BASELINE

Artificial intelligence is already shaping organisations, governments, and public services. Many of the most important AI decisions are being made by default rather than by design.

In this episode of BASELINE, Ian speaks with Jonny Williams, Chief Digital Adviser to the UK Public Sector at Red Hat, about why AI feels confusing, why value feels elusive, and why leadership matters more than models.

This conversation explores the real architecture behind AI systems, how technology stacks align with national interests, and why transparency and openness are now prerequisites for trust. Jonny explains why AI is not primarily a technical challenge, but a leadership and operating model challenge, closer to the role of a COO than a CTO.

Topics include AI sovereignty, Wardley mapping, open versus closed models, national infrastructure, mechanised government, digital identity, and why organisations risk losing agency if they allow AI decisions to drift to technologists alone.

AI is influencing how we work, how we communicate and how we make decisions. But the deeper change is personal. It affects our values, our identity and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.

In this episode, Professor Kevin Money explores how identity is formed, why it feels fragile during rapid change and what helps people stay grounded in an AI influenced world. Kevin is a behavioural scientist and Co-Director of the John Madejski Centre for Reputation at Henley Business School. His research focuses on identity, reputation, motivation, trust and responsible leadership. He advises the UK Government, global businesses and nonprofit organisations on how people think, feel and act.

This conversation looks at the psychology behind identity, emotional labour, belonging and the impact of trauma. It also considers how AI amplifies uncertainty and what we can do to stay anchored to our values while the world around us changes.

In an age of automation, some things can still only be seen by experience. Roger Bradbury spent decades inside UK construction before building the software he wished existed. His story shows how hard-won intuition, lived knowledge and human judgement still outperform the machine when it matters most.

This BASELINE conversation explores the reality behind construction’s complexity, why software has historically failed the industry, and what Roger learned building a platform trusted by thousands of operatives. He explains how private equity approached him, what they were really looking for, and why real-world edge cases still break even the smartest systems.

Roger shares a moment that changed everything for him: a foundation calculation that looked mathematically correct but instinctively wrong. One call to an experienced engineer exposed the limits of pure data and revealed the deeper truth of the episode: AI scales, but experience still decides.

https://www.space-dots.comLow 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.

https://leilapr.comAI generated content now floods every feed, and journalists are overwhelmed with synthetic pitches, misinformation and noise. In this episode, PR strategist Leila H joins me to reveal how real influence actually works in 2025. We explore what breaks through in the modern media landscape, why chasing the algorithm is a losing strategy, and how journalists choose the most interesting comment over the most senior voice. Leila shows why some stories generate thousands of reactions within an hour, how emotional content still drives attention, and why brands fail when they rely on AI to create generic pitches.

We discuss PR, media trust, AI creators, the future of influence, the hidden power behind the feed, and the new rules for getting seen when the internet is saturated with bots, auto-generated content and hyper-personalised news feeds. If you want to understand what breaks through in a world shaped by PR, AI and algorithms, this is the episode to watch.

As algorithms begin to decide what we see, believe, and even feel, one right becomes more important than any other - the right to think freely.Susie Alegre has spent her career fighting for that freedom. From the United Nations and Amnesty International to global courtrooms and parliaments, she has defended the idea that human thought itself must remain beyond the reach of governments and machines.In this conversation, she and Ian explore the frontline of cognitive liberty from AI bias and behavioural micro-targeting to the legal “reset” that could define the next century. Alegre argues that freedom of thought is an absolute human right as fundamental as the bans on slavery and torture and she shows how we can still reclaim it before it’s rewritten by code.

Is the AI boom a repeat of the dot-com bubble or something entirely new? In this episode of BASELINE, Ian sits down with Danvers Baillieu: tech lawyer, startup operator, and co-founder of GVT Labs to explore what’s real and what’s hype inside the AI bubble.

From advising early internet founders and co-creating Bootlaw, to scaling Hide My Ass VPN and InfoSum, Danvers has lived through every wave of digital disruption. Together they unpack how privacy, regulation, and trust are colliding with the speed of automation, and why AI’s foundations may be stronger than the markets think.#AIBubble #DotComDejaVu #BaselinePodcast #ArtificialIntelligence #Startups #TechEconomy

In this episode, Ian Smith speaks with Joe Tannorella, founder of PodEngine.ai, about the collapse of authenticity in modern media and why AI isn’t to blame. They explore how automation, marketing, and search are reshaping creativity, and why human connection has become the rarest commodity in technology.

The discussion moves from the mediocrity of generative AI to the power of conversational knowledge inside enterprises, from the death of traditional SEO to the rise of intelligent discovery. Together, they question why audiences no longer trust corporate media, how creators now outperform global brands, and what happens when the internet itself becomes synthetic.

In The Age of Imperfect Machines, global InsurTech leader Dr. Magda Ramada Sarasola (WTW) joins BASELINE to explore one of the most overlooked questions in the AI revolution:What happens when AI fails and how do we insure against it?From the fear of the first elevators to today’s non-deterministic AI systems, this conversation uncovers why innovation doesn’t come from eliminating risk, but from learning how to live with it.Magda explains how the insurance industry has always enabled progress by absorbing uncertainty so society can keep moving forward and how that same principle now underpins AI assurance, accountability, and agentic systems.BASELINE exposes the truth behind AI’s unstoppable rise. In-depth interviews with AI experts, real analysis, and insights you can trust on the technology reshaping our world.

For thirty years, Robin Christopherson MBE has shown how technology can remove barriers and bring people in. As Head of Digital Inclusion at AbilityNet, he helped shape the tools that transformed accessibility - screen readers, voice control, and adaptive interfaces that became the foundation for modern computing.Now a new paradox is emerging. The same systems that once empowered people could begin to replace them. AI can already triage patients, interview candidates, and make complex decisions in milliseconds. But who decides where the human boundary sits and who can be trusted to draw it?