AI, real estate and robots

If you're wondering what the slightly strange picture at the top of this post is all about, let me explain. It's a picture generated by artificial intelligence on the video and picture editing app Picsart . I met up with the company's founder Hovhannes Avoyan for a CEO Secrets interview.

You can see the original picture taken of us here:

I can't remember what instructions I gave the AI in the app when I asked it to change our picture, but I think it was "retro Japanese anime", maybe with the word "gangster" thrown in. It's pretty amazing tech to play around with. And in fact the advice that Hovhannes wanted to share was all about AI. It's something I'm hearing from a lot of entrepreneurs now. Basically, AI is a powerful tool and you need to learn to use it, to remain relevant and competitive in the workplace of the near future! Or as Hovhannes summarised it in the video: "AI won't steal your job, but people using it may".

Hovhannes has had a very interesting career growing up in Soviet-era Armenia and then creating lots of start-ups when it found independence in the 1990s. He also studied AI at university long before it was fashionable. He then moved to California to grow Picsart, which has become a unicorn, valued at more than $1bn. I had a long chat with him which will emerge in due course as a BBC World Service broadcast and podcast.

Robots get AI reboot

Staying on the theme of AI, I've just returned from a trip to Edinburgh, which happens to be my home town. There I visited a local tech company that has spun out from the university, Robotical . CEO and founder Alexander Enoch developed a walking robot to teach kids coding and STEM subjects - he sells it to schools around the world. But he's had to give it a serious reboot. As lots of people have commented, why learn to code when AI will do it for you? His robots still teach coding, but also introduce kids to machine learning, generative models and AI. Again, the idea is to mentally equip the next generation to be competitive in a modern workforce. That video is coming out soon.

Real Estate Outlier

From AI to good old bricks and mortar. I caught up with a commercial property developer who is something of an outlier, because there are few black CEOs working in this space in the UK. Sanmi Adegoke arrived here in the early 2000s, as a teenager with his parents, from Nigeria. While working at McDonald's two things happened to him, which he recalled to me. Unfortunately, he suffered racist abuse from customers, giving him first-hand experience of the ugly side of UK society.

But secondly, a colleague gave him a book that had a huge impact on him: 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad', by Al Mincarelli . One of its tenets is that you need to acquire property assets to get ahead in society. Sanmi started to do this using his small savings. He had no contacts in the property industry, but he used the contacts he did have to grow his business: London's thriving religious faith groups. He specialised in renovating buildings for church groups as his way into real estate and didn't look back. Read all about his story here (the video will follow soon and hopefully radio version as well).

Talks

I was invited to speak at the Cambridge Network all about the CEO Secrets series. There was a big turnout of entrepreners, as well as lots of people connected to that world, like patent attorneys and angel investors (including Peter Cowley (he/him) ). There was some very intelligent questions at the end that made me think. Sometimes people assume speakers will fear the unknown of the Q+A, but I look forward to it! It challenges me and helps me think up new ideas for future projects.

I'm also speaking at the The Photography & Video Show in Birmingham next month - message me if you want a discount to the event, though lots of people can go free, check their website for details.

And if you are interested to get a copy of the BBC CEO Secrets book, it's currently available on the Bloomsbury website for the special price of ￡14.

Thanks (and I wrote this myself, no AI involved, for now...)

Dougal