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 both the hype and the doom. Five hundred years of myths, machines and monsters, and what they tell us about the work we’ll do next.
For schools · festivals & conferences · a bar near you
Recently on stage at
- Greenbelt Festival
- Brazen, Bristol Tech Week
- University of Bristol
- Kingston University
- Leading UK schools
The event
Informed. Informal. Genuinely useful.
No robot stock photos and no sales pitch. Just a clear, funny, honest look at what AI is really doing to work, and what we can do about it.
A 500-year story
From the printing press to the chatbot, every new tool has promised to set us free from work. Knowing that history makes today’s headlines far less frightening.
The jobs question
What’s actually changing, who is carrying the cost, and which human skills are becoming more valuable, not less.
What to do next
Practical and hopeful. Audiences leave with better questions, a sharper vocabulary and a few things to try on Monday morning.
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 audiences leave with perspective rather than panic.
Book it
Three ways to bring it to your people
30-min assembly · 1–2h workshop
Schools
Assemblies, PSHE sessions and workshops that build real literacy, both human and machine, for students, staff and parents.
30-min keynote + Q&A
Festivals & conferences
A punchy, story-led keynote that audiences keep talking about at the bar afterwards.
2h informal evening
Host a night
Bring the show to your city: a relaxed, bar-based evening of big ideas, good questions and a drink in hand.
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?
Every audience asks it in some form. The fear usually isn’t the machines. It’s being left with the worst of the work while the best of it is automated away.
Claude Have Mercy! takes that fear seriously, explains where it comes from, and shows what history tells us about who decides how new tools get used.
The book behind the event
God-like
A 500-year history of Artificial Intelligence in myths, machines and monsters. It runs from a monk burned at the stake in 1600 to the chatbot in your pocket.
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Your guide
Kester Brewin
Author of God-like 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.
He brings the research, the history and a good deal of humour. You bring the questions.
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.