James Sherwood-Rogers - Don't Panic! It's AI

It seems we're starting to understand the real impact of AI on our future.

All the time we were generating pictures of cats in Viking outfits or gangs of Hell's Angel dogs and Santa Claus on summer vacation in Bermuda, we weren't paying attention to the very real and very frightening downside to the future of humans and AI.

Put simply, there's a strong chance that AI is going to cause dramatic levels of unemployment, with workers at entry level and middle management level being replaced by agentic systems that work tirelessly 24-7 for no pay and simply refuse to take vacation so their C-suite level owners can.

AI is currently responsible for around 25% of all job losses while companies experience incredible stock gains from pivoting to AI.

First it came for technology and accounts and I did not speak out because I'm not a techie or a bean counter.

Then it came for lawyers and travel agents and I did not speak out because I'm not a legal or vacation expert.

Then it came for middle managers and HR people and I did not speak out because I'm not a manager or a recruiter.

Then it came for doctors and scientists and I did not speak out because I don't have a degree.

And then it came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.

You might accuse me of being hyperbolic or overdramatic, but in the creative agency sector, my sector, I've already seen the replacement of junior staff, the increasing use of AI slop, and the hungriness in the eyes of clients and agency owners as they realise that the world might be able to get by on a diet of ultra-processed and regurgitated copy and imagery.

And while AI quite literally eats our lunch, dinner and breakfast, we're being told that we must accept this is our future and also that we need to accept that in order for a handful of friendless dweebs to continue increasing their vast wealth, we need to give up our land, our air and our water so that data centres can continue to be built.

It's a bleak picture, but maybe, just maybe, there's a glimmer of hope because high-profile people are beginning to speak out.

Is it too late for Erin Brockovich to join the fight? Her recent well-publicized efforts to help Americans report their concern about the effects of artificial intelligence data centers on their communities surely rang alarm bells at Google, Apple, Meta, and Amazon.

Her claim is that general public is not getting a seat at the table when it comes to decision-making involving data centre construction.

We don't want to ban it, but we do want to control it.

We do want the right to be consulted, which is what our elected officials should have done instead of stuffing their pockets with cash from the profits from the big tech companies.

because there is a grain of good in the application of artificial intelligence it's a massive playing field leveler for small creative agencies to compete with big holding companies it allows them to compete on procurement and process driven elements of the client agency relationship Where only big agencies could afford to research a sector or company in depth ahead of a pitch, it's now easy to fire up Claude, Perplexity or Waldo to pull historic data on trends and future data that's going to inform a conversation or drive campaign ideas.

It's like we want to leverage the benefits of AI without wondering if at any point it's going to kill us.

We want the answer to life, the universe and everything without it becoming Haktar.

And if I've just lost you, it's because last time we talked, my guest today, James Sherwood Rogers and I, went off on a crazy tangent talking about Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which, like all great pieces of creative work, absolutely nails the life we're now experiencing.

And we'll come to that over the course of the next hour, because James is exactly the right sort of expert to talk about AI's benefits and weaknesses, the advertising industry, technology and business, as well as legendary comedy fiction from the 1970s.

Ex-Sarchie and J. Walter Thompson account director, brand expert for global insurance businesses, chairman of several fintech and property companies, start-ups and those in transformation, James now works at the cutting edge of prop tech and new city construction.

He's built a unicorn, completed a number of acquisitions and overseen multiple successful market-leading scale-ups.

So here's James Sherwood Rogers in Don't Panic, It's AI.