The next decade will be shaped by intelligent systems and the people who choose how they are built and governed.
BASELINE is a long-form conversation series with founders, academic, policymakers, and operators working at the frontier of AI and digital systems.
These conversations surface judgement, intent, and lived experience - helping you orient yourself for what comes next.
**NEW** For leadership teams, that same work also informs a fixed-scope BASELINE Execution Sprint, designed to turn organisational insight into clear, executable decisions.
Watch. Listen. Engage with intent.
If AI Replaces Work, Why Do We Still Need Humans? - Dr Rodrigo Perez-Vega
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how markets operate, how companies hire, and how consumers make decisions. But beneath the headlines about productivity and automation lies a deeper question: what happens when human labour is no longer required to sustain the economy? In this conversation with Rodrigo Perez-Vega from Henley Business School, we explore how AI is reshaping consumer behaviour, employment, and even demographic trends. If consumption fuels economic growth but AI reduces the need for human work, the foundations of our economic systems begin to shift.
We discuss the collapse of birth rates across advanced economies, the possibility of synthetic reproduction through robotic womb technologies, and the growing transfer of agency from humans to intelligent systems.
From AI-driven consumer behaviour to the long-term implications for society, this episode examines one of the most uncomfortable questions of the AI era: If systems can think, produce, and decide… what role remains for humanity?
Subscribe to BASELINE for long-form conversations exploring AI, creativity, and human intelligence.
AI Is Rewriting Access to Power and Possibility - Justin Keeble
AI is changing who has the leverage to act - and who doesn’t. This conversation explores what that shift means for climate, work, and who gets to build next. In this conversation, Justin Keeble reflects on his career at the intersection of technology, sustainability, and business strategy, and why he chose to leave a senior corporate role to build something new. We explore how AI is being used inside real organisations today to measure, optimise, and make decisions across complex systems.
The discussion moves beyond hype into questions of agency, responsibility, and intent. Who gets access to these tools. How leverage is shifting from institutions to individuals. And why being deliberate matters as AI becomes embedded in how decisions are made. This is a grounded conversation about power, possibility, and what it now means to build.
Subscribe to BASELINE for long-form conversations exploring AI, creativity, and human intelligence.
The Incentive Trap Beneath AI - John Fletcher
We thought decentralisation would protect value. Bitcoin promised credible neutrality, but incentives reshaped it. Liquidity won. Ideology lost. In this conversation, John Fletcher explains why proof-of-work security models are structurally fragile, how Tether quietly undermined the neutrality of Bitcoin, and why incentive design always dominates belief systems.
Then the discussion turns to AI. Large language models already contain the world’s written knowledge, but they do not yet fully possess tacit human intuition. The strategic hints, transferable heuristics, and instinctive course corrections that live inside experts are now being extracted through everyday interaction. The game theory is uncomfortable: opt out and fall behind, or opt in and help train the system that may replace you.
Subscribe to BASELINE for long-form conversations exploring AI, creativity, and human intelligence.
When Intelligence Stops Being Scarce - Dr Asieh Tabaghdehi, PhD
Modern economies were built on a simple assumption: intelligence, expertise, and judgement were scarce.
That assumption no longer holds. In this conversation, economist S Asieh Tabaghdehi, PhD explores how AI is reshaping labour markets, destabilising human capital, and quietly breaking the assumptions modern economies were built on.
We discuss why entry-level knowledge work is being replaced first, why skills and credentials no longer offer the protection people expect, and why education systems and institutions are structurally unable to keep pace with the speed of AI capability.
Subscribe to BASELINE for long-form conversations exploring AI, creativity, and human intelligence.
I Didn’t Expect AI to Save So Much Money - Rob Paton
For a long time, creativity, marketing, and software were separate, outsourced functions. AI is collapsing those boundaries. In this conversation with independent brand consultant and creative Rob Paton, we explore what changes when execution becomes fast, cheap, and accessible to everyone. We talk about why traditional agency models are under pressure, why creativity still matters but shows up differently, and how AI-assisted tools are shifting work in-house.
From branding and production to custom software and “vibe coding,” this episode looks at what happens when teams can build directly instead of buying capability. We also ground the discussion in a real case study from a heating installation business, showing how AI-assisted tools can remove bottlenecks, reduce cost, and change how decisions get made.
Subscribe to BASELINE for long-form conversations exploring AI, creativity, and human intelligence.
Why Low Earth Orbit Is Becoming Dangerous - Bianca Cefalo
Low Earth Orbit is getting crowded, chaotic and harder to manage. In this episode, Space DOTS founder Bianca Cefalo explains why satellites are failing, why 90 percent of orbital anomalies have no known cause, and how space weather and hidden threats are reshaping the environment above Earth.
We explore the reality of Kessler syndrome, rapid material degradation, non kinetic attacks and why current data is no longer enough. This is the intelligence layer we need for the next decade of space operations.
Artificial Intelligence: Utopia or dystopia?
The Algorithmic Leap | AI, Innovation, and the Rules of the Game - Dr John Fletcher
In BASELINE052, Ian Smith sits down with Dr John Fletcher an Oxford, Imperial, and Cambridge-trained physicist and Chief Scientist at The Innovation Game. John is not just a world-class academic - he’s a rare innovator who bridges the gap between research and real-world impact.
At The Innovation Game, he is building technology that creates genuine competitive advantage, not just another layer of AI hype. His work proves how algorithms can solve critical problems in logistics, medicine, and science showing that the future of AI is about application, not buzzwords.
Artificial Intelligence: Utopia or dystopia?