Keynote SpeakerBen Sauer

Popular Talks by Ben Sauer

• Always Be Creating Clarity - daily habits for strategic storytellers

  The secret of gaining strategic influence isn’t what you say about your idea, it’s the story you present around it. But you shouldn’t need a PhD in storytelling to avoid boring your audience with an endless series of slides on screen. From mindful metaphors to hard-hitting headlines, Ben will share… Read more

  The secret of gaining strategic influence isn’t what you say about your idea, it’s the story you present around it. But you shouldn’t need a PhD in storytelling to avoid boring your audience with an endless series of slides on screen. From mindful metaphors to hard-hitting headlines, Ben will share the most practical habits you need to become an engaging, clear communicator, based on his book Death by Screens.

  Takeaways

  • Learn practical, unshowy ways to grab the attention of your audience, and hold it

  • How to create better headlines that explain key ideas quickly, using patterns

  • Simple, theory-free methods for ensuring your story structure makes sense

• Humane, not Human: how to communicate with humans without losing your soul to AI

  People are using AI to do the talking and the thinking for them, without much consideration about what that means for human relationships, or society at large. Countries like Estonia are proactively funding AI literacy for schoolchildren. But if we don’t use it mindfully, we risk becoming clear but bland,… Read more

  People are using AI to do the talking and the thinking for them, without much consideration about what that means for human relationships, or society at large. Countries like Estonia are proactively funding AI literacy for schoolchildren. But if we don’t use it mindfully, we risk becoming clear but bland, boring communicators. Or worse, lose our critical thinking skills.

  In this talk, Ben outlines the latest research in how AI is affecting human communication (for better and worse!), and identifies the ways in which we should, and should not use it to communicate for us.

  Takeaways:

  • Key research findings on how using AI affects human communication.
  • Societal implications of those outcomes.
  • Principles for the humane use of AI in communication

• Reliably Unreliable - approaches to AI in times of rapid change

  Marvin Minsky called AI a ‘suitcase’ idea: it needs a lot of unpacking! We know change is coming, but what kind of change? The naysayers are predicting doom, and the hype factory is promising the earth. The rest of us are left to try and make sense of what’s real… Read more

  Marvin Minsky called AI a ‘suitcase’ idea: it needs a lot of unpacking! We know change is coming, but what kind of change? The naysayers are predicting doom, and the hype factory is promising the earth. The rest of us are left to try and make sense of what’s real and what’s not.

  In this hype-free talk, Ben will try to make sense of the suitcase by covering some of the current trends, some eternal truths, and how we can approach AI while knowing that we don’t know exactly what change is coming.

  Takeaways:

  • Strategic principles for AI in times of rapid change.
  • Why metaphors are secretly important for creating a positive AI future.
  • How to avoid the most common misconceptions about AI

• Circular Reasoning: how to manipulate time with a metaphor

  Our attitude to time, and by extension, our lives, is deeply embedded in the way we design technology. From a clock that expresses time in poetic verse, to the South American tribe, the Piraha, who have no concept of time in their language; it’s a feedback loop – we make… Read more

  Our attitude to time, and by extension, our lives, is deeply embedded in the way we design technology. From a clock that expresses time in poetic verse, to the South American tribe, the Piraha, who have no concept of time in their language; it’s a feedback loop – we make the tools, and then they make us. The metaphor of a circle on a clock face reinforces the idea that time is circular, when it is anything but.

  In this talk, Ben will look at how technology affects our perception of time, and how the metaphors we use in designing it shape how we “spend” our lives, and indeed, if we change, them, how it might escape our pessimistic view of the future.

  Takeaways:

  • How the way we design shapes our perception of time.
  • How the language and metaphors we choose shape how we spend our time.
  • How we might change our approach to future crises (like climate) by rethinking how we design for time.

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