Jason Bradbury, celebrated technology speaker, television presenter, and former host of The Gadget Show, has spent his career exploring the cutting edge of innovation.
From building the world’s first hoverboard to predicting the rise of AI and automation, Jason has inspired audiences worldwide to embrace change and think differently about the future.
In this exclusive interview with The SpeakOut Speakers Agency, Jason discusses how artificial intelligence is reshaping the world of business, why ethical innovation is more important than ever, and what audiences can expect from his latest keynote, 30 Days of AI.
Q: As someone who has spent years at the forefront of innovation, how do you foresee artificial intelligence transforming the future of business?
Jason Bradbury: “That’s a critical question. I would counter with, how is it not going to affect the future of business?
“I mean, let’s put it this way: imagine that you had a crystal ball back in the noughties when computers were traditionally disconnected in offices around the world. The internet didn’t really exist – it was just happening as bulletin boards or simple kinds of email services.
“But you had access to a vision of the future that told you that new services like something called Amazon were going to arrive, where you could get logistics shipped around the world in lightning speed, that you could order products and get them delivered not just the next day, but in some places – in the West, some of the big cities in London, for example – the same day.
“That services like Blockbuster, which at that time would have been really familiar on the High Street, would just fail and no longer exist, and be replaced by mega corporations like Netflix, and again, Amazon, and something called Google would come along, and lots of other search engines that you’d never heard of before.
“Imagine that you had that knowledge – that you were able to look into the future and predict all of that. How would that have changed your business? How would it have changed your workforce – what you skilled them in, the kind of people that you employed, where you wanted to operate from, how you interacted with your customers, what services you offered?
“Well, that’s the state we’re in now. AI is as big – arguably bigger – than the dot-com boom or the invention of the computer. This is how species-level important this innovation is. But I want to be clear enough, and in line with my 30 Days of AI speech, I actually asked this question to an AI.
“Let’s see what their answer is. I did ask them to keep it short – so a four-line answer, please, I wrote. Okay, so the question is: ‘How will AI affect the future of business? And the AI said: ‘AI is expected to have a significant impact on the future of business, leading to increased efficiency and cost-saving through automation and improved decision-making.’
“That’s interesting – it affects leadership too. ‘AI will also enhance the customer experience through personalised recommendations and support. Additionally, AI is expected to give rise to new business models.’
“That’s critically important. So, you’ve probably heard this before – the jobs that AI is going to bring to your businesses, some of them haven’t been invented yet. It’s going to create new opportunities for growth and innovation.
“I don’t know – it’s up to you: which answer do you prefer, the human one or the AI one?”
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Q: With technology evolving at unprecedented speed, how can society ensure that AI tools and processes develop within ethical boundaries?
Jason Bradbury: “The ethics of AI is really the talking point of the moment. You might be aware that there are certain signatures to a letter – one of which is Elon Musk – which is where all the headlines come from. And the letter is asking for a pause in the development of AI.
“In fact, who knows – when you watch this video, that pause may have been initiated.
“It might sound strange to you that in our current stage of late capitalism, and the ways that we do business, pausing innovation might seem impossible. But actually, there are several historical precedents for slowing things down, pausing, putting a moratorium on the development of various critically important technologies.
“For example, chemical and biological weapons, nuclear weapons – the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as you know, is subject to various treaties. And perhaps most analogous to the development of AI, I think, are the developments that came from the Human Genome Project – so human cloning. It’s been agreed through most of the countries on Earth, probably all of them, that we don’t pursue human cloning at this point in our evolution.
“We’re quite good at coming together as a species and agreeing to make the right decision. And I wonder whether that might be the way we go forward with AI.
“The reason it’s important – the reason the ethical question is so important – is to do with the rapid nature of growth in AI. You need to understand, on a fundamental level, that AI evolves exponentially.
“You might be familiar with exponential growth in terms of things like Moore’s Law, but when AI evolves, it evolves very, very quickly. If you set the task of the AI as improving itself, change can happen very quickly – almost to the extent where we can’t control it, and we don’t have the moral or ethical frameworks in which to work.
“That’s why the ethics is a particular problem. It will be rapid, it will be fast, it will be problematic – and so I think we need to think very carefully about AI’s ethical dimension.”
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Q: You’ve seen technology advance from early computing to AI and beyond. From your perspective, what’s the next big breakthrough set to reshape our world?
Jason Bradbury: “This is going to be the number one question that I get asked as I travel the world doing various speaking engagements. And it has changed – it’s evolved – and my answer has evolved over, let’s say, the last ten years.
“I used to talk about blockchain, I would talk about crypto, I’d talk about quantum computing. I always talk about automation – and I would use that in this answer. I do think that the automation of vehicles, self-driving vehicles, will be huge – and huge in ways that we don’t immediately imagine.
“For example, there is a crisis in the retail sector at the moment. Big warehouses with tills at the front, which is what the big stores are on the High Streets – certainly around the UK – are no longer serviceable. That’s simply because certain companies can deliver products to you within hours, if not the next day.
“So why would you go into a shop on the High Street and then wait two weeks for the product to come in? What’s happening in retail – certainly in the spaces that are getting it right – is experiential shopping is becoming a thing.
“Delivery services can’t offer me hands-on with a product – like a new keyboard. How does it type? What does it sound like? Is it good for gaming? Whereas a High Street store can do that. Automation means not only will civic spaces where shops are generally located be safer and less polluted, they’re also going to change.
“When cars can drop you off and then move off – or buses and automated trams move off and park themselves outside the city centre – the city centre no longer needs to be this busy traffic hub. It can be a much greener space, full of trees and interesting outdoor architecture.
“That means retail will change – it will come out onto the street, it will use those spaces to create the very experiential shopping experiences that it needs in order to evolve.
“That’s quite an abstract prediction of what the next big technology will be – but of course, artificial intelligence has to be in that list. It’s probably the number one choice.
“Within AI, I think some of the big technologies we’re going to witness very soon will be entertainment-based – augmented reality, virtual and mixed reality, the metaverse.
“Buying something in the metaverse that you can then wear, for example, in various gaming or social experiences – that’s going to become normal.
“AI is going to drive that technology. And then other big technologies will be in biotech, in health, and in materials science – again, driven by AI. These are all innovations that, I think, answer that question.”
This exclusive interview with Jason Bradbury was conducted by Mark Matthews of The Motivational Speakers Agency.
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