Episode 21: AI Fluency for Executives - Learn by Playing

It's a slightly different episode today - in this one, we're talking about how we're helping executives develop AI fluency with one of the services we're offering, AI Fluency Coach. Here's the overview: Senior leaders are being asked to make enormous decisions about AI, on investment, direction and ethics, while quietly admitting to themselves that they don't really understand the technology. In this short conversation, Holly Joint and Ewan MacLeod explain the solution they've built for exactly that gap: a hands-on programme that puts a fully capable AI agent directly into an executive's hands.The premise is refreshingly simple. Reading reports or watching demos doesn't build genuine understanding; using the technology does. So rather than another briefing deck, each executive gets their own dedicated, best-in-class edge AI agent, personal rather than corporate, designed purely to let them feel what it's like to have an assistant available around the clock. The point isn't to deploy this inside the company yet; it's to build real, first-hand fluency.The examples bring it to life. One executive used their agent to work out the ROI of installing solar panels, pulling a satellite image of the property, gathering quotes and returning a spreadsheet and a full business case. Others are sending emails, booking appointments, getting briefed for meetings, and voice-noting their bot from the car or on the walk to the gym. Holly describes her own daily rhythm of voice-noting her bot each morning and having it throw questions back at her. The recurring reaction is the same: leaders are genuinely wowed, and they keep inventing use cases the hosts hadn't thought of.There's useful substance on how it works, too. Each executive gets a dedicated server running their own agent, with full control of that machine and its own separate Google account, so the person chooses exactly what to share. Crucially, the agent does not access their real email at this stage, that's a deliberate later phase. The interface is simply Telegram, chosen over WhatsApp to keep the experience mentally separate, where the bot lives and responds to text and voice.What stands out is how fast it works. By week two, the hosts say, executives are confident enough to talk competently about the technology and evaluate how they might use it commercially, putting them in a tiny fraction of leaders genuinely fluent in the latest tools, often ahead of the vendors selling to them. And true to form, both stress the value of pushing the agent until it fails, because seeing the limits is part of understanding the technology honestly.Key TopicsWhy senior leaders struggle to build real AI understandingLearning by doing: a personal agent over theory and demosA dedicated, private edge AI agent for each executiveReal use cases, from solar-panel ROI to meeting briefingsVoice-noting an AI assistant into your daily routineHow the setup works: dedicated server, separate Google account, TelegramReaching confident AI fluency within weeksThe value of testing the technology until it failsLinks & ReferencesAI Fluency Coach — https://aifluencycoach.comTelegram — https://telegram.org