it understands about your family. It understands about where your family lives. And it's, it's, it sounds, it sounds terrible. I'd like to, yeah, I'd like to bring one thing up about Palantir, and connects back up to JD vans again, and it connects up to Pope Francis that he connects up to, kind of the broader aspect he wrote a letter to his shareholders, and this is really the crux of kind of what Joe is pointing to, and Andrea in that sense. And in it, he states, and he quotes St Augustine in this who is a Catholic saint from the fourth century that Richard and I had mentioned before. But he essentially misquotes St Augustine in. That way too, or misuses the meaning of that quote, and he says, All men are to be loved equally that single August. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accident of time or place or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you. So this is the idea of saying, America first, we are closer, therefore we must use everything to protect ourselves, and that's what we need to do. JD Vance made the same comments too, about, you know, the role of Christianity and Pope Francis says, You are to love all your love. There is no such thing in love as this one deserves it more than others. There's no such thing as you being closer, therefore loves more. And I think that's really important, because at the heart of all of this is not the power of the tools, but it is how it is used, whether it is used for the justice and equity of all or whether it is all those you hold close and dearest to you. And when you do the latter, you have to show an indication of that. This week, the thing that shocked me most was how yesterday, almost as if it's a show designed the US veto of the UN Security Council resolution of ceasefire over Gaza gets completely wiped off the media by this breakdown of the bromance. Yeah, cares about the bromance. I care about the US using the veto in that way a lot more Yeah, and I care about the Gazans a lot more than about the US issuing the veto totally. And that's that's the thing. It's a big distraction, right? And there's so many more important things going on, and it all goes right back down to this craft of how people take things out of their understanding and context, picks 20 words and then say, this comes from such and such, and therefore I have authority to say I care for those closest to me more, rather than those further away. Because somehow there is a distinction to be made. And and I, and I want to, and I want to make a comment. On Sunday, Richard and I played our game, the game of Thrive online for the first time with a group of people in Malaysia. And the thing about it, it gets into climate change. And the thing about the climate change in the game, what happens is that you don't know who is going to hit. And that's where you realise, actually, you know, if you keep supporting the ones around you, the guys who really know what to do, are way out there. They are the ones that you've just shattered show again, and those are the ones that actually do need. You might get a spam warning for all the branding you're doing. David, yeah, it's a good point. Steve just said, Can we all just agree that JD Vance is the shit show? So I would, I would say, Ah, not that. I think he's just a part of it. Is a big risk, but, but, yeah, you know, one of the, one of the things that I, I keep thinking about, is, in the Global South, we're watching very wealthy people move their children to the global north to try to get them into secure positions for the future, right? Totally get that. But the people on the street, the farmers, the rickshaw drivers, the street chefs, those sort of people. They're the ones that keep societies running. They can't escape, and they're the people that they're going to have the walls put up in front of them. So I think we're being very, very stupid if we're only going to take care of the wealthiest, which is, of course, the whole sort of techno fascist sort of thing. It's, it's about taking care of the of a select group of people, the whole network state sort of concept. Societies need all sorts of people to run. And, you know, climate refugees are going to come from across the board. And we need to work out how to, how do we, how do we cope with that? How do we, how do we settle people? There's going to be new lands opened up where there's melting at the moment. You know, construction workers, the people who actually build our cities, our towns, you know. So there's, there's a lot of people who who we're not going to want to take care of, but actually, they're the ones that we need the most. We don't need the wealthy, privileged elite we need. We need the people that can get their hands dirty. You know, I might be the two things kind of popped up in my mind along so back in 2004 there's this film called The Day After Tomorrow, and it's an apocalyptic film about how climate it's my favourite. You know, the Atlantic. We're overturning current a model. And as a result, the US and the north, and, you know, the global north freezes, basically, and the Americans have to back the Mexicans to be let in. Yeah, so this is, this is the case. They're literally there at the wall, yeah, exactly, running across the Rio Grande with their suitcases. Yeah, it's great, right, yeah. But to me, that's, that's why I love the movie, because it, first of all, it felt like the most realistic, even though it's, you know, the scientists say that actual happening is not a possibility, because a sudden switch like that isn't a possibility. But it felt like a real possibility from a we don't know where the where the place is that we're going to have to go, you know, we don't. So a couple of years ago, I was, you know, when the news about the, you know, the was it, the was it bombed, Ice Bomb, or whatever it is, bomb storms, you know, that's the sudden cold things that embeds the US as it gets into the winter. Really cold storms that it gets bomb cycling or something hit. And there was this news about an airport out in Wyoming somewhere, and the temperature dropped over 15 minutes from plus 10 degrees, I think, plus 15 degrees, down to minus five, and then proceeded to drop over another hour, another 10 degrees or so. Yeah. Now when you say it doesn't happen. It happens you go out, not in, not fuse, not for freezing fuel, sort of, that's what the scientists are saying. But yeah, like 1015, degrees, nobody works at the moment, significantly negative. And you go out there and basically, you know your roads and the things, is the part that we get wrong about the science and or the science fails to get right. Perhaps that's a better way of thinking about it. Is the way the world works. You don't need the catastrophe for it to unravel. You just need to have a bad day, because all this call for efficiency, what it means is that nothing really works if you don't get that 100% or 110% from everything in that way. So it really doesn't take much to start unravelling it, and when it does, you then find that actually it's all connected. And that's where you have a problem. And so I think that's the part where, for Richard and I, you know, the reason why we got into this, as it were, is because we don't want to be poor, and we kind of see the unravelling, and we kind of, and in previous times, you know, we in the market for 30 plus years, right? Richard's been there, despite his young age, for five decades. That's quite incredible. And we've seen through crisis after crisis and so on around there, and we had always been able to find a way for us, either by trading it, or stepping outside it, or whatever it is, to manage this one. There is nowhere to go this one, there is no being smart about it. The only smart thing you can do is selfishly look after others so that you can thrive. Yeah. And, you know, we sorry, no, just that's probably, I think if people should really take what you've just said on board, because it was a very profound message you know about there's nowhere to go. And you you you know, you both know where you've always known where to go, right? This, this is a different time, and I think that sort of just really emphasises to me the times that we're in. So I wanted to get to our first theme for the day, and that is what is driving the economic crisis. So who wants to start first? I'm going to highlight you to start first. David, yeah, I'm very happy to do that. I think, I think this is one thing which people don't really appreciate. Is what Richard and I recognise when, you know, we were hedge fund managers, manage money, make money for big money. And who is big money? Big Money is basically your pensions, the pensions of the people in the wealthier countries and the middle class in the up in the fast growing kind of economies of China and India, Asia. In that way. And that's basically kind of the big money. Some of the oil money counts. Cans in there too. But they're individuals. They ultimately belong to the households. And when we wrote the book The unsustainable truth, we were really responding to this. Question of saying, you know, why is this incessant pace for growth? And we went through and worked out how fast a 20 year old who's contributing first to the pensions, to their first pensions, need that pension to grow at in order to be able to give enough for themselves. And that's a phenomenal amount of money. Is kind of 10 plus percent, basically, and that's not the pace at which nature can thrive at it may have been the case five decades ago, back in the 1970s but it isn't the case now, and that's really significant. Remember, because population much smaller, a lot more places you can go at all the lowing hanging fruits of what you can do in that way are gone. And people forget that actually all the low hanging fruits are gone. So I think we, then Richard and I then went on and did another calculation, and thought, Well, what about all these people who are currently pensioners? Well, pensioners are really interesting because when you and I, who work, generally, and we get paid out of the revenues of the businesses. So when, when a business, kind of like, you know, take money, they have to pay its employees, and that's the revenue being paid out. But pensioners don't work, so they're paid from the profits of the business. They actually have to live off the profits of the business. So when people start talking about profits over people, what's driving the profits are the people who are not working and have claims to the profits. Those are the pensioners. Those are the people I know who in the early 60s, who now kids gone to university, found their job, and they're now travelling around the world once every three three weeks, going to different places, you know, kind of enjoying their life and doing those things. And they have a great life. And that's kind of people who very much live in Europe, North America again, the wealthier of the Chinese, Indians and so on. We did this quick calculation of saying, Well, how much do they live off? So in the UK, the average pension household lives up something like 38,000 pounds. So this household is two people, and some are single households, but I'm just assuming that actually it's more individual along, because if you're single household, actually increases the amount that you need, because they're more people along. If you're divorced, then your wife is one household and you're another. As an example of how that works along, because we don't die. That's the point. We Don't Die. It's really important to remember. So, pretty crucial, in fact. And when you multiply that up by the number of households who are in that sort of Europe, North America, wealthier Chinese, Indians, where the Asians, some Middle East and so on, you get to a number of, like, $10 trillion that they need to live off. That's bigger than the economy of the UK, and it's bigger than the profits, about double the profits of the world's largest 2000 companies, the Forbes 2000 index. The rest of them, more or less, add up to maybe about the same or a bit less than that, essentially. And these pensioners are supported to a basic level by part of the revenue, the taxes paid, they go and pay out the pensions. And if you look in the UK, pensions are the thing that are always, always protected in the UK, this thing called the triple lock to ensure that the pensioners vote for the government. Because what do governments want? As Richard alluded to earlier, the first priority of any government is to stay in power. The first priority any party not in government is to get in power. And so everything else falls into the shit show, and there are more elderly people, people looking to retirement and in retirement, and they're younger in the richer countries, and they turn out to vote significantly more than the younger people. So the entire politics is driven by this need for companies to keep profits up, because the voters who vote are the ones who live off the profits and not off their earnings. So when you then go along and say, Well, you know, companies should not be making so much profit. They should spend more of their time looking after the environment and so on. Well, I'm going to die in 10 years anyway, so it's not really my problem, and I've worked hard, so I really want to be travelling around enjoy the world before it's all gone. Now, that's a huge mindset shift that we've ever need to be aware of. And this is my, you know, kind of my peers, and for many of us, you know, potentially, our parents who are there. My mom is 90. She actually spends almost nothing, but my siblings spend a lot. Uh, and live off a lot. And, you know, kind of like I look at them and think, Wow, really. And when you look along at how that mindset is really crystallised, if you really want to move this, it's actually getting to that and start saying, Okay, well, you know, maybe read more books. You know, have more kind of singing groups. I go to singing with my mom every Saturday with this group for visually impaired singers, VIP singers, if you're in London and you know someone who is visually impaired, just get in touch Saturday mornings, and is a lovely group where we socialise over songs. So But coming back to the whole problem, the underlying pressure, the underlying force for this is the fact that the boomers are now getting to retire, the Gen Xs are following them, and they don't know how to shift their mindset. And David, I think it's important to highlight the other point you often make, which is, humans are the only species that retire. Yes, I think that's important too, right? Humans are the only species that retires. And the problem with it, Richard came along and educated me about some time back, a long time back, about the Modigliani life cycle, where you start off basically at the bottom without much resources that you need. You sort of as you get older, you build it up, and then you start eating into and you go down, well on a planetary level. What that has done is that you start off, essentially people not having a needing a lot. You start building up. And as you get older, you start using more. So if you think about our elderly today, including myself, we need more. We hang on to more, and we need more in addition. We need more health care. We need more social care. We need more a friendly environment for us, and we need more entertainment and leisure that we want to do. We want to catch up on all the hard work we have done, taking the world to this place, and now we want to enjoy the fact that we have worked so hard, and so we end up needing more so that life cycle curve is completely corrupted. Instead of coming back down is actually pushing up, um, and the profits need to keep moving more, which means it's taking more from the planetary bounty, which is, yeah, part of, part of that going up, right? Absolutely, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's very nasty calculations that underpins what David is talking about. And you can tweak it, and you can play around with it, but the mindset ultimately needs to change. There are some things politicians can do very, very easily to sort of alleviate this situation. And I think we are in the sort of richer world moving towards higher retirement age, because these social security programmes like pensions were set up when life expectancy was far, far lower. And what matters here, from kind of an actuarial standpoint, is not what your life expectancy is at birth, but what your life expectancy is from point of retirement. So if you're only going to be around another five years from the moment you effectively stop contributing, the systems could survive it now that life expectancy for someone going into retirement in the UK is like 19 years. You know, that's a very, very different calculation from the ones that we set up these systems to actually provide for. So the first thing I think you radically need to to just mechanically shift is retirement age. And we're doing that, but we're not doing it fast enough, and that sits uncomfortably with the population. We're approaching retirement like ourselves. Davidson, my case, well, there's an easier thing that you can do. And you know, Joe and I, before the before the show, exchanged some kind of conversations and ideas and stuff, and we mentioned about the fact that, you know, gained in the unsustainable truth. When we were researching that, we came across this restaurant in Japan called the restaurant of mistaken orders. And the reason for it is, you know, the food is great, but you never get what you ordered. That's, that's, that's its key. And the reason why you never get what is ordered is because all the servers suffer from dementia. They're elderly or young, but they suffer from dementia. And the essence of what that restaurant does is it says people have purpose no matter who they are, or in what state they are. The retirement mentality robs people of that dignity. Robs retirees of that dignity. They can only be travellers, exploiting the world. That's the message of that retirement alone. And when you then look and I it took me a long while to appreciate this. I lived in Japan at the end of the 80s, beginning of 90s, right? And, and you walk around and you think, there are these constructions and stuff and outside each and you think, you know, gosh, they employ so many people who could do this with fewer. They don't need all this long. There's a guy in front of a in a building site, and he's there just waving the traffic on with a little very baton kind of thing. Inevitably, he's an elderly guy or an elderly woman who is in that sort of retirement kind of face. But the point is, it gives actual connection still with society that is working along, as opposed to take them out and that, and then say, you know, that's a different lifestyle. That's a different planet you need to live off. Well, actually, we only have one, and it's the same one for everyone. So we actually retire in that way. We have to carve out two planets. There is a mathematical theorem called the Banach task paradox, which kind of sets out of a system of choices, you can actually create two solid balls of the same size and volume, both solid out of one, but we are not in that sort of paradox world. Just stay with the one that we have. So so pushing the boundary of the retirement age is one part, but that's never really going to happen, because, again, politicians need to get elected, but changing the mentality over what retirement and engagement after retirement means, and that's switching from thinking I do voluntary work because then you're living off the profits of the planet, to actually, I need to live off, in some ways, the running cost of the planet. And when you do that, you start shrinking and start rethinking how you are engaging. Yeah, Joe, do you want to, do you want to sort of make any observations. Well, I think the challenge here is about the social promise, or at least what people buy into, and they you know, when you when you walk into a place or walk into a relationship or a job or anything, right, you kind of come in with some expectations. I think society has built up these expectations. It's a promise retirements a promise that's written over a very long time. It's not just today's promise. It's something that we've all, you know, built up layers and layers over so, like, like, the way we look at things now is, like, when they talk about the retirement age going up, it's, it's met with such horror, right? I mean, it's like, it's like the government's backing off the deal. And I'm speaking about the Singapore context, right? Where we've, we've moved the retirement age up, and it's and it was such a political hot potato as well. It comes in the context actually not, not of all the greater thinking that you know what David's talking about, which is a very realistic perspective on how it works. I don't think it's how people assess the problem. They don't, they don't think of it as that problem. It's not a financial problem. It's an effort problem. It's about, I'm tired. I put, you know, I've put myself through this, all this, all this time, and I'm therefore getting to the point where I should be retiring. And I do, I do a webinar for NUS where we talk about, you know, healthy longevity. And it's about also changing expectations. So we have, we have ageism built into our society now, because we expect certain things as people get older, certain things that are going to turn out certain ways we expect, you know, like, like, in terms of, you know, advice to people when they get older, especially when they when you get the economic curves in front of you, you notice that actually, the reality is, for most people, the the economic curve for your productivity is going to descend when you get to about 4550, it begins to shift downwards the Higher Performers amongst us are able to defy the gravity of that. But for most people, that's the reality, but a lot of that has to do with also our own expectations going in. So we expect that we are going to become slower. We expect that we're going to figure out we've got to find things more difficult. We expect that we're going to not remember things as easily, and what happens is we begin to make a smaller sized expectation for ourselves in terms of economics as well. So, you know, it's not, it's not the easiest thing, I think, for any kind of of government to try and turn it around. I don't know if the government can do it. I don't know that people can do it, because, again, because, again, the problem is this, which is the finance of it, but the the way it's being judged is not in terms of finance. It's term it. It's being seen differently. So to try to get someone to pay the price that they need to pay. This by doing that, that's going to be quite, quite a challenge. I want to add here what we're doing, which is that, you know, we think that what really matters is the young people and the young professionals today, that they see their future. They see the social promise as Joe's describing as different as something that they want to construct themselves that doesn't involve their retirement. Because if they can't, if they fall into this same belief, and when their parents pass on their wealth, and the grandparents pass on to wealth to them, and they invest it in that same way, which is basically what the whole financial industry is all about. Then, you it is, then, then they, they have no hook for themselves, then they are creating a case where Joe describes about that shrinking kind of mentality. So can I, can I just sort of add some thoughts? Because, you know, we the solutions thing. So I think, you know, targeting the young people is great, but at the same time, I'm sure David and Richard, you appreciate their futures. Not good, not looking that promising as it now stands anyway, right? So the concept of retirement for, say, a 20 year old today. Well, you know, we're looking at a three degree world. And while some of the conversations, I mean, you know, two degree, we're going to hit two degrees before the end of this decade, not, not, not in the 30s, not in the 40s, before the end of this decade, that's the end of the of the coral reefs, you know. And people talk about it like it's, oh, you know what? Like three degrees, oh, what? Was still going to be alive? I mean, what? Hello, crop failures. The reefs are gone. The oceans will be dead. Like there's no, there's no three degree world that's that looks good. So I think there's a conversation that needs to happen. You know, you look at the revolutions in France every time they start talking about increasing the retirement age, it's so violent, right? You know, it's just like, Come on, guys, we've, we've got to be having a different conversation. You know, we should be working in some form, like, you know, you were talking about in Japan, in Singapore, if you get I don't go to McDonald's, but if I ever do, there's a lot of elderly people working there. Sometimes they're working because they have to, not because they want to, because they're not getting the care of their families. But in Asian cultures, families tend to take care of each other. We've got, you know, I've seen single people living in four or five bedroom family homes, they need to, they need to move out of those homes. So we can look at the, you know, housing crisis, which I think is because there's a lot of boomers living in in very large properties, and they're attached to the memories of these homes, and that's why they want to stay there. But it's creating a societal issue that's creating societal problems that's impacting everyone. So, you know, I think we've all got to start, you know, when people say to me, what do we need to change? I'm like, we've just really got to change our thinking on, on, on a much, much bigger level. You know, the boomer generation was always going to have a major impact on health care, on pensions, on the economy, and it's, it's like, like, everything that we've been witnessing for the last 20, 3040, years, the short term vision of our leaders in politics, in business, you know, quarterly profits, annual profits, that sort of stuff. And here we are, you know, like modern wealthy countries are closing hospitals, just as the boomers are starting to need those hospitals, what's that all about? You know? So there's we've got to start, you know, thinking about, and let's not forget, 50% of the world at least, will never get a pension. They will work until they die because they have no choice. So we're not all we're not all equal in this. But if that other 50% of the population started to invest in pensions. About it is when you when you look through the numbers, you know there's households in terms of that population that that's basically living off $10 trillion okay, so, so you know, if you have 50% of world actually looking in terms of of pensions, and that's a disaster. That's complete disaster in that way you need that. You need to have 0% of the world. And that's how you can attend billion people, if you want to. That's, that's, that's kind of the thinking you want. You do want 10 billion people, they all need to be living with the planet, living on current income of the planet, and being aware that's what they're doing. Yeah, absolutely accepting of what that means, right? Yeah, yes. I was going to say, I think the the one thing that. Is a real challenge for our continued you know, survival, or at least thriving, is a problem about generational wealth. You know that with the idea, the idea that we can build it, make it, make it last forever, and then give it to the next generation, and then they propel from there as well. And again, this is this. This is going to be something that I have mixed feelings about, because I very much want to do that for my family. But at the same time, what really, ideally should work is, is you get to you get to make as much of it as you want, but you have to give it away, or you have to stop having it once you die, right? Because, because of the way wealth stays with the those who are already rich, at least in the ways that it does right now. It causes the viscosity for everybody else you know as you played the game. Yeah, you win this round of monopoly, or whatever it is, but it should not impact the next round and the next round and the next round, as in, like when new players come in, they can start afresh again. Everything gets distributed. But you mean, if you I think it's fair enough to say, Okay, well, while you're alive, it all stays with you. But you know, after, after you're done, you have no need for the home. And maybe there's a limitation that a number of homes you can acquire that that become unavailable to other people, you know, in terms of, in terms of the housing crisis, yeah, so, so it's a, it's a kind of a complete change in the mindset. And one of the things that I, that I that I've also been very much aware of is, I think part of how people decide what can be done and what should be done is in terms of the expectations of what they what, what their, their their lifespan or health span is going to be about. So when, when I was involved with the cessation, cessation of smoking committee, I can't remember the name of it. What the name of it was, but it was, it was something sexy like that. I always thought about the youth and smoking this way, right? You can't stop the youth from smoking if they don't think there's something to look forward to. And because, you know, then why should I preserve my health. Why should I look out for the long term? The reality now is that people born today have a lifespan, a life expectancy of 100 years. That's the reality that you face, right and because of of healthcare and everything else. But what that really means is actually, in terms of the reality as well, is your is your professional life does have to be a lot longer than what we currently have as a usual expectations. So I agree that actually, for me, I mean, I personally hate the idea of retirement. I don't want to retire. I'd like to be productive until I'm done or too embarrassing to go on, right? But it's, it's, it's one of those things where you know it. That's why I talked about ageism earlier as well, because of the way we look at certain aspects of ageing as well, the things that we do, for instance, for the people who are older, that, in a sense, comes while it comes from a compassionate place, we're actually sort of hampering our selves in the long term and our ability to move forward, right? You talk about people, for instance, who are working in McDonald's. It's not, at least in Singapore, I think it may be different. In some societies, it's not seen as a source of pride. This man has a job. He's doing his thing. I think it's also like even it takes a more developed society, such as Japan, to say that we're going to have a restaurant where, you know all people work and part and then the feature is going to be that you don't know what you're going to get right. So it's overcasted by design, but it's, it's a wonderful it's a wonderful thing that happens for a culture that is looking at itself in terms of hundreds of years. So, you know, the Japanese, in their culture, and the way they look at things has led to companies that have survived for hundreds of years. Because I think at some point somebody thought about it, somebody spoke about it, and enough people said, Yeah, that's a good idea. All right, sorry, Bucha, I was just going to say, Do you want to finish up, David, and then we'll move on. Because I actually think actually think the the extension of this conversation naturally goes to artificial intelligence, especially when it comes to jobs. But So David, you want to, do you want to finish up? Pick up a bit, from what Joe said, from my kind of interpretation, a little bit. And. Think that where, where we end up coming from, very much, is to look at nature in that way and and think about how nature operates. Because at the end of the day, you know, you so in at the end of the day. That's who we are. We are part of nature. This is nature with a capital N is the thing that is all of us, that is around us, with everything now, and when you look at that, the historical understanding of nature is about the big things, the big game, the big trees. The new appreciation of nature is the tiny things, the micro the microbes that the things that makes the soil healthy, the the things that keeps the oceans actually healthy and able to plankton and yeah, and that's the aspect where we need to look at human society and contribution to human societies in the same way, and that's the way in which we can address this issue of us ageing. We don't have to be the great leaders and the great champions, because what matters are the tiny bits, not the big bits. When you focus on the big bits, you end up creating this cult of retirement. The big things force the little things to overwork that they then have to go and retire in that way. Nature emerges. Everybody contributes along. They discover their own place. And you know what? If they've now got dementia and they're in Japan, then there must chance that they can actually keep working in that way as well. And it's interesting you talk of AI and I just finish off with another thing. There's another rest, another restaurant which is served by robots. The whole thing is served by robots. The robots are actually avatars of people who are bedridden and unable to do anything interesting. They're remote everywhere, and they connect, and they actually then end up connecting with society by serving in restaurants that's entirely working through robots. Yeah, that's one of the things that's really stand out. Stands out to me in Asia, is the the social cohesion focus, you know, making that's, that's, it's a really, it's, it's something I think Western countries could learn a lot from before we move on to AI. Nico's here, hi, Nico. I am not following the story on Burkina Faso. Is anyone following it? Russia has influence. Richard, you're going to know well Burkina Faso is, is a, I'm going to embarrass myself my with my geographical skills, but I think it's, it's a small country in in Western Africa, which I believe is landlocked. It's one of the poorest nations we have in the world because the complete lack of resources. And, you know, climatic difficulties and historical exploitation, etc. So it's, it's not a rich country by any standard, and there has been some political developments there over the last couple of weeks. And call me an old cynic, but I'm very much in Nico's camp. You know, people come in and they promise change and being radical, and then actually, the people that have come to power tend to mostly look after themselves, in my experience, yeah, well, it's a really poor country, yeah. So the leader is very young. They have this kind of news that I followed about how there's a lot of kind of the social media has been the driver of politics, basically, and that then the social media content have often been faked in that way, and there's this connection that the leader has formed recently with Russia to kind of enhance their connection along. So there's the promise of the great future, but you go along through and undoubtedly, I suspect, that you know, the Russians are involved with the social media campaigns that they have been in many of the situations politically around the world and so, yeah, I do think that, you know, Russia has influence, definitely, because the two countries, the two leaders, the last picture I met was, you know, kind of the two leaders meeting on friendlier terms than Trump computing. Yeah, Nico has also added so Nico was on the show last, end of last year, talking about just being, being a refugee, and what it was like. And he lives in Scotland, and he's basically saying, because of alcohol and drugs in Scotland, people are dying before their retirement. So it is working, yeah. So, you know, we've got, we've got this whole health culture that's going on. A lot of the, you know, the Brogue sort of culture is all focused around that. So health and wellness, and, you know, the RFK Junior type stuff. But let's move on to artificial intelligence. And Joe is someone I have a lot of deep respect for when it comes to this. If I've ever got a question about I, I I always get a joke because he's you're interested in it, right? But I think recently, the the social implications are really starting to come out. You know, like I was talking a couple of weeks ago, they think 80% of white collar jobs, 80% of women will be impacted, 40% job losses, you know. So this is, this is going to have a big impact on societies around the world, especially wealthy societies. So Joe, I'll hand it over to you. Well, here's the thing AI is coming for your job, and this includes you, if you're the CEO. This is, this is the thing that people are not really thinking about in terms of what AI will be used for. It's a tool, and it's a very massively powerful tool, and to not fully exploit it. And this is just purely from from a perspective of utility, obviously, the other implications that go along with it, but from a from a pure place of utility, this is what AI currently is, in terms of at least the language models, right? It is the collection of as much of published human intellect that's been collected into a space that it can try and organise and analyse and use, and we have an ability to kind of interact with that. It's It's foolish to say we won't use it, because that much of a resource, that much power at the hands of the average person. I mean, never mind, never mind companies, the hands average person. It is something that that should be used. We're silly not to use it. The real challenge, actually, is about us. We're not prepared to have change happen to us. We're not prepared to change. Should change happen to us. And again, it goes back to the idea of the contract, right? So I can speak about this in in terms of a time shift. I'm going to take you to another time when they wasn't AI, but the problem was very similar, and that is in the area of computing or computing science, right? Singapore actually is going through went through a phase and is continuing because of AI. It's made worse by AI. But you know, a lot of Singaporeans got into computing, or at least going to learn about computer science, because of the social promise. It was much in demand. It was the future and everything like that. So you will learn coding, and you become a coder. And what happened is, again, to increase your value. What you became is somebody who grows higher and higher into the organisation. So you did less and less coding and more and more managing. And ultimately, what happened is the bottom fell out in terms of the management side of coding and in terms of where coding talent came from, it was from everywhere else, where it came from. It was, it was, it was cheaper. You could get a coder from another country for much less than a Singaporean. And what happened was the Singaporean gets entrenched in the lifestyle that they get used to. They get used to the idea of and they've actually made the commitments to entrench them in the lifestyle as well. They bought the big house. They have a big mortgage to pay. They're trapped in that kind of situation, so they have to earn a certain amount of money to live the lifestyle that they're in. Right? They're not prepared to make the change. But the fact is, the ground has changed. There is the thing that you signed up for, the thing that you wanted to do before that has completely changed. The coder is not who you used to be. You're not talented as or at least you're not as well versed as you should be in that particular area. The job that you wanted initially is no longer yours. It has moved away. AI is doing something like that about something like that. It's doing that to a lot of people right now. If you're an accountant, you should be afraid, because if you don't, if you want your life to be exactly the same, and that's the premise of your thinking, then you have to be afraid. You have to figure out ways to protect yourself. You have to find artificial ways to say, like union rules and what have you to say? No, we want to keep this out, but I just want to think about this in terms of, like, tools and why AI is so ubiquitous. Because it's about humanity. It's not just in one area, right? If you think about the Excel sheet that at some point was an existential threat to the way that kind of business was done, if you think about the traditional accountant and bookkeeping Excel sheets, you know, should have devastated that. And guess what it did. It's completely irrelevant now for someone to have unless, of course, you happen to be in an organised crime and Hello, if you're watching our show. You know the the idea that you will not use that kind of software where all the tables are easy to address and you can do your research, right? So it's about the way things change. You move forward and you adapt, and you go from there, and they go like, how do I move forward with this? So the real challenge now with AI is a very large group of people, first of all, who do not know the change is coming and do not really understand the scale of the change. Because many people that I've met almost fell into trouble saying, many people are saying, have not actually used AI. So the number of people that I've met who have an opinion about AI and don't use it regularly. It's just staggering, right? And all they think is, AI is chat GBT, and all they think is a simple question is it shows you that AI is not that smart. I asked, I asked AI this question and got it wrong. And I go, like, well, you don't kind of condemn the human race by saying, like, I had an intern the other day. I asked him a question about the internet, and he got the answer wrong, and all the references were bad. You go like, well, therefore interns are useless. Now I view, if you really learnt the skills and you prompted them well and you figured out the whole thing, you can find very, very useful and powerful performance from an intern AI is just 10 times, 20 times that. Now we just understand this from a language perspective. AI is not just about language. AI is being applied to almost all aspects of manufacturing, right so there's a concept of, like digital twinning right now, which means that you don't have to, and this is the part that that we need to be careful about, is that you no longer have to think about the things you used to think about. And the challenge to people, I would say, or anyone right now, is this, then you should think about what you need to think about instead, right? It can't just be okay. I don't have to think about that anymore. I want to stay who I was before this. No, because that's not, that's not the game that you should be playing if you want to survive in the world of AI, which is now say, Okay, well, now that I don't have to think about this, what else could I think about what else could I do with my time that makes me better at what I do, and it's a big shift. I'm meeting so many people. I mean, I'm doing I'm doing a panel next next week, next month, depends on the schedule where we're going to talk about that as well. And people who are in creative industries are very much affected by this. So the launch of vO three by by Google recently, that's completely changed production, right? So the movie industry aside, which has been, you know, Hollywood actually is the only way I'm going to say the Hollywood has had its whole list of contracts and negotiations and all that sort of they think they're protected, but for the rest of the world that doesn't care, and this is now literally true, people who used to spend half a million dollars on a production budget that would have had actors, cameramen, sound guys, You know, everybody else, have been able to produce equal quality. And this is, this is, I mean, we're talking about really high end stuff for $500 right? That's a radical change. And if you want to hang on to the life that you had before and go like, I still want to fight that, it's not something that's, I would say, mentally healthy, right? So, I mean, I don't know if it's appropriate to give an example, as in, so I hate AI, and I use AI basically so, and people hate me for using AI. And so Richard and I, we're launching this course on for young adults and young professionals called thriving at Nature's pace, and we want to cook it up to London Climate Action Week, which comes later in June. And the idea is to give them tools and confidence to be pioneers of a Thrive economy in that way. So we need some graphics for this, right? So can I? Can I just try and share something? Share screens? Okay, yeah, so, so I'm going to try and share screen. And share screen is easier sooner. Or maybe I can share, if you just go down below, you say present or invite. You can add a image. So just wait while you're looking for a David. So one of the one of the problems, we all know that how much energy and water is used in AI, right? So when you're using AI for design videos. Obviously, more going to take a lot more. But the other thing is, I've worked with designers. It's a skill. I'm not a designer. There are rules to design. So there's a lot more crappy design out there. Canva was, was the beginning of crappy design. But also, we're taking money away from people all over the world who got into the gig economy and now and who are not expensive by Western sort of standards. But we're taking jobs away from people whose, you know, could have like, 5678, kids, and we're doing it ourselves through AI, which I actually don't think is very time efficient. Well, this is the thing. So, so, so let me kind of come to come to some of that, right? So, so I'm going to find this. You got it is, yeah, I got it. I just need to go through the computer to pass it over. This is the part where we prove to everybody else that this is not AI generated at all. Still dealing with very analogue people, still people don't. Just couldn't make sure that I'm actually passing the right picture along. So So I end up generating, could I just drop in there? Does that work? Nope, can't see So, okay, percent of invite image file. I clicked on that and, oh, okay, it's asking to find it now, there you go. I found it useful for brainstorming. But sometimes I'm I've got, you know, Joe. Oh, there you go. All right, go. So, so the course of thriving nation space, if anyone's interested, young person, young professional, is over 24th of June to 26th of June, three evenings, seven to nine, two hours each. There's a fee you get paid, and if you wanted more information, just get in touch. But the image on the left took, I used Google Gemini, and it, I asked it, give me a pioneer of a new world. And it showed me this, what's his name, Indiana Jones, type picture going through the forest, and says, I said, No, make the new world the future, and this kind of more catastrophic future type thing. Now I just said, give it. Make it. Make the new word in the sunny day, give it an Asian city and an Asian person. And it gave this sort of thing that came along. And I said, Well, you know, I'd like some trees in there, and that this sort of Hollywood type tree front. And so put the trees in the in the building, and then it ended up with this. And I said, you know, put a word pioneering a Thrive economy on top. That's it. That's what it did. And I thought, This is it. I put it up there, I created the invite, and I showed it, the invite to my son's girlfriend yesterday, and she was looking at this, and she looked at the things, and the one thing she said was, I really like this picture. You know, she didn't like the course what it was saying. I really like this picture. And that's the thing about AI, because what it does is it's drawn from all the material that's out there at the moment, and that's how these models work. And basically it represents how those things are. And therefore what you get out of it is something that fits with kind of, that psyche, that angst, that zeitgeist of all the material that's out there. And so it's not surprising that she says, You know, I like this picture, but the time it took is really short, and this is where, going back to Joe's comments, this is where that threat to all the artists and all those people. And I was talking to another friend, and he was trying to summarise all his blogs into a book, and he was throwing them all into an AI, seeing how it comes out and allow it to do that. And obviously, as Joe says, you know, it doesn't quite get it right. And but the fact is, people are exploring how they use it. It and what they use it for. And these are people who are doing the jobs that other people are currently doing, and armies of other people are currently doing, but they are individually doing it themselves. Now that can be a great thing. The thing I hate about the AI is the environmental cost of it, and that environmental cost is also the social cost, as in, the social cost is also the environmental cost. It's like the show in the poly crisis. They're kind of interlinked in that way. Yeah. So I want to, I want to talk. So I was very much in the.com boom and bust. And I feel like aI right now is the.com boom. And I remember, it was in 1999 that we all heard flowers.com for the first time, and the whole world went nuts, right? It was only two years later, I was working in Boston for a PR company, and this company reached out to me, and they were tractors.com and they said, Can you represent us? And I'm like, no one cares about dot coms anymore. This is before the crash, right? I said, No one cares anymore in the media, like it's been done to death. You know, even tractors.com but What? What? The other thing that was obviously happening at the time was what we're seeing now in AI, there's all these little like, I reached out to Joe the other day, and I'm like, I'm just, I'm just trying to create an app, right? And it's so confusing, like, there's so many different tools out there, there's so many different names, and there's criticism, and then the majority, the majority of the conversation around AI is so boring. Oh, look, you can do this. Look, you can do that. I don't care. I really don't care. Andrea Chow, I said last week he he ran a AI sort of masterclass for a group of us a few couple of weeks ago. And I could see the platform potential of it, because to me, it's What can I can do to make a bigger positive impact in the world. I will use AI if I can do that, but I won't use it for useless things, and I won't take a job away from someone if I don't have to, because I think design skills, I definitely respect design skills, and it's not one of my skills, so I really respect the talent. But then when you look at it more broadly, right? The societal impacts, governments are not getting ready for this. They're not talking about taxing the AI company, so that we're going to see the AI bust soon, and that's going to have a dramatic impact on the economy. And all these little companies that you know, 1520, 100 of them do the same thing. One of them will be picked up by Microsoft, and the rest will just disappear overnight. You know that will happen, and it's going to happen really, quickly, and we're at the beginning of that sort of roll up, and that's going to have an economic outcome like we saw with the.com bust. So we're so we've got the tedious conversation, oh, look at you can do with AI. Then we've got the the business conversation of, you know, where's it going? And no one really knows, not even the people designing it, then we have the panicked conversation. So apparently, I think it was whoever the CEO of the company that owns Claude, which is Anthropocene, or Anthro something they they tested one of their products in house, in to the to a really extreme edge. And apparently the AI was saying, I'm going to reveal all this information about you, but the media never gives it the context that it was done in a test environment. So then it just creates his panic around AI. Then you've got the environmental impacts of AI, you know, like, across, you know, like, we're going to see heat waves blast across the world, and the the contracts between the AI companies and the data centre companies, whoever owns them, for water and energy, will outweigh the people who live in those towns and cities, their their right to water and energy. And then we're going to start seeing people die because of AI. You know this is coming, right? It's on the way. But where it's really going to start happening isn't going to be in the wealthy countries. It's going to be in the poorer countries, where corruption and all those other things happen. So it's a really big and complicated conversation, but the number one thing that has to happen now is, how are we going to get ready? So there was another video I think I shared with you guys the other day talking about the great depression where there were 20% job losses. So they're talking 40% job losses. We don't remember the story because, not just because we weren't around, but because the people of that time wrote the story, and they didn't write the story of suffering. So we actually don't know what a 20, 40% job loss in our societies actually means, because there's no history that really grabs hold of it. Because. Is the people who won told the story of that history. Do you know? Mean, so it's a big, complicated thing? Yeah, the context matters hugely. I believe, you know, I think we always have a great deal to learn from from history, and we are very poor at doing so, because clearly there are evidence that we haven't learned an awful lot on a daily basis. Encountering me in the news and the aspects of AI and I'm probably you know, at the very bottom of the understanding of what's actually it might bring and might do. But there, the aspects that worry me is that you are effectively moving into a arbitrage situation where AI is knocking out other jobs, and it's doing so in a non level playing field, because you're effectively abusing the resources of the planet By doing so, yeah, yeah, if energy was priced at the different level, or if it wasn't available, you wouldn't be able to build data centres at this unbelievable, you know, pace that we are doing to be able to cope with the demand that's that's occurring, and that's the aspect that is really sitting at the bottom of my thinking around it, and the little I've used it some areas, it's massively impressive. The information you can get out of it, the application of that information so far, when I counter it not, not mind boggling by any standard. So there's still a long way to go. And if you look at the amount of money spent so far, and this is, again, the investor in me talking, I am somewhat underwhelmed by the results. Given the amount of capital that has been deployed, I would have expected more based into the tech industry. Yeah, the actual amount being thrown it's like, the fish and flood. It's like, the fish, seriously, oh, it's just gonna, but seriously. But it's a, it's, it's a really good point, and it needs to be emphasised. I remember in the.com revolution. So I'm based in Boston, so there's that. I think even today, really, there's only two real tech zones in the US. It's California and Boston, where the universities are. I was working with these companies who were selling ideas they hadn't built the infrastructure behind it, and they were getting millions and millions and millions of dollars invested and what they were competing for was to be bought by the big by the big company. That's it. But they, they actually were not delivering a product, because the product wasn't even created yet. Well, there's a coding company, podium, which now windsurf, which is, I think it's but we bought, or has just been bought for $3 billion by chat, GPT and the and what it does. And here's, here's the part that people don't particularly realise. What it does is uses AI to code, and it's great, you know? But what happens is, a lot of the concerns about it is that when when a coder codes, there are security protocols that you follow to ensure that things stay safe in that way. There's no such guarantee as you start doing this and they creep in. These insecurities creep in. So we are going to see a whole generation of rapidly produced apps that are entirely insecure, which goes back to Joe's comments right back about, you know, kind of pallet tie, and that that situation, about that access to data, that access to control who you are, and the effects of that. And there was some research done, there's not so much the extreme as such as some research done, which is exactly kind of like, you know, take the intern example. You know, if you have an intern, he hangs around with a group of kind of, your worst employees, if you imagine, pick up habits, and he's going to have his imagination running. He's going to think this is okay to do, and he's going to end up being leaning more towards that later on in how he how he guides and runs the place. And so what this experiment that was done was where it allowed coding to learn from codes that had security, is that insecure, insecure features in it, and the AI itself generalised to introduce malice into other tasks where there's a picture was generating or video or text or whatever, that it actually translated further. And so it was when it was acting as a, as when they tried to use it as a as a therapist chatbot, then it would actually come up with pretty harm. Suggestions to sort of tease people in that way. So the generalisation is, the is the thing that goes on behind this, and that's, you know, we got a lot of crap in the materials, learning, yeah, it was funny. I just want to finish off. Then when I hand it back to Joe, just to sort of conclude. So the other day, I started reading an article, and then I lost it. If you open an article on on LinkedIn, you've got to, you've got to put it somewhere, otherwise you can lose it, right? And basically it was talking about the benefits of AI for neurodivergent people, like massively, hugely beneficial, which I thought was a really positive read. So I've got to find this article. And then I was reading another one. So one of the things I always get really disturbed by is how much data we willingly give away, and we've been doing it for years, right? So any woman who has a menstruation app, to me is like, it doesn't make any sense to me why any woman would allow somebody and by the way, Palantir Peter Thiel thiels company owns one of those lifestyle apps. So people are already willingly giving over this data. We have our health apps. We have our so I don't have anything in one place. I have lots of different things that I use but but none of them are used consistently. So there's no way that you can really track me on that sort of stuff consciously. I do that most of us don't consciously think about anything. We give it all away. So I was reading this article just before we came on. I haven't gotten through it, but this, basically, this lady was saying how she's, she used, she used it as a as a therapist, and it's, it's one of the selling points, right? But all of a sudden, artificial intelligence knows your deepest, darkest secrets, fears, concerns, what you're ashamed of, and we're putting that into this, into this system that we don't even know what it does with it, you know? So I think you know, we've got to, we've got to wake up a little bit, but I want to hand it over to Joe. Maybe to finish it, we can move on to the last section. What do you reckon? Joe? You're mute. No, he's not the solution, the solution that I was going to suggest, you know, for everyone else, what you should do with it is to get get ahead of it. Is to use it, to interact with it, to do the active searches and figure out what AI can do. Because it doesn't matter what your opinion is about it. If you have an opinion about a tsunami, it's not going to make a difference, right? The difference is what you do in preparation of that, get yourself to higher ground, decide a plan and get better at it. And I mean, the somewhat glib way of looking at things is that if you see a big wave coming, you can either try to oppose it or try and figure out how to surf it, right? And I think that's what you should really try to do. I mean, I mean, try and push beyond the beliefs that you already have about things, and this is regardless of where you are actually, you know, in terms of the way you earn your living. So if you're an artist, I mean, like myself, I'm a voiceover as well, right? One of the many things that I do, so I don't want to put myself out there as the ultimate answer to things, but do as many things as I do that have value, because bit by bit is going to be it's going to be worn away. But I do voiceovers, and one of the groups that have been very upset by AI is the voiceover industry, because now you can get very good voiceovers done that way. Now I could decide that, yeah, yeah, therefore I can take that view as well, or I can say, Well, how could I try it out and see how I can make it work? So I actually have digitised my voice at 11 labs tried out what it can do given that digitization. And, you know, for certain kinds of applications, that actually is quite an okay performance. I mean, you know, it reads much better than I do. It's more it's, you know, it's able to do, to do long, long sentences, without having to take a second, take and, you know, maybe without as as much emotion. But, you know, it kind of works. And so for the right kind of application, it actually does the better job. But I also know the limitations, so I know where I start to be better than AI. Now, is it going to be continuously? The case? Will it? Will it be forever? Well, up to about, up to about a month ago, actors could say, You know what, AI can't do what I need to do. People who did camera work, and directors and all that say, Well, you know, can't do all that. VO three from.