Steven Bartlett
Entrepreneur & Podcaster
The Diary of a CEO host treats AI as the story of the decade — staging “emergency AI debates,” calling AI agents possibly “the most disruptive technology of our lifetime,” and urging his audience to adapt fast, even while accusing some AI CEOs of downplaying the risks.
In his words
I think “AI agents” might be the most disruptive technology of our lifetime.
I think some of them are a little bit sadistic about power. I think they like the idea that they will change the world, that they will be the one that fundamentally shifts the world.
Biography
Steven Bartlett (born 1992 in Botswana, raised in Plymouth) dropped out of university to co-found the social-media agency Social Chain, became the youngest-ever investor on Dragons’ Den, and built The Diary of a CEO into one of the world’s biggest business podcasts. Since 2023 the show has doubled as a rolling public seminar on AI.
The emergency-debate era
Bartlett’s May 2025 “AI Agents Emergency Debate” — featuring Replit CEO Amjad Masad and entrepreneur Daniel Priestley arguing over which jobs survive 24 months — typified his approach: bring builders and worriers to the same table, and tell the audience to prepare rather than hide. Announcing the episode, he called agents “an AI team member that can browse the open internet” and framed adapting to them as a career necessity, not a choice.
He is not a cheerleader for the industry’s leadership, though. In a June 2025 conversation with Geoffrey Hinton, Bartlett claimed — citing a billionaire friend privy to private conversations — that a major AI CEO says one thing about safety in public while privately dismissing the harm, and speculated that some AI leaders are “a little bit sadistic about power.” His December 2025 episode with Stuart Russell, “We’ve Been Lied To About AI,” pressed the same theme: the race is real, and the public messaging is not the whole story.
Through it all his practical posture stays pro-adoption: use the tools, build with them, and treat the disruption as opportunity — the classic operator’s stance, applied to the biggest platform shift since the internet he built his first company on.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/steven-bartlett