I recently went on Chris Bryant's YouTube stream to talk about the amazing ways we're using AI for animal advocacy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KIcYZ1Qs04

Claude Cowork: my learnings as they happen

Me and the Bryant team have been using Cowork for two weeks now, and it's pretty clear that this is the future of work. We now have multiple instances where the team has managed to complete one or two weeks' worth of work in a single day. However, it also…

In the latest edition of "Richie writing blogs about why you shouldn't pay him for AI stuff." I talk about why building a custom AI workflow is not always the best thing to do.

I use Claude Code for all my research projects now, but it's built for programmers, not social scientists. Here's an ongoing log of learnings on how to use this hugely powerful tool for social science research. I'll update it weekly.

How to automate your Plaud AI notepin using N8N I have had my Plaud AI notepin for about three months now and I absolutely love it. I can record my thoughts or ideas with the press of a button. It makes taking notes on all sorts of things in my life totally frictionless. I'm going to be writing a blog post on how I use it in a few weeks, so stay tuned!

How to automate your Plaud AI notepin using N8N

I have had my Plaud AI notepin for about three months now and I absolutely love it. I can record my thoughts or ideas with the press of a button. It makes taking notes on all sorts of things in my life totally frictionless. I'm going to be writing a…

Any academics out there who haven't played around with Claude code yet really gotta try it. I'd estimate recent past AI tools increased my research productivity by about 10-20%, Claude code feels like it will quickly reach 100-200%.

LLMs are exceptional programmers, but mediocre data scientists.

In 2025, LLMs got terrifyingly good at software engineering. So why are they so unimpressive at data science? Data science doesn't really use tests that much LLMs are so powerful for software engineering is because of a 1-2 punch: As…

Get a Google sheet of your Oura data that updates every day

Here's how you can automate pulling your latest Oura Ring data into a Google Sheet every day To do this we are going to use something that most people don't know about but is insanely powerful: Google Apps Script. Google Apps Script is a…

AI Could Fix School Examinations

What if we fundamentally recreated exams from the ground up, with AI at the core? I see the potential to make a radically better way to do school exams. What's more, most of the technology already exists. Before we begin: I'm going to use the term "LLM" a lot. That…

Offsetting meat consumption is likely to be more effective than offsetting carbon emissions

The consensus is that overall, carbon offsetting hasn't worked at reducing or negating emissions. Does that mean offsetting meat consumption is a dead-end? I argue no. If we look at the 2 main reasons why…

Is AI our secret weapon against factory farming? (podcast appearance)

I was recently on "The Vegan Report" podcast talking about AI and the animal movement. We discuss AI tips, how advocates are using AI in their activism, fears and concerns people have over AI, and even AI consciousness!

Where will the next generation of world changers come from?

AI can do much of the work that used to be reserved for interns and juniors. For cash-strapped, burnt-out workers in the NGO space, AI assistants are a tempting alternative to managing early career employees. But how can we reap these…

Be grateful for shit things

Most people write gratitude journals about the good things in their life. I've done this, and while it feels good at first, it gets a bit repetitive. It cultivates a useful mindset, which is to just regularly be grateful for things in your life. However, I think we can…

Finding the number of AI tools overwhelming? Don't know where to go beyond ChatGPT?
Lots of people feel the same. This post is for you. No jargon, no advanced things, no list of 100 tools. Just 5. I am extremely confident that one of them will be useful to you.

This summer I gave 3 talks on food security which are all now on YouTube! I've collected them in this post. Enjoy!

AI art is real art In 2023, I gave a talk on AI and art. In 2023! Feels like a lifetime ago. It was about how AI could affect the market for art and jobs for artists. Yet in the discussions after the talk, the question that generated the most discussion was: "Is AI art real art?" To me, the answer was a clear "yes".

Here I make the case that AI art is real and valid art.

The impacts of AI on Animals: mine and other expert opinions

Are LLMs good at making charts and graphs? People often ask me if AI can help them with data analysis and making graphs. To be honest, this isn't something that I have a huge amount of experience in, because I'm a data scientist who makes all of his own graphs. BUT, I have been reading some very interesting pieces by other people who do know about this kind of thing, so I thought I would collect together my 3 favourite, recent blog posts on Using LLMs for charts and graphs, and summarise the common themes.

Are LLMs good at making charts and graphs? I distilled insights from several excellent data visualisation blogs.

I’m teaching a free 12 week-course on AI

Myself and 3 other AI consultants are teaching a free 12-week practical course in generative AI. You'll go from beginner to confident user. It's open to anyone working on fixing our food system: promoting plant-forward diets, increasing animal welfare,…

How will AI developments affect the animal advocacy movement? I built a curated chatbot to find out! AI is transforming everything. How will it transform animal advocacy? Is it going to supercharge our campaigns, or render some of them totally obsolete? Will it help or hurt factory farming? These seem like pretty big abstract questions, but given the pace of AI development, we need to be talking about them. And increasingly, people are! Mostly on the Effective Altruism forum…

How will AI developments affect the animal advocacy movement? I built a curated chatbot to find out, and you can use it too!

Looking at AI conversations on socials you get the feeling that excitement and anger are the only two valid emotions to feel about AI.
In this very short post, I want to talk about fear.

The only AI concept that actually helps you use ChatGPT better "Do I need to learn about neural networks to understand ChatGPT?" I hear this all the time, and have been asked this a few times. I also see people making videos, courses and blog posts breaking down the technical details of how large language models (LLMs) work. People assume that by understanding the technical and theoretical concepts behind these models, they'll gain secret insight into how to use them better.

The only AI concept that actually helps you use ChatGPT better

"Do I need to learn about neural networks to understand ChatGPT?" I hear this all the time, and have been asked this a few times. I also see people making videos, courses and blog posts breaking down the technical details of how large…

"Will AI take jobs and should we protect jobs?" is the wrong framing for 2 reasons:
- AI will automate *tasks* not whole jobs. All jobs will be impacted to some degree, but some way more than others
- No one cares about jobs, they care about people (and maybe the economy). Protect people, not jobs.

New post from me!
Combining 3 things I love: Latin dance, regressoin models, and my Oura Ring!

I tested the new ChatGPT agent on 11 use cases and it’s just ok ChatGPT agent has now come to people on the paid £20 a month plan. The shameless YouTube hype merchants are obviously impressed (must be hard having your mind BLOWN literally every few days...), others are disappointed, and others have found some decent use cases. I thought I'd put it to the test myself! Here I share my tests, and most importantly, the…

I tested the new ChatGPT agent on 11 use cases and it’s just ok

ChatGPT agent has now come to people on the paid £20 a month plan. The shameless YouTube hype merchants are obviously impressed (must be hard having your mind BLOWN literally every few days...), others are disappointed, and others…

My new report with Good Growth and Faunalytics is out!

Last year I completed a six month research contract with The Good Growth Co. They're a brilliant social science think tank that serves the animal advocacy movement and alternative protein sectors in East Asia. We analysed a ton of social media…

Concerns about AI’s energy use are reasonable

I feel like every week I see the same debate play out again and again. "Is AI bad for the environment?" It a question on a lot of people's minds. I use AI for basically everything and so do many of my friends, so you can probably guess what my take is.…

New Blog post from me!
I propose some pretty sci-fi ideas for how AI could create exciting new opportunities for qualitative researcher and their work.

The Deep Research Revolution: my talk at AI, Animals and Digital Minds London 2025

A few months ago I gave a talk at the AI, Animals and Digital Minds conference in London. It was on the exciting new possibilities that have been enabled by AI deep research tools (I've also written about them…

Why Scheduling meetings with ChatGPT can give you breakthrough ideas Some people schedule meetings in order to avoid thinking. They have a problem at work and they either don't want to or can't figure out themselves. By scheduling a meeting with a bunch of other people, they can hash through it together. It gives them a kick up the arse to get something solved, that they put off on their own.

Why Scheduling meetings with ChatGPT can give you breakthrough ideas

Some people schedule meetings in order to avoid thinking. They have a problem at work and they either don't want to or can't figure out themselves. By scheduling a meeting with a bunch of other people, they can hash through it…