Some people see the glass half empty, some see it half full (and somewhere in the background, an engineer is muttering that you've got the wrong sized glass…)


About a decade ago I came across a family who had decided to take no chances with their children. No computers. No consoles. No phones. No internet.


I totally got it. These were thoughtful, well-meaning people doing what they believed was the very best for their kids. Every day you could find another headline about the risks and harm that technology posed, but not once could you find one that provided inspiration about the good that technology could do if used well. So, faced with all of the risk and no awareness of any upside, they turned it all off.


For pretty much my entire life I've been what some people call a "computer evangelist". I've never loved the term, but I've loved the job. Not the gadget-show version, all specs and features, but the richer one: sitting down with someone and showing them the outcomes a technology makes possible for them. You assume the best, and you show them what's possible.


The goal is twofold. Yes, it's to show the potential. But the far more powerful goal is to create the ambition, and the confidence, for people to pick it up and give it a go themselves. That optimistic opening is crucial, and sometimes even necessarily naïve, because it shifts the mindset. People become more open to new ways of working that care as much about the effectiveness of the outcome as the efficiency of the process.


With that family in mind, I created a parents-and-kids version of The Rise of the Humans to take into schools. It wasn't about rules. It was about helping parents see why these skills matter, and giving them the insight and confidence to bring technology into their lives so it could be managed properly. The kids loved it, because it showed them what technology is really for: not just gaming, not just collaboration, but something much greater. And the teachers loved it, because it opened the door to leaning on technology more in the classroom, not less.


In my experience of conversations about technological transformation, the alternative approach is far more common: start with the problems, then try to work your way up from there. It rarely succeeds, and even when it does, you've stopped far short of what was possible.


That's because the first frame sets the ceiling. Start with the risks and you've already lost. You immediately set about shutting them down, so you never map the best case, and with it goes the very thing you'd have weighed those risks against. Every danger looks enormous when you haven't seen the size of the prize. In a world where parents and carers only ever hear about the risk, never the opportunity, it's no wonder that when you ask whether they want their children to have more access to technology, the answer is always a resounding no. It's an unsurprising answer, and yet I find it terrifying. Because the longer we avoid helping people use technology well, the more likely the bad outcomes become. With the right skills, these kids could go on to cure cancer and tackle climate change. Now is our only chance to give them those skills.


We are going through all of this again with AI. Over the last few weeks it's been relentless, day after day of terrible headlines striking the fear of God into everyone but, once again, not really pausing to start with the upside. I'm not saying they're wrong to bring attention to the potential of such horrendous outcomes. But where is the overarching debate? How are we helping people understand and weigh the risks for themselves? If these technologies are so dangerous, why are we developing them at all? Of course the answers that describe the good that could come from AI are all out there. I am far from the only optimist left in the room, but sadly, unlike the dystopian headlines, the positive outcomes only make it to the fine print buried somewhere on page 15.


The result is predictable, damaging and, in my opinion, totally unnecessary. Cautious parents and cautious adults, all putting the brakes on their use of AI or stopping entirely. Again, I understand why, but I'm frustrated by our failure to help them understand better.


Most of you have probably figured out I'm not an AI "doomer". You might assume I sit at the other end, as an AI accelerator. But those who know me well will know I'm neither. I'm simply an optimist. I start naively, asking what might be possible in a world where we only ever love each other and do good things. We stay there for a while. Then we replace the naivety with pragmatism: if that's the size of the prize, how do we maximise the chance of people doing good, while minimising the chance of harm, intentional or otherwise?


That second step isn't optional. You can't have one without the other, and as much as I love unicorns and rainbows, at some point you have to get real. Plenty of people have taken the first step and never made the second. Doing it properly takes humility, and it takes talking to lots of people, so that the answer is neither constrained by a lack of imagination nor unbound by naïve optimism. But note that it is never driven by fear.


I can't tell you that all of the people who develop and control AI are doing it for the good of the world. How would I know that? What I can tell you, however, is that in my experience of working with or for some of the world's largest technology companies, I think many of them are. Their people are the same people as you and me. They live on the same planet, have families they care about and futures of their own to look forward to.


We have a duty of care, as we have always had in this industry, to help people understand what's possible on both sides of the coin, and then to work together to manage both the opportunity and the challenge.


So my ask of you is to start your conversations with the glass half full, and only then bring in the pragmatic reality of life, work or the future for you and the ones you care about. And if, like most of my rooms, you have an engineer present, give them some duct tape and some WD-40 and tell them to get busy…