Interview: Andrew Grill, Author of Digitally Curious
Last week we attended the launch of Andrew Grill’s latest book, Digitally Curious, held in conjunction with SAP Concur at the firm’s London office.
In the book, the futurist, speaker, podcaster and technology trends expert examines critical business concepts, such as the future of work, from a technical and human-centric point of view. He also looks at how Artificial Intelligence will impact us all.
We caught up with him to talk about the book and how technology is shaping our society.
How did the book come about?
I’ve been trying to write a book since about 2009. Originally it was going to be a book called Twitter for Business – remember when Twitter was a thing? I actually had a publisher and an advance, but I had to give the advance back because I was just too busy. I was aso approached several times to write a book while I was at IBM, but was really concerned that writing 60,000 words from scratch was going to be a real stretch.
It was my agent who suggested turning the podcast series into chapters in the book, knowing that I’m lazy. So that’s what I did. I’ve interviewed about 100 people for the podcast and used Otter AI to transcribe all those interviews, and put about 60 of them into the book. This meant, rather than having to write 70,000 words from scratch, I had half a million words automatically transcribed that I could actually play with!
In the book, you emphasize that being digitally curious is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity. Can you share a personal experience where being digitally curious has really helped your career or personal life?
I started being curious at a very young age. Age 12, I got my first computer – the Sinclair ZX80. I’m so old that the computer is now in a glass case in the Science Museum, but I used it to learn how to program! Back in 1983 I was dialing up to the internet, leaving messages, and my Dad actually had to get a second phone line because no one could get through on the phone. This is when I started to think the ability to communicate, to send messages that we now call email was going to take off.
Then, later at work, I was always the curious one. People would ask me questions. In fact, friends used to call me to ask them to Google something. It seems unbelievable these days but I became the human Google. There was often a line of people who came to my desk to ask me questions, because I was the only one who knew how to Google at the time!
What particular insights from the many interviews you have done really helped shape your thinking?
I’m really fortunate to have interviewed so many different people – leaders in their field. I’ve learned so much from them. Perhaps the one that stands out was an interview with Peter Voss (CEO of Aigo.ai). It was actually conducted in 2020 and he was already talking about artificial general intelligence (AGI). You hear a lot about this now – Elon Musk and Sam Altman both talk about it. It’s the next phase when AI becomes more human-like. He said back then that the company that really cracks AI is a company we haven’t heard of yet.
Another guest also talked about the need to understand these AI models much better than we do. They’re very much like a black box. He talked about the need to explain how a model works once it’s running and whether it’s actually performing the way it should. This is what is happening now with the EU AI Act which has finally become legislation in Europe. A lot of my guests have changed my thinking.
In the book you talk about safeguarding your digital identity. What should organizations do to protect their data and build trust with customers?
Yes I talk about staying safe in the age of AI, particularly the need to have two-factor authentication switched on for virtually everything! For example, if you don’t have two-factor on your Gmail, a hacker could guess your password and sit there for weeks learning the names of your children, where you like to travel and all of your favorite things.
They could then clone your voice (voice cloning is prevalent and very easy to do) and then call one of your loved ones pretending to be you in a panic, asking for money. What you actually need is a family password – a phrase to beat the AI criminals – that only you and your family could possibly know. And so if you call me, and it sounds a bit strange, you can then actually check that it’s me using the family password. The same precautions could be used in the corporate world too.
Which are the AI tools excite you the most?
At the moment, it has to be Google NotebookLM which enables me to do a podcast in five minutes. That blows even my mind! Actually I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet. What we’re going to see a lot of over the next few years are energetic AI agents where the device I have in my pocket knows everything about me, including my bank balance, the next meeting I’m going to and where I’m travelling to. It could then use this information to do all of my ‘life admin’ for me. Of course all of this is possible now, but the big challenge is around trust. Do I trust an AI system with my bank account and travel details and those sorts of things?
Outside of AI, what do you think are the next big technology trends?
One is quantum computing – in particular the arrival of Q-Day when experts predict that quantum computers will be able to decrypt everything that’s currently encrypted. Companies need to start asking their risk and compliance people, are we Q-Day safe? And are we quantum computing ready? A lot of people aren’t even aware of it.
The other trend to watch out for is self-sovereign identity (SSI), or digital identity. Basically, it’s about giving you power over your own data. For example, at the moment if you go to a pub and get carded, you give them your driver’s licence and they take a scan of it. They’ve then got your image, your home address and your driver’s license number. Who knows what they do with it? They don’t need all that data. All they need to know is, are you of a legal drinking age?
So, in the SSI world, the DVLA gives me a credential to say I’m of legal drinking age. It’s in my phone and I own that. Another example is LinkedIn. Everyone puts their own profiles on LinkedIn, and we don’t really know, say, whether you were at IBM from 2013 to 2017 or not. With SSI, IBM could provide a credential to say you really did work there.
You can buy a copy of Digitally Curious here.
