Creatives: Scaling with Soul - How can AI empower founders not replace them with Bridget Greenwood

Bridget Greenwood: 00:00:05

Back then I would speak to businesses and financial services and they were saying, "Our customers don't use social media. There's no way they'll want to talk about their finances on social media. We don't understand that it's a compliant risk and it's a reputational risk".

Right. And now no business in their right mind would ever think about starting up without a digital strategy. It's now the default.

You're listening to WithAI FM.

Lena Robinson: 00:00:32

Hi, welcome to Creatives WithAI. I'm your host, Lena Robinson, and today we have a wonderful guest, Bridget Greenwood. Welcome, Bridget.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:00:42

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Lena Robinson: 00:00:46

I'm really excited to have you on. You and I have chatted. I think it was even before Christmas originally actually.

And I'm really looking forward to the conversation today because the area that you work in is. Or one of the areas that you work in is helping organisations with. I think the wording you use.

I'm just looking at my notes here was around a prompt engineer and I don't think we've had a prompt engineer on here. But there's some other things that's really interesting about you. You're a founder of the bigger pie, which I'll get you to talk about in a minute.

A co founder of. Now, let me get this right. The 200 Billionaire Club.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:01:32

200 Billion Club (The 200BnClub)

Lena Robinson: 00:01:35

200 Billion Club (The 200BnClub). Apologies. What I like as well is that you're a real person that stands up for looking after women in the business sector.

So backing female founders around things like capital connections.

And the last one I think is beautiful is confidence, because I think confidence is a thing that a lot of women are lacking in the business arena, particularly if they're going into owning their own businesses. So I think I'm really excited that you're doing that. You have worked across tech venture and AI for quite a long time.

Designing AI training for businesses is one of the things you're doing.

You, you do have a lot of accolades, which I will make sure that we put into the show notes afterwards because you have done a lot of things for a lot of people. And when I get you to talk about your journey in a minute, maybe you can talk a bit about that as well.

And you led something called the 'Let's Fund More Women' campaign.

Definitely want to talk more about that and making sure that women are being recognized and that results are happening and the fact that they are leading in innovation.

Because I think a lot of the times it predominantly looks like it's men that are Doing it there, even if women are involved, they're not getting the recognition for that. So I'm really excited to have you on.

I would really like you to talk through then from the beginning of your career to how you've ended up being on a show called Creatives WithAI. So tell me your background.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:03:13

I can go to the end part. You stalked me on LinkedIn and invited me. But why did my, what did my LinkedIn profile suggest to you that you might want to invite me?

So, I mean, I didn't know about corporate world when I was growing up. My father was in the army, my mother was a teacher. There was no sort of understanding for me about the corporate ladder. I went to, I'm 52, I went to university and that's relevant for a few stages.

I went to university because I was delaying and deferring being an adult, which is phenomenal because I came out with £800 of debt and a three year degree. £800?

Nothing, considering my son, he was 20, got an unaccepted, an unconditional offer to his number one university choice, but turned it down because fees have gone up again. And I would agree. I graduated with £800 and he wants to do a master's as well. He was looking at graduating with £80,000 of debt.

That's in one generation. I mean, that's madness, isn't it? Anyway, yeah.

So creativity as we'll sort of get onto, I think is going to be more and more important as we move forward. Because if you look back one generation from my parents and there's me and then there's one generation to my son, they were able to go to university.

My father didn't. He went through the army and became a pilot, helicopter pilot, that way. But then I was able to remain a helicopter pilot.

My mother remained as a teacher.

You know, being able to have being trained up for something and then gathering your expertise, but staying in that field for such a long time with the financial packages that they did, so they were boomers. So they were able to buy a house.

They were given a golden, what we call a golden pension because it's civil service and it's attached to your final earnings, not how much you invested and how well the stock market did. So this is quite a long way around as to why I'm here.

But my point being, I didn't actually go right, I want to be a doctor or I want to do this or I want to do the other. Very much a personal, I have no idea what I want to do.

Hence, went to university to delay that, and I graduated and I still didn't know what I wanted. Then I became a financial advisor and I loved that job. So, financial advisor with private clients. And what does it mean?

It means you go into someone's home that you've never met before and you get to ask them a whole bunch of questions about who they are, what they want to achieve, what their concerns are about their health, their wealth and their goals. And then you go back and then you create a financial plan that matches those things.

And then you can spend a few years seeing how that plan and the children grow up and all sorts of things. I absolutely adored it. Unfortunately, after I had my son, I wasn't able to return to that field of work for a variety of reasons.

One was no child care in my. In where I. Where I stayed, I stayed in a place called Sheringham, which is a rural. The second one then also became. We were divorced.

I became a single parent. They were doing something called the retail distribution view, which meant that you had to then upskill and do more.

More studying, which in theory is fine, but when it's on top of everything else and then. Plus the cost of being registered with the FCA was prohibitive.

So, yeah, unfortunately, I wasn't able to return to that field in a field where there aren't enough female advisors. So instead I decided that I had to make things up as I went along. And so I loved it. Yeah. So I. Sheringham is rural. The opportunity is not around you.

You've got sea and you've got farmland. You know, three and a half hours to London. It's not easy to pop in and out.

So I was playing with the computer and social media and I was able to learn how to attract people. Organic traffic for social media. And then I saw a company in the States called 'Financial and Social Media' and I went, oh, brilliant.

Why don't I take my understanding of the financial services world with my understanding of how to attract people on social media and do that? So we did that for. I did that for a number of years. And in that time, though, two things happened.

One, we've seen how social media has massively, negatively impacted our world. The way our brains think, the way that people are manipulated.

We have no idea the damage we're doing to children who have been brought up online the entire time. We fully understand the algorithms and what they're showing our children because each feed is unique and different.

n to me was a response to the: 2008

So having been a financial advisor, I also found that very interesting and I thought it was a very laudable goal to say here's an occasion where the central financial systems fail. Wouldn't it be great if we had the opportunity not to just always rely on them, but to have alternative sources. Everyone wants to spread.

You know, you don't put all your eggs in one basket as it were. You're always meant to have, you know, your portfolio should be spread. And so it made complete sense for me to do that.

So then I went down the bitcoin rabbit hole as it were. But could I buy bitcoin? No. It was too difficult for me to be able to understand how to, to get on, etc.

Lena Robinson: 00:09:39

Etc.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:09:40

So anyway, a friend of mine said, oh, goodness sake Bridget, send me some money, download this wallet and I'll send you the equivalent in Bitcoin. And that's how I held my first Bitcoin.

And the difference between learning about something as an educational exercise, but as to holding, some of this is really interesting, the change that you feel. It's like, oh, okay, now I'm really invested in this. It's not just some sort of serial educational process.

And then he said, by the way, would you like to join my company? I'm going to start a company to help others do this. So then I became the first equity partner and the second client of what is now BCB Group.

And then that brought me into the web three world, blockchain, whatever we want to call it. So I think that the technology has a lot of promise, but we've ended up funding same, same.

Lena Robinson: 00:10:38

It's amazing, isn't it? I think we as humans fall back into patterns of doing things whether we try and change things or not.

I think sometimes patterns tend to re-enter no matter what new technology we've got because human behaviour is human behaviour, isn't it? So you bring it.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:10:58

Yeah, we have to understand, yeah, we have to understand our biases and then play with them and into them and recognise when they are restricting us. So biases is all run by our subconscious mind. Right.

And the amount of fascinating things and ideas that we have as we're a child and as we grow up, you know, and our experiences that Shape us. And some things land with one person where they feel very passionately about it and it passes someone else by.

And therefore we strive to do different things. I find that interesting. But humans are flawed. Can we please recognize that and put in systems to improve? Yeah. So then, I mean, so I was.

Lena Robinson: 00:11:47

Gonna say the flaws are sometimes a good thing because they push us in different directions that are unusual. So that can be like in the world of creativity, that can sometimes be a good thing.

But to your point, you know, it also brings in the negatives of the biases and ways that humans will behave around each other, let alone the technology. So you, so you're in that bitcoin world and the web3world. How do you end up where you're now advising businesses around AI?

Because that's, you know, it's not a big jump, but it is a jump. How did you sort of get to the.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:12:22

So, so with my introduction to Bitcoin and then Blockchain, DLT, crypto, web3, whatever words we want to call it, it was just understanding emerging technology and then looking in the spaces of emerging technology. And you do have to make it up as you go along. So when I was interested in social media, that was a form of how do we do business differently?

And then each time there's an iteration of technology we're looking at how do we do business differently, what are the fundamentals that never change and what are the issues and things that change dramatically. So I worked for BCB Group, but then I'm an exited founder and I wanted to be able to support more of the women who were in the space.

In Web3 building very much a male dominated space, women come in and they look to solve different problems, they have different lived experiences and they're looking to solve problems, real world problems.

the women who were leading in: 2017

You would look at their backgrounds and they speak multiple languages, they have multiple degrees, PhDs and masters, they've held, held huge corporate senior positions, managed huge amounts of money or teams. And then they had this vision and they were coming in and they were building this vision. But.

And so it's like, okay, let's support more of this, let's make sure. That we retain women in the tech space in web3, because in tech we see women come in, but we're not retaining them.

The environment is not conducive for women to be able to succeed on power with their male counterparts. So I thought, okay, well, we've got blockchain and this whole idea, if we think differently, maybe we could, maybe we could build differently.

My ideals and what I've seen happen have not been matched. Unfortunately. My deals are still a lot higher than what we're seeing. And yeah, so that's where the bigger pie came to play.

It was like, okay, when we make space for more people, we actually have more that we can share. It's not a nil sum game. It's not like, well, you have to be removed from the table to put a chair for someone else. It's not, we're creating more.

There's more for us. Exactly. And so, yeah, so we should allow more women, you know, to come into the space. You know, and competition's great, right?

If we're saying it should be about. And I can never say the word, what is it? When it's about Metrocracy anyway? If I just say that word once, then that's what we're talking about.

But if it's based on merit, then you want competition, right? Because what does competition do? It raises your game. It raises everyone's game. So anyway, that's where I was with that on that journey.

That's when I discovered, no, it doesn't matter how much competence or confidence or even connections that a woman has, unless she's getting the funding to back her idea to build it, she's not going anywhere. So why is it that we can all name tech CEOs who are men, but we can't name women?

And actually the younger generation can't name women of note for anything, which is awful because it's just not true. So we have bias in media and what they report, but also we're not funding women. And so that's where the 200 billion club came about.

So the Rose review said that if we invest in women on par with the way we invest with men, we can add £200-£250 billion to the UK GDP. That's just in the UK.

And at a time now where everyone is looking at economic instability, this is like the ideal time to say, okay, well, why don't we start investing more into innovative, creative women who have the capability to be able to build and scale with real world solving issues. So that touches on the Word creativity.

Lena Robinson: 00:16:42

So we come to the point where we're talking about creativity. So it'd be really interesting to understand from your perspective how you do, how you think about and describe creativity.

So what is creativity to you?

Bridget Greenwood: 00:16:58

When I was younger, I thought creativity was the arts. So you were creative. If you could draw or paint or be that type of artist, you were creative.

If you could do choreography and dancing, you were creative. If you could compose music, I always sort of thought that that was creativity.

But what I realized is actually creative problem solving is its own form of creativity.

And how you, how you navigate the world, how you overcome obstacles, I think is a really interesting creativity and one that I like to think that I have some degree of ability in, unlike being able to choreograph a ballet or whatever it might be. So that's where I see it.

And so this is why I love to support the women in the innovation, because they are creative in seeing here is a problem that is not yet being given a solution in the world. And I have found a novel way in which I believe this can build a meaningful and scalable solution.

And so the last part of the question is about why AI and what's my experience is when ChatGPT came out in November 23, who knows what time is anymore? Yeah, my son said, oh, have you seen this? And I went, no, I'll have a look. And I had a look and I had no idea how to play with it. And I went, oof.

And then. And then he said, oh, look, have you seen what this person's done? And it was an example of someone using. And then I went, oh, okay, now I get it.

So now I use it AI all day, every day. If, if it was taken away from me, I don't know how I would cope. It's amazing how fast you can rely on something.

Lena Robinson: 00:18:59

Right? It's moving super fast.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:19:04

Yes, Dangerously so. But there we go. So what I love about it is when you're in the startup world, you have to build with very little.

Only the smallest of smallest of smallest of percentage of people have the financial wealth or backing to perhaps throw money at a problem. But that's not the real startup world. You need to be leaning. You need to be creative about how you build your solutions, where you deploy resources.

And this is where I think that AI, something like ChatGPT or Claude or Gen AI can actually be really useful. You have an understanding of what you want. It's like being able to have more teams with you. You need to be strategic, you need to Be the expertise.

You need to be able to guide it. The prompting and we can talk about prompt engineering. You need to be able to guide it.

You need to be able to quality control the output and recognize what's and what's not. And then you need to be able to. Just like you would do if you were chatting with a human, right? You're like, okay, you're an expert in this.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:20:18

Let's dig into it. Well, actually, I challenge you on this and I challenge you on that. And what have you problem with ChatGPT? At least I haven't used Deep Seek as.

As much, I'll be honest, is that it's just so eager to please you. It's like a Labrador, you know, and you're. And you say to. Oh, what about this? You're absolutely right. What am I?

Can we have a more robust conversation? You know, Please, may I serve you? Please, may I help you? So, yeah, so I think for someone, for founders, it's amazing.

And you're able to scale and build more with less because of the AI models that we have.

Lena Robinson: 00:20:59

It's like having a sounding board, isn't it? If you're a single, if you're a single entrepreneur owner like myself and you need a sounding board.

I use, I mean, I still go to people that I know and friends. Of course I do. I'm not going to replace them with ChatGPT, but I do use it as a. What do you think of this kind of thing?

And to your point, I think I treat it like it's a human being. Like I talk to it the way I write it and everything. Is it like it's another person?

To your point, though, you would challenge things or question things or go. That doesn't quite sound right. What do you mean by that? Like, I talk to it like that. That's, I think, exactly to that point.

That gets rid of the trying to please you too much bit, which it does do for sure. It definitely does it.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:21:54

But yeah, I guess you can go and you can customize it, but it's, it's incredibly good at mimicking human behavior. So I do think that when you've got things like character...character AI, so character AI is where you build your own personas, right? An AI persona.

And it's that company where we've seen the teenager commit suicide based on its conversations with its character AI.

And I think, you know, we've got, we've got the release of Adolescence on Netflix, which is a program that looks at all sorts of aspects of modern day behavior.

And yeah, so this is where I think tools like, well, any tech tool particularly that can manipulate, mimic, pretend, be optimised for emotions that are not healthy because they're better for clickability and advertising in young minds in a world that is rapidly changing. Like it's like thank goodness that I wasn't exposed to that. I mean how many mistakes did we make that weren't captured?

Lena Robinson: 00:23:14

Many. You and I are exactly the same age by the way. I'm also 52.

So I definitely sit there and go, I mean even not just with AI, but with social media and all the rest, thank God they didn't...God, that wasn't being recorded and wasn't being stuck anywhere...half the crap I used to get up to. So I'm with you, I'm definitely with you on that.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:23:35

And I think I was such an idiot. I was such an idiot when I was younger. I sometimes replace some of those messages. Yeah.

Some of the, some of the conversations that I had when I was younger and I think now with my, you know, my, my lived experience and I think I might have punched that woman, a teenager, you didn't know anything what was wrong with you. Thankfully I've matured but you know, I wouldn't want any of that sort of captured for prosperity. God can imagine.

Lena Robinson: 00:24:09

I mean, what's your thought on.

I mean we have got these young people coming up through school, through education and then on to work and they're being impacted by a, like really, really quickly. And to your point, if that's the only thing that's happening, where does the lived experience come from? Like you and I both know how to.

So I, for example, if I'm asking it to do a research project, AI base it on what I already, because I've done it so much over the years, I know what to expect. So I've, I've written, I've used tools, templates that I've had for years on just how I want my research to be structured.

I now throw that into Chat GPT when I'm doing any research and I sort of meld my methodologies with the Chat GPT which I think is really smart. But with the young people without that lived experience, they're kind of being stuck with. Well, that's the answer without challenging it.

So how do we work with them to make sure that they a still get the lived experiences?

Because I think they are vital to also they're vital for critical thinking, but they're also vital to not just accepting like it's like social media, you don't just accept what's on there. Like there's a whole lot of bullshit on there. Right? So how do we get them to understand it's a tool and it's not perfect?

Bridget Greenwood: 00:25:43

And even if we do have the answer, will tech giants allow us to have some chance of implementing it? But this is where I think. So I'm, I use LinkedIn as a social media.

I don't, I don't hang out in other places a little bit on Facebook only recently, but just so I can watch the cat and dog videos because I, I do love those. And this is like giggles and fills my, warms my heart. So. But this is where putting down the tech and getting out is so important.

So if you look at education and if you look at the Norway and Finland. Finland, one of my friends is Finnish and he said the Finnish children are feral. But what it, what does it mean?

It means that it's part of the recognised education system for them to climb trees, to scrape their knees, to go.

Lena Robinson: 00:26:43

Out, to pick up birds as well. Like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally understand that.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:26:48

Yeah, exactly. So, so it's designed in. Because they understand that when curiosity is what we need for education, right? Curiosity, experimentation, not theory.

So you know, if you, you learn about gravity, if you fall over, you learn about ability, you know, you get feedback loops from nature. You don't always have to have. So I think that's incredibly important.

We also know that if you write, which I no longer do write, you know, one can, one can talk about these things, but implementing them is another matter. Right? I did my best as a parent to do what I did, not what I said.

But sometimes you have to recognise also maybe have this information and do it yourself because I'm not the best role model for that. But yeah, when you write. So when I study for university, etc. Etc. All of that was handwritten. And that really does help to.

I think we need to be physical whilst we're being stimulated mentally as well.

Lena Robinson: 00:27:51

There's a scientific proof, isn't there, that for example, I was talking to somebody about this the other day, that when you take notes. So somebody says, oh, the, the chat, the, the AI will take the notes for you.

But there is scientific proof and I've known this for years, there's a correlation between handwriting, note writer taking and memory. Like your brain remembers better if you are handwriting.

So that's why I still, even if it's still recording everything and it's doing all the notes and everything, I still want to Write.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:28:22

Yeah, exactly. And then who, who's bored in today's age? Like, remember how bored were we as children? There was, there was no tv. Not.

I mean, there was a tv, but no one was broadcasting all day every day on 101 different channels. We couldn't stream anything whenever we wanted to online. And you know, if. I don't think it mattered if you lived in the countryside or not.

There were hours and hours and hours of being bored.

Lena Robinson: 00:28:58

And I think growing up in the country, I always had to do loads and loads and loads. I was never bored.

I think being brought up in the country, I mean, I understand what you're talking about, but I was always like out building things, growing, making stuff, growing stuff. Like we had that kind of household and we didn't have. Did you have Long time in my life? So we were.

Lena Robinson: 00:29:23

Who. Sorry, you carry on, I'll wait.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:29:27

I was just excited outside, do stuff. Don't be around my feet. Like they were running businesses from home as well. So like they didn't want us under their feet.

Lena Robinson: 00:29:37

So we were just always told to get out and play and do stuff. So. But I do, I do recognize that our age group, there was, you know, there wasn't as the stimulus that, the over stimulus actually that the kids get.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:29:50

Exactly. But through boredom you come to creativity, right?

Lena Robinson: 00:29:57

Definitely.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:29:58

Now sometimes that creativity could, could be destructive. For example, if I was bored and you gave me a pair of scissors, the outcome would not be good. We'll have a lot. Oh, I wonder what I can cut now.

Lena Robinson: 00:30:13

I'm still a little bit like that.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:30:15

Now, but, you know, but, but the moment, but that time. And I mean, I do remember being bored and if you had friends to play with, it was a bit easier.

But sometimes, you know, your sisters or your friends were otherwise engaged and then you were sat there and half an hour. But there were times, I remember I listened to a podcast recently and. Or clip of a podcast, if I'm honest.

And I remember sometimes just putting on a record and lying down by the speaker and listening to a full album. You know, that was an activity by itself, but we listen to music whilst we're doing other things.

So what I'm saying is I think we have more tools with modern technology and AI to build creativity, but we have less lifestyle habits that will inspire creativity. You know what I mean? By sitting still with ourselves, by making sure that we build with our bodies, by having in person social connections.

I remember that people were worried about the lack of creativity because we were working from home during COVID But I challenged that. It's absolutely not because you're working from home, it's because you were shut in, you weren't able to go off and do things and see things.

And it might be the same journey that you do, but when you do the same journey, you're still going to see different things.

There's going to be, you know, different things on the road, there's going to be a different pedestrian to catch your eye, the weather's going to be a bit different, whatever. There's still some stimulus there that changes. But when you wake up and you go around your. Your house, that stimulus doesn't change at all.

And therefore, I think we're not inspired by things. So what can people do today to make sure that they're inspired to internally motivate their curiosity?

And then you won't just Chat GPT something and accept it as an answer because you're interested, you want to dive deeper, you want to delve into that, you want to check on various sources. So I think that's, that's the best way we have to do it. But my son, I'm so fortunate he discovered mountain biking.

So I'm not fortunate because it's downhill mountain biking, which is the craziest of all. Crazy. And clearly shows that his prefrontal cortex is not working in any way, shape or form. So.

But it's an it, but it's an activity, it's a physical activity that he's really interested in. He goes out with a gang of people, they're all different age ranges, so he's learning different things.

They're having conversations whilst they're riding, they're building trails, they're all sorts of things. He's so interested in it that he managed to get himself between, after his first year of graduating from A levels, what would be the gap year.

But now, as I said, he's chosen a different path than to go into university for his career in education. He called, outreached to 50 people saying, hi, this is who I am. I'd love to be a bike mechanic for the World cup downhill race team.

Who do you know who I could speak to? He had one response. He drove up to Scotland from Norfolk to meet this guy and then he had a. He had an internship.

So he was a bike mechanic for World Cup Mountain Bike Young Guns team. So now he's looking at his CV and he's building his CV and he's thinking about where does he want to go?

And he's built his own website so that he could sort of show off what he's doing and keep it up to date. And he said, what would you do if you didn't have anything?

Like, it's only because I like mountain biking that I can now turn around and say I do X, Y and Z and I've done A, B and C. That makes me different. But if I didn't have that interest, you know, then, then, then what would I write? What would I say when I'm 18, 19 years old?

But, but that one hobby for him, and it's a physical hobby, which I think is really important. He goes traveling with it now with friends and they're off to Morzine and he goes to Wales all the time. But that's also. He wants.

He wants to help bikes go faster or cars go faster. So he still very much wants.

Is interested in the mechanical engineering side of things, which is what he applied and got accepted for at an F1 school. But now he works for boat builders and the company is only 50 people in the company. So he'll get to see from start to finish the whole process.

They have a backorder of nine years of boats to build, so they seem to be pretty recession proof. I know.

So creativity, I mean, I see my son as being creative in how he is choosing to navigate his career, attached to his lifestyle, attached to his interests, and that's going to change so much as well. So there's loads we can talk about about IP and AI.

And I know it's been discussed a lot under the new administration and obviously the big boys just want to rip and pillage and rape everyone's creativity, which I find abhorrent. But it's almost like we're trying to close the stable door after the horse has gone, bearing in mind how much has been taken.

But it doesn't mean to say that that's an excuse to carry on. And I do feel very compassionate, heartfelt cross for the creators as I described them more.

So, you know when you've got your own artwork that is being stolen and repurposed in a world where your IP is your living, you know.

Lena Robinson: 00:36:19

Yeah.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:36:22

And then, oh, sorry, the rules have changed.

Lena Robinson: 00:36:26

Yeah, right. It's interesting because there's definitely appearing to be, I would say, three camps. So I've had people that have just gone, yep.

No, never that I've talked to that are in the world of the broader spectrum of creative.

I've had those that kind of have tried it, have got some element of it, but they've still decided they want to go back to the human way of creating art, whether that be painting, drawing, filmmaking, making music. I've spoken to composers and then I've got those people that artists and one of them's in my art gallery, Tom morley. And he's 100%.

He was originally 80s pop star and he has gone back to. And he's got a fine arts degree and all that kind of thing. He is the what he's using to make film and to make art from AI is incredible.

So I think there, there's definitely a spectrum of what's going on from a creative perspective. But it's really interesting when you're talking there about your son, about the need for the.

The physical and the outside of the technical digital world. So when you're looking at the impact of what's happening.

So you're working with businesses at the moment, advising them on how to work with AI and your. And I do want to understand more about what you're doing with prompt engineering and so forth.

What's the impact that you're seeing on the sort of businesses that you're working with? I mean, obviously they're wanting to be involved. How's the impact of AI happening with them?

Bridget Greenwood: 00:38:14

cryptocurrencies as it was in: 2017

And now, you know, Web3 Technologies and now we're looking at AI. And also if you look at the history of adoption, our cycles of adoption and getting to the first billion are happening faster and faster.

And I think itunes managed to have hit 1 billion downloads in nine months. So, you know, each time a new cycle. Yeah, so each time. But now that's slow.

If you compare it to, you know, how many users suddenly went on to ChatGPT. So I've seen people who dabbled in it the same as you.

So in terms of supporting business, I helped to create and deliver on a course for businesses sponsored by the London Mayor. And that was fascinating to see.

The people who came on, we had restaurant owners, we had people who were beginning to think about dabbling in their solopreneur journey.

Other people who are working for larger, more established businesses who were leading on the IT tech side and then other people who had a long established business who were the business owners. And they all showed up. And some people didn't quite make the whole course.

Whether or not it's because we were too ambitious in terms of what we wanted to cover and that was always going to be, you know, when, when things are this new, that's.

And that person needed just a prompt engineering six week course just to break it down, just to make sure that they understood what that was and really take them by the hand. And I think, you know, it's very difficult to remember what it was like when you didn't know. It's very important to do that. And that's why.

Yeah, that's why sometimes it's really useful to have a mentor who's only one step away from you because they remember where you were and how to get to your next stage better than someone who is light years ahead.

Anyway, so what we were finding that across all spectrums of business, whether it was service industry, more technical, B2B or B2C, everyone had an interest in using it. The different ways in which they were looking to use it was really interesting because some were just, oh, it's marketing, right?

ChatGPT is for marketing, generative AI is for marketing. And that seemed to be the easy default.

And then more people saying, okay, so we also, within that course that we did for six weeks, I also introduced some no code tools and at the time I introduced mindstudio. So they were able to build their own app using Mind Studio.

And one of the more ambitious students in her business, she really sort of grabbed onto the whole thing and she said, I want to automate with our Slack channel.

Internally within the organization we use Slack and there are times where we're seeing the same question come up and it takes a while for someone to come back to them.

But like we could just build a knowledge base and then someone asks the question and then the, you know, the AI bot can go through our knowledge base and they can answer that so they can move on and move faster and we're being more efficient. That's what she was looking to build. And what I found really interesting as well.

When we're learning in this environment that you might be leading the course, but it's the other people who are on the course who inspire other ideas or creativity of how to use this in a meaningful way with the other learners. And we're all learning at this stage, let's be honest, we're making up as we go along. So I would definitely say, you know.

Lena Robinson: 00:42:17

Exciting though, I suppose. Yeah, yeah.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:42:20

But I would definitely say, you know, when we're talking about creativity as well, is you can sit with yourself all day but you know, having creativity when you're just solely focused and having creativity, when you're with others is really an important part of. Oh yeah, because we don't know what we don't know.

And with no idea what spark might ignite something that really pulls years of thinking together, you're like, oh, that's the hook I was missing.

Lena Robinson: 00:42:49

Yeah, yeah. You sometimes just need that one thing that pulls it all together, don't you? I mean creativity is an interesting thing.

Is to your point is silo the siloed creativity or the sort of sitting, sitting on your own with your own thoughts, creativity. And then there's the.

When you're in a group of people and how that may be a question that somebody else asks that kind of makes you think, oh, I hadn't thought about it that way or I hadn't even thought about using it that way. Or like for example, I guarantee you.

Well, maybe not guarantee, but I would be guessing that the person that came into your course thinking it was just a tool for marketing would have then through the learning of watching other people ask different questions about different areas would have gone oh. And rethought actually what the impact of AI could be in their business. It is interesting.

One of the things I like to talk a lot about is impact on the individual, on the business.

From your perspective, looking into the future then what do you think the impact is going to be of AI on creativity, creative thinking, diverse thinking in the business environment.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:44:14

So we'll be talking more than five years here.

Lena Robinson: 00:44:17

I mean we can talk in five years which is to me is like so far away anyway when it comes to AI.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:44:22

It is.

Lena Robinson: 00:44:23

Well that's, that's start with five years.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:44:27

Three within five years.

Lena Robinson: 00:44:29

Three to five years.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:44:31

, so what we're talking about: 2011

Then I remember that Royal bank of Scotland, NatWest there they, they had outsourced their IT to India and nothing wrong with that apart from the fact that their it broke down and so no one could get paid, no bank transfers could happen. Anyone, you know, couldn't take out money. So imagine the chaos that, that led to.

So many people who, if that's in, in your pay period and you run out of, you know, money before the end of the month and then you have a delayed even further awful things that people have to pay for in terms of funerals, moving houses and you know, it was just an absolute nightmare. And it went on for days. And everyone was contacting @NatWest on Twitter, but @NatWest was Natalie Weston, who was a primary school teacher.

Because NatWest didn't even have their own Twitter handle.

Lena Robinson: 00:45:37

Oh, that's awful.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:45:39

Yes. So that they had, they had to figure that one out. But I mean, so, so people are.

Anyway, my point being back then I would speak to businesses and financial services and they were saying our customers don't use social media. There's no way they'll want to talk about their finances on social media. We don't understand that it's a compliant risk and it's a reputational risk.

Right. And now no business in their right mind would ever think about starting up without a digital strategy. It's now the default.

And that's, that's, that happened pretty quickly if we think about, you know, the expanse of business. So that's on social media. And it was quite funny as well when it came to sort of things like Bitcoin as well.

And I was saying to, I wrote a white paper for financial institutions. Far too early for them to say, by the way, as wealth managers and wealth advisors, you're in a competitive space.

So if you're not offering Bitcoin or Ethereum or some sort of cryptocurrency holding, your client's going to find it somewhere else. And if they find it somewhere else, will they take the rest of their wealth with them?

And now we're seeing much more slowly, but we are, we are seeing sort of those facilities being offered.

We see the ETFs come out and exposure to be able to hold these assets has become something that the banks and financial institutions deem to be necessary. So now we're looking at AI.

And so at the moment we've got discussed the difference between at least within the creatives, but I think the creators and the stories that we've shared about not going to touch it, tried it, but prefer the traditional methods to completely embrace it. We'll see that throughout the, you know, the business world as well.

gital media plan. But back in: 2011

What does it mean for creativity? I don't know. What does it mean for replacing labor?

So my favorite story and the way that I would love to see, again, I am idealistic, the way that I would love to see AI implemented is with ikea.

So IKEA replaced their customer service department with AI and they upskilled the customer service department to be able to help customers to phone up and help plan a room and design a room. So if you know what you want to buy, because as a design for you as the customer. Oh then yeah. So we reckon how about this design for this area?

Okay, now you can go and buy it. So they became more efficient.

They added an extra service that supported what their customers, customers wanted and they added 1 billion onto their turnover. Now I think that's how we should be using these tools to support. It's wonderful. It's my favorite story. I want to see more.

But then you'll get other people who go no, it's about the bottom line and the shareholders. And so we want to. But, but you know, you added billion, you didn't save a billion on staffing costs, you added a billion to your turnover.

But yes, you were saying.

Lena Robinson: 00:48:53

Well I was just going to say I think that's really interesting to your. Exactly to your point.

Like I'm hearing a lot of the higher end CEOs and CFOs and you know, board level people within the big brands around the world, predominantly looking at how can they use it to cut stuff and cut costs and all the rest of it. It's, it's so typical though, isn't it? It's like it's always about let's make more money by cutting rather than growing.

And I just find that extraordinary.

Like when I worked for, you know, the big, big agencies, particularly WPP as a, a group agency, the way that they used to constantly behave and I'm so anti this and why I did, I never wanted to work for them again was they were, they would hit their bottom line numbers by getting rid of people and cutting costs and freezing pay increases and all the rest of it. And it's the complete upside down way of looking. Like I am very much a people before profit type of person.

It's not obviously I'm in business, I'm not against making profit, there's a good thing, but it should be of benefit to everybody and it shouldn't be at the cost of everything.

And I think if AI is applied in the same way, like I'm loving the fact and IKEA is quite often quite forward cause I've worked with them in one of my agencies actually. They're amazing, quite innovative.

That's really, I'm really excited because that's a case, a proof in a business case to show other business people that that's how it should be done. Cutting that scares me. That scares me.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:50:43

Well, also, cutting isn't very creative, is it?

Lena Robinson: 00:50:46

No, it's not.

And that's because, and I'll be really honest with you about this, the reason why WPP was being run like that is because Martin Sorrel is a bean counter. That's what his background was. He was the guy running wpe, but he was an accountant running a business in the creative space.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:51:09

Yeah, I mean, so we started off this conversation talking about biases. And of course there is the confirmation bias that when you're looking for information that supports what you're doing.

So you're talking about a bean counter running a creative agency. It's funny how we'll find the tools to fit our biases and then.

But it was a perfect point to, as we began, when we talked about biases, it's about building designs and systems thinking to allow you to work in your creativity and your zone of genius, which is largely tapped into your subconscious, which is where all our biases sort of sit and channel that and then put system and design practices into place to make sure that when that's not the zone that you're in, whether that's an organization, a CEO, or whatever, that we're saying, okay, we can now filter and process this information and, and challenge thought and look at things in a way that we hadn't considered because we're inviting diverse opinions of people that we respect, that, you know, that can look at things from a different angle and to come to the table. And that's, that's where we're stuck.

That, that lack of systems to overcome biases is not something people, people are aware of, are interested in, want to, want to put into play, especially when it's already working for you. Right. If the system is working for you, why would you stop, slow down and make it more difficult for yourself?

And if the system's working for you, you generally get on better in the system and therefore you're higher up in the hierarchy and more influential in decision making. So it's quite difficult to change that.

And even when people do consciously want to change it, they won't necessarily dive into the work that's required. And that's the work that I do.

Lena Robinson: 00:53:14

So. So how do you apply that then? We've talked many times today about the, the prompt engineering. Talk to me about that. What, what does that look like?

Because I'm assuming design and thought and challenge comes into that in the way that you're.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:53:28

Yes. So you mentioned frameworks that you used in your research So I think first of all, when you're. When you're. I'm.

Prompt Engineering is basically being able to get the best out of the generative AI that you're using for the outcomes that you're looking for. One of the things I think everyone needs to recognize. And if you've been using these tools for a while, then you'll go, yes, experience that.

Absolutely. But if you're dabbling in them a bit, then. Then you won't recognize it. You need to understand when your prompt is fine, but the system is overloaded.

Right. How many times have we.

I mean, there's a couple of times when I've had a chat with ChatGPT and we created this character and I was like, you're on fire, chatgpt. What's going on? Why are you being so brilliant? And I was like, I have to note the time of day and what it was.

Because clearly it's not a time where there's a whole bunch of heavy users. The US has woken up.

I remember that with Facebook, you use Facebook, you'd be doing training on Facebook and then the US would wake up and they drain all of the servers and you wouldn't be able to show a screen or load anything anyway. So that's. That's happening with the AI models as well. And I.

We haven't touched on Lovable and the note we mentioned mine, Studio, but Lovable and Vi, which I'm about to explore into two.

Lena Robinson: 00:54:52

They are.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:54:53

So for me, generative AI like ChatGPT, etc is replacing my humans that I would have around the table strategically and thinking. And then Lovable is saying, okay, now I've got my DEB developers and I've got that team of developers. So I don't code, but I.

But I have so many apps that I want to build that I don't have the funds to be able to say, here's a whole team, please go off and develop it. And so I'm beginning to use Lovable and I'm going to explore with Vibe as to what to do and how to do that.

And that's fun and that's creative and sort of understanding that well. But would definitely like to do that with some more devs at the table as well to be able to say, you know, I don't know what I don't know.

So what was the question you asked me? Because I went around the houses and didn't quite get back to the answer.

Lena Robinson: 00:55:43

Oh, it was just about asking. I mean, Prompt Engineering, how you're advising people on that.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:55:50

Yeah. So I've seen it with lovable and I've seen it with the various different LLMs. One is understand when the system is overloaded and it's giving.

It doesn't matter what you put in, the output's going to be not good. Yeah. Imagine trying to speak to your teenager boy after a long night out, seven in the morning. Right. That's not the best time to be able to.

It doesn't matter how nicely you phrase the question, you're not going to get a response that is meaningful to you. So that's one of the things I think it's about. It is actually about, as you said, about speaking to them as if they're a human being. Right.

And it's amazing how long it takes someone to adjust to that or it's. I find it fascinating for me, I.

Lena Robinson: 00:56:44

Went straight into my brain went and.

Because nobody's taught me how to use these tools, by the way, I've just played the one thing I did because I've come out of the agency creative world. I know how to write a brief.

So I write to it like I am talking or writing something to a creative that needs to understand a what my vision is be what I want to achieve, but also as much information to give them that they need to be able to then create what they need to create. And I think because I've taken that approach, my prompts are pretty good. I very rarely. It's. It usually does something pretty amazing like yesterday.

Sorry to go off topic here, but prime example, it was World Art Day. I needed to write a piece of copy for the post that I was putting out and it had to cover off the awareness day.

It had to cover off what my beliefs are from a FTSQ gallery perspective. But it was also being dedicated to one of my artists that passed away last year and I put in the prompt. I knew what I wanted to achieve.

I gave it all the information, including links and all sorts of things to give it. What I did when it came back, I read it and burst into tears because it was so beautiful. It had absolutely nailed it.

So to your point, I think it's about. Yeah, there's an art to it. And Tom Morley, my artist, talks about this is an art.

So I love that you call it prompt engineering, but it's an engineering with an art and a craft to it.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:58:27

Would you agree? Yeah, absolutely. It's understanding. Well, other people would call it executive communication. Right. And. And then you'll see a lot of engineers.

So you'll a lot of people who are more. More officially called prompt engineers, as it were, then come from engineering.

And it's interesting because you'll see how they put the prompt together. So there's a formula and there's a structure to it and there's a lot of detail.

So really good prompts and how you engineer them is the more detail is, the better.

Now, if you're like me, so it sounds to me like you could say, okay, I need to put a brief together and you go through and you do the brief yourself, right Top to bottom, what's required, all the information. I put it together and then I send it in as my prompt. And guess what? The output's great.

Because I'm used to working with humans and I understand where you can have miscommunications and misunderstandings. And so that's great. Perfect. I'm not as skilled as that.

So what I would do is I say, okay, and then I talk to you about the first part of what I need to do, and then I say, what else do we need to do to do this? And then I'll give it the details on the second part. And so I'll do that until we've got everything.

And then I'll say, okay, write me the prompt that would get this from us. What am I missing? Right.

Lena Robinson: 00:59:54

So you get it to write its own prompt.

Bridget Greenwood: 00:59:58

Well, whenever it's hard work, then I.

Lena Robinson: 01:00:01

That's cool.

Bridget Greenwood: 01:00:01

As opposed to strategic work, then, yeah, I let it do the heavy lifting. If it's not, you know, a teenage boy at 7 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday, in which case I go off and do different work.

Lena Robinson: 01:00:13

I never thought about the timing of it because I have wondered sometimes when I'm doing something and I'm thinking, why is that so different? I've literally used exactly the same. Because what I do is I quite often cut and paste prompts, just change some of the details, reuse.

Bridget Greenwood: 01:00:27

Yes.

Lena Robinson: 01:00:28

It comes back with the most ridiculous structure of what it's put together. And I'm thinking, I've asked you to do exactly what I did, like yesterday, on a different topic, and you've come back with some utter bollocks.

Technically, it's information that was correct, but the way it's put it together, the.

Bridget Greenwood: 01:00:46

Structure is like, oh, yeah, it's lightweight.

Lena Robinson: 01:00:50

So is that the reason? The timing? Never even knew that was a thing. I've learned something new today.

Bridget Greenwood: 01:00:57

Love it. Yay. And he took an hour of conversation.

Lena Robinson: 01:01:03

It's been a great conversation.

I love the fact that it's gone in lots of different directions and we've talked about creativity from quite a different perspective, which I really like. Actually.

I like the fact that it's been more about creative thinking, creative way of looking at things and creativity and it's very broader sense no matter what the business is. Cause I do think most business owners, because we are solution finding, a lot of the time, our thinking does have to be creative.

So I've really enjoyed our conversation today. I think we've gone from, you are right, we went in this big loop from bias back to bias again, which I think is really interesting.

I do like to ask one last question, which is if there was anybody you would like to see somebody that's inspiring maybe that you would like to see on Creatives with AI, is there anybody that you've come across or you've seen and you think actually that would be a good person? That would be.

Bridget Greenwood: 01:02:02

I, I think, I think Yasmin Topia would be amazing. She's a beautiful founder who is using AI as a tool. Streaks ahead of the game.

Before ChatGPT was launched and generative AI was launched, before us mortals got to play with generative AI and had an idea of how actually powerful it could be, she was already working with teams and building this and looking to deploy them. So she deploys it in search for fashion, but she went through a whole bunch of iterations to decide this can be used so many ways.

But you, you know, we know that you have to niche and that whole process and then her journey on, you know, as building this company.

I think she's a creative person, you know, in terms of fashion and choice and style and then she's creative in terms of her business and resilience and I, I think she would be very interesting.

Lena Robinson: 01:03:05

Cool. We'll see if I can get her on the show. Thank you so much for coming on today. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.

I love the fact that it's kind of gone in lots of different directions because I think that's a really good way to have a chat. I'd like to say thank you to our amazing listeners. Thank you for listening to both of us chatter on about creativity and AI today.

And I just want to encourage everybody to stay curious because I think it's a vitally important thing when it comes to what's happening in the world of business, AI and creativity. So thank you, Bridget. Thank you listeners.

Bridget Greenwood: 01:03:42

Thank you everyone.

Lena Robinson: 01:03:42

See you later.