Richie

The only AI concept that actually helps you use ChatGPT better "Do I need to learn about neural networks to understand ChatGPT?" I hear this all the time, and have been asked this a few times. I also see people making videos, courses and blog posts breaking down the technical details of how large language models (LLMs) work. People assume that by understanding the technical and theoretical concepts behind these models, they'll gain secret insight into how to use them better.

The only AI concept that actually helps you use ChatGPT better

"Do I need to learn about neural networks to understand ChatGPT?" I hear this all the time, and have been asked this a few times. I also see people making videos, courses and blog posts breaking down the technical details of how large…

"Will AI take jobs and should we protect jobs?" is the wrong framing for 2 reasons:
- AI will automate *tasks* not whole jobs. All jobs will be impacted to some degree, but some way more than others
- No one cares about jobs, they care about people (and maybe the economy). Protect people, not jobs.

New post from me!
Combining 3 things I love: Latin dance, regressoin models, and my Oura Ring!

I tested the new ChatGPT agent on 11 use cases and it’s just ok ChatGPT agent has now come to people on the paid £20 a month plan. The shameless YouTube hype merchants are obviously impressed (must be hard having your mind BLOWN literally every few days...), others are disappointed, and others have found some decent use cases. I thought I'd put it to the test myself! Here I share my tests, and most importantly, the…

I tested the new ChatGPT agent on 11 use cases and it’s just ok

ChatGPT agent has now come to people on the paid £20 a month plan. The shameless YouTube hype merchants are obviously impressed (must be hard having your mind BLOWN literally every few days...), others are disappointed, and others…

My new report with Good Growth and Faunalytics is out!

Last year I completed a six month research contract with The Good Growth Co. They're a brilliant social science think tank that serves the animal advocacy movement and alternative protein sectors in East Asia. We analysed a ton of social media…

Concerns about AI’s energy use are reasonable

I feel like every week I see the same debate play out again and again. "Is AI bad for the environment?" It a question on a lot of people's minds. I use AI for basically everything and so do many of my friends, so you can probably guess what my take is.…

New Blog post from me!
I propose some pretty sci-fi ideas for how AI could create exciting new opportunities for qualitative researcher and their work.

The Deep Research Revolution: my talk at AI, Animals and Digital Minds London 2025

A few months ago I gave a talk at the AI, Animals and Digital Minds conference in London. It was on the exciting new possibilities that have been enabled by AI deep research tools (I've also written about them…

Why Scheduling meetings with ChatGPT can give you breakthrough ideas Some people schedule meetings in order to avoid thinking. They have a problem at work and they either don't want to or can't figure out themselves. By scheduling a meeting with a bunch of other people, they can hash through it together. It gives them a kick up the arse to get something solved, that they put off on their own.

Why Scheduling meetings with ChatGPT can give you breakthrough ideas

Some people schedule meetings in order to avoid thinking. They have a problem at work and they either don't want to or can't figure out themselves. By scheduling a meeting with a bunch of other people, they can hash through it…

My recent talk at VARC2025 is on YouTube! I got great feedback from on this one, including many people with no economics background. Give it a watch!

"I want to use AI to help with my presentations, but my IT team has a strict approved AI tools list, what can I do?"
I've got this request a few times from security-minded orgs, so I wrote a post on how you can revolutionise your slide decks with just ChatGPT or Gemini. No new tools needed.

Probably the most useful piece of AI content I've ever written!

The secret to winning with AI is not better AI tools, it's AI culture!

New post from me: The topic is a bit generic I'll admit, but had a few people ask me for recommendations. At least it's not about AI!

A little late but I had a great time speaking at VARC2025!

An advanced guide to Deep Research tools Part 1 — Choosing the right question

It's barely April, and 2025 has already seen an AI breakthrough that I believe will change the work of nearly every office worker on the planet: AI Deep Research (DR) tools. If you've not heard of them, then stop reading…

Amazing tip for doing research using Perplexity AI: Add "filetype:pdf" to your prompt to only get back pdf results! This is great for identifying reports and grey literature.
See the 2 screenshots for a comparison.

What’s the impact of artificial intelligence on energy demand? The International Energy Agency (IEA) thinks we should all chill out a bit.

This is your weekly reminder that AI energy use is probably nothing to be concerned about:

We can use AI to be more human.
This week, ChatGPT updated their Image generator and it's insane.
My dad is recovering from an operation and & loves WW2, so I whipped this up for him and he loved it so much 🥰

If you're coming to VARC this weekend, swing by my talk!
DM me if you want to have a chat too, I'd love to connect with people irl.

Keeping up to date with Generative AI developments: my list of creators to follow Last reviewed and updated 23 march 2025 Since 2023 I’ve been giving free advising to non-profits on how they can leverage AI, particularly generative AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Midjourney e…

“How do I keep up with generative AI? I really don't want to have to read 10 newsletters!”
Big update to my concise list of AI creators to follow. I've culled a few, added a few. It's still manageable & high quality.
Which AI content creators do you rate?

Where do data scientists fit in with the animal advocacy movement? Updated 16th March 2025 Perhaps about once a month someone messages me on LinkedIn or the Hive Slack community, asking how a data scientist can use their career to help animals. This is something I…

evolvingimpact.wordpress.com/2023/11/26/w... I've updated my career advice for data scientists / data people wanting to make a difference for animals. I'm always learning more about the job landscape in the movement, & talking to people more knowledgeable than me, so like to keep this post fresh.

Can AI help us make better graphs?

Here I show you how I made a custom GPT that will advise you on how to improve your graphs.

More generally, I discuss the powerful AI use case of using GPTs to crystallize human expertise into AI assistants that for others to benefit from.

Creating the long-running 50 things to do before you're 11¾ - Behaviour Change In 2012 we created 50 Things to do Before You’re 11¾ for the National Trust and the award winning campaign has since become their most successful behaviour change initiative to date. Designed to…

Liked this breakdown of the #behaviouralscience behind an initiative to get kids outside more.
The key takeaway? Consider kids AND parents:
- It was exciting for kids, but also nostalgic for parents.
- Using a scrapbook engaged kids, but also gave parents a momento to keep after.

Sewage is a problem but water pollution from agriculture is at least as bad On 3 November, thousands of people joined the March for Clean Water to demand more action to clean up our waterways. They have a right to be angry: only 14 per cent of UK rivers are in good ecologi…

greenallianceblog.org.uk/2024/11/27/s... The more fertiliser we use, the more food we can grow, but the more we pollute rivers. One solution is to be extremely efficient with fertiliser, by not using it to grow tons of crops to feed to farm animals, massively wasteful.

The Future of Food Security in the UK: New Research Reveals Why Factory Farming is Not the Answer  - CAWF The CAWF report challenges the narrative that factory farming bolsters UK food security, revealing instead how it undermines it—costing taxpayers millions, threatening farmers’ livelihoods, and…

New report (by me!): factory farming undermines UK food security, but investments in British fruit & veg, & a modest shift to alternative proteins could go a long way to securing our food system. I had a blast writing this 🔥

Chicken manure can be classified as industrial waste, judge rules US-style mega-farms in Herefordshire face tough new regulations after high court ruling

www.theguardian.com/environment/... these farms will now have to have a plan for the tons of faeces they produce! Amazing that common sense has prevailed, this will give local people the tools they need to save their rivers from factory farming.

Everyday productivity with AI part 2 – Why I recommend ChatGPT as your main LLM Last updated 10th March 2025 Which AI large language model (LLM) should you use? With so many on the market, new developments every month and rampant cherrypicking when comparing models. It can be hard to know which is right for you. We have ChatGPT from OpenAI, easily the most popular, but we also have Google's Gemini model, Claude by Anthropic.

Which AI large language model (LLM) should you use? ChatGPT? Claude? Grok? DeepSeek?
There are nuanced discussions here, and finding the best model for you takes research and thought.

Here's why I think 95% of people should ignore all that and just use ChatGPT.

Here's a fun tip for how to easily get tailored results out of ChatGPT. It's called "role-playing". Ask it to adopt a persona before asking your question. It will give different answers!
When you're having it solve work tasks, for you, try having it adopt the persona of *your job title*.

I'll be giving a talk at the upcoming conference of The Society for the Psychology of Human-Animal Intergroup Relations (PHAIR)
I'll be presenting a spicy one, on how most vegan/plant-based messaging studies might be wrong 😬 . But don't worry, I have solutions!