#25 - Shubber Ali: Your garden, the 'field of dreams' for tackling the twin crises of climate change and artificial intelligence

The Grand Challengers Podcast

Shubber Ali, CEO of Garden for Wildlife, a spin-out from the National Wildlife Federation in the US, reflects on the journey from helping companies improve their innovation to how people can contribute to improving biodiversity in their own gardens through the use of native plants. We also discuss the twin crises of climate change and artificial intelligence (in particular, Generative AI) and look at both the positives and negatives around major societal changes we are likely to experience in future.
Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Starsky by Alex Keren (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vZ3lENfDLjkln8scBJ8mW)
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro and Gardening
6:48 Innovation a love-hate relationship
13:43 Shubber's Origin Story
16:16 Nature's best hope
18:46 Founding Garden for Wildlife
24:35 Nature and human health
27:10 Native vs. Non-native
30:30 Green justice the Field of Dreams Hypothesis
34:10 American fascination with lawns
36:36 Reducing friction for change
39:08 The IKEA for Biodiversity?
41:26 Deal with it at source - cost of poor quality problem
43:15 Current successes of Garden for Wildlife
45:18 What's next for Garden for Wildlife
50:51 Coming to Europe?
52:08 Climate Conference COP27
55:04 We have too much information
58:01 Artificial Intelligence and the dawn of Generative AI
1:02:09 Potential downsides of AI
1:08:55 Crisis breeds action
1:10:53 What is the root cause problem?
1:13:59 Q&A Start
1:14:17 If you had a magic wand?
1:18:25 What inspires you?
1:22:55 Key book event person
1:30:55 Biggest challenge to date
1:34:55 Time Management
1:40:50 Where can people find you?
1:41:37 Final Message
1:41:59 Outro

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