May 12, 2025 • 43 mins
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Simon Hudson shares his fascinating journey from medical device inventor to tech entrepreneur, exploring how information architecture transformed his approach to SharePoint, Teams, and AI ethics.
TAKEAWAYS
• Started his career in physics and medical devices, developing two patents for chronic wound dressings
• Founded Cloud2 and developed Hadron, possibly the first SharePoint-based "intranet in a box" solution
• Recognized that 90% of organizational information needs are the same across companies
• Initially skeptical about Teams but had a "road to Damascus moment" when realizing its potential for structuring collaboration
• Companies that adopted his Teams approach transitioned seamlessly during the pandemic
• Believes AI won't eliminate jobs overall but will disadvantage those who don't learn to use it
• Working on how to build ethics directly into AI rather than just creating guardrails around it
• Concerned about AI agents making autonomous decisions without proper moral frameworks
• Sees data quality as a critical challenge for effective AI implementation in organizations
• Envisions personal AI "doppelgangers" that can handle routine tasks while embodying our ethical frameworks
Listen now to explore how information architecture might just be the key to more ethical, efficient, and empowering technology.
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Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark Smith (00:01):
Welcome to the Power Platform Show.
Thanks for joining me today.
I hope today's guest inspiresand educates you on the
possibilities of the MicrosoftPower Platform.
Now let's get on with the show.
In this episode we'll befocusing on evolving SharePoint
(00:26):
teams and AI.
Ai is affecting everything inthe world we live in these days.
Today's guest is from NorthFurby in England.
He's the founder of NovaWorks.
He is a lead author andfacilitator on the maturity
model for Microsoft 365.
He's the author of two patentsrelating to medical devices,
which is a little interestingfun fact there.
(00:48):
You can find links to his bioand socials in the show notes
for this episode.
Welcome to the show, Simon.
Simon Hudson (00:54):
Yeah, hey, mark, very good to be here.
I wish I was there, though.
New Zealand I've not been toNew Zealand for just over a year
now and I'm missing it badly.
Mark Smith (01:05):
I feel that well, okay, that's not too long ago
though that you know, as I havequite a few guests on from the
United Kingdom and I know you'rein the middle of winter and
here I am, like you know,t-shirts and shorts outside at
the beach every day.
It's a different lifestyle fromwhen I was living in London,
and I was fortunate enough whileI was there in winter well, in
(01:26):
Christmas time to get a snow,which was amazing.
Simon Hudson (01:30):
Yeah, we've had snow in the UK this week, which
is pretty rare these days.
Mark Smith (01:34):
But January man, it can be bleak in London eh.
Simon Hudson (01:37):
It can be bleak everywhere in the UK.
Yeah, winter I mean it's beentwo months of just cloud, you
know, yeah, you know the light'sout winter it's been two months
of just cloud.
Mark Smith (01:44):
Yeah, the lights out at 3 pm in the afternoon
doesn't come on till nine oftenand as I'm going to say lights
out, the sun's gone, Yep.
Simon Hudson (01:50):
You're absolutely right.
On the other hand, we'regetting sunnier weather starting
now and you guys are going intowinter.
That's it.
That's it, the solstice haspassed right.
Mark Smith (02:03):
Yeah, crazy times Food family and fun.
Simon Hudson (02:04):
What do they mean for you?
Oh gosh.
Well, let's start with myfamily, because that's kind of
important.
Um, I've been married tochristine, my beautiful wife,
for 38 years now 38 years.
God, she has a medal, um, soshe's sitting downstairs trying
to get over the cold that youcan also hear in my voice today,
but, uh, we've been together along time and it's still great,
so that's rather nice.
And then, um, we have adaughter together well,
(02:26):
obviously together, I guess.
Um, she's uh, 28.
She's a beautiful young ladycalled ella hudson, and she's
soon to be dr ella hudson.
She's, uh, just submitted herphd thesis in biotechnology and
just landed the dream job thatshe's been after for the last
seven years.
So, yeah, so my family are kindof important.
(02:46):
They're all quite close to me,so that's rather nice.
I love it.
Food, food.
Oh well, I mean, I've got norestrictions on food.
I love all foods from alldifferent things, apart from
cheese.
Cheese makes me unbelievably ill, um, but apart from yeah, yeah,
no, some people say it's a badthing.
I mean, how would I know?
Um, so, yeah, cheese is good,but but foods that I love and I
(03:07):
cook a lot.
In fact, I've been a lot for along time.
I've been the main cook in thehouse.
We redid the kitchen a coupleof years ago so I had an even
bigger, more fun space to cookin.
So, yeah, and we're justliterally this.
Last couple of days, we of days, we've started on a thing where
we're going to try and bevegetarian during weekdays.
Certainly for the next monthwe'll see how that goes.
Mark Smith (03:26):
We're not vegetarians, but but we want to
try and do our bit, so we'regoing to try to be vegetarian
five days a week well, in london, my wife and I did it for a
month, you know, and and here'sthe thing I I was brought up
very much a carnivore and on adairy farm and things like that,
and a meal wasn't a meal if itdidn't have meat in it, type
thing.
And so I, you know, for me itwas around changing a paradigm
(03:49):
that was stuck in my mind thatyou can't have tasty food if it
didn't include, you know, a meatbased protein.
And so I think, yeah, I'm bigon changing paradigms that you
inherited through yourupbringing that might not work
for you now, or that society hasfed us that might not work for
(04:09):
you Precisely.
Simon Hudson (04:12):
We didn't cover fun, fun, oh well, there's just
a list that goes on and on andon.
I'm sorry, I'll give you thesummary Music, love music.
I've seen I think I'm on my129th band now because I keep
track of them all.
I've seen I think I'm on my129th band now because I keep
track of them all.
I've got a massive musiccollection of CDs and loads of
vinyl and a very good hi-fi andI play guitar and mandolin.
(04:32):
I'm trying to learn gypsy jazzguitar, which is really hard.
I love my cars.
I've got a couple of classiccars, a couple of Beats,
actually, yeah.
But I also have an EV and we'relooking to buy our second ev
this year.
Games we played dungeons anddragons a lot.
We do all sorts of board games.
I taught my daughter to beincredibly competitive at games,
(04:53):
um, so she beats me.
Now we ski, uh, and then I'veboth spent the rest of the time
boring people to death, eitherabout sustainability issues or
technology.
Mark Smith (05:02):
I love it.
So on my property, my wife andI between us is we've created a
brand called High Tech Hippies,which she came up with, and it's
because we are trying to narrowone of the things that we've
got an acre and a half and I'vegot a big garden and I'm
starting to develop a foodforest because I want to
(05:25):
eliminate the transportationbetween the plate and my food
source and, um, and we don'thave any animals, which was very
like.
The first thing I did when Ibought the property was put
fencing in for animals and we'vedecided, no, we're not going to
have animals per se.
I mean, we have cats and um,and I'll get chickens at some
point for the eggs, but I'm notgetting typically I would have
(05:48):
got sheep or a cow or somethinglike that on, you know, to
fatten up type thing.
And yeah, so sustainability inthe last, particularly probably
since moving back to New Zealand, has become a massive focus for
us from a practical perspective, not so much in our business
lives.
But how are we?
What can we do to change things?
You know, I have a worm farm torecycle my vegetables.
(06:11):
I collect all my gray water inthe property and I recycle it
multiple times across trees andplants on the property.
You know, if I collect a dropof water I to you know benefit,
get benefit from it three orfour times before it is um, you
know, goes back into the earthtype thing.
So I'm trying to maximize thatyep, and it's really interesting
(06:34):
.
Simon Hudson (06:34):
I mean, I got into the whole energy transition
part because of my background,um, which we'll talk about in a
sec, um, but, um, the energy waswhere I started and then I
realized it wasn't just aboutenergy, it's also about all the
other parts of sustainabilityand diet and the way we eat is a
big part of that.
But it's just interesting to doLearning to cook just with
really interesting, exciting,nutritious meals with no meat.
(06:57):
That's a fun thing to do.
Mark Smith (06:59):
So another challenge is the craft to pick up and you
just need to look at often theIndian cooking, the amazing
flavors that profiles that theycan bring out in food and you
know, and they're totallyvegetarian-based dishes.
Simon Hudson (07:13):
Yeah, about all sorts of Asian food.
I mean, there's such a range ofdifferent stuff you can do and
I'm busy trying to, you know,pick up as many techniques as I
can from wherever they are.
Mark Smith (07:22):
What's your favorite feature in your kitchen that
you remodeled?
Simon Hudson (07:27):
I mean, I guess the main thing is I've just got
an awful lot of workspace now,you know, we've got rid of all
the clutter, we just got I don'tknow eight or ten meters of
usable worktop, and so thatmeans I can spread out and get
all my stuff prepared and youknow, I can have, you know, the
dehydrator going in one cornerand my bread machine in another
and still have plenty ofworkspace.
But I guess the big thing,actually it took some doing, it
(07:52):
took a couple of chefs, I know,to convince me to switching from
a gas hob to an induction hob.
Mark Smith (07:57):
Wow, interesting, interesting.
Simon Hudson (08:00):
So we're a fully electric home, now without gas
Wow.
Mark Smith (08:04):
I've just been approved to build my home our
home on the property here, whichhas been laborious.
I left London in 2019 and thearchitecture for it had been
started in 2018 and we've onlyjust got to approval.
It's a long process and one ofthe things in the kitchen that
we're doing quite different thanmost is putting a commercial
(08:27):
underbench dishwasher in.
Oh yeah, okay, because they'remuch more efficient than your
normal home dishwashers.
I did not know that and theyturn around like typically I've
got where I am now a dish drawerand it takes an hour 15 minutes
to do a standard cycle.
A dish drawer and it takes anhour 15 minutes to do a standard
cycle.
A commercial dishwasher takesfive minutes to do the same.
(08:47):
High-level sterility,cleanliness, that type of thing,
yep, without that running foran hour 15 minutes.
And so it's just like and itwas from an architect they said
listen, this is probably thegame-changing feature we
recommend in new builds is thatyou pay a little bit more for a
commercial dishwasher.
(09:08):
It's still small, not a bigindustrial machine, but they run
quite differently than yourhome user unit.
Simon Hudson (09:15):
I've never heard that before.
I'm going to have to go andinvestigate that now because
it's interesting.
I want to see what the energyprofile looks like, but also
what's the water use look like.
Mark Smith (09:23):
Yeah, let's move on and talk about your career.
How did it get to where it is?
What are you focused on now?
What's the big bets that you'remaking from your career at this
time?
Simon Hudson (09:35):
Well, I'll give you the kind of, you know, the
bullet point version, then we'llexpand on that.
I mean, you know, the reallyshort version looks like physics
, medical device, corporateentrepreneurship, retirement.
That's my career in a nutshell.
Not exactly an obvious careerpath, however, yeah, I studied
physics, did undergraduate andpostgrad in physics and bit of
chemistry Rubbish chemistry,don't ask me chemistry questions
(09:57):
and then I spent 15 yearsworking in the medical device
industry globally, which wasreally cool.
I mean, I learned a lot, got todo some fantastic things, you
know, traveled the world.
That's where my patents comefrom.
I designed two new.
I designed a lot of newproducts, but two of them were
patentable.
I made a difference.
That was a big thing.
I designed products that helpedpeople, and so mostly it was
(10:20):
chronic wound dressings.
So these are the horriblewounds that don't tend to heal,
usually in compromised, uh,older people, and I designed
things and sold things to tryand make that better to manage,
better for the patients, betterfor the clinicians.
So, and make the wounds heal.
How long ago?
Oh gosh, um, that's probably 18years since I left that
(10:43):
industry, something like that,maybe 20.
Mark Smith (10:47):
And you know, patents interest me and it's
something that I feel that Ineed to do at some point.
But I just feel like, is it along, drawn out process to get a
patent, or is it a relativelystraightforward?
And from the UK perspective, ifthat's where you did it, I mean
, you know.
Simon Hudson (11:03):
New Zealand patent law and the UK patent law are
very similar because mydaughter's becoming a patent
lawyer, so I know these thingsnow.
Oh, no way.
Yeah, yeah, the key thing is,you know, to invent something
which is genuinely patentable.
That's the first step.
And there's a whole bunch ofthings, but it needs to be an
inventive step that an ordinaryperson knowledgeable in the
field wouldn't automaticallycome up with and which hasn't
(11:24):
been done before or talked aboutin public.
So that's your short version.
So, um, you know, if you cancome up with a great idea that
is patentable, then that's yourfirst step.
Getting it patented usually cantake six months to a year if
it's a good one.
You know there's a whole bunchof searches to make sure that no
one's going to challenge it.
You know you do a bunch ofstuff, or your patent attorney
(11:46):
does a bunch of stuff, and thenthe patent office themselves
does a bunch of stuff, which ismostly publishing it and waiting
to see if anybody comes backand says this is infringement or
we've already got that idea orno.
It's just being obvious.
But it can be fairly quick.
The the hard thing is thenprotecting the patent.
Um, so anybody can come alongand challenge it and go.
(12:07):
Actually, you know we've gotsomething.
We either want to work aroundpatent, in which case you
challenge them, or they've gotprior art that they come back
and go.
Actually, we need to constrainthe patent or have it struck off
.
So there's more money.
It's more costly to protect apatent than it is to create one.
It's a fascinating area, though.
In the UK or maybe there's morepatents that come out of Great
(12:33):
Britain and I guess what we usedto call the Commonwealth heaven
knows what we call it thesedays without treading on toes
than everywhere else in theworld put together, which is
kind of cool.
Mark Smith (12:42):
Yeah, yeah, I worked at IBM for three years and they
used to be the top patentproducers and just to recent
times that they have now droppedout of that.
And I've spoken with peopleinside Microsoft and they get
patent awards every time theyget something patented for
Microsoft and often there waswith the MVP program and stuff.
Why is there so much secrecyaround everything?
(13:03):
And it's because of what yousaid before.
If too many, they can't patentsomething.
If too many people, if it'sleaked down the public domain or
anything like that, yeah, it'snot too many people.
Simon Hudson (13:12):
If anybody says oh , I've already heard about that,
that's it, Patent's dead.
Mark Smith (13:17):
Yeah, it's sub 50, isn't it?
It's like a very low number,it's none.
Simon Hudson (13:22):
It's none.
It's none If you go and talk toyour mate down the pub and go,
I've got this great idea, andthen he gets challenged by the
patent lawyers and goes youheard of this, it's in the
public domain, it's none, whichis kind of scary.
So you're absolutely right.
I sit on the Microsoft forStartups Advisors Board so I
(13:43):
talk to quite a lot of startupsthrough that and through the
university stuff that I do, andone of the top things I tell
them is you know, don't tellyour mates about it.
If you think you've got a greatidea, you can talk to me
because we're under NDA, butdon't tell anybody about it.
Maybe your partner maybe, butmake sure he or she knows and
not to talk about it.
(14:03):
Yeah, great stuff.
That's so interesting.
And of course, the purpose ofpatents is not to hide your
invention, it's to put the stuffout there so everyone knows how
to do it.
But you get the benefits of itfor a little while.
So basically, you're givingmankind your brilliant idea in
return for about a quarter of alifetime's benefit from that.
Mark Smith (14:24):
Yeah, I've gone through a trademarking process,
so I know one.
I had to go through multipleiterations because it was not
only just a word trademark, itwas also a design trademark.
And you know, the firstiterations were considered to be
too infringing on othersbecause it involved the silver
fern, which in New Zealand is,as you can imagine, a big deal.
And so I finally got it through.
And then, of course, where Ireally spent the money and the
(14:48):
10 plus years of having it isthe infringement.
Yep, Somebody comes along, setsup a new company and decided to
use the whole phrase in it.
They've not done any researchor anything, and of course it
flagged to my attention and thenI had to lawyer up because it's
only as good as you can defendit right.
Simon Hudson (15:06):
And so, yeah, yeah , it's a really interesting
space.
The whole intellectual propertyfield is fascinating and
probably deserve a bit moreattention from the tech people,
not just in terms of protectingwhat they do, but actually
building some better tools fordoing intellectual property
management, and AI is both aproblem and a solution in that
space.
Mark Smith (15:26):
I like it.
Let's drill into that.
Tell us about in the discussionwe had before.
You've been involved inSharePoint, teams and AI.
Just let's take those threebroad headings.
What are your thoughts on them,your experience with them and
your thoughts going forward withthem?
Simon Hudson (15:45):
Well, I guess you know SharePoint's where I'm
going to start, because it'sliterally where I started in my
move into tech, because Ihaven't got a tech background.
You know, I think that shockspeople sometimes.
Here I am as an MVP and they goso which technology?
No, I've never been in IT,actually I just started IT
companies.
But SharePoint for me wasreally interesting.
(16:05):
I guess I've had my hands onSharePoint since Team Server, so
pre-WSS, pre-sharepoint 2001.
Because of its ability to doinformation management, I mean
the way.
I think my science background inparticular lends me to think
about things in terms ofinformation architecture and
structures.
Sharepoint and also, slightlybefore that, probably Lotus
(16:27):
Notes, lotus Domino, were thefirst tools I had hands-on that
let me start to structure theinformation stores I wanted to
do whatever the heck I was doingin my career at that time, and
so then, when I left the medicaldevice industry, I ended up
working for an IT companyrunning their medical division
over in beautiful York, and theywere doing nothing with
(16:49):
SharePoint.
They were doing loads of stuffwith content management tools,
big, expensive tools likeVignette I mean proper expensive
, yes, yes, I remember Vignetteand I said well, this SharePoint
thing looks like it can do alot of what you're doing, but
for like 10% of the cost, whichdidn't actually please them
because they figured they couldmake more money out of Vignette.
I don't know if anyone buysVignette anymore.
I I don't know if anyone buysvignettes anymore.
(17:09):
I think they may have backedthe wrong camel there.
But I got more and more intolooking at SharePoint as a tool
and then realized and this wasreally the core of me becoming
an entrepreneur realized thatall the dozens and dozens of
companies and organizations Iwas talking to when you drilled
right down into it, what theyneeded was basically always the
same.
There was a core sort ofknowledge and information
(17:31):
structure that everybody has.
It's about sort of, um, youknow, centralized content
management, you know documentcenter, about departmental
activity.
But there's two halves to thatthe internal department and the
outward facing part of thedepartment.
There's all these structures Isaw appearing time and time
again, and every time I spoke tothe tech guys in the company I
was working for and others,their solution was throw a bunch
of developers at it, do somecomplicated pointers.
Time again, and every time Ispoke to the tech guys in the
(17:51):
company I was working for andothers, their solution was throw
a bunch of developers at it, dosome complicated pointers,
waterfall processes and build abrand new one from the ground up
.
Now this is crazy.
They all have the same needs.
They may not know it, but 90 ofwhat they do is the same.
Why don't we just build a corethat has that 90 and spend the
rest of the money on actuallydoing the bit that's unique to
them?
So they didn't listen.
(18:13):
So I left in interestingcircumstances and started my own
company doing exactly what I'dbeen saying.
I set up Cloud2.
We built a product calledHadron and Hadron embodied all
of that, the informationarchitecture that I'd been
working over for five years orso, and we think that was the
very first SharePoint-based whatthey now call an internet in
(18:35):
the box.
We call it a solutionaccelerator, but we think it was
that.
There's just one other companythat maybe has equal claim to
that, and we did that.
We mostly focused on buildingthat for the NHS because, man,
they needed stuff At the time.
It was the average time, becausewe looked at the research to
build an intranet was two yearsupwards of quarter million
(18:55):
pounds.
Wow, wow, two years, quartermillion pounds, you know, half a
million new zealand dollars um,we were doing it in 14 weeks
and about a hundred thousanddollars amazing.
So.
So that was that was my thingand there's sharepoint developed
.
We kept reworking the model anddoing more things, but for us
(19:15):
it was always really about theinformation management and
architecture and thecollaboration and not really
about the traditional commswanting internet where they can
put some things that no one'sever going to read.
So that was the heart of mystory.
And then, towards the end of mytime at Cloud2, because I guess
I ran that with my businesspartner for 10 years or
(19:35):
thereabouts and I had an exitplan and then, about 18 months
before I exited, teams camealong.
Yes, and at first I went.
I don't really know what thisis Teams it looks like a not
very good version of that otherproduct that I've completely
forgotten the name of now.
Mark Smith (19:51):
That was like a stream of consciousness sharing
Link originally, and then Skype.
Simon Hudson (19:56):
No, a competitor product.
I can't even remember what it'scalled, it doesn't matter.
Ah, yes, yes, Slack.
So that's the one which I hated.
I hated and I thought the Teamswas just Microsoft's bad
attempt to build Slack.
And then I had this road toDamascus moment and I go oh, but
you can store content in it andyou can expose that content
through tabs and channels, andyou can structure channels
(20:16):
within team areas and you canactually build an information
architecture aroundcollaboration.
And that lit me up enormously.
So I can build informationarchitecture for collaboration,
not just for content.
And at that point I suddenlybecame one of the biggest voices
of saying you know this Teamsthing, we really ought to be
doing it.
And I built out a couple ofmodels for Teams solutions in
(20:38):
the same way that I had forSharePoint, and started
migrating the whole concept ofan intranet into being embedded
inside Teams, so you wouldn'thave to go to SharePoint for one
thing and something else, youjust go to Teams.
All your stuff would be there,including your email and your
calendars.
And that model still continues.
I think Microsoft are catchingup on the idea now.
But the idea was your entireworkspace is inside Teams, yeah,
(21:02):
Except when you have to spawnout to go and do something else.
So we did a lot with Teams andI've continued doing that a
little bit since I retired.
So I left Cloud2.
I shut down a second company, amedical company that I started,
so I now just have a smallconsulting company.
We still do a bit of workhelping people get on board with
teams, and all the people thatI'd helped that took my advice.
(21:25):
When that thing that happened afew years ago, that pandemic-y
thing happened and we weren'tallowed to walk outside the
house, all the companies thathad taken my advice just went
and switched to remote workingwithout missing a beat and all
the others ran around with theirheads on fire.
So I was really quite proud ofthat piece of envisioning that
we had Now introduce AI.
Yeah, so I mean I guess we'recoming up to two years into AI
(21:51):
now, aren't we?
Mark Smith (21:52):
November 22,.
Right, no November 23.
Simon Hudson (21:55):
Yeah, coming up to two years, you know, since you
know, sort of human-readablelarge language models came along
and changed the profile andthat's been really interesting.
Yeah, I played around with AI alot to begin with.
I spent a fair bit of timetalking about the benefits,
allaying people's fears aboutthe fact that you know they
probably won't ruin societyovernight.
(22:16):
It almost certainly won't takepeople's jobs, but it will take
the jobs away from people thatdon't learn to use AI as every
technology in the history ofmankind has done.
You know, if you don't adaptand move on, you will be
affected, but there won't be aloss of jobs overall.
And I did quite a bit of stufflooking at the ethics and
morality of AI, and still do so.
(22:37):
I have an ongoing I'd like tocall it a project.
That's far too grand a title,but I have an activity to try
and find out how we can buildethics into AI If we don't have
it at the moment.
The moment we build ethicsaround AI.
We put these guardrails up thatqualify the stuff we ask it, so
you can't ask it to do nastythings and qualifies what it
puts out so it can't tell younasty things.
(22:58):
I want to build it into theheart of it.
And the reason is at some pointvery soon we've seen it in the
last few months agents arecoming.
We saw agents running insideself-driving cars already.
These agents are goingeverywhere and we need to
understand what their moralframework is.
And those moral frameworks needto be definable in a way that
(23:19):
we can say you know, you guys inNew Zealand you've got a
slightly different view onthings than us laggards here in
the UK have, and we're certainlya good deal different to the
ones over in the US.
I don't think I want to trustmy car to use an AI built with
US morality.
It's going to run some peopleover that I don't want to run
over.
So I'm really interested inthat.
(23:39):
Ethics of AI, not in terms ofhow do we use it, but how do we
make them ethical, because if wecan get that right, maybe our
AIs can be the better version ofus.
Mark Smith (23:49):
Well, yeah, my specific thoughts are very, very
utopian in the future of whereAI will go and even on difficult
things like organizational biasthat has been built up over
potentially decades.
For then why couldn't we havean agent, a bias agent, that
(24:10):
explicitly goes out andquantifies that and cleans it up
and, you know, helps enact newpolicy?
So we don't just employ 99%males that are white, that are
you know, because that's whatwe've always done and therefore
we're modeling off what we'vealways done and that's how the
you know that bias becomesinstitutionalized.
(24:32):
So I do agree with you Onething that struck me recently
with you know, copilot and theMicrosoft Graph and people you
know using it, and they've beencollecting data For the last 10
years we've talked about one ofthe mega trends that are going
to affect the world is theproliferation of data and it's
(24:56):
funny now because it's almostlike we don't have enough data
and the need for training in thefuture, and I think models will
evolve with this.
And then there's synthetic data, of course, coming in now with
AI generated.
But one of the challenges isthat humans make mistakes and no
matter how hard we try to stophumans making mistakes and it
(25:16):
was funny, I was on a callyesterday and someone said what
do I need to change in what I'mdoing?
And I'm like, I'm not good atspelling.
It's part of my dyslexia and nomatter how hard I try, I can't
see that I've spelt somethingwrong.
I can't see it, and so if I'mgoing to go, I need to correct
that mistake.
(25:37):
I've got to understand thatit's a mistake in the first
place before I can correct it.
The problem is in institutionsand organizations that have
SharePoint teams, et cetera,micro mistakes have been made
all the time.
You didn't put the correct T'sand C's in a document, you
didn't adjust the numbers in aspreadsheet, you dropped
(25:58):
something that's changed thecalculations, all these little
incremental and then you copythat document and now there's 10
different proliferations ofthat mistake and you amplify
that across thousands ofemployees, potentially an
organization.
And then we go hey, ai, learnour organizational data and
let's use that as a groundingpoint.
(26:19):
And then we go oh my gosh, aiis hallucinating.
Is it hallucinating?
It actually might be justpresenting back to us massive
organizational mistakes that ishuman to make.
And so, therefore, I think thatyou know the ai story inside
any organization is a data story, and although we've been
(26:40):
collecting data for years.
There needs to be an amount oftriage on that data to and then
also narrowing down when we havean ai use case, to make sure
that we're not giving it theocean to operate on, but really
we're giving it just the dataset that is pertinent to the AI
(27:00):
task, rather than we're going,hey, let's just give it access
to everything and let it learnand find the patterns, because
the problem is it's finding thepatterns of error and thinking
that it's truth.
Simon Hudson (27:11):
Absolutely, and people like you and I and those
within the community have beenbanging on about the importance
of data governance since AIfirst became a thing a year and
a half ago.
Because if you've got bad datain your organization and, let's
face it, almost everyorganization's data is rubbish
you know they've got some greatstuff in there, but they've kept
it mixed in with all therubbish Then you're going to get
(27:32):
bad results.
It's a garbage in, garbage outmodel on steroids.
So we've definitely got thatproblem and I think maybe one of
the greatest initial benefitsof AI is going to be getting
people to sort their data out.
Yeah, so I'm a silver liningkind of a guy.
Maybe people actually go well,maybe we do need to do that.
(27:52):
That's something they've beentelling us to do for a decade.
Mark Smith (27:55):
Have you seen any tools that orgs can use that can
potentially help them with this?
Simon Hudson (28:00):
I mean, there's loads of tools.
At the end of the day, it'sstill a human judgment thing and
it's a process thing.
You know, obviously Microsofthave got tools like Purview.
I think that that isn't reallygoing to help with the legacy
data issues or governance issues.
I think it's pretty good atdoing some things about looking
at the quality of the data,putting in effective lifecycle
(28:21):
management stuff all thatcontent management where.
I started 30 years ago Doing allthat stuff.
Right, there's no shortage oftools, but someone's going to
have to, in each organization,bite the bullet and go.
You know we're going toimplement policies now, and I'm
not talking technology policies,I'm talking organizational
policies.
You will not keep your rubbishfor 30 years.
You know you're going to getrid of it after six months
(28:43):
unless it's subject to aretention policy.
You are not going to createduplicates and if you do, it's a
disciplinary offense.
You're not going to do allthese things that we've got away
with because we had too muchstory space and people couldn't
find the time or wouldn't makethe time to clear up.
So I think there's some stuffthere.
However, there's a big caveat tothis, which is there is an
(29:06):
argument to say that progress ismade through making mistakes.
Yeah, so there's a little bitof me that wants to get rid of
all the dangerous and and stupidmistakes, but a bit of them.
It says we still need to beallowed to have errors because
the errors make us go.
Oh, that's interesting.
I wonder what that's telling me.
(29:27):
Or or that chart I just saw.
I know someone's just told meit's wrong, but what would it
take to get there, and so Ithink so, yeah, evolution thing,
because evolution is a processof errors and some of them are
big and non-viable and some ofthem are small and progressive.
So I think that we need to findways to allow error, but to
(29:48):
make sure that we govern thatwhich is truly dangerous and
accept that AIs are certainly nobetter than people but we'll
probably talk about this more.
But this concept and, I think,microsoft, to their credit,
because they get a lot of stuffwrong, but to their credit this
idea of a co-pilot, somethingthat sits alongside you, you
work with it, it works with you,you correct its mistakes and,
(30:10):
man, it makes a lot of those.
I've been doing some codingtoday and it just makes mistakes
, but I'm smart enough not to beable to write the code but to
be able to go.
That's not right.
And then it corrects me when Iget stuff wrong.
So that co-piloty my buddy whoworks with me, my shadow, that
(30:31):
has lots of merit and allowingourselves to make mistakes, but
then correcting each other ishow we learn.
Have you watched Silo?
I'm five episodes in, literallystarted at the beginning of the
week.
Mark Smith (30:43):
Just because you use that phrase shadow, and of
course it's very yeah, I love itas in it's actually enhanced my
keenness to get back into a bitof sci-fi, because of where we
are, you know, in the world andoh well, I'll tell you what you
know, going off off piece for amoment.
Simon Hudson (31:00):
Go and find all the books there's only three at
the moment by stuart turton.
It's sort of sci-fi but it'scleverer than just sci-fi.
I'm a big sci-fi fan but stuartturton, top author, start the
Seven Deaths of EvelynHardcastle and if you don't like
it, I'll give you your moneyback.
Mark Smith (31:20):
So here's the thing I don't read a lot of novels,
but I got into Dan Brown and thereason I don't get into them?
Because my life goes on hold,because I've got to keep reading
and that means all through thenight.
I just read and his most recentbook, which was published maybe
four years ago five years ago,okay, it's all set in Spain and
(31:48):
how much of a predictor of AIthat book was is off the Richter
scale.
Mind-blowing compared to wherewe are now.
Off the Richter scalemind-blowing compared to where
we are now.
His ability to mix the realworld with where things could go
just honestly amazing.
Simon Hudson (32:02):
Yeah, there are some really interesting
visionaries out there.
I mean, you know the number ofbooks that get published a year.
Someone's going to get it rightsome other time.
But I think Dan Brown's reallyinteresting and he raises some
interesting positions in hisbooks.
Are they great literature?
They don't need to be.
They tell a good story, greatstorytelling and they present
some interesting ideas.
Mark Smith (32:21):
Yeah, I see we're already over time.
This has been such aninteresting discussion.
I'm going to close with this.
We start 2025 where theconclusion of 2024, we have been
marketed to heavily by allmajor players that agents and
agentification and agentic isgoing to change the entire world
(32:48):
in 2025.
And I believe that.
But I have become more reservedin my thoughts around that of
recent times and I suppose myreservedness has come about by
my expectation of a gentic isthat something will act
autonomously after I press go,and my simplest example of that
(33:11):
is my dishwasher.
I press go, it's going.
That is my dishwasher.
I press go, it's going to cleanmy dishes.
I don't have to go in andintervene most of the time and
I'm going to wake up in themorning and there's going to be
clean, dry dishes that can beput away in the cupboard and you
have a high degree ofconfidence that it will do that.
Simon Hudson (33:31):
That's a key thing .
Mark Smith (33:32):
Yes, a high degree of confidence, right?
I feel that with current airight one, it has this uncanny
ability to give up when it runsout of steam kind of thing.
It doesn't have a what I'd calla heartbeat monitor on it.
You know it doesn't go, it'sit's still ticking over.
Um, I've started doing my owngpts where I give it a books.
(33:55):
I've taken all my kindlelibrary over 300 books and what
I've done is removed, drm off it, and because I'm only using it
for myself, not public, you knowand so then I've used it to
create a intellectual propertyposition accepted as in.
So it allows me now to query itbecause what I found is that I
the way my mind, mind works, Ioften have quotes in my mind
(34:16):
which I have read and then Icannot find them and I want to
attribute to an author, butthat's not available in the
public domain oftentimes.
And so you know, one of thebooks I quote a lot was Brad
Smith.
He wrote a book a couple ofyears ago at Microsoft you know
the head of legal counsel inMicrosoft and there's some
(34:36):
quotes that he has on data, andI needed to get to those quickly
, and so what it's allowed me todo is drill in and get those.
But I've just finished a bookcalled Nexus by the author of
Sapiens and Homo Deus, andincredible view because it's
like it's taught it was onlypublished six months ago, so
(34:59):
it's like up to date around aiand the effects, and he and he
talks about knowledge in thereand how knowledge has been used
over time to and.
But knowledge needed technologyto distribute it, to make it
effective.
Right, the, the printing press,the telegraph and like the rise
of communism and how thatworked and how having networks
(35:21):
of people that knew informationthat others allowed massive
control.
And his concern was that nowyou know, any knowledge in the
world required it to go througha brain to repurpose it into
something else.
Right, you couldn't have a bookwrite another book.
It needed a brain to consumethat book, write a different
(35:42):
view, etc.
And and advance it.
Uh, ai is potentially going tochange that paradigm and and
change how information cantransfer.
Um.
So, in other words, thecommunication and the technology
are combining more and more andso it just gives this, really.
But I went to that book, put itthrough in person and said,
(36:02):
listen, just give me a quote perchapter.
And I said no, I said give me21 quotes out of it.
Well, it took 21 quotes fromthe preface, even though I
directed it to do the wholething, and it was like, oh,
let's take the preface and getyou.
I directed it to do the wholething and it was like, oh, let's
take the preface and get your21 quotes out of that, which
were not great, not what I waslooking for, and so that's, when
(36:22):
I go back to the engendic world, I'm like there's still some
problems to be solved here forme to sit and forget and have
confidence that I'm going to getan output that I'm after.
What are your thoughts?
Simon Hudson (36:35):
Yeah, well, I think you know Microsoft and
everybody else, you know theyhave to create the market.
That's what they're doing now.
You know we're two years intoAI and, yeah, and we're only
just beginning to see thepromises that they made in March
23, you know begin to be real.
I mean there's lots ofexcitement about it.
Some of the tools are great,but they're not without their
(36:56):
flaws Let me be kind on that.
So I think you're absolutelyright that right now there are
dangers of letting the AIs goand do whatever they have been
told to do, because we may havetold them wrong, we may have
told them right but they mightjust not be up to it.
So I think you're absolutelyright to be concerned.
I suspect, pretty confidentactually, that the kind of
(37:19):
things we're going to let theagentic I really don't like that
word, but let the agentictechnologies get their hands on
are going to be the non-criticalsystems to begin with, and
they're going to be done ifthey're done right.
They need to be done with humanoversight to begin with.
I mean, this stuff's all in theMicrosoft Maturity Model piece
on AI anyway.
But you know that need forhuman oversight and to work
(37:41):
confident and put in placehuman-like processes.
I talk about this every now andthen.
It was a guy from Capgemini,actually, that stole his idea,
but he said AIs that take thejob on of a person need to have
the same controls a person wouldhave.
They need to have a manager,they need to have a set of
objectives, they need to haveperformance reviews, they need
(38:03):
to have things that are done tothem if they perform badly.
And so I think that thatmindset of absolutely let's use
agents where they're appropriatebut not just make it a tech
thing you plug it in or leave itto its own devices, but treat
it just the same as anothermember of staff that needs to
live up to their salary andexpectations so I think there's
something really powerful inthat.
(38:24):
However, there's a flip side.
I did a session with do youknow Bill Ayers?
Oh, the name rings a bell BillAyers, longstanding MVP of the
UK.
Definitely someone you shouldget on your show.
He's a fantastic, fascinatingguy.
Bill and I did a session backin Texas in April on AI
doppelgangers.
(38:46):
So because I'm intrinsicallylazy although my dowry says
otherwise, I'm intrinsicallylazy.
I want an AI, Simon.
I want a doppelganger of methat can do some of the things
that I can do.
I want it to know the stuffthat I know.
Going back to all the pointsI've made earlier, I want it to
have the same ethical base as me, so when it makes decisions and
takes judgment, it does it inthe way that I would.
(39:07):
I want it to be able to takesome of the load off me, um, but
I I also want it to be able tofree me up yes, being constantly
on call to people so they cando the thing.
Let me go off and live thiswonderful life that I'm probably
living already, to be honest,um, but I'd like to be able to
do that.
Yeah, do that earlier.
So I want those kind of agents.
I want my ai to have enoughagency to relieve me of the some
(39:32):
of the drudgery, letting me goon and do more, not, yeah and of
some of the drudgery.
Mark Smith (39:35):
The Edmund life Edmund.
Simon Hudson (39:36):
Yeah, and just some of the turn-handle stuff,
because I need to spend my timedoing things which are genuinely
more creative and insightful.
I need to be reading thosehundred books and going oh
that's interesting, because thatbook intersects with this one
and here's a brand new idea thatcomes out of that.
The AI can't do that, but itcan.
Let me have the time to do it.
So that sort of part of mydream is embedding our personal
(40:00):
morality in the machines,getting them to learn from us as
individuals.
Being my buddy that can lookafter my affairs when I'm asleep
or drunk or enjoying myselfCould be all three of those at
once, who knows?
Or enjoying myself Could be allthree of those at once, who
knows, yeah, and letting us movetowards that more utopian world
.
That, I think, is actually agenuine possibility.
You know, we're A hundredpercent.
(40:22):
We might be living in the.
You know we might be the lastgeneration that has to buy
energy, because we're so close,if we have the will and the
political control, so close tohaving, you know, having
unlimited energy for all ofmankind if we don't screw up the
world in Cleveland Zero-costenergy.
Mark Smith (40:40):
I believe that's definitely going to be one of
the solves that we're going toget to, and that excites me
because we saw what energy didto the last 150 years and it was
fossil fuel energy then, and itcame with a price, but the
invention that came from it wasmind-blowing right.
(41:02):
So I think you're on the money,Simon.
I think we could go on forhours.
Thank you so much.
This has been such an enjoyableconversation.
Simon Hudson (41:11):
It's been an absolute pleasure, mark.
I hope this reaches out topeople in the way it's meant to
and I look forward to it.
Are you going to MVP Summit?
Absolutely Good, I will see youthere as soon as I book my air
tickets.
I'll look forward to it.
Lovely Cheers, simon.
Good, have a great day.
Mark Smith (41:26):
Hey, thanks for listening.
I'm your host businessapplication MVP Mark Smith,
otherwise known as the NZ365 guy.
If there's a guest you'd liketo see on the show, please
message me on LinkedIn.
If you want to be a supporterof the show, please check out
buymeacoffeecom.
Forward slash.
Nz365 guy.
Stay safe out there and shootfor the stars.
Welcome to the Power Platform Show.
Thanks for joining me today.
I hope today's guest inspiresand educates you on the
possibilities of the MicrosoftPower Platform.
Now let's get on with the show.
In this episode we'll befocusing on evolving SharePoint
(00:26):
teams and AI.
Ai is affecting everything inthe world we live in these days.
Today's guest is from NorthFurby in England.
He's the founder of NovaWorks.
He is a lead author andfacilitator on the maturity
model for Microsoft 365.
He's the author of two patentsrelating to medical devices,
which is a little interestingfun fact there.
(00:48):
You can find links to his bioand socials in the show notes
for this episode.
Welcome to the show, Simon.
Simon Hudson (00:54):
Yeah, hey, mark, very good to be here.
I wish I was there, though.
New Zealand I've not been toNew Zealand for just over a year
now and I'm missing it badly.
Mark Smith (01:05):
I feel that well, okay, that's not too long ago
though that you know, as I havequite a few guests on from the
United Kingdom and I know you'rein the middle of winter and
here I am, like you know,t-shirts and shorts outside at
the beach every day.
It's a different lifestyle fromwhen I was living in London,
and I was fortunate enough whileI was there in winter well, in
(01:26):
Christmas time to get a snow,which was amazing.
Simon Hudson (01:30):
Yeah, we've had snow in the UK this week, which
is pretty rare these days.
Mark Smith (01:34):
But January man, it can be bleak in London eh.
Simon Hudson (01:37):
It can be bleak everywhere in the UK.
Yeah, winter I mean it's beentwo months of just cloud, you
know, yeah, you know the light'sout winter it's been two months
of just cloud.
Mark Smith (01:44):
Yeah, the lights out at 3 pm in the afternoon
doesn't come on till nine oftenand as I'm going to say lights
out, the sun's gone, Yep.
Simon Hudson (01:50):
You're absolutely right.
On the other hand, we'regetting sunnier weather starting
now and you guys are going intowinter.
That's it.
That's it, the solstice haspassed right.
Mark Smith (02:03):
Yeah, crazy times Food family and fun.
Simon Hudson (02:04):
What do they mean for you?
Oh gosh.
Well, let's start with myfamily, because that's kind of
important.
Um, I've been married tochristine, my beautiful wife,
for 38 years now 38 years.
God, she has a medal, um, soshe's sitting downstairs trying
to get over the cold that youcan also hear in my voice today,
but, uh, we've been together along time and it's still great,
so that's rather nice.
And then, um, we have adaughter together well,
(02:26):
obviously together, I guess.
Um, she's uh, 28.
She's a beautiful young ladycalled ella hudson, and she's
soon to be dr ella hudson.
She's, uh, just submitted herphd thesis in biotechnology and
just landed the dream job thatshe's been after for the last
seven years.
So, yeah, so my family are kindof important.
(02:46):
They're all quite close to me,so that's rather nice.
I love it.
Food, food.
Oh well, I mean, I've got norestrictions on food.
I love all foods from alldifferent things, apart from
cheese.
Cheese makes me unbelievably ill, um, but apart from yeah, yeah,
no, some people say it's a badthing.
I mean, how would I know?
Um, so, yeah, cheese is good,but but foods that I love and I
(03:07):
cook a lot.
In fact, I've been a lot for along time.
I've been the main cook in thehouse.
We redid the kitchen a coupleof years ago so I had an even
bigger, more fun space to cookin.
So, yeah, and we're justliterally this.
Last couple of days, we of days, we've started on a thing where
we're going to try and bevegetarian during weekdays.
Certainly for the next monthwe'll see how that goes.
Mark Smith (03:26):
We're not vegetarians, but but we want to
try and do our bit, so we'regoing to try to be vegetarian
five days a week well, in london, my wife and I did it for a
month, you know, and and here'sthe thing I I was brought up
very much a carnivore and on adairy farm and things like that,
and a meal wasn't a meal if itdidn't have meat in it, type
thing.
And so I, you know, for me itwas around changing a paradigm
(03:49):
that was stuck in my mind thatyou can't have tasty food if it
didn't include, you know, a meatbased protein.
And so I think, yeah, I'm bigon changing paradigms that you
inherited through yourupbringing that might not work
for you now, or that society hasfed us that might not work for
(04:09):
you Precisely.
Simon Hudson (04:12):
We didn't cover fun, fun, oh well, there's just
a list that goes on and on andon.
I'm sorry, I'll give you thesummary Music, love music.
I've seen I think I'm on my129th band now because I keep
track of them all.
I've seen I think I'm on my129th band now because I keep
track of them all.
I've got a massive musiccollection of CDs and loads of
vinyl and a very good hi-fi andI play guitar and mandolin.
(04:32):
I'm trying to learn gypsy jazzguitar, which is really hard.
I love my cars.
I've got a couple of classiccars, a couple of Beats,
actually, yeah.
But I also have an EV and we'relooking to buy our second ev
this year.
Games we played dungeons anddragons a lot.
We do all sorts of board games.
I taught my daughter to beincredibly competitive at games,
(04:53):
um, so she beats me.
Now we ski, uh, and then I'veboth spent the rest of the time
boring people to death, eitherabout sustainability issues or
technology.
Mark Smith (05:02):
I love it.
So on my property, my wife andI between us is we've created a
brand called High Tech Hippies,which she came up with, and it's
because we are trying to narrowone of the things that we've
got an acre and a half and I'vegot a big garden and I'm
starting to develop a foodforest because I want to
(05:25):
eliminate the transportationbetween the plate and my food
source and, um, and we don'thave any animals, which was very
like.
The first thing I did when Ibought the property was put
fencing in for animals and we'vedecided, no, we're not going to
have animals per se.
I mean, we have cats and um,and I'll get chickens at some
point for the eggs, but I'm notgetting typically I would have
(05:48):
got sheep or a cow or somethinglike that on, you know, to
fatten up type thing.
And yeah, so sustainability inthe last, particularly probably
since moving back to New Zealand, has become a massive focus for
us from a practical perspective, not so much in our business
lives.
But how are we?
What can we do to change things?
You know, I have a worm farm torecycle my vegetables.
(06:11):
I collect all my gray water inthe property and I recycle it
multiple times across trees andplants on the property.
You know, if I collect a dropof water I to you know benefit,
get benefit from it three orfour times before it is um, you
know, goes back into the earthtype thing.
So I'm trying to maximize thatyep, and it's really interesting
(06:34):
.
Simon Hudson (06:34):
I mean, I got into the whole energy transition
part because of my background,um, which we'll talk about in a
sec, um, but, um, the energy waswhere I started and then I
realized it wasn't just aboutenergy, it's also about all the
other parts of sustainabilityand diet and the way we eat is a
big part of that.
But it's just interesting to doLearning to cook just with
really interesting, exciting,nutritious meals with no meat.
(06:57):
That's a fun thing to do.
Mark Smith (06:59):
So another challenge is the craft to pick up and you
just need to look at often theIndian cooking, the amazing
flavors that profiles that theycan bring out in food and you
know, and they're totallyvegetarian-based dishes.
Simon Hudson (07:13):
Yeah, about all sorts of Asian food.
I mean, there's such a range ofdifferent stuff you can do and
I'm busy trying to, you know,pick up as many techniques as I
can from wherever they are.
Mark Smith (07:22):
What's your favorite feature in your kitchen that
you remodeled?
Simon Hudson (07:27):
I mean, I guess the main thing is I've just got
an awful lot of workspace now,you know, we've got rid of all
the clutter, we just got I don'tknow eight or ten meters of
usable worktop, and so thatmeans I can spread out and get
all my stuff prepared and youknow, I can have, you know, the
dehydrator going in one cornerand my bread machine in another
and still have plenty ofworkspace.
But I guess the big thing,actually it took some doing, it
(07:52):
took a couple of chefs, I know,to convince me to switching from
a gas hob to an induction hob.
Mark Smith (07:57):
Wow, interesting, interesting.
Simon Hudson (08:00):
So we're a fully electric home, now without gas
Wow.
Mark Smith (08:04):
I've just been approved to build my home our
home on the property here, whichhas been laborious.
I left London in 2019 and thearchitecture for it had been
started in 2018 and we've onlyjust got to approval.
It's a long process and one ofthe things in the kitchen that
we're doing quite different thanmost is putting a commercial
(08:27):
underbench dishwasher in.
Oh yeah, okay, because they'remuch more efficient than your
normal home dishwashers.
I did not know that and theyturn around like typically I've
got where I am now a dish drawerand it takes an hour 15 minutes
to do a standard cycle.
A dish drawer and it takes anhour 15 minutes to do a standard
cycle.
A commercial dishwasher takesfive minutes to do the same.
(08:47):
High-level sterility,cleanliness, that type of thing,
yep, without that running foran hour 15 minutes.
And so it's just like and itwas from an architect they said
listen, this is probably thegame-changing feature we
recommend in new builds is thatyou pay a little bit more for a
commercial dishwasher.
(09:08):
It's still small, not a bigindustrial machine, but they run
quite differently than yourhome user unit.
Simon Hudson (09:15):
I've never heard that before.
I'm going to have to go andinvestigate that now because
it's interesting.
I want to see what the energyprofile looks like, but also
what's the water use look like.
Mark Smith (09:23):
Yeah, let's move on and talk about your career.
How did it get to where it is?
What are you focused on now?
What's the big bets that you'remaking from your career at this
time?
Simon Hudson (09:35):
Well, I'll give you the kind of, you know, the
bullet point version, then we'llexpand on that.
I mean, you know, the reallyshort version looks like physics
, medical device, corporateentrepreneurship, retirement.
That's my career in a nutshell.
Not exactly an obvious careerpath, however, yeah, I studied
physics, did undergraduate andpostgrad in physics and bit of
chemistry Rubbish chemistry,don't ask me chemistry questions
(09:57):
and then I spent 15 yearsworking in the medical device
industry globally, which wasreally cool.
I mean, I learned a lot, got todo some fantastic things, you
know, traveled the world.
That's where my patents comefrom.
I designed two new.
I designed a lot of newproducts, but two of them were
patentable.
I made a difference.
That was a big thing.
I designed products that helpedpeople, and so mostly it was
(10:20):
chronic wound dressings.
So these are the horriblewounds that don't tend to heal,
usually in compromised, uh,older people, and I designed
things and sold things to tryand make that better to manage,
better for the patients, betterfor the clinicians.
So, and make the wounds heal.
How long ago?
Oh gosh, um, that's probably 18years since I left that
(10:43):
industry, something like that,maybe 20.
Mark Smith (10:47):
And you know, patents interest me and it's
something that I feel that Ineed to do at some point.
But I just feel like, is it along, drawn out process to get a
patent, or is it a relativelystraightforward?
And from the UK perspective, ifthat's where you did it, I mean
, you know.
Simon Hudson (11:03):
New Zealand patent law and the UK patent law are
very similar because mydaughter's becoming a patent
lawyer, so I know these thingsnow.
Oh, no way.
Yeah, yeah, the key thing is,you know, to invent something
which is genuinely patentable.
That's the first step.
And there's a whole bunch ofthings, but it needs to be an
inventive step that an ordinaryperson knowledgeable in the
field wouldn't automaticallycome up with and which hasn't
(11:24):
been done before or talked aboutin public.
So that's your short version.
So, um, you know, if you cancome up with a great idea that
is patentable, then that's yourfirst step.
Getting it patented usually cantake six months to a year if
it's a good one.
You know there's a whole bunchof searches to make sure that no
one's going to challenge it.
You know you do a bunch ofstuff, or your patent attorney
(11:46):
does a bunch of stuff, and thenthe patent office themselves
does a bunch of stuff, which ismostly publishing it and waiting
to see if anybody comes backand says this is infringement or
we've already got that idea orno.
It's just being obvious.
But it can be fairly quick.
The the hard thing is thenprotecting the patent.
Um, so anybody can come alongand challenge it and go.
(12:07):
Actually, you know we've gotsomething.
We either want to work aroundpatent, in which case you
challenge them, or they've gotprior art that they come back
and go.
Actually, we need to constrainthe patent or have it struck off
.
So there's more money.
It's more costly to protect apatent than it is to create one.
It's a fascinating area, though.
In the UK or maybe there's morepatents that come out of Great
(12:33):
Britain and I guess what we usedto call the Commonwealth heaven
knows what we call it thesedays without treading on toes
than everywhere else in theworld put together, which is
kind of cool.
Mark Smith (12:42):
Yeah, yeah, I worked at IBM for three years and they
used to be the top patentproducers and just to recent
times that they have now droppedout of that.
And I've spoken with peopleinside Microsoft and they get
patent awards every time theyget something patented for
Microsoft and often there waswith the MVP program and stuff.
Why is there so much secrecyaround everything?
(13:03):
And it's because of what yousaid before.
If too many, they can't patentsomething.
If too many people, if it'sleaked down the public domain or
anything like that, yeah, it'snot too many people.
Simon Hudson (13:12):
If anybody says oh , I've already heard about that,
that's it, Patent's dead.
Mark Smith (13:17):
Yeah, it's sub 50, isn't it?
It's like a very low number,it's none.
Simon Hudson (13:22):
It's none.
It's none If you go and talk toyour mate down the pub and go,
I've got this great idea, andthen he gets challenged by the
patent lawyers and goes youheard of this, it's in the
public domain, it's none, whichis kind of scary.
So you're absolutely right.
I sit on the Microsoft forStartups Advisors Board so I
(13:43):
talk to quite a lot of startupsthrough that and through the
university stuff that I do, andone of the top things I tell
them is you know, don't tellyour mates about it.
If you think you've got a greatidea, you can talk to me
because we're under NDA, butdon't tell anybody about it.
Maybe your partner maybe, butmake sure he or she knows and
not to talk about it.
(14:03):
Yeah, great stuff.
That's so interesting.
And of course, the purpose ofpatents is not to hide your
invention, it's to put the stuffout there so everyone knows how
to do it.
But you get the benefits of itfor a little while.
So basically, you're givingmankind your brilliant idea in
return for about a quarter of alifetime's benefit from that.
Mark Smith (14:24):
Yeah, I've gone through a trademarking process,
so I know one.
I had to go through multipleiterations because it was not
only just a word trademark, itwas also a design trademark.
And you know, the firstiterations were considered to be
too infringing on othersbecause it involved the silver
fern, which in New Zealand is,as you can imagine, a big deal.
And so I finally got it through.
And then, of course, where Ireally spent the money and the
(14:48):
10 plus years of having it isthe infringement.
Yep, Somebody comes along, setsup a new company and decided to
use the whole phrase in it.
They've not done any researchor anything, and of course it
flagged to my attention and thenI had to lawyer up because it's
only as good as you can defendit right.
Simon Hudson (15:06):
And so, yeah, yeah , it's a really interesting
space.
The whole intellectual propertyfield is fascinating and
probably deserve a bit moreattention from the tech people,
not just in terms of protectingwhat they do, but actually
building some better tools fordoing intellectual property
management, and AI is both aproblem and a solution in that
space.
Mark Smith (15:26):
I like it.
Let's drill into that.
Tell us about in the discussionwe had before.
You've been involved inSharePoint, teams and AI.
Just let's take those threebroad headings.
What are your thoughts on them,your experience with them and
your thoughts going forward withthem?
Simon Hudson (15:45):
Well, I guess you know SharePoint's where I'm
going to start, because it'sliterally where I started in my
move into tech, because Ihaven't got a tech background.
You know, I think that shockspeople sometimes.
Here I am as an MVP and they goso which technology?
No, I've never been in IT,actually I just started IT
companies.
But SharePoint for me wasreally interesting.
(16:05):
I guess I've had my hands onSharePoint since Team Server, so
pre-WSS, pre-sharepoint 2001.
Because of its ability to doinformation management, I mean
the way.
I think my science background inparticular lends me to think
about things in terms ofinformation architecture and
structures.
Sharepoint and also, slightlybefore that, probably Lotus
(16:27):
Notes, lotus Domino, were thefirst tools I had hands-on that
let me start to structure theinformation stores I wanted to
do whatever the heck I was doingin my career at that time, and
so then, when I left the medicaldevice industry, I ended up
working for an IT companyrunning their medical division
over in beautiful York, and theywere doing nothing with
(16:49):
SharePoint.
They were doing loads of stuffwith content management tools,
big, expensive tools likeVignette I mean proper expensive
, yes, yes, I remember Vignetteand I said well, this SharePoint
thing looks like it can do alot of what you're doing, but
for like 10% of the cost, whichdidn't actually please them
because they figured they couldmake more money out of Vignette.
I don't know if anyone buysVignette anymore.
I I don't know if anyone buysvignettes anymore.
(17:09):
I think they may have backedthe wrong camel there.
But I got more and more intolooking at SharePoint as a tool
and then realized and this wasreally the core of me becoming
an entrepreneur realized thatall the dozens and dozens of
companies and organizations Iwas talking to when you drilled
right down into it, what theyneeded was basically always the
same.
There was a core sort ofknowledge and information
(17:31):
structure that everybody has.
It's about sort of, um, youknow, centralized content
management, you know documentcenter, about departmental
activity.
But there's two halves to thatthe internal department and the
outward facing part of thedepartment.
There's all these structures Isaw appearing time and time
again, and every time I spoke tothe tech guys in the company I
was working for and others,their solution was throw a bunch
of developers at it, do somecomplicated pointers.
Time again, and every time Ispoke to the tech guys in the
(17:51):
company I was working for andothers, their solution was throw
a bunch of developers at it, dosome complicated pointers,
waterfall processes and build abrand new one from the ground up
.
Now this is crazy.
They all have the same needs.
They may not know it, but 90 ofwhat they do is the same.
Why don't we just build a corethat has that 90 and spend the
rest of the money on actuallydoing the bit that's unique to
them?
So they didn't listen.
(18:13):
So I left in interestingcircumstances and started my own
company doing exactly what I'dbeen saying.
I set up Cloud2.
We built a product calledHadron and Hadron embodied all
of that, the informationarchitecture that I'd been
working over for five years orso, and we think that was the
very first SharePoint-based whatthey now call an internet in
(18:35):
the box.
We call it a solutionaccelerator, but we think it was
that.
There's just one other companythat maybe has equal claim to
that, and we did that.
We mostly focused on buildingthat for the NHS because, man,
they needed stuff At the time.
It was the average time, becausewe looked at the research to
build an intranet was two yearsupwards of quarter million
(18:55):
pounds.
Wow, wow, two years, quartermillion pounds, you know, half a
million new zealand dollars um,we were doing it in 14 weeks
and about a hundred thousanddollars amazing.
So.
So that was that was my thingand there's sharepoint developed
.
We kept reworking the model anddoing more things, but for us
(19:15):
it was always really about theinformation management and
architecture and thecollaboration and not really
about the traditional commswanting internet where they can
put some things that no one'sever going to read.
So that was the heart of mystory.
And then, towards the end of mytime at Cloud2, because I guess
I ran that with my businesspartner for 10 years or
(19:35):
thereabouts and I had an exitplan and then, about 18 months
before I exited, teams camealong.
Yes, and at first I went.
I don't really know what thisis Teams it looks like a not
very good version of that otherproduct that I've completely
forgotten the name of now.
Mark Smith (19:51):
That was like a stream of consciousness sharing
Link originally, and then Skype.
Simon Hudson (19:56):
No, a competitor product.
I can't even remember what it'scalled, it doesn't matter.
Ah, yes, yes, Slack.
So that's the one which I hated.
I hated and I thought the Teamswas just Microsoft's bad
attempt to build Slack.
And then I had this road toDamascus moment and I go oh, but
you can store content in it andyou can expose that content
through tabs and channels, andyou can structure channels
(20:16):
within team areas and you canactually build an information
architecture aroundcollaboration.
And that lit me up enormously.
So I can build informationarchitecture for collaboration,
not just for content.
And at that point I suddenlybecame one of the biggest voices
of saying you know this Teamsthing, we really ought to be
doing it.
And I built out a couple ofmodels for Teams solutions in
(20:38):
the same way that I had forSharePoint, and started
migrating the whole concept ofan intranet into being embedded
inside Teams, so you wouldn'thave to go to SharePoint for one
thing and something else, youjust go to Teams.
All your stuff would be there,including your email and your
calendars.
And that model still continues.
I think Microsoft are catchingup on the idea now.
But the idea was your entireworkspace is inside Teams, yeah,
(21:02):
Except when you have to spawnout to go and do something else.
So we did a lot with Teams andI've continued doing that a
little bit since I retired.
So I left Cloud2.
I shut down a second company, amedical company that I started,
so I now just have a smallconsulting company.
We still do a bit of workhelping people get on board with
teams, and all the people thatI'd helped that took my advice.
(21:25):
When that thing that happened afew years ago, that pandemic-y
thing happened and we weren'tallowed to walk outside the
house, all the companies thathad taken my advice just went
and switched to remote workingwithout missing a beat and all
the others ran around with theirheads on fire.
So I was really quite proud ofthat piece of envisioning that
we had Now introduce AI.
Yeah, so I mean I guess we'recoming up to two years into AI
(21:51):
now, aren't we?
Mark Smith (21:52):
November 22,.
Right, no November 23.
Simon Hudson (21:55):
Yeah, coming up to two years, you know, since you
know, sort of human-readablelarge language models came along
and changed the profile andthat's been really interesting.
Yeah, I played around with AI alot to begin with.
I spent a fair bit of timetalking about the benefits,
allaying people's fears aboutthe fact that you know they
probably won't ruin societyovernight.
(22:16):
It almost certainly won't takepeople's jobs, but it will take
the jobs away from people thatdon't learn to use AI as every
technology in the history ofmankind has done.
You know, if you don't adaptand move on, you will be
affected, but there won't be aloss of jobs overall.
And I did quite a bit of stufflooking at the ethics and
morality of AI, and still do so.
(22:37):
I have an ongoing I'd like tocall it a project.
That's far too grand a title,but I have an activity to try
and find out how we can buildethics into AI If we don't have
it at the moment.
The moment we build ethicsaround AI.
We put these guardrails up thatqualify the stuff we ask it, so
you can't ask it to do nastythings and qualifies what it
puts out so it can't tell younasty things.
(22:58):
I want to build it into theheart of it.
And the reason is at some pointvery soon we've seen it in the
last few months agents arecoming.
We saw agents running insideself-driving cars already.
These agents are goingeverywhere and we need to
understand what their moralframework is.
And those moral frameworks needto be definable in a way that
(23:19):
we can say you know, you guys inNew Zealand you've got a
slightly different view onthings than us laggards here in
the UK have, and we're certainlya good deal different to the
ones over in the US.
I don't think I want to trustmy car to use an AI built with
US morality.
It's going to run some peopleover that I don't want to run
over.
So I'm really interested inthat.
(23:39):
Ethics of AI, not in terms ofhow do we use it, but how do we
make them ethical, because if wecan get that right, maybe our
AIs can be the better version ofus.
Mark Smith (23:49):
Well, yeah, my specific thoughts are very, very
utopian in the future of whereAI will go and even on difficult
things like organizational biasthat has been built up over
potentially decades.
For then why couldn't we havean agent, a bias agent, that
(24:10):
explicitly goes out andquantifies that and cleans it up
and, you know, helps enact newpolicy?
So we don't just employ 99%males that are white, that are
you know, because that's whatwe've always done and therefore
we're modeling off what we'vealways done and that's how the
you know that bias becomesinstitutionalized.
(24:32):
So I do agree with you Onething that struck me recently
with you know, copilot and theMicrosoft Graph and people you
know using it, and they've beencollecting data For the last 10
years we've talked about one ofthe mega trends that are going
to affect the world is theproliferation of data and it's
(24:56):
funny now because it's almostlike we don't have enough data
and the need for training in thefuture, and I think models will
evolve with this.
And then there's synthetic data, of course, coming in now with
AI generated.
But one of the challenges isthat humans make mistakes and no
matter how hard we try to stophumans making mistakes and it
(25:16):
was funny, I was on a callyesterday and someone said what
do I need to change in what I'mdoing?
And I'm like, I'm not good atspelling.
It's part of my dyslexia and nomatter how hard I try, I can't
see that I've spelt somethingwrong.
I can't see it, and so if I'mgoing to go, I need to correct
that mistake.
(25:37):
I've got to understand thatit's a mistake in the first
place before I can correct it.
The problem is in institutionsand organizations that have
SharePoint teams, et cetera,micro mistakes have been made
all the time.
You didn't put the correct T'sand C's in a document, you
didn't adjust the numbers in aspreadsheet, you dropped
(25:58):
something that's changed thecalculations, all these little
incremental and then you copythat document and now there's 10
different proliferations ofthat mistake and you amplify
that across thousands ofemployees, potentially an
organization.
And then we go hey, ai, learnour organizational data and
let's use that as a groundingpoint.
(26:19):
And then we go oh my gosh, aiis hallucinating.
Is it hallucinating?
It actually might be justpresenting back to us massive
organizational mistakes that ishuman to make.
And so, therefore, I think thatyou know the ai story inside
any organization is a data story, and although we've been
(26:40):
collecting data for years.
There needs to be an amount oftriage on that data to and then
also narrowing down when we havean ai use case, to make sure
that we're not giving it theocean to operate on, but really
we're giving it just the dataset that is pertinent to the AI
(27:00):
task, rather than we're going,hey, let's just give it access
to everything and let it learnand find the patterns, because
the problem is it's finding thepatterns of error and thinking
that it's truth.
Simon Hudson (27:11):
Absolutely, and people like you and I and those
within the community have beenbanging on about the importance
of data governance since AIfirst became a thing a year and
a half ago.
Because if you've got bad datain your organization and, let's
face it, almost everyorganization's data is rubbish
you know they've got some greatstuff in there, but they've kept
it mixed in with all therubbish Then you're going to get
(27:32):
bad results.
It's a garbage in, garbage outmodel on steroids.
So we've definitely got thatproblem and I think maybe one of
the greatest initial benefitsof AI is going to be getting
people to sort their data out.
Yeah, so I'm a silver liningkind of a guy.
Maybe people actually go well,maybe we do need to do that.
(27:52):
That's something they've beentelling us to do for a decade.
Mark Smith (27:55):
Have you seen any tools that orgs can use that can
potentially help them with this?
Simon Hudson (28:00):
I mean, there's loads of tools.
At the end of the day, it'sstill a human judgment thing and
it's a process thing.
You know, obviously Microsofthave got tools like Purview.
I think that that isn't reallygoing to help with the legacy
data issues or governance issues.
I think it's pretty good atdoing some things about looking
at the quality of the data,putting in effective lifecycle
(28:21):
management stuff all thatcontent management where.
I started 30 years ago Doing allthat stuff.
Right, there's no shortage oftools, but someone's going to
have to, in each organization,bite the bullet and go.
You know we're going toimplement policies now, and I'm
not talking technology policies,I'm talking organizational
policies.
You will not keep your rubbishfor 30 years.
You know you're going to getrid of it after six months
(28:43):
unless it's subject to aretention policy.
You are not going to createduplicates and if you do, it's a
disciplinary offense.
You're not going to do allthese things that we've got away
with because we had too muchstory space and people couldn't
find the time or wouldn't makethe time to clear up.
So I think there's some stuffthere.
However, there's a big caveat tothis, which is there is an
(29:06):
argument to say that progress ismade through making mistakes.
Yeah, so there's a little bitof me that wants to get rid of
all the dangerous and and stupidmistakes, but a bit of them.
It says we still need to beallowed to have errors because
the errors make us go.
Oh, that's interesting.
I wonder what that's telling me.
(29:27):
Or or that chart I just saw.
I know someone's just told meit's wrong, but what would it
take to get there, and so Ithink so, yeah, evolution thing,
because evolution is a processof errors and some of them are
big and non-viable and some ofthem are small and progressive.
So I think that we need to findways to allow error, but to
(29:48):
make sure that we govern thatwhich is truly dangerous and
accept that AIs are certainly nobetter than people but we'll
probably talk about this more.
But this concept and, I think,microsoft, to their credit,
because they get a lot of stuffwrong, but to their credit this
idea of a co-pilot, somethingthat sits alongside you, you
work with it, it works with you,you correct its mistakes and,
(30:10):
man, it makes a lot of those.
I've been doing some codingtoday and it just makes mistakes
, but I'm smart enough not to beable to write the code but to
be able to go.
That's not right.
And then it corrects me when Iget stuff wrong.
So that co-piloty my buddy whoworks with me, my shadow, that
(30:31):
has lots of merit and allowingourselves to make mistakes, but
then correcting each other ishow we learn.
Have you watched Silo?
I'm five episodes in, literallystarted at the beginning of the
week.
Mark Smith (30:43):
Just because you use that phrase shadow, and of
course it's very yeah, I love itas in it's actually enhanced my
keenness to get back into a bitof sci-fi, because of where we
are, you know, in the world andoh well, I'll tell you what you
know, going off off piece for amoment.
Simon Hudson (31:00):
Go and find all the books there's only three at
the moment by stuart turton.
It's sort of sci-fi but it'scleverer than just sci-fi.
I'm a big sci-fi fan but stuartturton, top author, start the
Seven Deaths of EvelynHardcastle and if you don't like
it, I'll give you your moneyback.
Mark Smith (31:20):
So here's the thing I don't read a lot of novels,
but I got into Dan Brown and thereason I don't get into them?
Because my life goes on hold,because I've got to keep reading
and that means all through thenight.
I just read and his most recentbook, which was published maybe
four years ago five years ago,okay, it's all set in Spain and
(31:48):
how much of a predictor of AIthat book was is off the Richter
scale.
Mind-blowing compared to wherewe are now.
Off the Richter scalemind-blowing compared to where
we are now.
His ability to mix the realworld with where things could go
just honestly amazing.
Simon Hudson (32:02):
Yeah, there are some really interesting
visionaries out there.
I mean, you know the number ofbooks that get published a year.
Someone's going to get it rightsome other time.
But I think Dan Brown's reallyinteresting and he raises some
interesting positions in hisbooks.
Are they great literature?
They don't need to be.
They tell a good story, greatstorytelling and they present
some interesting ideas.
Mark Smith (32:21):
Yeah, I see we're already over time.
This has been such aninteresting discussion.
I'm going to close with this.
We start 2025 where theconclusion of 2024, we have been
marketed to heavily by allmajor players that agents and
agentification and agentic isgoing to change the entire world
(32:48):
in 2025.
And I believe that.
But I have become more reservedin my thoughts around that of
recent times and I suppose myreservedness has come about by
my expectation of a gentic isthat something will act
autonomously after I press go,and my simplest example of that
(33:11):
is my dishwasher.
I press go, it's going.
That is my dishwasher.
I press go, it's going to cleanmy dishes.
I don't have to go in andintervene most of the time and
I'm going to wake up in themorning and there's going to be
clean, dry dishes that can beput away in the cupboard and you
have a high degree ofconfidence that it will do that.
Simon Hudson (33:31):
That's a key thing .
Mark Smith (33:32):
Yes, a high degree of confidence, right?
I feel that with current airight one, it has this uncanny
ability to give up when it runsout of steam kind of thing.
It doesn't have a what I'd calla heartbeat monitor on it.
You know it doesn't go, it'sit's still ticking over.
Um, I've started doing my owngpts where I give it a books.
(33:55):
I've taken all my kindlelibrary over 300 books and what
I've done is removed, drm off it, and because I'm only using it
for myself, not public, you knowand so then I've used it to
create a intellectual propertyposition accepted as in.
So it allows me now to query itbecause what I found is that I
the way my mind, mind works, Ioften have quotes in my mind
(34:16):
which I have read and then Icannot find them and I want to
attribute to an author, butthat's not available in the
public domain oftentimes.
And so you know, one of thebooks I quote a lot was Brad
Smith.
He wrote a book a couple ofyears ago at Microsoft you know
the head of legal counsel inMicrosoft and there's some
(34:36):
quotes that he has on data, andI needed to get to those quickly
, and so what it's allowed me todo is drill in and get those.
But I've just finished a bookcalled Nexus by the author of
Sapiens and Homo Deus, andincredible view because it's
like it's taught it was onlypublished six months ago, so
(34:59):
it's like up to date around aiand the effects, and he and he
talks about knowledge in thereand how knowledge has been used
over time to and.
But knowledge needed technologyto distribute it, to make it
effective.
Right, the, the printing press,the telegraph and like the rise
of communism and how thatworked and how having networks
(35:21):
of people that knew informationthat others allowed massive
control.
And his concern was that nowyou know, any knowledge in the
world required it to go througha brain to repurpose it into
something else.
Right, you couldn't have a bookwrite another book.
It needed a brain to consumethat book, write a different
(35:42):
view, etc.
And and advance it.
Uh, ai is potentially going tochange that paradigm and and
change how information cantransfer.
Um.
So, in other words, thecommunication and the technology
are combining more and more andso it just gives this, really.
But I went to that book, put itthrough in person and said,
(36:02):
listen, just give me a quote perchapter.
And I said no, I said give me21 quotes out of it.
Well, it took 21 quotes fromthe preface, even though I
directed it to do the wholething, and it was like, oh,
let's take the preface and getyou.
I directed it to do the wholething and it was like, oh, let's
take the preface and get your21 quotes out of that, which
were not great, not what I waslooking for, and so that's, when
(36:22):
I go back to the engendic world, I'm like there's still some
problems to be solved here forme to sit and forget and have
confidence that I'm going to getan output that I'm after.
What are your thoughts?
Simon Hudson (36:35):
Yeah, well, I think you know Microsoft and
everybody else, you know theyhave to create the market.
That's what they're doing now.
You know we're two years intoAI and, yeah, and we're only
just beginning to see thepromises that they made in March
23, you know begin to be real.
I mean there's lots ofexcitement about it.
Some of the tools are great,but they're not without their
(36:56):
flaws Let me be kind on that.
So I think you're absolutelyright that right now there are
dangers of letting the AIs goand do whatever they have been
told to do, because we may havetold them wrong, we may have
told them right but they mightjust not be up to it.
So I think you're absolutelyright to be concerned.
I suspect, pretty confidentactually, that the kind of
(37:19):
things we're going to let theagentic I really don't like that
word, but let the agentictechnologies get their hands on
are going to be the non-criticalsystems to begin with, and
they're going to be done ifthey're done right.
They need to be done with humanoversight to begin with.
I mean, this stuff's all in theMicrosoft Maturity Model piece
on AI anyway.
But you know that need forhuman oversight and to work
(37:41):
confident and put in placehuman-like processes.
I talk about this every now andthen.
It was a guy from Capgemini,actually, that stole his idea,
but he said AIs that take thejob on of a person need to have
the same controls a person wouldhave.
They need to have a manager,they need to have a set of
objectives, they need to haveperformance reviews, they need
(38:03):
to have things that are done tothem if they perform badly.
And so I think that thatmindset of absolutely let's use
agents where they're appropriatebut not just make it a tech
thing you plug it in or leave itto its own devices, but treat
it just the same as anothermember of staff that needs to
live up to their salary andexpectations so I think there's
something really powerful inthat.
(38:24):
However, there's a flip side.
I did a session with do youknow Bill Ayers?
Oh, the name rings a bell BillAyers, longstanding MVP of the
UK.
Definitely someone you shouldget on your show.
He's a fantastic, fascinatingguy.
Bill and I did a session backin Texas in April on AI
doppelgangers.
(38:46):
So because I'm intrinsicallylazy although my dowry says
otherwise, I'm intrinsicallylazy.
I want an AI, Simon.
I want a doppelganger of methat can do some of the things
that I can do.
I want it to know the stuffthat I know.
Going back to all the pointsI've made earlier, I want it to
have the same ethical base as me, so when it makes decisions and
takes judgment, it does it inthe way that I would.
(39:07):
I want it to be able to takesome of the load off me, um, but
I I also want it to be able tofree me up yes, being constantly
on call to people so they cando the thing.
Let me go off and live thiswonderful life that I'm probably
living already, to be honest,um, but I'd like to be able to
do that.
Yeah, do that earlier.
So I want those kind of agents.
I want my ai to have enoughagency to relieve me of the some
(39:32):
of the drudgery, letting me goon and do more, not, yeah and of
some of the drudgery.
Mark Smith (39:35):
The Edmund life Edmund.
Simon Hudson (39:36):
Yeah, and just some of the turn-handle stuff,
because I need to spend my timedoing things which are genuinely
more creative and insightful.
I need to be reading thosehundred books and going oh
that's interesting, because thatbook intersects with this one
and here's a brand new idea thatcomes out of that.
The AI can't do that, but itcan.
Let me have the time to do it.
So that sort of part of mydream is embedding our personal
(40:00):
morality in the machines,getting them to learn from us as
individuals.
Being my buddy that can lookafter my affairs when I'm asleep
or drunk or enjoying myselfCould be all three of those at
once, who knows?
Or enjoying myself Could be allthree of those at once, who
knows, yeah, and letting us movetowards that more utopian world
.
That, I think, is actually agenuine possibility.
You know, we're A hundredpercent.
(40:22):
We might be living in the.
You know we might be the lastgeneration that has to buy
energy, because we're so close,if we have the will and the
political control, so close tohaving, you know, having
unlimited energy for all ofmankind if we don't screw up the
world in Cleveland Zero-costenergy.
Mark Smith (40:40):
I believe that's definitely going to be one of
the solves that we're going toget to, and that excites me
because we saw what energy didto the last 150 years and it was
fossil fuel energy then, and itcame with a price, but the
invention that came from it wasmind-blowing right.
(41:02):
So I think you're on the money,Simon.
I think we could go on forhours.
Thank you so much.
This has been such an enjoyableconversation.
Simon Hudson (41:11):
It's been an absolute pleasure, mark.
I hope this reaches out topeople in the way it's meant to
and I look forward to it.
Are you going to MVP Summit?
Absolutely Good, I will see youthere as soon as I book my air
tickets.
I'll look forward to it.
Lovely Cheers, simon.
Good, have a great day.
Mark Smith (41:26):
Hey, thanks for listening.
I'm your host businessapplication MVP Mark Smith,
otherwise known as the NZ365 guy.
If there's a guest you'd liketo see on the show, please
message me on LinkedIn.
If you want to be a supporterof the show, please check out
buymeacoffeecom.
Forward slash.
Nz365 guy.
Stay safe out there and shootfor the stars.
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