This is the last episode of Season 3, and we look back at my five favourite episodes, including SaaS, CRISPR, Deep Fakes, and an update of me being brought to life by AI tech. (jump to 4:30 to see that). I also give a quick tour of the Futures Club and invite you to check it out.
We will be back in September with Season 4.
TRANSCRIPT
This is ThrowForward Thursday, my name is Graeme Codrington and come with me, as always, to the future, where we try and see what’s going on and work out what it might mean for us today.
This is Episode 114 of ThrowForward Thursday, and as it happens, it’s the end of Season 3. In Season 1, we actually went for 52 episodes, a full year, and we looked at all sorts of interesting ideas about the future. Season 2 was characterised by our End of series and if you haven’t seen any of those, they’re all available on the podcast, on YouTube, and you can search for them on social media as well.
Season 3, we’ve been having a look at an issue, and then in the second week, we’ve been looking at the applications of that issue to how we think like a futurist and my five favourite episodes from this sixth month season that we’ve had Season 3.
The first one, I suppose, was Episode 111, where we talked about renting clothes. This was that wonderful story about Japan Airlines who told holiday makers in Japan, don’t bring any clothes with you, we’ll just rent you some for the week that you hear. But that got us thinking not just about the circular economy and recycling and ESG and things like that, but also about X as a service, anything as a service, and I hope I got you thinking about the types of services that your current products could be turned into and pushed your thinking in innovation in that way.
Another of my favorites were episodes 102 and 103. This is where we talked about CRISPR, the Nobel Prize-winning insight and discovery of how we can edit our DNA. And alongside a number of other things like mRNA, mRNA vaccines, and advances in medical technologies. And now, of course, we could add artificial intelligence and some of the other technology systems on top of that. I just think we are going to be mind-blown by the advances in medicine over the next few years.
Talking of AI, my fourth favorite was episode 105, where we talked about using artificial intelligence not as AI, but rather as IA, and I think that’s where we are at the moment. It’s an intelligent assistant rather than artificial intelligence. I don’t think we’ve got artificial intelligence in most industries yet, and ChatGPT is not even 1% of artificial intelligence. It’s a large language model but go and have a look at Episode 105 for more on that.
And then that links into Episode 95 if you’re looking for my full list from the season, and that was where we talked about deep fakes. The fact that these artificial intelligence systems, so-called, especially the image, video, and voice side of them, that’s going to allow us to develop remarkable fakes.
Well, in a little bit of an update, a friend of ours, John Peters, who runs the Athena Micro Learning site. He and I did a webinar a few weeks ago on AI, and he was looking at it from an L&D perspective, and he took a little bit of license with permission. He took a photograph of me, just a little promotional photograph that was taken a few months ago. He then took some sampling of my videos, and he put that into the sound sampling system, 11 Labs. He then used the AI system called DID, Digital ID, in order to animate the image, and he then used ChatGPT to come up with a little message around the use of artificial intelligence with learning and development professionals. So, it was playing around, but in less than half an hour, he was able to create a one-minute script, and he was able to animate a photograph of me speaking with, well, we agreed that it wasn’t a perfect representation of my voice. My wife might probably not pick it out of a voice lineup, but it’s not bad. Have a listen to a few seconds of this.
“Hello, I’m Business Futurist and author Graeme Codrington. Gone are the days of rigid one-size-fits-all learning models. With AI, we have witnessed a revolution in personalised learning experiences where employees can embark on tailored learning journeys that match their unique needs, preferences, and aspirations”.
Well, thank you very much, Graeme. Interesting stuff, isn’t it? Go back and have a look at Episode 95, where we talked about deep fakes, as well as thinking about what you might need to do to protect your own image and your own voice and your own videos from that.
It was about that time as well, Episode 96, in fact, if you want to go and have a look at it, that we launched The Futures Club, Graeme Codrington’s Futures Club, and I’ve been talking about that over the last few weeks. I really invite you, if you haven’t had a look yet, I invite you to go and have a look at The Futures Club. Go to www.jointhefuturesclub.com, and I’m asking you to please take a chance on signing up. I promise you that there is a money-back guarantee. If you sign up, give us your credit card details and you go into The Futures Club and you look around at all of the resources we’ve gathered there and you don’t like what you see, just tell us. No questions asked. We’ll give you your money back and we won’t bother you again.
But what I think you will see and what I think that you will discover is that we are taking the research that our team does, this is what we do for a living. We research the future, and we are taking the best of what we find. So, we don’t want to become a news service for you, but we’re taking the best of what we find, we’re summarising that for you so that you can go into the Futures Club and when you go to the menu item called Insights, you can go to the areas that you are interested in.
They all relate to the future of work, they relate to disruptive forces shaping your industries and you’ll see that there are just a few bullet points. We remove the ones that are a little bit outdated, and we find better resources and add them. We’re not trying to overwhelm you with another channel of information and news, but rather extract the deep insights and clever wisdom and make them easily accessible to you.
You’ll also be able to see some of the videos that we’ve put together. You’ll be able to see some resources, and those are focused on helping you to think like a futurist. I want to share the toolkit and the skill set that our team uses to be able to anticipate change and to prepare for whatever the future holds for us. I want to share those insights, tools, and skills with you so that you and your team can develop them for yourselves.
You’ll see there are short little videos, there are items, practical items that will give you a tool to use, and a practical activity suggestion. Give it a go and see if it makes a difference with your team. Finally, there’s a set of recommendations in terms of books and other resources that you might find useful.
As I say, go to www.jointhefuturesclub.com, sign up, have a look around and I’m sure that you will discover that the weekly emails that we send out give you way more value than the cost you have to pay, but if it doesn’t, that’s also okay. If it doesn’t work for you, we’ll give you your money back, but isn’t it worth finding out?
So that’s the end of Season 3 of ThrowForward Thursday. I’m going to take three weeks break before we start Season 4. In the next three weeks, I’m going to give you just a little mini-series every Thursday looking at some of the work our team is doing on what we call the Great Grey Elephants, and these are seven of the most significant disruptive forces shaping the world right now that are also being overlooked by a lot of people. I’ll give you some insights into those and tell you how to look for opportunities in those disruptive forces. Then early September, we’ll have a nice, refreshed studio and we’ll head into Season 4, a ThrowForward Thursday, and I’ll tell you all about that in a few weeks’ time.
For now, as always, thank you for joining me in the ThrowForward Thursday studio. I’ll see you next week for some more.
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Graeme Codrington, is an internationally recognized futurist, specializing in the future of work. He helps organizations understand the forces that will shape our lives in the next ten years, and how we can respond in order to confidently stay ahead of change. Chat to us about booking Graeme to help you Re-Imagine and upgrade your thinking to identify the emerging opportunities in your industry.
For the past two decades, Graeme has worked with some of the world’s most recognized brands, travelling to over 80 countries in total, and speaking to around 100,000 people every year. He is the author of 5 best-selling books, and on faculty at 5 top global business schools.