'We're on the edge of really very exciting things, but also tremendous risks at the same time.' Patrick Dixon, Futurist author and AI keynote speaker in conversation with Alison Jones - Extraordinary Business Book Club - about his latest book "How AI Will Change Your Life".

Whether you're an AI enthusiast or it fills you with existential terror, this conversation will challenge your perspectives and elevate your understanding of our increasingly super-smart world. Futurist Patrick Dixon has been predicting AI for 25 years, and now he works with the world's largest corporations and governments, helping them explore the profound implications of artificial intelligence across all sectors from medicine to marketing to global security. This is not comfortable listening. We peer into the chasm (did you know that in a recent study, half of AI researchers perceive a 5% risk of AI leading to human extinction?). But Patrick remains an optimist, albeit a worried one, and hopefully you'll feel the same way at the end.  One great cause for hope is his insistence on the importance of authenticity in writing, the irreplaceable human connection that readers seek; AI-generated content cannot replicate human passion. A thought-provoking conversation that merges foresight with practical wisdom.

MANY OF MY GLOBAL CLIENTS are food and beverages retailers (F&B), or they manufacture Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) retail products that sell globally, and these are sectors that are changing very rapidly but not always as people expect.  AI will be vital to the future of grocery retail, food and beverages - what we eat and drink. Take total online retail sales, (including Fast Moving Consumer Goods) which have reached 22% of retail globally.

This figure for home-food ordering leapt during COVID but will not leap forward as much again because there is a natural limit here – physical retail will always play an important role in every society. This is especially true for food, less so for beverages, because consumers often like to see, feel, smell the food they buy, and there are often wider ranges of package size in store compared to online. The UK is one of the world’s most advanced online economies: online food and grocery sales shot up during the pandemic as part of the jump in total retail sales from 20% to 37%, then (as I predicted) total online retail dropped back again, to 32%, which is probably close to where it will be for the longer term – significantly less than 50%.

AI impact on global food market - worth $1 trillion a year

The global food market is worth $10tn a year, and will grow rapidly. It needs to. More than 800 million people across the world are often hungry, while 1 billion are now considered obese. By 2050 the number of people who are obese will rise to 2 billion, and half a billion people will probably still be hungry. So how will AI help us provide enough food for tomorrow’s world?

There is no doubt that AI will help many farmers grow more food, using smaller teams. Agriculture in countries like the UK, France, US and Canada is already highly industrialised, with ever larger landholdings and food output. The latest agricultural machines are so complex and expensive that many individual farms now rent them by the day.

Farmers are totally dependent on the right amounts of sun and rain each month. More accurate long-range weather forecasts using AI will mean farmers improve their food harvest yields – advised by AI when best to plant, spray, weed, fertilise and harvest. AI will help farmers work out how best to maintain their soil with improved diagnostics. Videos by drones will be used by AI for ‘precision agriculture’: earlier diagnosis of damaged crops, weed infestations and possible disease...