The Rest Is Money — Episode 258

How AI Changes Everything We Should Teach Kids

Date: March 9, 2026
Hosts: Robert Peston & Steph McGovern
Guest: Mark Warner (Founder, Faculty AI, now acquired by Accenture)

Episode Overview

In this episode, Robert and Steph sit down with Mark Warner, founder of the UK’s AI unicorn Faculty, which is being sold to consulting giant Accenture for $1 billion. The trio explore the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on education, jobs, business, and society at large. With anecdotes from Faculty’s involvement in the NHS COVID response and reflections on building an AI business, Warner lays out both opportunity and risk, urging governments, educators, and businesses to adapt to fast-evolving realities.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Rise of Applied AI and Faculty’s Mission

• Faculty’s Origins:
  • Warner co-founded Faculty in 2014 after leaving a career in quantum physics, seeing AI as “the most important technology of our time.”
  • Faculty’s mission was to bridge AI frontiers with real-world application, notably in health and education, rather than pushing academic breakthroughs.
  • Quote: “If you take technology that already exists and you just apply that, that seems to me like almost obviously good.”
    — Mark Warner [05:11]
• Growth into a Unicorn:
  • Faculty began by retraining PhDs as data scientists, then built products for connecting AI to business decisions, leading to large-scale contracts and ultimately, acquisition by Accenture.
  • Initial focus: “transitioning from a very mathematical subject...into the world of data science...was quite tricky...So we started as a program to help PhDs become AI engineers...”
    — Mark Warner [07:56]

2. Pandemic Response and AI in the NHS

• Building the Early Warning System:
  • Faculty pivoted to support the NHS during COVID-19, building predictive models to forecast hospital demand, supplying vital data for resource allocation and lockdown decisions.
  • “We built a system called the Early Warning System...to predict how many patients were going to turn up across the entire NHS.”
    — Mark Warner [14:02]
  • Their modeling influenced government decisions, possibly saving thousands of lives by informing earlier lockdowns.
  • Quote: “If it hadn't been for the work that you and your brother did, the Prime Minister might not have locked down.”
    — Robert Peston [16:20]
• Legacy and Lost Opportunity:
  • The system, which Mark describes as "the future of public health," was disbanded post-pandemic, a decision Warner laments.
  • “We are now behind Malawi in our ability to do this wastewater surveillance and early warning.”
    — Mark Warner [21:21]

3. AI’s Transformative Role in Business Processes

• Application, Not Just Research:
  • Faculty made a strategic choice to specialize in applied AI rather than building new foundational large language models, focusing on implementing transformative solutions in real organizations, such as optimizing clinical trials.
  • “Think about something like a pharmaceutical company: each of those elements [drug discovery, clinical trials, marketing] is going to change substantially over the next five to ten years.”
    — Mark Warner [11:17]
• Why Sell to Accenture?:
  • To scale the safe and broad adoption of AI globally, Warner saw joining a global consultancy as the best path:
  • “If we did brilliantly for another five, ten years, we'd be a multi-billion dollar company and we wouldn't be able to touch the sides of safe, widespread adoption at a global scale.”
    — Mark Warner [24:34]
  • Accenture offers “access to essentially every organization in the world...help build technology out in a safe and widely [used] way.”
    — Mark Warner [25:04]

4. Human Judgment, Jobs & the Future of Work

• AI Will Replace Jobs, But...
  • Warner acknowledges inevitable job displacement but sees it as a continuation of long-standing technological change:
  • “AI is ultimately better software...we've been on [this trajectory] since the invention of the computer...Secretaries over time have diminished.”
    — Mark Warner [30:15]
  • He expects change to be gradual, with disruptive “ChatGPT moments” punctuating more continuous progress.
• Human-Led AI Is Essential:
  • “We have to find ways to stay in control of the models.”
    — Mark Warner [29:09]
  • Warner advocates for keeping humans in the loop, especially given current limitations of AI to synthesize broader context or judgment.
• Soft Skills Are Essential Skills:
  • As AI commoditizes technical skills, communication, creativity, and other human-centric capacities become even more valuable.
  • “All the artistic skills that [Silicon Valley] don’t prize so much are actually going to become the much more competitively valuable skill set.”
    — Mark Warner [45:32]

5. Education, Skills, and Policy

• Banning AI in Schools Is “Clinically Insane”
  • Warner and the hosts criticize current bans on AI use in schools, calling them “completely mad.”
    • “If AI makes it harder for us to test people...We cannot take away the absolute best tools for learning that maybe humanity has ever invented.”
      — Mark Warner [36:25]
• Preparing Kids for the Future:
  • Coding skills remain useful for young adults, but as software development industrializes, adaptability and problem-framing will be more important.
  • “Software development is about to undergo a similar transformation [to the industrial revolution]...it's going to be available to everyone all the time.”
    — Mark Warner [37:23]
  • For Warner's own children, he emphasizes cultivating “skills that involve human taste, live music, live comedy, professional sport, podcasting” — anything where we value the experience as much as the outcome.
    • “I don't think [pushing the frontiers of knowledge for economic value] will be open to him in 20 years' time...but we do maths...more as an artistic pursuit than as an economic pursuit.”
      — Mark Warner [41:30]

6. Risks, Ethics, and the Distribution of Wealth

• Political & Technical Risks:
  • Warner warns against both “malicious use by bad actors” and the “concentration of power” through unchecked AI adoption.
  • The solution is “safe, widespread adoption” with “technical safeguards” and broad access.
• Sharing the Benefits:
  • Peston raises the risk that “99.99% of the profits don't all go to Elon Musk” or other megacorporate entities.
  • Warner agrees: “If you get the path right...there's brilliant futures available. But it can be quite bumpy and quite path dependent on getting there, and there's no guarantees.”
    — Mark Warner [44:48]

7. Building a UK Tech Powerhouse & Policy Recommendations

• Loss of British Ownership:
  • Warner admits there's regret in selling to a foreign company:
  • “If...we'd had really ambitious British capital...we would have taken that and this wouldn’t have happened...There are arguments this could easily end up being better for the UK because...we have this now global reach...still going to be London based.”
    — Mark Warner [46:32]
• What Should Government Do?
  • Make the UK a magnet for ambitious founders through visas and tax breaks, despite the political challenge of giving tax incentives to “extremely tiny companies” that might later become huge.
  • “We desperately needed some growth in our economy. We cannot flatline. And that was the necessary trade off to make.”
    — Mark Warner [50:03]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “That's mad.”
  — Mark Warner [36:23], on schools banning AI
• “Clinically insane.”
  — Robert Peston [36:24], agreeing with above
• “We should have on the TV every day a weather forecast, a pollen forecast, and an infectious disease forecast.”
  — Mark Warner [20:37], on public health data
• “It's about the experience...You know, Magnus Carlsen [chess] already knows what it's like to have a job in a world where super-intelligent systems dominate him at chess...we still do maths...as an artistic pursuit.”
  — Mark Warner [41:30], on the value of human experience over efficiency
• “All the artistic skills that they don’t prize so much are actually then going to become the much more like competitively valuable skill set.”
  — Mark Warner [45:32], on the future job landscape
• “I wish we could recapture that level of clarity, particularly in government work more regularly.”
  — Mark Warner [18:09], on government responsiveness in crisis

Key Timestamps

• [01:53] – Warner explains Faculty’s founding and vision
• [05:11] – The ethical choice: applying rather than inventing AI
• [14:02] – Faculty’s NHS COVID work and its impact
• [20:37] – Vision for real-time public health data
• [22:51] – Rationale for selling Faculty to Accenture
• [26:15] – Human-led AI and the importance of human judgment
• [30:15] – AI and job displacement view
• [36:23] – On banning AI in school: “That’s mad.”
• [37:23] – The coming “industrial revolution” in software
• [41:30] – Why some skills and experiences remain uniquely human
• [46:32] – Reflections on British tech ownership and scaling
• [50:03] – Policy: making the UK a magnet for talent and capital

Tone and Style

The conversation is fast-paced, candid, and laced with humor, with the hosts challenging and riffing off Warner’s sometimes bleak but mostly pragmatic optimism about AI, education, and the economy. Warner is thoughtful, at times self-deprecating, always focused on big-picture societal impacts alongside the technical details of AI.

Summary Takeaways

• AI is rapidly transforming every area of business and education. Banning it in schools or resisting its workplace adoption is counterproductive and risks leaving entire generations unprepared.
• While job displacement is inevitable, “human” skills — creativity, judgment, empathy — will become even more prized.
• The UK risks losing its brightest technology companies without bold government action to attract founders and capital.
• Policy, ethics, and education must adapt quickly and thoughtfully if societies are to enjoy widespread benefits and avoid dangerous concentrations of power.
• AI can make us more human, not less, if its adoption is guided by values and distributed opportunity.