It started out as a way to help his daughter learn maths and now features as a case study for OpenAI with interest from around the world.
Manchester-based Phil Birchenall is no AI novice, with his company Diagonal Thinking providing artificial intelligence solutions for businesses. He’s also created FactGPT, a Factory Records Simulator…
However, it’s been his “bonkers” idea to turn the family’s cocker spaniel into an AI maths tutor which has put him on a global stage.
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Some years back, he was helping his daughter prepping for SATS and, in particular maths. So he created an AI Maths Tutor, trained on the areas that his daughter was struggling with – all through the persona of their dog.
“Fast forward a couple of months. We’re sat in a caravan in The Lake District. It’s raining and my electric MINI has been towed away because it won’t charge, and the rest of our week-long break is starting to look a bit grim,” he said.
“Daisy’s on her iPad, and I’m doing the terrible parent thing of dipping into emails and checking updates on LinkedIn. Bad dad. As I scan through messages, one catches my eye: it’s the most far-out piece of spam I’ve ever had.
“‘Hi, I’m from OpenAI’s comms team. We’ve seen your story and we’d like to talk to you about it.’ YEAH RIGHT.
“‘Hey Daisy, have you seen this? This is exactly the kind of scam I’ve told you to watch out for!’”
Well it turned out to be very real. And ChatGPT were wanting to feature some of the brands and people that had used their platform, the likes of L’Oréal, Morgan Stanley. And Phil Birchenall.
It meant that OpenAI’s Creative Director Adam Koppel headed to Didsbury to film them.
“It still hadn’t really dawned on me how much of a big deal it was until Adam, a really senior guy from the company, picked up a felt-crafted doll of Izzy that was sat on the window shelf in our kitchen.
‘’’This is just like the version of Izzy our animation guys are working on!’”
“One internal double-take later, I’m starting to get a sense of how cool this video was going to be. They’d loved our story, using ChatGPT to tackle a simple human challenge. They loved that I wasn’t a techie, just a dad in need of a hand. And they loved the fact that we put our bonkers dog right at the heart of the thing we made.
“You know what? They captured the heart and the humour behind turning a family dog into a maths tutor who saved the day. And we LOVE the video they made.”
Birchenall added that since the video went live on the OpenAI website, he’s been “inundated with connections, messages and stories on how people are following the steps I took to make their own tutors using ChatGPT.”
Plus the video has been shared at education conferences around the world.
