The Future Belongs to Human-Centered AI - Simon Ratcliffe - S1, Ep. 9

In this episode of Leaders of Impact, we are joined by Simon Ratcliffe, a technology leader with a career spanning finance, technology, governance, and education across more than three decades. He has served as a CIO advisor, board member, trustee, mentor, and keynote speaker, and is guided by a belief that successful transformation is fundamentally about people, process, and technology in that order. In this conversation, Simon traces his path from psychology to accounting to leading technology change, and shares why he thinks most people are approaching AI all wrong - mistaking simple automation for genuine intelligence. He unpacks the difference between AI-enabling your systems versus your vision, why "slowing down to go faster" is the only sustainable path through transformation, and why, after decades of change, he still believes people come before any piece of technology. 00:12 – Welcome and introducing Simon Ratcliffe 00:53 – Simon's path: from psychology to accounting to technology leadership 02:45 – When technology first entered the finance function 03:47 – Why we've forgotten to train people on the basics 06:00 – Fear-driven AI adoption and the "keep up" mindset 07:02 – IKEA's story: retraining 15,000 jobs instead of cutting them 08:12 – Why Simon has a problem with the phrase "AI" 08:36 – Automation vs. AI: the distinction most leaders miss 08:50 – A 1990s OCR story that mirrors today's AI hype 11:32 – Asking AI where AI fits in the business 13:11 – Why AI has to be a radical shift, not just faster automation 13:44 – Garbage in, garbage out: why prompting well matters 16:01 – Reversing the principle: showing people the art of the possible 16:59 – The two camps: unaware users and unrealistic expectations 17:24 – Why AI's data foundation is the real bottleneck 18:00 – Building a parallel ".AI" business to avoid disrupting the core 19:03 – Rising AI costs and the shift toward localized processing 19:49 – Simon's advice distilled: AI-enable your vision, not your systems 21:06 – Why some businesses just shouldn't AI-enable 22:04 – Why nobody can predict AI three years out 24:00 – The real cost and accuracy risks in scaling AI pilots 27:00 – Small language models as the answer to cost, accuracy, and carbon 29:49 – "Slow down to go faster": governance and guardrails in AI projects 36:20 – The achievements closest to his heart: a museum in VR and a pandemic teaching story 43:00 – Spotting the earliest signs a transformation is heading the wrong way 45:19 – Why people always come first, then process, then technology Simon's LinkedIn -   / itevangelism   Subscribe to Leaders of Impact for more conversations with technology leaders driving real-world change. #AILeadership #DigitalTransformation #FutureOfWork #TechLeadership #LeadersOfImpact