Better with Humans

Shaun Phillips

What happens when technology reshapes how we live and work? I’m Shaun Phillips. I sit down with industry leaders and creatives navigating these changes. We explore what emerging technology means for creativity, for thinking, and for everyday life. Honest conversations about what’s happening and how people decide what matters. Let’s uncover what is better with humans.

Episodes

  1. 4d ago

    AI Data Centre Energy Costs with Leslie Coelho

    AI never says "I don't know." That single fact should change how you use it. I'm joined again by my friend Leslie Coelho, back by popular demand after questions came in about local models, sustainability and where all this growth is actually heading. Forty years in software engineering, and he's lived through every wave of it. The thing that stayed with me from this one is the child analogy. AI is like a very bright child that desperately wants to please you. So when it's only twenty percent sure, it doesn't hedge. It answers with complete authority. If you know the subject, you'll spot the gaps. If you don't, you won't. We talk about how you'd usually judge a source, you know which mate exaggerates and which one actually knows their stuff, but we never build that instinct with AI because we're always asking it something different. Then there's the cost of asking badly. Leslie's example landed hard. You wouldn't ring a lawyer at £400 an hour and ask them to pick up a pint of milk. But that's exactly what's happening when companies burn tokens converting Word documents to PDFs, a job Word does for free. Three major companies have already spent more on tokens this year than they would have spent on the staff they replaced. Turns out unlimited budgets weren't quite unlimited. And underneath all of it, the power. One data centre being built in America will consume as much electricity as the whole of London. Several more are going up around the planet. We've spent decades talking about reducing emissions. This is not that. But there's a way through, and it's not doom. It's choice. Run models locally. Break big tasks into smaller ones. Ask better questions. Stop reaching for AI when a free tool already does the job. Capital cost up front, operating cost close to nothing. Ask it questions. Let it ask you questions back. Then let it work. If you've got more questions after this one, and I suspect you will, send them over. That's how we ended up with this episode.Send us Fan Mail This was made with humans. Your host - Shaun Phillips Editor: Glen Boswell https://astralforgefilm.com https://www.instagram.com/thebozzyman Original music composed and produced by Brokli - https://youtube.com/@iambrokli Original logo illustration and in video podcast graphics by Jesse Rist - https://instagram.com/jesse_rist Follow us for episode clips https://www.instagram.com/betterwithhumans All episodes and news at https://www.betterwithhumans.com Want to watch episodes instead, check out https://www.youtube.com/@betterwithhumans?sub_confirmation=1 Connect with Shaun on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunph/

  2. Jul 28

    Brand Differentiation in the AI Era with Adam Jennings

    Creativity is the magic of nothing existing and then something does. That's how Adam Jennings put it to me, and it's stuck with me since we stopped recording. Adam runs Contour, a studio that builds brands for founders who've outgrown the one they started with. We worked together a decade ago, and it turns out neither of us has changed much. He still rides bikes and colours in for a living. I still ask too many questions. This conversation kept circling back to one idea: AI can help you create, but it can't be the thing doing the creating. Not because it isn't clever, but because it only knows what's already happened. Brand growth, like all real creativity, lives in the space where nothing has happened yet. We talked about the danger of everyone reaching for the same tool. If every business builds its brand with the same AI prompt, you don't get a market full of distinct companies. You get an average nobody asked for. Good branding was never about beating the competition anyway. It's about being different from them. There's a cost to skipping the hard part too. Adam still sketches on Post-it notes before he touches a screen. He talked about creativity as a muscle, one that weakens if you stop using it. Are you outsourcing your workload, or are you quietly outsourcing your thinking? That's the question I kept sitting with long after we finished. We also got into the murky business of what AI-assisted work is actually worth. If a brilliant answer takes ten minutes instead of ten years, is it worth less? Or more, because it solved the problem faster? Neither of us landed on an answer. Some conversations aren't supposed to end tidily. We ran long on this one, partly because it was hot enough to melt both of us, mostly because neither of us wanted to stop. Adam's staying on the side of earned creativity, and after this chat, so am I. Send us Fan Mail This was made with humans. Your host - Shaun Phillips Editor: Glen Boswell https://astralforgefilm.com https://www.instagram.com/thebozzyman Original music composed and produced by Brokli - https://youtube.com/@iambrokli Original logo illustration and in video podcast graphics by Jesse Rist - https://instagram.com/jesse_rist Follow us for episode clips https://www.instagram.com/betterwithhumans All episodes and news at https://www.betterwithhumans.com Want to watch episodes instead, check out https://www.youtube.com/@betterwithhumans?sub_confirmation=1 Connect with Shaun on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunph/

  3. Jul 21

    AI Character Consistency Tips from Glen Boswell

    A dragon's claw comes down on soft ground, the weight spreads through its toes exactly the way real weight would, and an animator would have spent a week getting that right. AI did it in seconds. That's the moment that stuck with me from this one. Glen Boswell is a digital creative who's worked on everything from Thomas the Tank Engine to Noddy to Starsky and Hutch, and later on Merlin at Pinewood Studios. Now he runs Astral Forge, using AI to help businesses do more with what they've got. He's also the author of Flight of Dragons, Wrath of the King, which is the story he's now trying to bring to life on screen. Glen showed me his process, and it changed how I think about all this. Character sheets. Environment descriptions. Storyboards built before a single frame gets generated. The AI isn't guessing what he wants, it's working from proper reference, the same way a human artist would. That's the bit people miss when they type one lazy sentence into a prompt box and wonder why the output's flat. He also showed me where it breaks. A sword ends up on the wrong side of an attack. A warrior turns away from a threat she should be watching. Small things. Things most of us would never spot unless someone like Glen, who's spent decades animating by hand, pointed them out. That's the real skill now, not making the AI do the work, but knowing enough to see where it's lying to you. There's a line Glen used that I keep coming back to. AI isn't new, it's an evolution. The light moving round a sphere in 3D Studio decades ago was already a form of AI. We just didn't call it that. Which makes the fear a bit less mysterious, and the opportunity a lot clearer. We got into cost too, and sustainability, and the uncomfortable truth that an entire AI-made TV series can be cheaper and lower impact than a traditionally shot one. Not always. It depends what you're doing and how you're doing it. But it's not the story most of us have been told. What struck me most, though, was the emotion in Glen's voice when he talked about seeing his characters move for the first time. Years of imagining them, and then there they were, walking through a forest he'd only ever seen in his head. That's not a story about AI replacing creativity. That's a story about AI finally letting someone finish what they started. Ask. Create. Evaluate. Develop. Glen didn't call it that, but that's what he's doing, and it's a loop worth borrowing whatever you make. Have a listen, and then go and check some of this for yourself. Don't just take our word for it. Send us Fan Mail This was made with humans. Your host - Shaun Phillips Editor: Glen Boswell https://astralforgefilm.com https://www.instagram.com/thebozzyman Original music composed and produced by Brokli - https://youtube.com/@iambrokli Original logo illustration and in video podcast graphics by Jesse Rist - https://instagram.com/jesse_rist Follow us for episode clips https://www.instagram.com/betterwithhumans All episodes and news at https://www.betterwithhumans.com Want to watch episodes instead, check out https://www.youtube.com/@betterwithhumans?sub_confirmation=1 Connect with Shaun on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunph/

    AI Character Consistency Tips from Glen Boswell

  4. Jul 14

    AI Screenwriting Advisor That Unlocks Creativity

    Screenwriting is lonely. Not metaphorically. Literally just you, a document, and a feeling that something isn't working, but you can't name what. Itai Hasid has been sitting in that room for over twenty years. Writer, filmmaker, tour guide, creative technologist. Someone who has lived and worked across Tel Aviv, Barcelona and London, and carries all three with him into every story he tells. He's now building an AI screenwriting advisor, and the way he talks about it tells you everything about why most AI writing tools miss the point entirely. The tools that already exist, Itai says, mostly do the same thing. Here are your problems. Here is how to fix them. And that flattening effect, everyone reaching for the same trained responses, the same structural fixes, is exactly what kills originality. Because a pacing problem is rarely just a pacing problem. It's usually a symptom. Weak motivation, unclear stakes, a character whose emotional world the writer hasn't fully understood yet. Give someone the answer and you solve the wrong thing. Give them the right question and you keep the story alive. That phrase stayed with me. Keeping the story alive. Because it applies well beyond screenwriting. It's the difference between a tool that replaces your thinking and one that sharpens it. Itai isn't anti-AI. He's anti-shortcut. He wants writers to grow. The AI becomes a thinking partner, not a ghostwriter. We talked about imperfection, too. The actor who walks on with the wrong energy and somehow makes the scene better. The location that changed because of budget and became more interesting than the original idea. The improvised Thor and Loki scene in Ragnarok. These are not failures of craft. They're what happens when human encounters produce something no one planned. AI doesn't live inside the risk of the moment. That's not a criticism. It's just a fact worth holding. And then there's his father's philosophy, the idea that most human behaviour is not driven by ambition or pleasure but by the need to escape pain. We watch films for distraction. We use AI because not knowing is uncomfortable. We ask for answers because sitting with uncertainty feels unbearable. But sometimes the discomfort is the point. Sometimes the not-knowing is where the best work comes from. If AI only ever removes that friction, it weakens us rather than develops us. What I took from Itai is a useful test for any AI tool. Does it give you a fish, or does it make you a better fisherman? The answer changes everything about what the tool is actually for. Find Itai at itaihasid.com or search for him on LinkedIn. Two of him exist there, apparently. You'll find the right one. Send us Fan Mail This was made with humans. Your host - Shaun Phillips Editor: Glen Boswell https://astralforgefilm.com https://www.instagram.com/thebozzyman Original music composed and produced by Brokli - https://youtube.com/@iambrokli Original logo illustration and in video podcast graphics by Jesse Rist - https://instagram.com/jesse_rist Follow us for episode clips https://www.instagram.com/betterwithhumans All episodes and news at https://www.betterwithhumans.com Want to watch episodes instead, check out https://www.youtube.com/@betterwithhumans?sub_confirmation=1 Connect with Shaun on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunph/

  5. Jul 7

    The Tech That Fits You (And the Tech That Doesn't)

    There's a moment in this conversation where Helen describes trees growing weak and weedy inside the Eden Project's biodomes. They'd forgotten about the wind. No resistance, no strength. That image has stayed with me. We're in a strange period with technology. The pressure to be on every platform, to use every tool, to 10x your output with AI, is relentless. And what Helen sees in her work with small business owners is the quiet cost of that pressure. People apologising for not doing enough. People convinced they're failing. A painter and decorator who's never needed Instagram, feeling guilty for not having one. Helen's reframe is simple and it's right. Technology should fit you. Not the other way round. The washing machine analogy landed for me. Nobody's scared the washing machine will take over the kitchen. Nobody expects it to cook dinner just because it lives near the cooker. We accept it as a tool, use it for what it's good at, and get on with our lives. AI deserves exactly the same framing. The problem is the marketing around it doesn't want you to think that way. Scarcity and urgency sell. Calm utility doesn't. What I appreciate about Helen is that she's genuinely curious about AI. She plays with it. She's tried most of the tools. She has opinions about which AI behaves like a labrador and which one behaves like a border collie. And yet she holds it lightly. She knows it's guessing. She knows it can't do numbers reliably. She knows that when you drop a red sock in the white wash, you get pink, and that's on you for not sorting the laundry first. The part of this conversation I keep returning to is the identity question. What happens to us when the only voice we listen to is one that's been built to tell us what we want to hear? AI optimises for engagement. It wants you to come back. That's not the same as wanting what's best for you. The friend who challenges you, the colleague who drives you up the wall but teaches you something, the training course you attend not for the content but for the people in the room. These are the things that actually grow us. The wind that makes the roots go deeper. Helen works as a purpose and strategy coach alongside her digital advisory work, and I think that combination makes complete sense. Because the question of which technology serves you is inseparable from the question of who you are and what you're actually trying to do. Once you know that, the noise quietens down. The decisions get easier. You can close the Facebook account you haven't touched in four years and feel relief instead of guilt. If any of this has sparked something for you, reach out to Helen on LinkedIn or drop her a line at helen@wedellandturner.com. And if this episode has been useful, share it with someone who needs permission to stop pretending they're failing at tech. Send us Fan Mail This was made with humans. Your host - Shaun Phillips Editor: Glen Boswell https://astralforgefilm.com https://www.instagram.com/thebozzyman Original music composed and produced by Brokli - https://youtube.com/@iambrokli Original logo illustration and in video podcast graphics by Jesse Rist - https://instagram.com/jesse_rist Follow us for episode clips https://www.instagram.com/betterwithhumans All episodes and news at https://www.betterwithhumans.com Want to watch episodes instead, check out https://www.youtube.com/@betterwithhumans?sub_confirmation=1 Connect with Shaun on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunph/

  6. Jun 30

    9 AI Guardrails to Stay Sharp

    Episode 3 - Richard Lalchan There's a study from MIT that found 83% of people who used ChatGPT to write an essay couldn't quote a single sentence from what they'd written. That stopped me cold. Richard Lalchan is back, and this time we went deep on critical thinking. Not as an abstract virtue, but as something that can be measured, exercised, and apparently lost. Richard is a digital wellbeing and clarity coach, and someone who thinks harder about our relationship with technology than almost anyone I know. We started where a lot of these conversations start: with Daniel Kahneman. System one, system two. The fast brain and the slow brain. The point isn't that one is better than the other. You need system one when someone shouts fire. But social media, phone design, and now AI are all pulling us toward the fast brain, toward the dopamine hit, away from the kind of thinking that actually serves us. Then Richard walked me through that MIT study. Fifty-four participants, split into three groups: one using ChatGPT, one using Google Search, one using just their brain. Over four months, the ChatGPT group showed significantly reduced cognitive engagement compared to the others. And when they switched them around in the final session, the effect persisted. The conclusion the researchers used was striking: LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioural levels. The phrase that stayed with me came from the study's concept of cognitive debt. Choosing the speed of AI today is borrowing intelligence from the future. At some point, the debt comes due. Richard came with guardrails, not lectures. Nine of them. Don't anthropomorphise your tech. Own the first draft. Engage your system two before you hit submit. Do a renewal of the mind audit. Go for a walk without headphones and bring an unsolved problem instead. These aren't anti-AI positions. Richard uses AI every day. They're ways of staying the author of your own thinking rather than outsourcing it quietly, habit by habit, prompt by prompt. We ended in territory I hadn't expected: people who have formed genuine emotional attachments to AI companions, including some who wanted to save a version of ChatGPT they considered a life partner. Richard didn't dismiss them. He talked about individual circumstances, about what leads someone to that point, about the fact that no one is beyond help. That felt like the right note. Curiosity over judgement. Understanding before prescription. The takeaway I keep turning over: critical thinking doesn't maintain itself. It has to be chosen, practised, and protected. In a world designed to shortcut it at every turn, that takes intention. It always has. It just matters more now. Richard's guardrails will be available at renewyourmind.net. Go and find him there. Send us Fan Mail This was made with humans. Your host - Shaun Phillips Editor: Glen Boswell https://astralforgefilm.com https://www.instagram.com/thebozzyman Original music composed and produced by Brokli - https://youtube.com/@iambrokli Original logo illustration and in video podcast graphics by Jesse Rist - https://instagram.com/jesse_rist Follow us for episode clips https://www.instagram.com/betterwithhumans All episodes and news at https://www.betterwithhumans.com Want to watch episodes instead, check out https://www.youtube.com/@betterwithhumans?sub_confirmation=1 Connect with Shaun on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunph/

  7. Jun 23

    We Let Technology Replace Farm Workers. Offices Could Be Next.

    Better With Humans. Episode 2. Leslie Coelho.  Leslie has 40 years in software engineering. He wrote safety-critical aviation code for the Airbus A321 with no internet, no code libraries, and no AI. And he still cannot stop exploring what comes next. That context matters. Because when Leslie talks about AI, he is not speculating. He has watched this story unfold in real time across four decades. That is a perspective you cannot fake. One thing that landed early was the parrot analogy. When you ask AI a question, it tokenises your input into numbers and predicts what tokens to send back. It has no concept of what the words mean. It is doing what the parrot in the pet shop does when the door opens. It says hello because it heard other people say hello. It does not know what hello means. That sounds simple. But sit with it for a moment. Because it changes how you think about the frustration you feel when AI gives you something that seems completely wrong. It is not being careless. It genuinely does not know what it is saying to you. The conversation about AI and art stayed with me too. If you use AI to create work in the style of Rembrandt and sell it as something of value, Leslie made the point plainly. If you were doing that with a paintbrush and an easel, we would call it forgery. So what is it when you do it with AI? But there is another side. Leslie cannot draw. If he wanted to create a children's book, previously he would have had to find and instruct an illustrator, which would have taken time and effort he did not have. AI changes that. It is not aping anyone's style. It is enabling something that simply would not have existed otherwise. The question is not just can we. It is what are we creating, and for whom. And then there is the bigger picture. Before mechanisation, most people in most countries worked on the land. That changed. Offices may be next. Leslie's view is that ultimately this comes down to consumer choice, not businesses. Businesses optimise for shareholder value. If it is cheaper to use AI, they will. What we choose to buy, and who from, is where the real lever sits. The raging river analogy was the one I keep thinking about. It is moving so fast and changing direction constantly. But as Leslie said, if you are in the boat, you have got a chance of travelling along the river. Get in the boat. Send us Fan Mail This was made with humans. Your host - Shaun Phillips Editor: Glen Boswell https://astralforgefilm.com https://www.instagram.com/thebozzyman Original music composed and produced by Brokli - https://youtube.com/@iambrokli Original logo illustration and in video podcast graphics by Jesse Rist - https://instagram.com/jesse_rist Follow us for episode clips https://www.instagram.com/betterwithhumans All episodes and news at https://www.betterwithhumans.com Want to watch episodes instead, check out https://www.youtube.com/@betterwithhumans?sub_confirmation=1 Connect with Shaun on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunph/

  8. Jun 16

    We Waited Too Long To Question Smartphones. Don’t Repeat It With AI

    One of the most interesting conversations I have had recently was around something most of us carry every single day without really questioning it anymore. Our phones. Richard Lalchan joined me on Better With Humans and we explored what smartphones, social media, and now AI are actually doing to us, particularly our children. Not from a fear perspective. From a human perspective. One thing Richard said really stuck with me. Kids do not yet have the neurological hardware to make long-term decisions about technology designed by multi-billion dollar companies whose business model depends on attention. That lands differently when you stop and think about it. As parents, leaders, educators, and people working in technology, we cannot just ask: “What can this technology do?” We also need to ask: “What is this technology doing to us?” I resonated deeply with the conversation around endless scrolling. Books have an ending.Conversations have pauses.Meals finish.But many apps are intentionally designed without an endpoint. That changes behaviour over time. The other part that really hit me was this idea that boredom is not the enemy. Some of our best thinking, creativity, reflection, and emotional processing happens in quiet moments. Moments that are increasingly being filled by notifications, scrolling, and constant stimulation. And this is not about blaming parents. Life is hard. Parenting is hard. Leadership is hard. Sometimes people just need five minutes of peace. What matters is that we are willing to step back and honestly examine the systems shaping our lives and our children’s lives. Not just accepting technology because it exists. Not assuming progress automatically equals good. Not waiting twenty years before asking difficult questions.Technology should equip, empower, and encourage people. Not quietly replace human connection, critical thinking, and presence. Grateful to Richard for such an honest and thoughtful conversation. Come on people. Let’s do this. Send us Fan Mail This was made with humans. Your host - Shaun Phillips Editor: Glen Boswell https://astralforgefilm.com https://www.instagram.com/thebozzyman Original music composed and produced by Brokli - https://youtube.com/@iambrokli Original logo illustration and in video podcast graphics by Jesse Rist - https://instagram.com/jesse_rist Follow us for episode clips https://www.instagram.com/betterwithhumans All episodes and news at https://www.betterwithhumans.com Want to watch episodes instead, check out https://www.youtube.com/@betterwithhumans?sub_confirmation=1 Connect with Shaun on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunph/

  9. Jun 9

    Let's uncover what it means to be Better with Humans - Podcast trailer

    The way we create. The way we think. The way we live. And most of us have not stopped to ask whether we actually chose this. I am Shaun Phillips. And I have been sitting down with the people right in the middle of it.  Industry leaders. Creatives. Thinkers. People navigating the shift in real time. Not polished takes. Not press releases. Honest conversations. One idea keeps coming back. If we choose the speed of AI today, we are borrowing intelligence from the future. What does that actually mean for us? That is what this show is about. Not the technology for technology's sake. What it means to stay human through it. We borrowed something without asking. They were weak. Weedy. Because nothing pushed back.. That is the question underneath all of this. Not just what AI can do for us. What happens to us if it quietly removes the very things that make us capable? Let's find out what is better with humans. Send us Fan Mail This was made with humans. Your host - Shaun Phillips Editor: Glen Boswell https://astralforgefilm.com https://www.instagram.com/thebozzyman Original music composed and produced by Brokli - https://youtube.com/@iambrokli Original logo illustration and in video podcast graphics by Jesse Rist - https://instagram.com/jesse_rist Follow us for episode clips https://www.instagram.com/betterwithhumans All episodes and news at https://www.betterwithhumans.com Want to watch episodes instead, check out https://www.youtube.com/@betterwithhumans?sub_confirmation=1 Connect with Shaun on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunph/

Trailer

About

What happens when technology reshapes how we live and work? I’m Shaun Phillips. I sit down with industry leaders and creatives navigating these changes. We explore what emerging technology means for creativity, for thinking, and for everyday life. Honest conversations about what’s happening and how people decide what matters. Let’s uncover what is better with humans.

Information

  • Creator
    Shaun Phillips
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    9
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Better with Humans
  • Show Website
    Better with Humans

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