A live event with author Kester Brewin
What is happening with AI and jobs?
Claude Have Mercy! is an informed-but-informal session that cuts through the hype and punctures the doom. Engaging and accessible – and based on up-to-date evidence – it offers insights into how AI is changing our labour market (and entry-level roles in particular), and practical actions for people to take.
For schools · festivals & conferences · a bar near you
Recent events at
- Greenbelt Festival
- AI West
- University of Bristol
- RocketVan, London
- Kingston University
- Leading UK schools
- LSE
The event
Informed. Informal. Genuinely useful.
No robot stock photos and no sales pitch. Just a clear, engaging, honest look at what AI is really doing to work – and workplaces – and what we can do about it. Claude Have Mercy has been enjoyed by university students wanting to know how to approach the jobs market, schools wondering how to refocus, parents and grandparents concerned about the future, and firm wanting to deliver that better future.
AI: a 500-Year History
Where the hell in the human heart did this technology come from? To understand the future of work, we start with the past - and long-standing promise that tech will relieve us from toil.
The jobs question
What’s actually changing, who is carrying the cost, which skills are becoming more important, and how a 'socio-technical' approach is key to understanding how to make the future work.
What to do next
Practical and hopeful. Leave with better questions, improved understanding, and a and set of actions you can take.
Why it lands
AI didn’t arrive from nowhere.
The flint, the plough, the typewriter: every tool has taken over something we lacked. Every one of them has also changed who does the work, who pays the price and who profits. Claude Have Mercy! puts today’s AI into that longer story, so people leave with perspective rather than panic.
Book it
Three ways to bring it to your people
2h informal evening
Host a night
Bring the show to your area, university or organisation: a relaxed, evening of big ideas, good questions and a drink in hand.
25-min assembly · 1–2h workshop
Schools
Assemblies, PSHE sessions, careers and employability workshops, evenings for concerned parents – a teacher for over twenty years, Kester has lived and breathed education, giving you confidence that the session will be shaped for your audience.
30-min keynote + Q&A
Festivals & conferences
A punchy, story-led keynote that has filled venues around the country, offering a unique take on a truly important topic.
In Parliament · June 2026
We are large language models.
Giving evidence to the House of Commons Education Select Committee, Kester argued that the best preparation for an AI-shaped future starts with the oldest technology we have: language.
Kester giving evidence to the House of Commons Education Select Committee, June 2026.
The question in the room
Who gets the dishes, and who gets the art?
It’s the question behind so many questions: is tech going to take on the grunt work, or leave us the slops?
Claude Have Mercy! takes that fear seriously, explains where it comes from, and shows us that – if we focus less on AI agents and more on human agency – the future of work need not be predetermined by tech companies.
The book behind the event
God-like
In 2023, the UK government’s own lead on AI safety wrote a piece for the FT demanding that we ‘pause the race towards god-like AI’. Why the theological language? And where had this race come from? In this acclaimed and highly original book, Kester Brewin takes us from a monk being burned at the stake through the shock of Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb to Musk’s worries about AI ‘summoning a demon’, showing the long history of our desire to create all-powerful machines… and how we can respond now that we have.
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Your guide
Kester Brewin
Is the author of many books, and Associate Director at the Institute for the Future of Work, an independent research and development institute exploring how new technologies are transforming both work and wellbeing.
An expert facilitator and communicator, he brings together leading research, fascinating history and a good sprinkling of humour. He has written and presented for BBC Radio, twice presented at the UK’s leading TED event, and is a sought-after keynote speaker.
Book Kester
Bring Claude Have Mercy! to your school, festival or city.
Based in London and travelling across the UK. Tell us about your audience and we’ll find the right format.