Unlocking Better Learning with AI: Insights from Genio’s Josh Nesbit

Full Transcript 

David Savage 00:00

First of all, thank you for inviting me in to spend some time in your office this morning, especially in a busy week when you've got events and whatever else going on. You're welcome, yeah.Tell me a little bit about the company that you work for and your role here as CTO. 

Josh Nesbitt 00:10

So I work as CTO at Genio, so our mission is to unlock better learning for everyone. Ultimately, we build a whole host of tools, communities, courses to allow people to sort of learn a way that really makes sense to them.

00 mins 21

So yeah, I've been in Genio for two years, before that I've run a software consultancy for about 15 years, and I also run events and conferences in Leeds as well. 

David Savage 00:28

Yeah, and you're an executive sponsor of the Leeds Digital Festival. 

Josh Nesbitt 00:32

Yeah, GNO previously had been sort of supporting the festival for quite a few years and my history of the LDF goes back for about 10 years as well. So I actually was sat with Stuart in one of the early pub visits where we were trying to sort of dream of what the LDF could look like and now I took a boy with backseat so I can't claim a lot of the stuff that he's built over the last 10 years but I was happy to be able to start.Adventurous. 

David Savage 00:51

do you think it's added to Leeds as a technology? I hate the word ecosystem but for want of a better word because you do feel that there's a bit of a community here but over the years it's gotten bigger and bigger as a festival so what has it actually brought in rather than just attention? 

Josh Nesbitt 01:07

think it's brought people out of their homes, most importantly and into the right spaces to be sort of collaborating, communicating. I like that we've sort of promoted the region and what we have to offer. I think, you know, the north has not historically been very good at promoting themselves, promoting the sort of talent and skill sets that we have up here. So yeah, I think it was nice to sort of position that front and centre and start talking about it more publicly across the, you know, across the UK.But yeah, I think for me, it's, you know, we're in the conference over 10 years, the conference next year as well. So the communities existed before, but I think how it brought, you know, brought the communities together who might not normally meet in the same rooms and, you know, discussing problems they're seeing, trying to sort of collaborate on those problems, just sort of fall outside of the usual comfort zone of the usual communities they're part of, I thought was really powerful. 

David Savage 01:54

You talk about communities. I think one of the fair accusations where tech is concerned is sometimes that it can be quite insular.In a city like Leeds, do you think the technology industry is communicating and connecting with less well-positioned communities, more disadvantaged communities, and offering opportunities to them? 

Josh Nesbitt 02:17

I don't see a lot of insular behaviour, maybe I'm in an insular community, I don't see it, I don't know. I think I see a lot of willingness to not fall into that sort of comfort zone.I think, you know, the conference that I ran, there was a lot of people from very different backgrounds, different experience, different skill sets and I think, you know, LDF has always been very good at creating accessible events and I think ensuring that, you know, people from a whole host of backgrounds can attend LDF events. So, you know, like the one we had today around neurodiversity, I think the accessibility sort of makes it a lot easier for people to come in to places they might be more uncomfortable coming into. I think in general, I'm not seeing a sort of a hugely insular behaviour as part of the LDF, I think it's been really beneficial as a result of that. 

03 mins 06 to 03 mins 16 *David Savage*

Where AI is concerned, do you think that's helping accessibility? Especially when you think about some of those minority groups that we sometimes work very hard to try and engage with more in the industry. 

Josh Nesbitt 03:16 to 03 mins 29 *Josh Nesbitt*

So we create heavily accessible tools for neurodiverse and disabled learners but also the new majority of learners which is basically people juggling jobs or you know have other sort of disabilities they're working with. 

We pride ourselves in that sort of accessible tooling from the start by default.You know there's other ways to achieve accessibility through like accessibility layers in your products and stuff and AI is probably not always great in that respect you know I think we're still understanding how to make AI truly accessible. I think in terms of people actually learning and sort of being able to you know to use AI to learn I think we still have a lot to learn. 

03 mins 53 to 04 mins 32 *Josh Nesbitt*

We talk a lot about productive friction at Genio in terms of there should be a bit of a struggle or a bit of friction for you to learn something it shouldn't be automating everything. I think people are still understanding what AI can do in that respect. I think people are seeing it as an efficiency tool, as a productivity tool, as a way of shortering certain things which can be right in the right area. So you know sometimes you want to use AI to automate things but those are the things that you want AI to not do so you can really ensure that you focus on the task at hand. So you know we build a note-taking product we want to make sure that people actually take notes, refine those notes, they take the content of those notes in. So I think we've got a lot to learn about the accessibility of AI when it comes to that sort of stuff. 

David Savage 04:32

And look, the region wants to be an AI growth zone, one of those kind of government flagship hotspots for bringing together infrastructure and opportunity and investment into an area. Do you see that having an impact for the people of a region like Leeds?Or is that the kind of money that sounds great, but in reality, it's going to big companies and that investment might flow elsewhere? 

Josh Nesbitt 04:56

I think it's important for the people in the region to engage with what's trying to be achieved, because ultimately, 

5 mins 02

you know, I think a better knowledge of AI, a better understanding of, you know, what it brings to a region economically, but also what the technology can do. I think having something that is more locally based is quite a powerful thing.So I'd expect more people to engage with AI tooling, startups, businesses that are trying to make advantages of it. 

5 mins 19

So, yeah, I'm sort of optimistic for bringing a lot of, yeah, sort of deeper knowledge of AI to the region, I guess, because, you know, you often expect some of the, you know, London or, you know, some like San Francisco to be pioneering a lot of AI techniques, a lot of AI policy, a lot of compliance approaches to AI. And I think, you know, we've got a lot to offer in the north. I think it's important to consider how the local sort of community can bring that. 

David Savage 05:43

But I come from a part of the country that has a very strong cultural identity. I come from Newcastle.And I think that that is replicated across a lot of the former industrial heartlands of the country. Do you think Leeds Digital Festival and that focus on opportunity through technology can help not replace but recreate some of that local pride that perhaps has been diminished through a deindustrialisation and that period of change in the economy? 

Josh Nesbitt 06:11

Yeah, I think you can definitely reignite the excitement that it's possible again. I think, you know, my sister's based in Sheffield and they have similar challenges with the history that Sheffield's seen with technology and industry and whatnot. So I think just sort of bringing that conversation back to the forefront and having people talking about it, looking at ways to engage with it is probably quite important.So yeah, I think it's more about reigniting the passion with it and trying to sort of get people excited about it again. 

David Savage 06:36

Do you think there's a good level of digital literacy and maybe AI literacy in the general population of you? Obviously, I know you're a CTO, so the jobs that will be under you as an individual be quite hard tech roles, but as a business more broadly, when you're looking at kind of marketing or HR or those jobs that are getting increasingly disrupted, is there that level of literacy that helps people take advantage of the opportunities? 

Josh Nesbitt 07:04

I think at Genia there is, and I'm not saying because a lot of people who are actually really proficient are not under my steer, and that's amazing to see that without some of that steer from a CTO, they're still using that initiative to look at how AI can really change what they do as a job. I don't think Genia is in the smaller percent of those businesses in Leeds as well. A lot of the conversation I've had at the festival and with other roundtables, and I think a lot of people are utilising AI quite significantly and quite boldly. I don't think people are cautious of it, and I think the skill set is quite in depth.But again, it depends on the sector you're operating, right? We're a tech company, essentially, as you said, but, you know, across Leeds, it'd be interesting to compare it to what's going on in government and so on. My wife works in the NHS, obviously. The ability to utilise AI in the NHS is mixed based on policy, based on some of the red tape that you've got there. So I think policy and a better understanding and a leadership level of what AI can do for the businesses is needed, and so sadly, due to the size of the NHS, it's a lot harder to roll some of these things out as quickly. 

David Savage 08:09

You talk a lot about kind of being involved in the community through Leeds Digital Festival. Obviously, you are a tech business as we've established, but there are a lot of businesses who get involved in LDF that aren't primarily tech businesses.What do you think their attitude towards AI is right now? Because a lot of organisations are pushing for implementation, pushing for deployment of AI. A lot of struggling to see necessarily what the return is on that at the minute. How are they feeling? 

Josh Nesbitt 08:35

I guess it's due to the perception of AI and what it can do for those businesses. I think the challenge of just adopting AI without understanding the problems you're trying to really solve with it is probably the biggest challenge that we're seeing. So, what's the diagnosis of why AI is the answer in these scenarios, I think is an important thing to consider. So, I mean, how are they feeling? I mean, ultimately, I imagine there's still that fear and uncertainty around what AI is going to mean to their businesses.And, you know, if they're not adopting it as part of their tool chain, they're familiar with it, they're comfortable with it, they understand how it works, they understand the ethics and sort of data side of things. And I guess there is a concern. But I think the advice has to be to adopt and to start to get comfortable with those new tool chains and starting to understand what AI can do for your business. What problems you're trying to solve, again, I think just adopting it. I think the early sort of promotion of AI was around efficiency. It was around productivity. It's around AI can do all these things that you don't need to do anymore. And while that is definitely true, I think there's a lot of AI usage that can also sort of enrich existing roles, existing skills. It doesn't have to be about placement. And I think that's probably something that needs to be sort of echoed more when we're talking about AI in leads, but also across the country. 

David Savage 09:53

I feel like you've hinted at a bit of an issue, perhaps, within business leadership, in that AI is so broad. It could be machine learning or data science, or it could be AI, it could be Gen AI, it could be agentic. It's a very broad church. And understanding what it is, it would appear is still a bit of a question mark for some businesses.Do you think that's fair, that for some, they're still trying to get their head around what do we actually mean? Or when we talk about it, we talk about it in this very vague and unspecific terms, and that's not overly helpful to the narrative. 

Josh Nesbitt 10:31

Yeah, I mean, I often chat to my my friend James, who runs an agency and leads and we talk like you could replace AI with any other tool name really. It's too broad to really be useful in general conversations.I think you do need to talk more about, again, back to the problems you're trying to solve and what solutions you think I can bring there. Is it that you're trying to, you know, in engineering, are you trying to offload some engineering tasks to be background work by an agent or by, you know, something like Claude or are you thinking about trying to, you know, use GenAI and some other areas of the business, maybe marketing or whatever. I think you just need to really understand the problems you're trying to solve. And I think AI is too broad a term to discuss that. I think, you know, as you said, there's just so many facets to it. I think we need to start talking more specifically about, you know, the implementation of AI related to problem solving. 

David Savage 11:20

The government is understandably keen to make sure that there is a certain foundation level of AI literacy in the working population. And if you look at reports, Nash Squared's own digital leadership report talks about an 82% rise year on year in the level of demand surrounding AI skills.Again, it's all quite top level and unspecific around what we actually need. 

11 mins 50

As a C-suite technology leader, when people start talking about AI skills, what do you think it is that people actually need to thrive in an industry or to thrive, I suppose, in an organization like your own? 

Josh Nesbitt 12:03

I think there's a combination of things. I think in terms of AI skills, that sort of, it doesn't need to be a technical skill set, but I think it needs to be an understanding of how AI, how the different variants of AI work and what data you're sharing it with, like how it uses that data, how the output may be something that you need to sense check or work with. I also think there's probably a bunch of soft skills that you probably still need to prioritize in terms of how you communicate, how you engage with AI.We found out through a recent study that 92% of students using AI within their sort of courses, but institutions are only supporting students like 36% of those students, basically. So there's a huge gap in terms of how people are being supported in higher education, but probably also that spreads to the workforce, right? And how we ensure that we create literacy programs to support people onboarding with AI, essentially. So yeah, I think it makes the human skills even more important. I'm a technologist, but I'm also an optimist in terms of how people communicate. And I think, yeah, the human skills become even more important in the age of AI. But then, you look more into the technical stuff, some of our engineers and day to team is how you do good prompt engineering, how you ensure that there's not misuse of the tools, how you ensure that you're not breaking any sort of laws or ethical policies and those sort of things. So we sort of provide a company level steer on what we think AI means to education and what it means to genio. But then we provide a more practical framework that looks at the things like the legal compliance, ethical aspects of how we use it day to day in product, also in the company. 

David Savage 13:35

People often talk about the fact that people shouldn't necessarily be nervous about AI, that it's not AI that's going to take your job. It's your colleague who's using AI who's going to take your job, and that AI will undoubtedly create jobs.You've said you're an optimist. I also would like to believe that AI will create more roles than it takes away, but undoubtedly it is limiting the number of opportunities at an entry level into industries. How do we tackle that? 

Josh Nesbitt 14:04

I am an optimist but I'm also, you know, I don't think we should assume that all AI is good. I think it's important to state that.So, you know, there's definitely, you know, companies with monopolies or sort of a lot more to win from AI than others and I think it's important to be skeptical about what some of these vendors are trying to do and why they're trying to do some of these sort of strategies they're employing. So, I think that's the first thing to point out because actually, just like you can't talk about AI broadly, you can't talk about good and bad actors in that space more broadly either. 

David Savage 14:33

When you look at AI skills, despite the level of demand, you see only about 50% of the organizations that we survey as an organization actually really actively putting resource into upskilling and training people. And I find that quite surprising.Just out of interest, why do you think that might be? 

Josh Nesbitt 14:53

I wonder if it's due to the spread of where they think AI can be affected within organizations. So realistically, every department function has the ability to utilize AI in different ways, whether it's using AI in financial forecasts and projections, to marketing materials, to productivity through IT, through engineering, through data. So I think it might just be maybe a slightly short-sighted view of what AI can do within an org.

15 mins 21 to 15 mins 57

I think the important thing to do is to sort of set the tone at leadership level about how we're embracing AI, how we encourage AI usage through creating budget, through creating time for people to spend upskilling on AI tools. Also to model usage for people to see leadership using AI actively in anger day-to-day to ensure that people feel like they have permission to experiment, to make mistakes, all those sort of things. So I think there's a hugely cultural aspect to it where leadership needs to model that. And I think you need to follow that with budget creation and policy creation to encourage usage. 

David Savage 15:58

Right now, across the industry, retention is possibly more important than recruitment due to the lack of skills. If we limit the number of entry-level roles across industry, doesn't that risk exacerbating that and how are organizations actually thinking about that long term? 

Josh Nesbitt 16:16

Yeah,

16 mins 18 to 17 mins 04 *Josh Nesbitt*

so we're not seeing any limiting of more junior roles at junior, we're actively trying to encourage it through apprenticeships, through internships, through hiring juniors and obviously there needs to be an understanding of the AI toolchain, we need to see a willingness to work with AI. I don't know if it's just the way different or if this is sort of what others in the industry are doing but I don't think you can afford to not invest in that sort of more junior starter skillset within an org.I think otherwise we'd have a really big issue with top heavy senior talent with no one to really support the work after that. So that's something we're actively doing because we feel that is important, not only to support the local community, to support people getting into tech, but also be that next generation of talent is really important to invest in now. So we're not changing our resourcing profile in that case, what we are doing is looking at where we can use AI to augment that to do more. I think that's where we're seeing it a bit differently, we're not trying to replace and Costco, we're trying to just do more with the people we have with AI. 

David Savage 17:21

If you talk to anyone around this subject, they all espouse the need to see great collaboration between educators, private enterprise and policymakers. If there are gaps at the minute, where are the blind spots that we need to pay attention to? 

Josh Nesbitt 17:40

There's definitely a gap in terms of faculty trusts, so we see a lot of challenge with faculty trusting AI in any products, not just ours. So I think the way we're sort of working on that is trying to support institutions with policy creation around AI. So we've created an AI policy template to help institutions understand what would a good policy look like for their institution, and it sort of fit in the blank sort of thing. And I think that's going to be a really powerful thing to get faculty to really be on board with AI and to understand how they're protected by AI in their institution, how their jobs aren't a threat through AI, and actually it could be an amplifier, it could help them produce better course materials, it could help them do all sorts.It's not about replacing the role itself, it's about it changing pretty much every role at the moment that's out there, right? So I think it's just trying to create more acceptance with these sort of roles for adopting, for experimenting with AI, but in institutions that can be quite challenging. So I think the main gap we're seeing, because we work directly with institutions, is around that sort of faculty level, from the president of the university right through to faculty. But I think the government has a stronger role to play as well in providing resources, materials, providing steer on how they see AI really amplifying the way that we work, and probably providing more steer to public and private institutions in that way. 

David Savage 19:02

Given that the rate of change is so fast and is only going to get faster, how do you think we might solve that then? Because that sounds like the kind of thing where there's always going to be this lag that just gets bigger and bigger. 

Josh Nesbitt 19:14

Yeah, it's always a challenge, right? I think AI is moving so fast. It's completely different to what it was six months ago. Never mind, you know, a year.I do think there's a sort of active role to play in ensuring that policy reflects reality. And I think that's a challenge in any business. But yeah, I mean, sometimes the best thing to do is to not try and regulate it too heavily at first and try and have more open policies to allow the experimentation to take place. So, yeah, maybe that's what's making those faculty members feel more uncomfortable at the moment because it feels like a very unregulated, wild west scenario at the moment. But I just think it's, you know, no policy is almost sort of a policy itself. You know, I think not creating any sort of steer is almost more harmful than trying to provide some level of understanding about what this means to business. 

David Savage 20:02

Josh, I know it's a very busy week, so thank you for giving up some time.