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Sharon: My god. Can I not turn here?

Nikolas:  I don't know. Oh, okay. 

Sharon: Well, we did.

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Nikolas: Yeah. There you go. Well, we we're we're rule breakers, right? So, let's let's go. If we get arrested, we'll do it on camera. That's right.

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Sharon: And that's all right. 

Nikolas: I I'm all about rule breaking.

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Sharon: Still not quite sure if I'm even allowed to drive here.

Nikolas:  I tell you what, let's go down here, take a left, take a right down the hill, and then we'll find a

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quiet spot down there where we're where we can hide from the police that are now significantly looking for us cuz we've broken the rules 

Sharon: like five times.

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I have such a special treat again. My next guest is Nicholas Badminton. He is a world-renowned global futurist and hope engineer.

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He mentors top executives in highest levels of government to create bold visions by exploring hopeful

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futures, anticipating disruption, and of course, supercharging strategic planning. I see him right there. 

Let's get him in the car. Hey, Nick. Need a ride? Hi.

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56 seconds

Nikolas:  Hi. How are you? 

Sharon: I'm great. 

Nikolas: And it's taken us some time to get here, so I'm ready.

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Sharon: But you you've been busy. You have been predicting the future. 

Nikolas: We don't predict futures. 

Sharon: So tell me, what the heck is a futurist? Who am I actually speaking to?

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Nikolas: Yeah. So, since I was really young, I've been really obsessed with, you know, science fiction, what might come next,

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technology and whatever. And really, all of this is signals. Signals that indicate the change is coming. And when they start to interact and you start to join the dots between them, it means

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that we we can see the trends. And the trends indicate a trajectory forward.

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And then when we start to combine them in scenarios, what if in 2045 we see these systems, these places, these people, these regulations,

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uh these cultural and societal effects,

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you can start to see the dynamics of change and and the final piece is around storytelling. But what we don't do is we don't predict. So we don't say in year X technology Y is going to be, you know,

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doing this and this and this and this. 

Sharon: So you're not a psychic.

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Nikolas: We're not a psychic. But what we do is we we take the data, we take the ideas and we take the the sort of the narratives and what's happening in the

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world. We qualify it and then we sort of speculate on what might happen.

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Sharon: What does a truly privacy respecting future look like and is it even possible in a world driven by data?

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Nikolas: Anyone can make their house a privacy respecting uh space by making everyone turn off their phones.

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Sharon: So you you can never really be uh fully protected. I I suppose 

Nikolas: well you can if you turn off your phones and you don't have any internet

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connection in your house and you basically don't have connected devices and 

Sharon: you put tin foil around you. 

Nikolas: Well yeah you can put them in, you know,

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boxes that that stop signals from getting in and out of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

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you could do that. I know people that do. Yeah

Sharon: . Are they happy? 

Nikolas: Sure

Sharon:. Okay. Is it you?

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My house is very analog.

Sharon: I have a serious question though. 

Nikolas: Yes.

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Sharon: Where are the flying cars that we've been promised? 

Nikolas: They keep trying to do it. So if you're somewhere like LA, you know, eight lanes of traffic, eight lanes of traffic, and if you're going to

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solve that commute and that sort of that congestion, you literally have to have nearly like 1,600 drones in the sky at any one point in time.

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Sharon: Oh wow.

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Nikolas: It's just it just it's not it's not something that's really practical. But at the same time, you know, all exploration of ideas of what might be is

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relevant in a way. There's lots of things that need to be overcome. But you know, futurists always say, you know,

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never say never. But like, you know, the glittering lure of the future is around flying cars and robotics and AI and not about the mundane things that I think

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that we need to be uh bearing in mind like how to improve recycling and waste,

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how to improve the water, energy, food nexus. Right.

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Sharon: We are obviously here because I want to talk about privacy.

Nikolas:  Yes.

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Sharon: Tell me how do you know what privacy is going to look like in 50 years from now?

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Nikolas: Yeah. So it it's all about understanding the history of how we got to today, the signals and the trends and what's emerging and then speculating on what

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comes next. Now we see an acceleration of sensors and sensor fusion. We see an acceleration of artificial intelligence and the processing of data. We're seeing

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an acceleration of a culture in business where they want you to sign off terms and conditions where they ultimately own your identity. They own all of your

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behavior and they want to use all of that with analytics to understand, you know, the constellation of your family,

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the constellation of your work and build a full tilt profile of everything you do. Ultimately to sell you more stuff from an intelligence community

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perspective to understand you to the nth degree so they can understand if you're,

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you know, a vector of risk, right? um we're kind of we've we're sleepwalking into corporate surveillance and we're

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just signing our life away and we don't have a choice anymore. It takes something like 9 hours to read uh

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Amazon's terms and conditions for Prime like if you read them out loud and at any one point in time after that point

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of maybe you understanding it they can just change them all as well because there are clauses within that 

Sharon: Is privacy dead

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Nikolas: Yeah. But it doesn't mean that we don't have to care deeply about our own privacy and what we put out into the world. You won't ever find a picture of me and my wife and my kid online.

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Sharon: Is that right? 

Nikolas: Yeah. And that's a choice.. Um but at the same time, 

Sharon: Explain that to me.

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Nikolas: How come? Why would I want to share that with anyone outside of a trusted friend group that people have got this, you know,

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online digital platforms like therapy for people that don't want to invest in therapy, right? They they they just want to like somehow share that

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they're doing okay rather than actually doing okay, right? Look how good we're doing. Look what we're doing. Look where we're on vacation. Look what I'm eating

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for lunch. Look at my kid. Aren't they amazing?

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Sharon: There could be two things. So, you don't want to share because you kind of feel like, well, it's just like me showing off, you know, all these things that's

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not really necessary. Or is it that you're actually concerned about not what the public can see, but maybe what

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companies can see of you and your family? Is is that also at play here? 

Nikolas: It it's actually the primary concern. The

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targeting that can happen uh through the platforms that we have. Uh it's incredible, right? Yeah. I I've got a

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huge problem with it. I've got a huge huge problem with it. Google Gemini,

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their their generative AI platform is being rolled out to most countries around the world for kids under the age of 13, which is terrifying because it's

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ingested all of the information in the world and it's it's going to be, you know, hallucinating and providing opportunity for kids to shortcut thinking and learning and and whatever.

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But not in Switzerland, not in not in the European Union, not in the UK.

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Sharon: Meaning they're not they're not they're not they're not allowed to roll out because you're not allowed to influence children like via

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tech platforms like that. But everyone's trying to get to the kids, right? And why? Because they want to indoctrinate them in a new way of like, it's okay,

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just fall asleep at the wheel. Um bleed bleed data every day. In fact, give us more information. Your life's going to be more convenient. 

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It's going to be better. And and there's a real problem with that.

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Sharon: Let let me ask you this. So I mean AI is not going anywhere.

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Is it not better to train your children on how to use it responsibly, therefore allowing them to use it within the

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schools rather than pretend it doesn't exist and not let them on those platforms.

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Nikolas: So having just come off the back of an education keynote, this is perfect.

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There's something called productive struggle. So you can be productive, you can learn, you can use tools but you have to struggle through it so that you learn.

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Sharon: You also call yourself a hope engineer. 

Nikolas: Yes.

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Sharon: So where is the hope? Where is you know the good stories that we can expect from our future.

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Nikolas: Hope is an energy for change and also futures help us explore you know a hope for a better world and also hope to make a change today towards that world as well..

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So that's why I call myself a hope engineer. 

Sharon: I love that.

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Nikolas: Yeah. 

Sharon: And we should all be hope engineers.

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Nikolas: Exactly. And and people are gravitating towards it. I talk about, you know,

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future to set the direction and the vision. Hope to be the energy of change and wisdom to be the guidance.

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Sharon: That's beautiful. What are your thoughts on super intelligence?

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Nikolas: It's going to be incredibly difficult to get to that point. Um does that mean that any of these big tech companies are not going to redefine what it really

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what it is to them and say that they've achieved it? That's what's going to happen in the next 5 years. Sharon: Oh, really?

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Nikolas: Yeah. We've achieved AGI, but it's not going to be true artificial general intelligence. If you if you think about it, it's that idea that it's smarter

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than the whole of the human race. It's autonomous in its ways. It it it's got an ability to to truly

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in a way be sentient and to be aware and to be conscious.

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We can't define consciousness like we can't it's difficult. There's a million definitions of like intelligence. 

Sharon: Now, 

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a lot of uh well-known executives say that super intelligence is going to pretty much wipe away humans and make us extinct. Do you think that's the case?

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Nikolas: Let me fix that for you. Tech executives selling you solutions that promise to do this say that. Um let's be honest, like

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you know, in a world where I sell sell red paint, you know, I see a world that's painted red and you should too, right? That's That's bad futurism.

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Sharon: I want to talk about the art on your arm. 

Nikolas: Yes.

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Sharon: Tell tell me. Is there a story behind it?

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I mean, you you have two full sleeves here

Nikolas:. Yeah, I've got more than that. 

Sharon: Oh, really?

Nikolas:  Yeah. No, I'm completely covered. 

Sharon: No. Wow. 

Nikolas: Why not?

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Sharon: Oh, I don't know. Tell me.

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Nikolas: In uh in the late '90s, I was in San Francisco in a Japanese bookstore called Kinuka, and I picked up a book called The Bashidilo, and it was about the

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japanese bodysuits. Now, what they don't tell you is that these guys are 5'1 and 140 lb..

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I'm like 6'4 and 260, right? Um it like it takes like three times as long to tattoo me

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So So whilst I'm not a full Japanese bodysuit, it's just because it hurts a lot and uh I and I just don't have the time to make it all happen.

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It's one of those things. It just takes a long time to get that.

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Sharon: Well, it took me all of like five minutes to do my arms.

Nikolas:  Come on. Yeah. Okay, there you go.

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Sharon: I I didn't I don't want you to feel like you 

Nikolas: That's That's pretty cool. You've got some like You've got some cool

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writing on there. I don't know what it says. What does it say?

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Choppers. You bike it. You got some flames and some stars.

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Sharon: Can we talk a little bit about zero trust? 

Nikolas: Yeah. So, there are stories out there.

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So, I I tell a story, a cyber security story. Um engineering firm in Hong Kong.

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Um the the the the chief finance officer calls in. He's on a trip with a couple of his team for the next two weeks. Um,

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actually, you know, that's happening in the world. And and he's on this he's on this trip and he calls into HQ and says,

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"Look, I need to move like 200 million Hong Kong dollars to these five entities and it's because, you know, I'm building these partnerships. I'm traveling around

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mainland China. We have to do this." and they're like, "Well, we can't take that phone call as a as a as a signature, as

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a as a, you know, an absolute permission or or a sort of signed off part of our process. You have to be in the office to do that." Mhm.

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And uh he said, "Well, I'm going to be on the road. These really important relationships. How about we have uh a

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call, a conference call, a video call uh with me and my team, and we'll verbally we'll go through everything and verbally we'll give you the go ahead." And they

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did about 2 or 3 days later they they went ahead and they did that. And um it was only after a day or two of starting to move money around that HQ realized

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that they their human intuition said it didn't feel right. And it wasn't actually turned out after an 

investigation um that there had been a

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number of um identities and compromises on uh on certain accounts internally including like the the chief chief

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financial officer and his team and uh all of the people on that video conference were not real.

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Sharon: Oh my god.

Nikolas:  So, so zero trust literally we're we're coming back to absolute trust from standing in the same room

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absolutely verifying who that human is through biometrics or whatever and then taking going through due process and

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then checking again and again shake your hand see you record you understand the situation. 

Sharon: So like if this is happening

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now what is going to happen in the next 20 years when things get even more intelligent?.

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Like how do you prevent this from happening? 

Nikolas: So we are at the sharp end of the stick.

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So we have to make the decision on whether something is real or not. So uh the government of Finland are actually teaching this in school. They're teaching people how to determine if something is um true, false,

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misinformation, whatever. Um because we're the filters. the tech companies aren't coming to help us or so. 

Sharon: Is there any hope there?

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Nikolas: Hope lies with humanity and humanity's ability to cut through that noise. 

Sharon: So, we talked about privacy is dead.

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And for companies who are listening to us is in saying privacy is dead,

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they may be saying, well, why do we need to comply with privacy regulations?

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Privacy is dead. Why should we even care? Um if even people don't care about their information, they're giving it

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away so easily. Why should we care? So what do you say to that?

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Nikolas: You know, the the most valued companies in the world will be those that truly empower the people that they serve.

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Sharon: I know you and I may actually care about our privacy and how we're sharing our information, but the average consumer, the average individual, do they care?

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Nikolas: When you chat to people, I've got nothing to hide. It's like, sure, but are you going to give me enough information so I can create a story about you that fundamentally changes how

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people see you? That's what you really have to care about. And you don't need that much data to basically create a story that isn't necessarily 100% true that changes an opinion of someone.

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Sharon: One thing that surprises me about you,

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Nik, is your trust in artificial ingredients. 

Nikolas: Artificial ingredients.

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Sharon: Artificial ingredients. Cuz I found out that on a road trip you like to eat pepperoni. So, in a world of zero trust,

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We know Nick does trust these artificial ingredients.

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Nikolas: Give me it. Depends. 

Sharon: It I don't know. A a piece of meat that cannot that is not refrigerated for months. It scares me.

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Nikolas: Really?

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Sharon: Yes. There has to be some preservatives 

Nikolas: But I'm European. This is normal. This is good stuff, right?

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Sharon: Zero trust with everything else. But pepperoni stick.

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Nikolas: Yeah, but you can read the You can read the ingredients. Imagine

Sharon:  that they tell you is in there. 

Nikolas: Yeah. And they make it easy to read.

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Imagine if that's what that's what data and privacy policy was like.