This Week in Leading AI

The Pantomime Horse Grows a Third Pair of Legs 🍺 A first for us, someone else at the bar. And she earned her special tankard. Nicole Alos — founder of Socratyc, executive coach, and creator of Socratyc Sidekick — heard the steam engine episode, recognised exactly what Kieron was describing from her own leadership work, and emailed in. So, we pulled up a third stool. What followed is one of the be...

Plus a Troll, a Marking Robot & a Mystery Guest 🍺 Episode 20. Somebody told Neil his content is lazy and rehashed. He's decided being trolled is an accolade. Kieron got ambushed on stage when a customer asked a live audience whether KnowledgeFlow had helped or hindered them. (Spoiler: he survived. Every hand that went up said helped.) The big question this week: is AI conscious? Kieron —...

It's getting hot in the pantomime horse outfit.  Neil's back from the Isle of Arran — sunburned, hydrated, and mildly alarmed by the FT and The Economist's sudden AI pessimism. Meanwhile, Kieron had a rollercoaster of a week with client highs and lows. Week 19 rolls on. The big insight this week: most organisations are handing staff a Copilot licence and expecting transformation. Th...

By the time Kieron listened to last week's episode, Fable had already been released and banned. That's the pace of AI right now. This week: why the US export ban on Anthropic's frontier models should worry every business that's quietly become dependent on one provider, the bid that went brilliantly until a customer who didn't believe a 100/100 score was real, and the KPMG...

Week 17. Kieron wore a shirt and shoes to a food industry conference for 60 senior leaders. Neil nearly went back in the doghouse because his daughter told him to read the room and he (foolishly) chose not to. Leading AI's website has had hundreds of cyber-attacks in two weeks. It's been that kind of week. Schools — 58-page complaint letters and why the AI arms race matters A head contac...

Episode 16: $500 Million in Tokens, AI Slop at Interview & Trigger's Broom 🍺 Week 16. The pantomime horse rolls on — and the transcript called it pantyhose again. Neil is blaming his Northern accent. Kieron is firmly in the back end. Nothing has changed. Someone burned $500 million of Claude tokens in a month 💸   An unnamed organisation gave all staff unlimited access to Claude Enterpri...

Week 15. Kieron is back from six days on the beige boat of joy — a 1980s river cruiser that he describes as "full on retro". Neil describes Kieron as the “Magnum P.I. on the Thames”. If you’re lucky enough to be under 50, look it up. Kieron said his six-year-old son's favourite thing about the whole trip was watching YouTube on the iPad. The joy of parenting in 2026. "Neil, you...

Episode 14: Steam Engines, 100 Out of 100 & Can Me Mam Use This? 🍺 Week 14. Veterans now, apparently. Kieron is off to pootle on the Thames on the beige boat of joy after this. Neil is enjoying the last few days of summer in the Lake District before the cold winds of June blow through. The pantomime horse of a podcast rolls on. The steam engine analogy — and why it changes everything 🏭 Kiero...

Episode 13: Live from the Glastonbury of AI — Our Gartner Debrief 🍺 Week 13. Unlucky for some — but not for two people who've just spent three days at the Gartner Data and Analytics Summit, AKA the Glastonbury of AI. Neil says he was nearly as exhausted after three days sitting down as after five days at the actual Glastonbury. What goes on at Glastonbury stays at Glastonbury. But what goes...

Buzzsprout Description Episode 12: Sir David Attenborough, Magic Wands, and prep for the Glasto of AI 🍺 Week 12. The pantomime horse of a podcast is back. Kieron is heading to David Attenborough's 100th birthday picnic after this. Sort of. It's at his son's school, 100 metres from Sir David's house. There is a non-zero chance of Sir David making an appearance. Neil wants photo...

Episode 11: McKinsey Got Hacked, McDonald's Writes Python & We're Big in Uzbekistan 🍺 Week 11. Eleven weeks of consistent podcasting — a personal consistency record for both of them. 🥳  The podcast now has listeners in Venezuela, Malaysia, Kenya, Ukraine, Vietnam and Uzbekistan. Almost certainly the same person with a very well-travelled VPN. Hello to all our world listeners. Kiero...

Episode 10: TechUK Recognition, You Get What You Pay For & The Very First Cyber Attack 🍺 Ten weeks. The longest either of them has been consistent at anything. Neil's briefly out of the doghouse. Kieron's on squash instead of beer. And Leading AI has just had two case studies published in one of the most important AI reports of the year. Pull up a stool. TechUK's "From Pil...

Episode 9: AI Deniers, AI Slop & KnowledgeFlow Cracks Salesforce 🍺 Neil's on a non-alcoholic beer again — this time because he's in the doghouse with Mrs Watkins and needs to drive her to a romantic weekend away to patch things up. It's that kind of Friday. Welcome to Episode 9. Mrs Watkins is an AI denier — and she's not alone Neil tried to convince his wife of the wonder...

No beer again this week — just water, Coke, and the usual dose of brilliant conversation (Ed. - Seriously? Who writes this stuff?).  AI liability — who's actually responsible when it goes wrong? Kieron sat down with Peter Lee of Simmons & Simmons , head of AI governance, to ask the question nobody has a clean answer to yet: when AI gives someone wrong information that affects their life,...

Episode 7: Punch Cards, Agentic AI & KnowledgeFlow Outperforms Salesforce 🍺 It's Easter week and this week’s recording is in the morning, so too early for beer. Even for us. And that’s in spite of Neil’s granddaughter telling him to toughen up. Welcome to Episode 7. This one's packed — from a proper history lesson about the early days of computers, to KnowledgeFlow quietly doing som...

Episode 6: Non-AI Days, The AI Gap & Why Copilot Isn't a KnowledgeFlow 🍺 The beer has finally arrived. Unfortunately, Neil's is non-alcoholic because he's got to go to the dentist. Kieron got lost on a golf course on the way back from a college in Essex. And the podcast is officially going global — hello, Karen Foster in Australia. Week 6 is here and it's a cracker. Buckle...

Episode 5: The Fumble Zone, AI Safety & Leading AI Goes to Canada 🍁 Neil's heading to the pub. Kieron's been up since six. It's Friday, the sun's on their faces, and Episode 5 of the Leading AI podcast is underway — squash in a Peroni glass and all. This week the boys (?!) cover some genuinely meaty ground: The Fumble Zone 🏉 Bob Piggott's interesting LinkedIn piece o...

Episode 4: AI, Snowboarding & Why Your Organisation Is Losing Months It Can't Afford Neil's back from the slopes. Slightly heavier, considerably happier, and absolutely buzzing with new ideas. Kieron's been up since six and already done a social work podcast panel before lunchtime. It's business as usual at Leading AI HQ. This week the guys dig into some genuinely thought-p...

Episode 3: Talking to AI, How Buying Has Changed & the Birthday Gift Nobody Expected Kieron's back from a whirlwind week — Glasgow, a college hackathon, a delayed flight, and Tunnock's teacakes. Neil's been holding the fort. Between them, they've got plenty to talk about. This week the lads get into some genuinely meaty topics: Talking to AI — are we doing it wrong? A simpl...

Welcome to the very first Leading AI podcast.  This week Kieron and Neil talk about how Leading AI came about, what we're doing now, and some of the key challenges we se in the sector.  As you'll see, we may not be professional podcasters, but we do know about AI and how it can help transform organisations, so enjoy.

This Week in Leading AI — AI Adoption, Copilot Frustrations & Why Timeliness Beats Efficiency It's Kieron's birthday — and he's spending it talking about AI. You're welcome. This week Neil and Kieron get stuck into one of the biggest challenges facing businesses right now: why aren't people actually using AI, even when it's sitting right there on their desktop? Fr...