As his short tenure in the top job comes to a somewhat terse handbrake stop, here’s a snap of Camden’s own Sir Keir taken in happier Prime Ministerial times; opening Google’s local AI Campus, back in 2024.

The pace of change these days might best be described as ‘fast-and-only-getting-faster’, with our penchant for churning through leaders just one such manifestation of today’s dizzying clip. (How long do you give plucky newbie Andy, then?)

Among the very few things everyone agrees on right now though, is that the accelerant for this hyper-transitional and polarising rollercoaster is largely down to the latest tech. Specifically, the exponential growth of all things currently badged under the catch-all moniker of ‘AI’.

So, just as the beaming (and back then newish) PM ushered in a long-awaited governmental focus on boosting the UK‘s adoption of such technologies - stating, quite rightly; “we stand in the foothills of a revolution” - it has swiftly come to pass that today’s relentlessly-forwards, attention-lite, tech-driven AI hyper-momentum may well have inadvertently done for dear Camden Keir himself.

Who knew that the white-collar career killer AIs would be coming for those in the very top jobs, too?

And yet, the scare story that these bamboozling-yet-mind-expanding platforms and plugins are going to leave us all twiddling our penniless thumbs due to the lack of meaningful work (in just a few short months from now, apparently) is, I hope, a sales-driven misreading of what today’s next-level industrial revolution is really going to be about.

Why? Well, earlier this week, I went to the swish Town Hall by Bottaccio to see my 18-year-old daughter speak at her graduation ceremony as part of the very first cohort of Google’s Keir-endorsed AI Campus, which is based in Somers Town. It’s been genuinely inspiring for her to have completed this weekly course while at sixth form, [proud dad moment claxon📯], potentially setting the scene for all she goes on to do next.

The nascent programme is, for now, a uniquely Camden opportunity offering free training and barrel-loads of potential to local kids from all backgrounds. In doing this, Google are essentially being good neighbours, improving chances for success for young residents across the swathes of Camden in which the global business has so significantly landed. This outreach, its scale, ambition and impact, is an exceptional thing. Imagine growing up with all that a short walk away.

There were emotional words of thanks given to the Google and Camden Council/Learning teams and their supportive staff for delivering such an ambitious project and - no matter how you might feel about the societal twisting, warping and bending that comes with this new tech - also a genuine positivity around creative/industrial applications of new AI tools, too. We need to hear more of this stuff, as the inevitability of our AI transition trajectory won’t benefit from people resisting, fearing and effectively heading off-grid, off-banking, off-truth and more.

Melanie Eusebe, Director of AI in Society for Google DeepMind, then delivered a sterling speech, revealing her failings as a young student, leading to a dose of parental intervention and how she could not have possibly envisioned her current role back then, as none of it had been invented.

“It's so hard sometimes,” she said, addressing the students, “as the world has so many stereotypes, tropes and expectations that you're going to run up against, yet you've had no place in defining. I am here to tell you that those are not for you. You are to define your own journey, and to define your own success.”

She was also keen to bring humans to the forefront of this largely bot-centred hot dinner party debate topic. “It's not just about the technology,” Eusebe carried on, “which is just an enabler of our humanity and the communities in which we form. For everything that you code and for every problem that you solve, remember the human face that is going to feel every single one of your decisions.”

Such rousing sentiment is a far cry from the alpha bravura of the usual Silicon Valley bros, extoling the virtues of automating jobs and erasing human overheads via their all-conquering robot tools. You could, of course, say Melanie has merely imbibed the corporate Kool-Aid. However, events like this one do provide a rare positive lens through which outsiders can view the massive cultural shift ahead of us, and I think that’s hugely important for anyone who doesn’t want to get left behind, forever wallowing in dated digital legacy nostalgia.

Wider, exciting AI can then be revealed as creatively valuable, time-savingly efficient and far less threatening to adopt, rather than just being sneered at as a vehicle for spitting out bland emails responses, terrible LinkedIn updates or generic job applications.

Seeing how much completing the course meant to the students and to the staff who’ve conceived and delivered it, it was impossible not to be moved and enthused by all that goes on here, at the cutting edge of Camden’s Knowledge Quarter. Times may still be damn hard out there, but there really is still so much to go and do - no matter who you are or where you’re approaching this from - if you dive in to opportunities like the Campus.

Refined learning of AI theory, building and prompting practice are the kind of skills everyone will soon want/need, yet now each year, selected Camden school kids get the chance to learn directly from some of the world’s tech experts, for free. What a time and place this is (which is why we celebrate it via this newsletter every week, of course).

The AI Campus project is the kind of tech-led takeover of the near future we should all be behind and proud to have in the area. A model currently being trialled, designed and improved right here, for the benefit of us locals, but with truly global implications. And with Platform 37 on the way later this year, expect more hands-on, eye-opening AI explorations to come for more than just school-aged people, too…

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