This Is Me. Sort Of.

Oliver Hart

Welcome to the not first episode of Inside My Head, Unfortunately. I suppose the obvious place to start is by explaining who I am, why this podcast exists, and perhaps most importantly, who is actually speaking right now.

Oliver Hart

Because the voice you are hearing is not my real voice. It is generated by AI. I am also Swedish, despite the fact that this podcast is in English.

Oliver Hart

So even the language you are hearing is part of the experiment. The original thoughts begin in my head, usually in Swedish and rarely in the correct order.

Oliver Hart

I write them down as they arrive: unfinished, misspelled, jumping between subjects, and occasionally contradicting something I wrote two sentences earlier. AI then helps me organise those thoughts, translate them into English, and turn them into something another human being might actually be able to follow.

Oliver Hart

The voice is artificial. The language has been adjusted. The sentences have been cleaned up.

Oliver Hart

But the thoughts, opinions and observations are still mine. So this is me, but processed through AI. Which is a slightly strange sentence.

Oliver Hart

Perhaps the best way to explain it is that AI is not creating the person behind the podcast. It is helping that person finish a sentence and then reading it aloud in a voice he can tolerate listening to.

Oliver Hart

Because I have never really enjoyed hearing recordings of my own voice. This may seem strange, considering that I was the vocalist in a band when I was younger.

Oliver Hart

Although vocalist might be a generous description. There was some screaming. Some growling.

Oliver Hart

Possibly some attempts to swallow the microphone. It was less about hitting the correct note and more about making sure the note knew who was in charge.

Oliver Hart

So why make a podcast now? Mostly curiosity. My head came up with the idea and decided it might be interesting to test.

Oliver Hart

That is generally how things begin. A thought appears, then another, followed by fifty possible versions of the same idea, several potential problems, and a completely unrelated question about something I saw three days ago.

Oliver Hart

And suddenly, apparently, I have a podcast. We are surrounded every day by advertisements telling us how easy all of this is.

Oliver Hart

Use AI. Automate everything. Create a podcast while you sleep.

Oliver Hart

Generate digital products. Build a business. Make thousands of dollars every month without doing any real work.

Oliver Hart

According to the internet, everyone except me appears to have created an automated financial empire during their lunch break. So I became curious.

Oliver Hart

How easy is it really? What happens when an ordinary person with too many thoughts starts using AI to turn some of them into a podcast?

Oliver Hart

I am somewhere in my late forties, I have a family, and technically I probably do not have time to begin another project. Then again, the children are old enough to manage quite a lot by themselves now.

Oliver Hart

At least, that is what I have decided to believe. I also belong to Generation X.

Oliver Hart

You know, that mysterious generation that younger people sometimes talk about as though we were raised in a poorly supervised survival experiment. We went outside in the morning, got on our bicycles, and disappeared for most of the day.

Oliver Hart

There were no mobile phones, no live location sharing, and no family group chat asking where we were every twelve minutes. Our parents often had only a vague idea of where we were.

Oliver Hart

The basic arrangement was that we should return home when we became hungry, when it got dark, or when something started bleeding badly enough to require adult involvement. We were encouraged to go outside and, in many cases, actively discouraged from coming back inside too soon.

Oliver Hart

Being bored was not treated as an emergency that required a screen, a subscription service and immediate parental intervention. We had to find something to do, usually involving bicycles, forests, badly constructed ramps, or decisions that would probably require a written risk assessment today.

Oliver Hart

I am not saying everything was better. I am just saying that we survived a surprising amount of freedom, questionable judgement and complete lack of supervision.

Oliver Hart

And now, after growing up without the internet in my pocket, I am using artificial intelligence to create an English language podcast with a voice that does not belong to me. That feels like a fairly impressive journey.

Oliver Hart

Or possibly evidence that we should never have been left outside unsupervised in the first place. And after all of this, I should probably tell you what the first real episode will be about.

Oliver Hart

I have absolutely no idea. It could be about technology, human behaviour, work, family life, something that annoyed me in a supermarket, or a completely unnecessary problem that my brain has already developed ninety seven possible solutions for.

Oliver Hart

Most likely, I will ask AI. Over time, I have told it a surprising amount about the things I work on, the questions I ask, the projects I begin, the things that irritate me, and the ideas that appear in my head when I should probably be doing something else.

Oliver Hart

So I will probably ask it to make a list of possible episode topics. And then it will confidently tell me what I should begin with, as though it knows exactly what I find interesting.

Oliver Hart

Which is slightly ridiculous. Although, considering how often I have explained my thoughts to it, there is also a small possibility that it does know.

Oliver Hart

That may be the strangest part of this whole experiment. I am curious about AI, but I am also sceptical.

Oliver Hart

Every day, I see advertisements explaining how easily it can make me rich, productive, creative and possibly unnecessary. Apparently, all I need is the correct prompt, three automated tools and a video thumbnail featuring someone looking shocked next to a large amount of money.

Oliver Hart

I am not expecting this podcast to make thousands of dollars a month. At this point, I would consider it a success if I manage to publish a second episode.

Oliver Hart

So I do not know where this podcast is going yet. But that is also the point.

Oliver Hart

It can be about almost anything from everyday life, as long as the subject manages to stay inside my head long enough to become an episode. And if I cannot decide what to begin with, AI will apparently decide for me.

Oliver Hart

What could possibly go wrong?