Can anyone get AI Agents working for them? In this episode, we explore the shift from AI as a corporate mandate to AI as a personal utility. While much of the discussion around artificial intelligence focuses on high-level strategy, the real revolution happens when individuals use it to solve their own "boring" problems, like data extraction, research automation, and the endless cycle of copy-pasting. Our guest is Barbara Johnson, the Chief Operating Officer and non-technical Co-Founder of the award-winning Auto ML company Kortical. With a background in commerce and marketing rather than engineering, Babs shares her firsthand experience of "practicing what she preaches" by automating her own professional and personal worlds.

Show links:

1. Barb's Linkedin video post about Claude CoWork
2. Getting started with Claude: Step-by-step guides (thank you Ruben Hassid)
3. Anthropic's "Get started with Claude Cowork" guide
4. Barbara Johnson on Linkedin
5. Kortical website

Key topics discussed in this episode:

• The "Aha!" Moment: When AI stopped being industry news and became a personal tool that no longer required a developer to implement.
• Claude CoWork vs. Claude Code: Understanding the differences between these tools and how non-technical users can steer agents back on track when they encounter "black box" errors or hallucinations.
• Building with "Lego Bricks": A look at the current tech stack and how to connect tools like email and spreadsheets to an "AI brain" to summarise your work week.
• The Control Problem: Navigating the risks of agent access and the technical nuances of UI-based automation versus text-based codebase interaction.
• Empowerment over Replacement: Why the future of AI is about unburdening humans from robotic tasks to make room for creative, high-value work.

Listen, Watch and Subscribe on all your favourite platforms: Apple, Amazon, Youtube, Spotify, Jiosaavn, Deezer and more: https://linktr.ee/humanxmachine

Sponsorship or interview opportunities: Contact Christopher Lomas

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The "Cloud" is finally leaving the ground. In this episode of The Human Machine, Christopher Lomas explores why the data center industry has hit a terrestrial wall and why the vacuum of space is the inevitable next frontier for AI. What could this shift mean for you and your customer or employee experience? As of April 2026, the environmental and energy costs of AI are staggering: a single 40-megawatt data center consumes over 1 million tons of fresh water annually. To escape this "energy crunch," visionaries like Philip Johnston (CEO, Starcloud) and Elon Musk (CEO, SpaceX) are racing to build orbital regions where solar energy is 36% more intense and cooling is "free" via the blackness of the void.

Highlights of this episode:

• The Physics of the Void: How engineers solve the paradox of "Passive Radiative Cooling" and the "Radiation Tax" of cosmic rays.
• The Billion-Dollar Race: Why Starcloud became the fastest unicorn in history and how SpaceX plans to deploy 100 gigawatts of orbital capacity.
• Geopolitics in Orbit: The rise of China’s "Thousand Sails" constellation and the shift toward "Space based AI data centers" as the ultimate data haven.
• The "Mean Physics" of Space: Navigating the risks of hardware failure and the 40% increase in U.S. Space Force budgets to protect these new assets.

The backbone of the global economy is moving from under the Atlantic to Low Earth Orbit. Is your business ready to plug into the stars?

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.