How This Ex-Thomson Reuters Exec Got a 333% ROI on Innovation | Ep 3 Vic Silverman

My guest today is someone who holds what might be the most interesting contradiction in the AI space right now. She's one of the people most dedicated to helping organizations adopt AI and she absolutely refuses to let it anywhere near her own creative work. She started in Brixton, got to Cambridge, wrote for the Guardian, the Financial Times and Private Eye. And then she spent years inside some of the biggest names in financial services, Reuters or London Stock Exchange Group where she watched innovation transform how people work from their inside. She then founded after AI, a framework helping individuals and organizations figure out what to do with all the time and creative space that AI actually frees up.

Oh, and she just won a blockbuster screenwriting award in Hollywood. Victoria Silverman, welcome to Woman Lead AI. So, thank you so much for your time. Uh, I'm so excited to have you here. The first thing that I wanted to ask you, uh, you're one of the most, um, vocal advocates for AI adoption, but at the same time, uh, you said publicly that you never let AI near your creative work.

Um, and I I want to start there and I want to understand how how do those two things live in in the same person? It's a really good question. Um, because I love AI and the things it can do, but if you look at what it can do with screen plays, the output is terrible. You know, you have a play and you just go, "Oh my god." Um, this is really bad.

And a lot of people in the industry know that. and they would immediately see if you'd written something with AI. we just uh there's a uniformity and I write with my coowwriter Norma Norma J Hibbit and um you know we'd been working on a piece uh a TV pilot and we'd built she'd done the outline we'd built the characters you know this has been bubbling up since 2022 and I just thought I'm just going to write the TV pilot and get it done using my golden hours which uh you know AI helped me uh do my tax return in a couple of hours rather than 3 days that it would have taken me before. So I'm using that kind of time where I'm using AI to help me in my general life. And you know I I wrote the the pilot and it's I do the bare bones and then we work it up together.

and I sat next to her and she she read it and I'm sitting there like an expectant father and she grabs my hand and she goes, "Vick, it's good. It's really good." Now, if AI had done it, you know, my poor ego would be thinking, "Well, you know, she like but she liked it because I'd done it." And unfortunately creative people are very at the center of their own ego universes. So I I honestly don't think it's viable at the moment.

It will be but it will never have a lived experience that us two have had you know which is I could probably tell you Victoria over a glass of wine or you know a box of wine I think would take you know all the things we've been through. AI can't do it. can't get back creativity. Where do you think is that like is that balance between the you know you for example asking it to write an outline versus you asking it to write a script uh versus I saw like the other day a whole trailer of a movie being done uh using you know I think it was midjourney um and like it was incredible. So I I was really surprised that it was made uh using AI.

But where do you think you know is that balance where oh it's still like my work and my idea? I have seen those those trailers and those things and it's so tempting but it I the only time I've used it on our feature film that we won the award for um for the screenplay best drama is a production house we're interested in um taking it on as a project. We we did an actor's read through with them and we changed the script considerably because the actors always have better ideas which AI you know unless it's got kind of built in actors who can feel it. Um you know we're not feeling enough tension we want more peril. We want more thrill we want it to be a thriller.

So, we changed it and the production house said, "Can you tell us what changed from the actors read through script to the new script and then I put both PDFs. I made sure that the back end was locked so that this couldn't be shared and the AI couldn't learn from it. I didn't want that to happen. Uh, so hopefully protecting the IP. I put both PDFs in and it came up with a one pager which said you know on page 22 you changed this scene to this on page 32 and that would have taken me a week but that's the only time and that is really I do I am so tempted to create a trailer for our film using AI.

I just I just think that it feel at the moment it feels like cheating. >> Okay. >> And >> is that what's what's stopping you? >> I don't know. I think it's just not the industry doesn't like it.

People would say that's just AI. Do you know what I mean? Whereas the bringing together of actors in a room who read interpret who live your your your words I think is very valuable and I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon. It might be a good thing to get you across the line to get an agent to say look we put our script into AI and this is what it thinks the trailer would look like. Can you imagine Paramount running with this?

Yes, but for me it would feel wrong. Although I'm a an advocate for AI, I think the real stuff, the good stuff won't won't be taken over quickly. >> Do you think there could be a case made? For example, let's say I'm a student at a university and I'm part of film making society and I want to make a kind of James Bond movie, right, with big explosions and all of those things. Obviously, I don't have the budget for it.

Um, what like for example using it for for that, what what would you say about that? It's good good as an experiment and you know obviously parts of your production your big explosions riding off a cliff you know unless you're Tom Cruz or you can get Tom Cruz you know someone who wants to do their own stunts um it will happen it's like the green screen you know suddenly people aren't traveling to Hong Kong from say Paris because the green screen can do it well now in the beginning you could tell it was green screen, now you can't. So, yeah, of course it will happen. It will happen, but you will lose some of the skill that makes a film incredible. And when you when you get to know people in the industry, you know, they started with by making shorts in their own back gardens and then they've really really honed their skills and they've got that sense of what will this shop mean?

What what's going to happen here? God, what if we subvert that and do this? Which AI may not have that ingenuity? Well, it may be that you prompt it well, and it does. I'm not ruling it out.

I'm just saying at the moment is the time we find ourselves in. It It's good that you're pressing me on this. And I am so tempted, but I dare not. Partly because the people we talk to, we go out to can, we've been out in LA for, they really are not ready yet for their way of working to be sort of lost. And you know eventually the ctographers of big cities had to concede that Google maps is is brilliant you know so it will adjust but the moment it's not ready and it's not it will be cheaper but that there'll probably be a two tier um you know stream running where you'll have the AI made films that people can buy maybe at a discount and then you'll have the real films and that will continue and and they will have real actors, real value people that um stand out who really know how to act and it's you know when I was thinking about coming here today you we've had what 150 million years when we were preverbal so one sloped eyebrow you know one raised shoulder one one glance from an actor.

It It's unique to them. It's their fingerprint. It's their the way that they act and AI will have a good shot at replicating that and giving it personality, but it won't it won't be the same. It won't stand out for people. People pay a premium to see a real a real film.

>> Yeah. I guess uh I guess when I think about for example you know athletes and watching Olympics like the reason why it is so fascinating is because you know that someone has put hours and hours of training into that right that they've spent the last four years doing just that one thing. >> Yeah. And the reason why, you know, we hate, for example, people that do doping in athletics is is for that reason that it feels like they're they're taking a shortcut. Um, so maybe, you know, maybe, like you say, there is kind of an argument to be made that that effort is part of the the value that we as an audience have, right?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, do you feel it when you get on your streams or on social media and suddenly those dancers come up and at first I thought, "Wow, these are really good dancers." But then you realize it's AI.

No one could dance like that. I mean, how does it feel when you see that? Do you when you see for example someone doing like gymnastics, it's like, "Oh, it's incredible that human can do that." But if it's not a human doing it, then is it so incredible? >> Exactly.

See, that's what we need. We need the joy of the incredible. And a film is a feature film. It's a massive feat. I mean it's thousands of people and each one has a specialtity you know and the costumes the people who build the sets these are like real experts like and they're like Olympic athletes they have trained and trained and trained tried they've done different things and they all come together and their individuality coming together ish it's magic and I think that there are areas where we can't lose the magic but there are areas where it just makes sense to use AI.

>> Yeah. Let let's go back to your journey. Um and you um you went from a comprehensive school in Brixton to doing an in Cambridge and you then became a journalist. um and then worked in some of the biggest financial institutions that are out there. Um where where does AI enter that story?

Yeah. So, we go back to 2016 and um I've been doing a comm's job in uh financial and risk business at Thompson Reuters and there's 49,000 people and we've got the um innovation labs and at that point so Reuters news agency were looking creating algorithms to detect fake news because there. You know, it's the cleanest news agency in the world. You know, they every story has to be real. It can't be invented or >> And that was back in 2016.

>> 2016. And at the same time, blockchain, >> the distributed ledger was causing quite a a a a storm because people were saying, "Look, if you work in accounting, if you work in banking, in 10 years, you won't have a job. It's all going to be on the blockchain. This is we're we're really um in trouble. So I I had this brilliant job I love director of innovation enablement and uh we were in every country in the world.

It was a small tiny allw women kick-ass team and um you know I I go to the people in the labs and some of them had like three or four PhDs in maths and they were just at the cutting edge and I'd have to say to them look can you explain to me how an algorithm works as if I was seven >> this is what I prompted my AI and they and then they they'd explain it and I'd go, "Okay, well, let's take this down a notch. Can you explain it to me as if I were your cat?" Because it, you know, they were just and they go, "Right, all right. Let's explain basian statistics to you." and um it it was my job to kind of translate what was going on, you know, and so that's where it started and that whole uh blockchain thing and then the early application of algorithms in a business setting that was accelerating fast and I have to say I work there were some incredible women working in that field and Big shout out to Joyce Shen who follow her if you can on LinkedIn and she's doing phenomenal work.

um really really good work and there just people would come in they they chalk up their al algorithm on a board and then you would have to dissect it, understand it, what can it do, where can it go and everybody because they were lovely, brilliant, intelligent people who had very little ego. They were talking about the ethics and what does this mean for the world? So my ears were pricking up and going, "Okay, you know, we all think that we're going to hell in a handcuff because you're going to have this uh agentic learning and it's going to do its own thing." But the people behind it are really responsible. I don't think there's a mad kind of wizard go haha, you know, or James Bond villain controlling it all.

Yeah, >> it it's I'm I'm relatively sure that although people do want money, they're also humane and they're thinking about the world although they know that there will be consequences of applying AI rapidly >> and in that role I know uh you managed to get return in um on investment in innovation 300 133%. Can you tell me about that and what like how how did this happen and what did you learn from that experience? >> Yes. So obviously I'm part of a team but fantastic global leader who's out in North Carolina. We're spread across the world across Europe across uh uh India.

it it's like a kaleidoscope of innovation and the we had a fantastic um chief of staff the late Carla Jones who she brought me into a room and she said I think you're quite creative how can we use this in the business so she was open to doing that you know and in all businesses you have pockets of genius and you have pockets of people who want to move ahead and want to do things, but they're also really annoying for the people who plan three to 20 years in advance. You know, your financial planners, you know, so you've got all these people who are rolling, they're lean, they're agile, they're they're all about small experiment experiments and pivoting. and I loved those people. But it's also quite hard. You're an operations person.

You've got a supply chain. Like, you've got it all lined up. It's all rolling quite smoothly. Why the hell do you want the people in the jeans and the t-shirts to start disrupting everything? But, you know, businesses I'd worked in had gone, well, do the customers feel what do they feel?

And they say, well, we're not moving fast enough or we're not the cutting edge. So then we took a an approach. So obviously there were there was a catalyst fund which uh you could it was like a dragon's den or a shark's tank. You could go in you could pitch an idea. >> So that was within Reuters.

So they so they they had uh so the company put together a fund and the employees were able to pitch their ideas. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then you could have up to $100,000 or more and you could backfill your own role and you could go off and develop your your innovation.

>> Oh wow. >> So but you know there was quite a bit of money put into it. So we take 90 people who were at the cutting edge of AI at that point. We take we all went to Bangalore. We all went to Zoo in Zurich and we would work on a challenge a series of challenges that the business needed or the customers through the lab had said you know we want to get smart contracting or we want to do things in a different way.

It was really that was very technical AI and you know blockchain related. It wasn't um the sort of organizational HR functional stuff at all. And then we did operational uh challenges for innovation and um then we did do some of the lovely soft stuff. So we got uh we we ran this campaign called dare to disrupt and at that point people in the offices precoid and what we did was every time there was a flip chart we got people to write something that would spark innovation for another team coming into the room. Then people did it online because it's global business.

They did hikuz they did um that people built story boards in corridors to try and get other people thinking and they what they did was I got them to take a selfie and then hashtag it with dare to disrupt so everyone could find the inspiration that the whole business was creating. That was fun. Do you know what I mean? that that obviously didn't um incite the action. But then we created a whole system where you could identify what kind of innovator you were in the business, you know, were a technator where you you understood and love technology and would put you into sort of a one group.

49,000 people did it. It was an e-learning that brought you in and helped you identify how you innovate. Were you an entrepreneur? Were you someone who wanted to physically give up your time, you know, and that discretionary effort because you couldn't help yourself from from making new stuff. And uh so what it was saying really was, you know, if you're a disruptor, there's a place for you.

You you exist here. So, you know, or were you just someone who liked to bring in knowledge and if you went off to an event, you came back and you had a coffee or ver virtual coffee with your team and you just explained that I've been out to this conference. There's all this stuff happening with wearables, VR, you know, and and the labs were looking at that as well. So, you could have a subject matter expert come and talk at your coffee or your lunch and learn or whatever it was. Like to me this kind of it sounds like a culture within the company where innovation is like one of the north stars.

You know, >> I think when you within a week of being in a new company, you kind of either have that feeling of, oh, this is the kind of company where they believe either they disrupt themselves or, you know, someone else will disrupt them or it's the kind of company where actually, you know, this is the way we do things and if we're forced to move because competitor has, you know, has improved, then we'll do that but we're not like that open to it. How, you know, how do you think you can you can like create that kind of culture within the company? And is it is it the case of like because it it sounds to me like Roy Thomas Reuters they you know they basically put uh the money where their mouth is, right? Where they they had that fund um and then they realized that right if we want innovation we need to have like budget for it. >> Yeah.

you have to invest. But to be fair, they weren't at the cut cutting edge at that point, but customers, they could see that their competitors were. So, you know, if you if you go into a Google or a Facebook or a Meta, you know, um it's baked in, right? And they're employing you because you've got that creativity. And then you you do go to places where things are good and it's like why why rock the apple boat?

This is working. There is a problem because everyone who's asked this question will say we have to have psychological safety. You have and and in a way that's what all this um funding of innovation did. You had psychological safety. You didn't have it in every team, right?

And sometimes there were team leaders who were like, I've got three people out on maternity leave and now you're telling me someone wants to backfill their role so they can go off and, you know, create something that might not even work. I'm underst staffed. I've got five people sick as well. No, you know, and then then it was a negotiation. Um, and we would advocate for the people who really wanted to do that.

But for me, psychological safety, right, cannot work if people are tired. So, especially in the financial bit of a business, you had a lot of presenters. You had a lot of really hardworking people who would be in at 7 and then they would finish at 7 and then there would be networking drinks and they'd be supporting, you know, business resource group, etc. And and then I think it's harder because when you get people who are really really tired, they cannot innovate. Their brain is on high alert and it's ready for fight or flight and it is not doing a lot of other stuff.

So it's not an easy path. Do you It wasn't like a wonderland where everyone went, "Oh yeah, lovely. Yeah, let's let's do that. Let's let's look at an algorithm that can do X." Because at that point what they're doing works uh they want to do the work that's going to get them the bonus.

Then you know you look at how do you reconfigure enumeration. How do you get what people are doing as entrepreneurs recognized um within their performance review and sort of paid for. So that is the challenge like it's not easy. If I was a leader, I would be like, okay, how I I'm bought into innovation, but how do I get return on investment? And I think it's is it the case that you know, you just know that if you make however many experiments, you eventually will get that innovation and those potentially productivity gains or or is it you know something else?

I think it is structural and I think you know the whole lean six sigma um innovation methods which have probably been surpassed by new things I don't know about but I think that just looking at things in a lean way doing small experiments small steps move fast is still valid really valid and you know in your own life don't you sort of withhold so many vitamins and minerals s you take it for 3 weeks. If you don't look like Olivia Dean or Hannah Fry, you you just you just go, "No, I'm I'm not I'm not spending on this anymore." So we're doing it in our own lives and doing it at work is harder because you have got your finance people who might not be agile or they might you know that that's a joy isn't it to have people working with your collaborators who are really agile you know and one of the things I'm doing with afterai is um helping founders market themselves and really reach customers because that's quite it's relatively new. So, we're all scrambling and sort of seeing what works, how do we do it? And I'm working with an AI founder and she's just she's just a machine, you know, and she she literally thinks that you should feel uncomfortable doing something.

You should it should stretch you and it should be painful and you do it and if if you muck up, it doesn't matter. And I love it because she she's created a really great platform for schools and communities and for people to get a scale of economy when they buy things for schools and education. And you know, big up Ivonne it's it's a spirit. It's an uh go with it and find the right people who feel the same and then have for one who's a bit slower who goes, "Oh, hang on a minute. Why are you pivoting?

That actually worked. You know, because sometimes you get too busy with iterating and changing and oh hang on that's not going to give you as big of much of a return but your return on investment is going to be good or or that has potential for growth that you know your your perfect thing might not. >> Yeah. I think um in companies where I worked you know like sometimes that culture of innovation is is you know you can kind of feel it more or feel it less but it is at the end of the day I think a lot of companies have that oh you know at the same time the end of quarter is coming. Yeah.

>> And obviously you know and sales is one of the the primary uh kind of factors that that people look at. So if it goes down then it impacts um you know their uh kind of stock market value. Uh and I think yeah that that's like that's a very big challenge where with innovation you have to have that look at you know what how do we want to position them ourselves in 5 years time but actually we're only looking in the next like two months until the end of the quarter but um I would love to hear more about your work with after after AI what what is it that you do and as I understand it you look a lot at what happens after AI is introduced in the company. I think a lot of um a lot of people uh go for that you know transformation sort of phase and they help companies with that but yeah would would you tell me more >> so sort of three levels so when I say after AI that's because I think AI is here do you know what I mean so even if you're not deploying it in a company if you've got 50 people um who can save one hour a day because AI helps with their emails or helps with their plan or whatever it is, their planning or their analysis, making sure it doesn't hallucinate. Um, but it's getting better.

But, but whether it can help you speed up in your own job, the instinct is to do more busy work. But if you had a 50 people in a company and each one of them set aside a golden hour, right, and you haven't even got AI, you know, you're kind of telling the shareholders that it's coming or you're you've got systems in place that that are highly automated, right? Even if you haven't got anything, all of those employees that you've got amongst a team of 50 or a company of 50, if they can save one hour a day, you've got 12,000 hours a year, even with everyone taking off their four weeks holiday or whatever they're doing, you've got, you know, all those hours. Now, you could do something together with that really innovative, you know, or you could you could put it to your well-being because when you have good well-being, you have more psychological safety because then you don't have people who are running around like headless chickens on high alert because got to get this done and can't think about anything else, which is how it is. I mean, most businesses are quite, you know, it's a swan with the legs flapping underneath.

And as you say, you've got to hit those targets. You've got to get that money in. So, just just say, well, look, we've all got an hour a day. How how can we use that hour? So, I've created a little calculator which calculates what people do and then creates a what not to do list, right?

uh which is very simple stuff but then working out what will you do with that time and where where how are you going to become more creative more productive more strategic is looking at that so with the big companies you know that is uh it's workshopping it's working out what the reality is for them and where they want to take their their time as they adapt to AI so you know if You look at survival of the fittest, which Darwin took, he took that phrase, it was phrased by Herbert Spencer in the 19th century. And what Darwin was seeing that was that the best you the best you are adaptive, the the the way that you adapt will help you survive. It's not the most intelligent and it's not the strongest. It's the ones who can work out what to do. And you know, he's looking at peppered moths and they can make their wings go look like their surroundings and their environment and they're surviving and other little clever moths are not, you know.

So, you know, if you put Mike Tyson in a room with a peppered moth, he's got no chance. He can be big and strong and punching away. a peppered moth has found a little space behind the bookcase where no one's gonna find it. So it is all about that survival. And then I am working with small companies and creators.

So graphic designers and animators, illustrators who are literally having their lunch stolen by AI, eaten every day by AI. They're going back years. You know, some of them have their profits have gone back five years and they had big customers and they were well respected and they now they are often freelance and then it's about divers diversification and obviously doing that work really cut price for them to say what what would a new revenue stream look like and you know for people who are art um uh sort of inclined where AI is producing images and is doing stuff for basically nothing taking their work then you you help them to look at you know where are big growth areas so there's a mental health crisis in the UK how do you can can you adjust what you're doing around towards art therapy at at scale that you can handle or you know how can what you do find its place now because we are after AI. The AI is there. You know, Vick, you were saying it can create a a a trailer for a feature film probably in about 10 seconds.

And then all those camera people, all those, you know, scene builders, set builders, costume designers, they're they're really um having to look a new at what they do and how they can adapt. So it after AI is just about the adaption but also bringing in some of the techniques that I've learned around um being more creative, being more strategic cuz I think you know those are always useful even if your business isn't predicated on tech it's it needs to be as creative as it can be. So if I am a a graphic designer and uh I got laid off from my job um and the reason is that the company had employed five of us but now and I was responsible for let's say editing um pictures of the products but now with combination of Claude Code and nano banana I can you know edit hundreds of pictures in about 5 minutes. What like what would you say to that person? How can they utilize their skills uh to to you know to like make money and and have that likelihood when we look at the next 5 years?

>> Wow. It it is a really difficult time for those people. You know, it is tapping into what they can do and where they are and how they can adapt. So, it's not going to be easy. There's there are no easy answers.

But it is just thinking about what are the three biggest crises uh in the UK, right? So obviously mental health, housing and now employment is is going to be a bigger problem and that person is literally feeling that and I know so many people who are in that um exper you know in that situation. It's really about thinking it through and I am experimenting with um looking at fine artists and how they worked through disruption. Picasso especially um through the 20th century kept changing kept adapting what he was doing um and often innovating as well to do it. But it is not um easy and it might be if you're self-employed you might need to ramp up how you go to market and you might need to invest in different ways but I think all of us should be preparing so and adapting not not just thinking that it's not going to happen to me because every role will be possibly replaced >> and and how how do I prepare So I would say right I think the Americans are more forthcoming and easier with this obviously generalizing about a very large population but the Americans I've spoken to they they have always had because they don't have health care right so they've always been a very large percentage between 55 and 75% of the American middle class deal in stocks and shares So they have a fall back.

I mean, I've known people make six figure salaries or not salaries, you know, uh, revenue from stops and shares in America, people I've worked with on teams. So, I think that if you're a woman especially, get yourself a financial coach or a good financial advisor and start any spare money you get, even if it's small, start to do that. I think that if you have got savings, property will be a a good thing. Obviously, we can't give financial advice. We're not financial advisers, but if you can get a cheap property at auction and rent it out, governments will still be paying housing benefit.

They will still be helping people to live in places. I mean, this sounds crazy because um you know, it it sounds like I'm saying, "Oh, get get some dry biscuits and a cupboard where you can uh you know, be ready for the the zombies to start parading in the streets." But there will be a really big shift and it's in the next 3 to 10 years. >> Yeah. I mean, when I hear, you know, about Amazon laying off like, you know, 500, 5,000 people, it doesn't feel that far away, does it?

>> No, it doesn't. It doesn't. I mean, all those companies have always laid off. You know, I used to call it the annual call and I I've worked in companies where they decided just before Christmas, you know, let's tell Yeah, I have worked companies have always been automating and always changing, you know, and people unfortunately you know in in the Ukraine suddenly they had this terrible war and your job is gone, your house might be gone and you have to adapt, right? So there's not really a lot we can do.

And same with creativity. Sometimes you've had religious zealatry or you've had uh wars, you've had things that happen in life. Uh you know, we could all we could all have an illness. We could all So I think get yourself a golden hour, right? Get AI to give you a golden hour.

It's almost like saying, "Okay, if you're going to mess up my life, matey AI, I'm going to use you to prepare and I'm going to adapt, you know, and what does what does that golden hour mean to you and what Yeah. >> So, I got very um friendly with time. I had a cancer diagnosis in 2020 and No, it was all right. It was a stage one. It was luckily despite all the newspaper headlines, NHS was brilliant and I got seen really quickly and they they sorted it out.

Um so that was lucky. But I I'd been to a coach um about 10 years ago and she said to me, "Look," I said, "I want to I feel like I'm I'm not performing at my best. I'm not really I've lost my mojo." and there's things I want to do. So, I wanted to start a blog, a support kind of community for the parents of teenagers.

And I wanted to do some more writing. I wanted to be doing my journalism. And she said the only way anyone can do anything if you're busy, which all women are, do you know what I mean? Like always, is you can um you can make a golden hour. So at 9:00 when the kids are in bed, partners washing off, you can use that golden hour and you have to insist it's your golden hour.

You're going to be a prima ballerina. You are going to train. So take an hour and and if I did that and so with the film, I had a lot on Norma and I when we met, both of us had parents with dementia. You know, Norma had a sibling with dementia as well. So, we were looking after our children, nieces, nephews, and we had our own sort of physical battles and disease and stuff going on.

And we were absolutely frustrated, but we knew we wanted to write something. And we were like, well, how are we going to do it? And I thought back, I thought, well, I I did manage to have my golden hour. I got got the community for the parents of teenagers up and running. I did a column on the South London Press, regional newspaper had a every week.

There was a time when it got too much when my son was ill, I was ill, and my parents were ill. And I was like, okay, enough, you know, like forget your golden hour. But I I well, we've got this golden hour. But we did literally do that. And you you just set yourself a time boundary.

If you don't look at time and say if I fritter you away, it's like money. You will never have any time. You will always have busy work. You will always have, you know, the things you want to do, the giving and the loving and the family life that that you need and that is part of life. But but just carving out time even before AI was really important but now I'm like hang AI can actually do that some of it for us can do the grunt work but that's the difficult thing isn't it because so um at work I had this um Excel spreadsheet and I was like oh you know I want it to be more interactive I would love to redo it but I was I was never that good at Excel.

I knew what like the output that I wanted, but I didn't know how to actually do it. >> So, um I used the the co-pilot and it has that agent mode where it can actually put in the formulas. >> So, you know, something that would probably take me 3 4 hours. Um it like it did it in 5 minutes, right? Um but what I did next is I looked at my to-do list and I just went to you know point number two three four.

So I feel like a lot of people are like me where okay you know I managed to reduce that time uh that that I had for for that activity but then I've got you know five other tasks to do. So did you put your task list into AI and say tell me how I can create an hour a day from this for me for work that will help me seem more valuable in my workplace. >> That that's a good point. Or you can put your performance review and you can say oh this is a PDF of my performance review uh you know obviously subject to data protection but put it in and um say but how can I be more strategic? How can I how can I have my boss's job in three months?

Don't put that in. But do you know what I mean? like you you can use it for you and >> get it. You could say if you're a soloreneur, you can say to your AI, I want you to be my CEO or I want you to be my executive chair person and coach me and make sure I'm doing the right things. I think uh yeah using it for personal development is something that like people don't think about when actually you know two or three years ago hiring someone who has that level of knowledge would have cost me you know $500 per hour >> but now I have it in my pocket and you know what people use it for is uh is creating a custom meme instead of thinking about how do I actually get that you know next position.

>> Yeah, absolutely. I mean this is it and we we got to use it to adapt. >> Yeah. >> You know I don't know it's like sort of asking your enemy to AI is our friendmy. It's our friend now and we've got to prepare.

So get that golden hour. uh you were featured on channel 4 um in I think a program that was called will AI take my job um which I think is a question that a lot of people uh it keeps them up at night um what is your answer to that yes it's going to take lots of jobs definitely but you have to think uh that if you look at digitization which took jobs, you know, typing pools and lots of jobs, but organizations move glacially slowly sometimes. Did you see the Suprini uh alapar research? So, actually, it didn't quite make the headlines as much as it should have done because it was just when the conflict in the Middle East was kicking off. Um, but there was a an international piece of research research was um on Substack was a blog by an AI uh creator and venture capitalist Arab Sha and he was saying um that you're going to have if you if 10% 10.

2% 2% of white collar jobs go then white collar workers make up 75% of discretionary spend in in most um advanced economies and therefore you're going to have ghost GP GDP right you're you're going to have faster better output by companies but because no one's employed by them you're literally going to have no one to spend any money on what's coming out and So, you're going to have this silly situation and it's like quite an obvious thing to happen. Um, and the jobs will go, but he was saying or the research was saying 2028. I think it will that's when we're going to hit crisis point. I think it will be much slower. But I still think that we should be ready to adapt.

you know, we are the peppered moth of survival. And uh you know, the Channel 4 program looked at all the different areas where um AI could take over and it pitted humans against the AI. In some cases I think where the humans won out even then the law you know is is one area which is ripe for change. Yeah, it's it's interesting, right? Because um from what I understand when uh a lot of these labs were evaluating the performance of the models that they were coming out with uh they had I think it something called touring test.

>> Yeah. >> But they found themselves in a position where they need to come up with a new and new test because uh the the models are you know too too good at it. Um and what what they've been recently doing is understanding how long can we have um AI work on like a a like a big project and compare that to for example human working on the same project but they got to the point where it was about like 16 18 hours and obviously they didn't have the data for humans because no human can can work continuously for for that long. >> Um, so you know, it feels like you're on that, you know, on that train and all of all of the labs, their believers, you know, if we if we don't if we don't come out with a new new model and and get to, you know, AGI, which is a whole separate conversation, as soon as possible, then, you know, China will come out with it. So, we have to be the first race.

>> Yeah. Yeah. M >> and and I guess like you know as a human in in all of this you think oh there's a new model coming out there there's a new tool here what do I do to you know to be relevant >> yeah absolutely >> and uh what would you say to that question >> yeah but it's going to be different isn't it so you have to look at your own situation and say how can I be the most relevant and and it's what what skills will my company need uh and I and start adapting now and you know even project management that that is going to be mechanized or I think understanding ethics and risk will be very valuable for people. um you know start doing some certification using your golden hour to to but it's what your company does and where you can be you can't say well we'll become a great people manager because you're going to be managing machines I I think being able to say you know you don't have to know algorithms and AI inside out and back to front you know it's like we're getting a car. We don't really >> Yeah, >> my brother knows how it works, but you know, uh or a lift.

You get in a lift, you don't fully understand how that lift is working, but you use it every day. Um and you're not going to go back to stairs all the time. Ju just look be awake to it but don't worry because we you know when I grew up being ancient you know it was like we're going to have a nuclear bomb was going to fall on our heads and literally everyone joked and planned what would they do in the last 2 minutes or 3 minutes before the sirens began you know and as a kid you were like oh no it it it will happen but it it will probably happen quite slowly Because the AI founders, they can create the new model, but you know, it's like blockchain. It existed. It it it's a thing.

But who's bringing it on board and how quickly? And you know, you do get the odd CEO who's putting out a lovely message saying, "Oh, I could replace you with 17,600. I could replace 17,600 people with with AI." And it's like you've got to be ready to go, well, bring it. You know, and how you do that, try try and get your investments up, you know, just like your golden hour.

Put some money aside every month, some time aside to treat this as a real problem. And, you know, if I I've got two two young sons that, you know, they're young adults. So I started a family relatively at a relatively young age and one of them has really struggled to find work. He's done his degree and got a good 21 and tried everything to get work and ended up working at a casino and uh my other son's four years older. He stepped straight into a job.

um and you know he's paying 500 quid a month back in student loans. So the the struggle is already there. So it's very hard to say that if you're under a certain age how how are you going to do this? But may time yes you can do although it's hard and it might be have to do something on a Sunday afternoon rather than watch the football or you know or you know have have the time that you'd like and really work out what you're going to do. But the trouble is if you retrain you you might retrain in an area that was also going to be taken over.

So, we're at a sort of thinking crisis of thinking it through and being fearful. Um, but you know, just if you if you find yourself spiraling and think, "Oh god, I'm not going to be able to pay my mortgage. Just think about people in Ukraine or the Middle East. There's there's no house for them. There's no job.

Their factory has been bombed. There's no electricity." Um and so things like that do happen but eventually we find a way and we go through it. It's very hard >> and you know when we think and look towards the future what do you think what is going to differentiate the companies and individuals that are going to uh come out of it stronger versus those that you know are going to let's say let's call it be left behind. Uh, I think there are two things, right?

There's the peppered moth, right? Survival of a fittest isn't is the wrong term, but it's easy to get your head around. The people who adapt. So, start adapting now. Use your time wisely.

Don't don't waste brain mental brain energy. There's a really good book by Karen White Law Smith which is called the butterfly experience and that uh says that no negative thoughts can help you which isn't which is very different from toxic positivity. What it says is is if you've got a problem if you start to think negatively about that it can't help you. So, say you were in Paris and you knew the Germans were marching through your country in the Second World War. Um, if you sat back and said, "Right, I'm really worried.

I'm really worried. I'm really worried. I'm really worried." You're just using brain energy. Whereas, if you say, "Right, I'm going to find the resistance group.

" Or, "I'm going to work out how I get to a bolt hole in I've got a cousin in in Na. I'm going to go and stay with them or whatever it is. And and someone goes, "Well, all the streets are clogged. How are you going to walk there?" Do you know what I mean?

It's like, but you you start to use your brain energy for something constructive and even if having your golden hour where you get AI to do something or you have you you learn about stocks and shares and you do start to make investment, you take it really seriously. And you maybe go to a moneyb bags relative who say you say look can you can you seed fun from me some money to do that because I really need to do it. It it will help you to start thinking better because you can't be passive. >> Yeah. I think it's always you know when like my personal belief is that whenever any technology comes in you can either think and spiral into anxiety that this is going to replace me my skills and I'm going to get laid off or you can think oh wow this is like the biggest opportunity that I've seen in my life.

>> Yeah that's great. Do you are you able to do that? Have you got that? >> I think uh I think it's like you said that if you go that first route then nothing constructive comes out of it because it only puts you into more depressive mode. uh if you think like this is opportunity what can I do with it then you think oh like it's a it's a reframe you reframe this in your mind and and then you think about like oh I can do that I can do that I can do something else um and then you know that that helps you with those like next steps um and when we think about that um you know something that I've seen research on is that women are adopting AI at um a lower rate than men and you've led a lot of um diversity and inclusion communications in in the roles that you've been in.

What would you say is is the reason for that? >> So I suppose women are represented less in tech roles, aren't they? and whoever is building the tech, making the tech has a say in how the tech is. So that is uh and who's funding the tech as well. Um, interestingly, I was working with a founder from Kenya and and she's noticed that an AI founder that there's a very certain type of woman who's getting the VC funding and the angel investors and they know women aren't getting that funding.

ridiculously small number of women founders are getting fully funded. Um, also, you know, if you're relying on AI co-pilot and you're a woman, I don't know how true this is. It seems that the women I know are more risk averse, right? Which is a great value in the financial sector especially. Um, you know, really thinking before you do something is a good idea.

I definitely, you know, uh my attitude is always like, "Oh, if if there is a problem, I'm thinking, oh, let's sleep on it, right?" And my partner is like, "No, I just want to make a decision." >> Yeah. Let's fix it. Let's fix it soon and do it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I agree.

So, I think we are more careful. I mean, in the beginning when you first like played around with a chat GBT, um you you you thought, "Who is this clown?" You know, it's just making stuff up. I've asked it stuff and it comes up with something. I be like, "No, that's not right.

" I No, I No. So, you I think we've lost a bit of faith and uh you know, an academic who works in this area is is very hot on hallucination and what it means. I also think that there's some evidence that those problems are being ironed out and I do think it's it's good for women to get back and like if you've if you've dismissed what AI is doing to really have another look. I um I think I come across many people that you know they I don't know they they've tried one tool and it was um even like seven months ago and they're like oh it's it's rubbish like it told me that something that is not truthful and you know since then there have been free updates >> uh of that tool and now it's like it's completely different. So I think having that mindset, oh I tried it once and you know it's not working for me like it's it's very detrimental for for people.

>> Yeah. >> When we look towards the future you know like I can think about a version of the future in which creativity um becomes less valuable because it's outsourced uh to AI. Um and at the same time it can be you know the most valuable thing when we think about well if the problem if it's not a challenge to actually like create a product but the challenge is having good taste then actually you know having that creativity and having that good taste is really valuable which which way do you think we're we're going to go and um you know what do we need to do to make sure we are on the on the right side of it? Yeah, it's a good question and it actually um someone I know who works in customer uh service AI created a website for a business and showed it to me and I thought, "Oh, that's fantastic. Done it all with AI really quickly, but it was good.

" Like, it was top top notchotch. But then I saw another business, someone doing something different that had exactly the same look and feel. You you you are going to get a lot of repetition. It's like crowdsourcing, right? You you're going to crowd sourcing is great and and why shouldn't you crowdsource from all the world's experts?

You can come up with with good stuff like it's clever and it's it can be brilliant. I think the trouble is it can't be original, which is where, you know, all that uh stuff about AI trailers and AI films is you lose that originality and you you won't be able to get the the uniqueness of projects. You know, each graphic designer comes in with their own thinking, their own ideas. Everything's filtered through their experience and you can get brilliant original work. I think that's much harder with AI and you know I I know a photographer who Tim who is he was he was around on shot shoots with Princess Diana, right?

So, he'd been a long time in the game. And then digital photography came in and everyone went, "We can do digital photography. That's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've all got our own iPhones and good digital cameras.

We're going to do it." And uh he had to spend £50,000 upgrading his equipment, etc. He no longer needed a dark room, so he got some space back in his house. Um, but he and and you know I it was quite hard but he stayed in the game and then people realized that his work was actually much better than someone with a digital camera trying to take a picture. And so now he's really in demand because people have worked out that kind of photography he does is it's it's him in a way, you know.

So I think we always do, don't we? We always sort of you have your thesis, your antithesis, and your symphysis. And for people who want uh you've got a tutor in your pocket, I remember going to a school as part doing head of comm's role for a charity and we went out to lots of schools and there was one school where they got people who had a four in their uh GCSE. So people got really bad marks and then they worked with absolute passion to bring all these young people up to a really high level at their A levels so that they could get high A levels. And um I said to him, "What do you think about AI?

" And I thought he was going to go, "Oh, the kids are cheating and uh it's ruining my life and I feel really bad." and he said instead that um AI was the best thing that had ever happened to his children from disadvantaged backgrounds because they had a tutor in their pocket. So now it's not just mommy and daddy are going to spend 70 quid and I'm going to have a tutor it because the kid has also who hasn't got mommy and daddy has also got that tutor. He said it was a great equalizer. So I I I think what will happen is that we will we we're also in the cycle of hype you know and fear and everything we do is based on fear.

Everything we consume from the number of face creams I use and hair conditioners and all the rest of it is based on the fear of looking you know my age which is ridiculous. And every newspaper you buy, every uh you know, every time you scroll a Guardian online is all every every news story is built around fear. It's that amydala in your head. And a lot of time in coms, people say to you, I know, let's do a newsletter with good news. And then you have to go, well, it's not going to work.

And we go, you don't know that. People like good news. In an age of bad news, people like good news. And unfortunately, we're just not wired for that, you know. Um, it just doesn't work.

>> Yeah, of course. Well, um, let's do a fast round. Um, I'll ask you three questions and, uh, yeah, just a short answer to them. So, um, what's one AI tool or workflow that really changed the way, um, how you work? >> Podcast LM.

>> Okay. What was that? So it's uh a little app and you can take a lot of information. So for example uh I was working with a CEO who was phenomenally busy and didn't really have head space for a lot of new regulation and law that was coming in. So I took all of that regulation, all of the white papers, everything that was proposed, I put it into podcast LM and it created a podcast.

>> Oh, it's like a notebook LM. Yeah, I've used you can listen to it in the car go and so >> she started the CEO she started to use it >> uh all the time you know and I could put the board notes in and then there'd be a podcast and just before she went to the next board meeting rather than reading the minutes she it took me a second to do you know and you know when I showed it to my partner or my sons they were like oh it's creepy having somebody's voice and we shouldn't >> it sounds really real It sounds really really real. It's not robotic. It's brilliant and I use it for myself. So if I've got to remember something and I'm short on time, I put it in there and it teaches me.

I'm listen to it and it's lovely and it's two or three people chatting about something. >> Um, what's the best piece of advice for someone who is scared that AI will take their job? >> Get adapting now. Right. you're the peppered moth.

It's not the fittest and it's certainly not the most intelligent people who start adapting. So, use your golden hour. Try and get some investment advice and like really get going stocks and shares. If you can if you can get a a cheap flat at auction and you get rent coming in, do it because it's it's key that you have some backing to help you through the shocks. And even if you can't do any of that, just take an hour a day, but don't get rid of that time by more busy work.

Say, okay, I'm going to put my to-do list into AI. let it tell me I put my performance review into AI obviously looking after privacy you don't want you certainly don't want your company to know completely to see what you're doing if it's not allowed or it's going to give it away >> yeah obviously follow follow your own >> voice adapt yourself now slowly and uh yeah the the two things so one is that adaption the other thing is family and friends and you know it sometimes we get estranged or we fall out you know try and mend those relationships because it is it's families that survive you know and and go together or or deep friendships. Try not to find find out if you're falling out with people, why you're falling out with people, and you know, mend and heal because you've got to be in this together. You got to help each other. >> Yeah.

I think you can, you know, you can always find ways to lift each other up, right? >> Exactly. Lift other people up. >> That is key to adapting. >> Finish this sentence.

The most valuable human skill is >> The most valuable human skill is adaption. It It's getting used to it, you know. >> Change is the only constant. >> Yes. And change is a pain in the butt, you know, but you get good things.

So, you know, when you have a baby, you're like, "What? I can't even I can't go to the toilet without lugging a child with me." like but but you will get the most out of life. Yeah. When we all rock into our old ages hopefully um it's all those things that matter and somehow you always manage to survive it.

I mean uh I've survived quite a lot of poverty as a young person. But be prepared, you know, do your research, get your golden hour, try and get some investments going so you're not exposed or you can have some rents coming in. Uh it's very this is all very kind of uh commercial or materialistic and I'm not like that. I just think that we need to survive. >> Yeah.

I mean, you know, if you if you're struggling for, you know, for money, you don't have like uh enough money to to cover your rent or food, then that's the only thing that you can think about, right? So, you have to make sure that you have those necessities. >> Yeah. And even with the cost of living, it's already hard for people, even people on quite good wages. So, it might get worse, but it will test us and then it will get better.

No, thank you so much for for your time and uh if um if someone is interested in getting in touch with you um either to to work with you uh for your company or um they're interested in the movie that uh got the awards where they can uh find you and where they can uh find the the film as well. >> Yeah. So, Victoria Silverman or Victoria Harboard, my maiden name uh on LinkedIn is a good starting point. DM me or email me. And uh there there is another company called Afterai, but I've trademarked the After a brand, After brand.

So, uh it's a trademark of a company called the missing manual limited. So if you feel you you need a manual for life with the advent of accelerated AI and Aentic AI, get in touch. Uh Victoria atmissingmanual liimited.com and obviously the you know the usual Instagram, Facebook. >> Awesome.

We'll put a link >> Yeah. >> to it. Well, thank you so much. >> Thank you. Every conversation on this podcast exists because of one simple belief that when women understand AI, engage with it, and lead with it, something shifts.

Not just for them, but for the organizations they are part of and the people around them. If you want to keep exploring that with us, Women Lead AI is more than a podcast. is a community, a learning space, and honestly, one of the best conversations happening in this space right now. Come join it. Details in the show notes.

And see you next week.