David speaks with with Alex Fefegha, a creative technologist who currently works as a creative coder at Google's Arts & Culture Lab. Previously, Alex founded COMUZI, a design studio he started at 19. He also runs The Office of Art & Technology, creating games and interactive experiences.
They talked about:
💻 How Alex got into tech after growing up in South London
⚽ Getting kicked out of a football academy put him on a new path
🎵 Losing thousands trying to break into the music industry
🧠 Teaching himself to code and making it his edge
🤖 AI and why he says “computers are stupid”
🚀 How he built COMUZI - a creative studio working on cutting-edge AI projects
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📄 Show notes:
[00:00:00] - Introduction
[00:01:26] - From Football Dreams to Performance Science
[00:07:32] - Discovering Tech Through Friends and Hustle
[00:10:11] - First Hustles in Tech and Entrepreneurship
[00:13:41] - A Crash Course in the Real World
[00:20:29] - Building Skills as an Apprentice
[00:25:31] - Choosing Work Over School
[00:26:45] - Breaking into the IT Industry
[00:28:39] - Music, Startups, and Studio Life
[00:29:52] - Learning to Code the DIY Way
[00:31:52] - Where Tech Meets Music
[00:32:49] - AI, Music X-Ray, and Finding Purpose
[00:41:04] - From Fan Communities to Founding COMUZI
[00:43:52] - The Ethics of AI and Real-World Impact
[00:48:36] - Being Tokenised and Walking Away
[00:50:42] - Finding Creativity in AI Again
🗣 Mentioned in the show:
COMUZI | https://www.comuzi.xyz/
Richie Brave | https://theknowledge.io/richiebrave-1/
Tooting & Mitcham | https://www.tmunited.org/
Pecan | https://www.pecan.ai/
Audacity | https://www.audacityteam.org/
Bonnet Football Club | https://www.bonnetbayfc.com/
Wired PR | https://wired-pr.co.uk/
Music X-Ray | https://www.musicxray.com/
Mike McCready | https://twitter.com/mikemccreadypj
A&R's | https://www.careersinmusic.com/what-is-a-r/
SoundCloud | https://soundcloud.com/
Feminist Internet | https://www.feministinternet.com/
Digital One Dead Bot | https://www.wionews.com/world/deadbots-the-digital-soul-that-can-speak-for-you-after-your-death-478639
New Inc Museum | https://www.newmuseum.org/
Ross Goodwin | https://rossgoodwin.com/
Es Devlin | https://esdevlin.com/
Rakim the hip hop | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakim
The Thames Path 2040 | https://www.newreal.cc/artworks/the-thames-path-2040
MKBHD | https://mkbhd.com/
ChatGPT | https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
👤 Connect with Alex:
Website: https://lexfefegha.com/
Twitter: https://x.com/lexfefegha
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfefegha/
👨🏾💻 About David Elikwu:
David Elikwu FRSA is a serial entrepreneur, strategist, and writer. David is the founder of The Knowledge, a platform helping people think deeper and work smarter.
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📜 Full transcript:
From Football Dreams to Performance Science
David Elikwu: I think you call yourself a creative technologist and you've been in technology for a while, but was that something you grew up with? Did you always have this passion for technology or was that something that you had to develop kind of as you grew older?
Alex Fefegha: Yeah, something that I actually mention on my website. So I have a website called, LexMakesThings.Fun and it's called Lex GpT, where you can chat with me. I originally made it in 2019 and then I thought maybe chatbots are boring. And then I saw in recent hype that chatbots are the in thing [00:02:00] again. So I brought my chatbot back.
In that story I actually talk about how I was not that done who was focused on tech and stuff, like my headspace was all about sports. Like I wanted to play soccer or football. Now I feel I've been speaking to too much Americans about football too much. I just said soccer. Oh my God. But, um, yeah, I wanted to play football. I wanted to play center back. You know, I was big, tall, fast, had all the attributes to be a really good center half. And my focus was literally, can I make it in football? If I can't, can I make it in athletics? Because I was fast. If I can't, can I go be like a sports psychologist or a strength and conditioning coach? One of those two. I was really interested in performance and what help someone perform better. And that element of helping someone perform better kind of brings me eventually as we talk about the AI conversation, 'cause that same thing was something I really focused on. I was really interested in [00:03:00] performance. And that inspired me from like when I was like 15 because it's, you're from South London, you know, the economy at home is tight. So are you getting the nutritions you need? Are you getting the rest you need? Are you getting the care you need? How does that accommodate your body to be able to perform at a level, especially if you are a young athlete trying to get to the highest of your sport? What are the environment you need in order to be perform very well, especially at the time that, you know, you might talk so much about the physical attributes of an individual but the mental attributes of an individual was something that wasn't spoken about. And so I was very interested in sports psychology in terms of its impact with people who play golf. And for me, who knew nothing about golf, I was like, what do you mean you need sports psychologists for this, da da da da dah. But now, as I'm older and I watch sports more and myself playing sports and I understood about, I would [00:04:00] perform in environments well where I felt confident, but in environments where I didn't feel confident, I'd second guess myself, things wouldn't feel natural.
So my background very much was sports, like I studied a sports science B. Tech. I got like personal trainer qualifications, sports coaching qualifications. I was actually planning to go to university to study sports science as a BA and then somehow get a scholarship to go to the states to study some sort of masters in like sports psychology or something like that. Or try to navigate the American education system where you have to study first and then you get drafted into some sort of major league or something. Like I had proper, that was my whole head space. The only thing that actually stopped me going back was actually like not having money. Because you're here, I didn't really understand like the division one, division two, division three education system that the states has, you know, every young athlete in the states want to go to division one university, so that's where the full [00:05:00] scholarships are gonna be, that's where trying to get into the NFL, trying to get into the MLS, trying to get in the NBA, trying to get in the NHL and the other sort of, sports association leagues or individual sports, division one had the facilities and stuff. I didn't know anything. I just wanted to be there, but there was a lack of money because I wasn't getting full scholarships. It was like, you have these companies where they tell you to play exhibition matches. So you might be one player, you play against a bunch of players and then you have like people who watch you and they scout you and then they help you go to the states, but you need money for a certain process. Then you need a university to watch you. Then you need a university to give a scholarship and will be a full scholarship, and all of the stuff.
There's a bit more networks like, you know, for example, I have a interest in American football. It was something that people were trying to get me to play for years you know, a couple years ago I took it up as a sport after. I [00:06:00] was in America in the gym and someone saying to me like, yo you know, what's your 40 yard dash? And I'm like, I don't know. And he's like, bro, you can go to the NFL and make money, da da da da da.
And then I happens to be in the gym in the Uk. Someone comes up to me again and goes, what sports do you play? And I'm like, gym. And he's like, nah, if you need play American football, da da da, dah. So I took it up and I took an interest. And I began to realize, okay, there's like an NFL academy, which now actually helps young players from the UK be able to have the opportunity to train, live the American football lifestyle, play American football matches, but also have the exposure to those division one universities and other universities which can help move their destiny. And that's a whole completely different game. And so I guess at the time when I turned 19, I was very much like asking myself, I haven't got a professional club contract ever play semi-pro football [00:07:00] and really try to do my best to like perform and pray that I can get an opportunity you know, from playing professionally, I didn't mind what level I played. I just wanted to play football professionally. I really loved it. I felt like I was good at it. But there's many other people who are just as good at me or even better than me trying to pursue the sport. And you know, and it's such a hard sport. There are people I played with that I thought, they were unbelievable and they ain't pursuing ball. They're not playing there right now. And so it's just a hard thing.
Discovering Tech Through Friends and Hustle
Alex Fefegha: So, you know, one of my closest friends, Rich, was studying multimedia technology at Brunell, and it, it actually happens to be called Digital Design now at Brunell. And, um, he was learning how to make websites. He wasn't the best with it as I banter him, but you know, I began to like be interested in the tech world, mostly around the culture of tech startups. Like, can you create your own startup? [00:08:00] Can you, you know you heard and stuff about like, Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle buying a Beach, and you are watching this on E-News. There used to be three of us, me, Richard, and Ernest. And we'd be in Ernest's house watching these videos and stuff and we're like, yeah, I would love to be a tech entrepreneur, da da da da da. And then it was like, how do we enter it? How do we dabble in it? At the same time, just that nature of who we are, we were very entrepreneurial. Richard was always the person that was like an eBay seller. He would sell his phone on eBay. I remember during college he would sell his phone, stack the money, save, buy more stuff, and then buy a phone back after. That was Rich, that was Rich's personality. Where the good thing I had is I knew a lot of people, so it was like, how do we combine that mindset and that skillset to basicaly try to make legitimate ways of making money? You know, I grew up in Peckham, South [00:09:00] London, in the norm, in the estate. And then there, as we call it. Know, so my headspace, my environment was, you need to make bread before the ages of 18, bread equals money. For those who heard me speak, you know, you do what you need to do, the creative entrepreneurship, you know, and that type of stuff. And you did that.
That was, that was the model I nerve model, like pre 18, like I said, the economy was tight. You wanted new clothes, you wanted new trainers, you wanted to eat, you wanted to experience stuff. And those who had to do shiny stuff, we had to creative entrepreneurs, can't say that I was tempted to dabble in it. I guess I just had that fear of like, getting caught and, you know, having a whole different path. So for us it was like very much in our headspace was how can we like, have the same energy that these men have on a more legitimate scale? That was literally the whole mindset like, I had no grand plan [00:10:00] whatsoever. I was just broke and just wanted to make bread. Like, I had no, oh yeah, here's a grand master plan. And I knew about technology. I knew that AI was coming. I had no clue.
First Hustles in Tech and Entrepreneurship
David Elikwu: So I was just gonna ask, did you have much access to computers and stuff at the time? Because I remember, so I was talking to Richie Brave about this, if you know him. But what I find funny is that I remember there was a, there's a distinct period of my life, probably even when I was quite young, like 14, 15 or so, where I had access to computers, but only through the school library and I lived across the road from a library. So I saw books about coding and so I, there's some stuff that I learned, but I learned it for the purpose of designing websites. But beyond that, I had no idea that there was an actual industry of legitimate tech companies and I think I just didn't even see that at all. All I saw was, okay, here's ways you can make money today, and that's about it. And so when it wasn't useful for that, then I didn't really take it any further beyond that.
Alex Fefegha: No, I think it is a [00:11:00] very true point. You mentioned in the library, like the first granddad, you know, who was a university lecturer. He predominantly lectured in Nigeria, but I think he decided to move to England back to like, to want to study. I mean, not study here, to lecture here. He had a PC that he bought, set up, but he didn't have to use it. So he was going to, like, there was a charity, there is still a charity called Pekin, which was all about like, I think it's an employment support charity, but at the time in 2003 in that they had like learn how to use computers. soAnd predominantly come from a world of typewriter and, you know, pen and paper and then moving to the computer. It was, he had that first exposure to learn in that way.
When I was much more younger, I think I did have a PC for myself. My grandparents wanted me to study Nigeria, so I studied Nigeria for like two years or so when I was young. And I remember the IT lessons, you have one pc, they bring one computer to the class between 50 people [00:12:00] fam. You watch the teacher teach how to use the computer film one, if the student's lucky that day, it's your lucky day to type on the computer. So I remember that. And then when I came back, had the PC at home, but no internet, so I'm just playing games on there. But I used to go to the library and when I would go to the library, I would like get into the floppy disc culture.
So I would meet people who had games. floppy disks. And then what I would do would go to these websites, get my floppy disk download like Mario Peja bad games, and put in a floppy disk and then go home and put it in, 'cause I didn't have, there was no internet fan, so you need to get them games on floppy disc. I remember playing Miniclip, miniclip games, like, ah, that was my whole library experience was gaming. I literally just gamed in the library for a long period of [00:13:00] time.
And then in secondary school we used to have ICT classes and ICT classes. You know, the teachers did their best. I think ICT classes were classes where most of us did not really pay attention. It was kind of a free for all lesson to basically just play games. I think I played games throughout every ICT lesson watch football compilations on YouTube the time of like, different players, um, nah, them, I didn't even know 480p, whatever quality that it would probably be. But back then, I'm doing is watching YouTube compilations of footballers, watching Namar, Santos and Gant and all of them, stuff like that. Like that was my life.
Getting arrested the night of an exam
Alex Fefegha: And then what happened was actually, there was a moment in like 2011, I actually got kicked out college, unfortunate story, you know, I, I got arrested the night of an exam. So why I studied a Btec for science. I did the A levels in performing arts at the [00:14:00] same time. I went to a college in Sunbury called St. Paul's, I was actually playing for a team. Who was I playing for? Tooting and Mitch. Like, they had like their semi-pro club, but they had like this academy program. When you're in that age is, you would have football clubs, either professional, mostly semi-professional football clubs or like the lower league professional clubs who have these academy systems set up around football. So you would have kids who would come and study, um, a B Tech, and then you would like get the, the football teams kit. You would train for the team you would play on Wednesdays in like the youth leagues and stuff like that. So I went there and I got arrested and then they were like, yeah, you're gonna have to repeat college again. And I was like, damn.
One day, the person I was seeing at the time in 2011, wanted to go to, uh, was looking at college viewing days. 'cause they were at one college and they wanted to change the college. So I went to, through the college and then I [00:15:00] was, started performing arts as an A level. And that's hard 'cause they're like two different worlds of sports science and performing arts. But because I did a drama GcSE, it was like, I have an opportunity to do an A level. when you are trying to pursue the sports sort of thing, it's very rigid in terms of like, if you're somebody who maybe has been raised in a very academic way, like my granddad was very big on for me, you're not really having a lot of leeway in terms of like, if you wanted to study A levels, it's gonna be a madness. But if you studied a bt e it's for science. It was, the course was structured around your football, so you can train and do a lot of things around that. So I was like, okay, I'm a person of multiple interest. That's always been me. I want to, I'm gonna keep this a level in performing arts. And so there was a performance, you're doing a performance at this period of time. There was a lunchtime performance and there was an evening performance. I'm trying to get back. So after doing the viewing, I'm trying to [00:16:00] go through King's Cross because is like past Kingston. You, she needs to get to Waterloo. You need to take a train all the way past Kinston, get to Sunbury, then you basically, a Sudbury Sunbury, I can't remember, it's Neverum somewhere, but St. Paul's College sixth form. And that type of stuff so I happened to go through Ken's cross. then mentions that she doesn't want to come anymore. So I go, okay, cool. I need to cut. So I'm going to start leaving by my ones. A police officer goes like, can we, know, stop and search unit? And I go, no, because like I need to get to college. Like, I can't, I'm running late now. I need to speed. And growing up in ends, I know how to navigate stop and searches, you know, where some of my friends, would give the police, you know, a hard time and I'd stuff, my thing I realized over time was if I just spoke to them in a nice way and said, yeah, you're right, duh, [00:17:00] duh had a bit of ban. The searches is less vigorous, more blessed and everybody's your friend and they actually leave me alone. Like, that's something I learned was it's like, it's interesting. It's like they wanted you to provoke them. and I learned that the tactic is not to provoke way, or form? I said to the police officer, look, I'm rushing. I need to get to college. Like, can you just allow me to go? officer goes, you are smelling of weed. Dude, at that time I had never smoked weed in my life. So I was like, ah, please kind of go. like, okay, I'm a call back. Called back up, call back up. I thought it was just gonna be a thing of, look, I'm bigger and taller than everybody, so I acknowledge and understand that I am physically intimidating. So I thought calling back up so you can do your search and you basically just let [00:18:00] me go that basically, you know. Alright, thank you mate. you go. no, I actually got arrested. I got arrested, I got cautioned for disturb. What's it like disturbing the public peace? Something like that, like. You know, I got arrested in Kings Cross station and handcuffs and all that stuff. I think, you know, I remember the solicitor or that I had at the time basically was calling out the police officer for abusing their power.
And yeah, that messed up. 'cause I meant to be at performance and you know, it was a play and I had been a very key part to that play. But the fortunate thing about that, which leads to this part is I, you know, obviously growing up in secondary school, your whole mindset was the way how things was, and this is maybe the flaws of the education system you know, it's a game, right? Get GcSEs don't get three years in college, had to do college two finish university in free. Like everything's timed. And I think at the time when they told me that I'm gonna have to do first year again, was so angry [00:19:00] and I was like, what do you mean duh duh. So I need to find something that worked out for me. I began to look at apprenticeships, 'cause I had this window for a period of time, of how do I study and make money? And I think my ego was crushed at, I would have to study again. I looked for apprenticeships and at the time, this is one year after the Tories have taken power and I know the Tory's or agenda was to try to improve vocational qualifications and apprenticeships and stuff at the time. so the apprenticeship program I think, had always been down, I'm not sure we had launched in a new way. So this is early stage apprenticeship program. and this is also a recovering economic market as well after the global crisis. So I'm applying for apprenticeships. I think I applied for like an office admin one. applied for an accounting one. I applied for an IT one. The accounting one was sweet 'cause it was paying like four bills a week, 400 pounds a week. For those who are not familiar with that. 400 pounds a week in 2011 was, [00:20:00] I don't even know if I had done all that money if I got it, you know, but it was funny that, that one, because you had people who had graduated from university who were actually applying for the same apprenticeship program as you.
So that's why I mentioned the economic crisis because you had folk who you would think would be in a gadget scheme would be doing that. We actually applying for the same apprenticeships. They were willing to go to college to study at the same time. You just graduate, you got a whole degree your hair competing with me for this opportunity and stuff.
Building Skills as an Apprentice
Alex Fefegha: But it was the IT apprenticeship that accepted me in a primary school in like Clapham Junction somewhere. they were the ones who hired me. It was a company who hired me and then I got put in. in the primary school as like a staff member. Basically as a contractor. the company he hired me was dodgy. I didn't get paid for three months. And then one time when they tried to pay me, I think HSBC thought it was fraud, so they closed my HSBC account. at first they gave me a check to set a check balance. It's fraud, duh duh. Then I [00:21:00] got money and a wall of cash after three months, which is really nice. I blew the cash, I dunno what I did with the cash, but I did what anyone would do in 2011. How I designed 2011, I was 17. I did what any 17-year-old would do with money in 2011 maybe. Actually, no, maybe some 17 year olds might be different, but you know, yeah, I had 1,333 pounds. I was out there, man. I was up.
David Elikwu: It goes a long way in ends.
Alex Fefegha: It goes a great way. [00:22:00]
But the apprenticeship was my first exposure to technology because I spent a lot of time fixing and building stuff. I had to fix the computers. a lot of the times, the broken keyboards, the all of these things, putting them together, put a lot of parts together, taking up computers apart, trying to fix stuff. I spent a lot of time on YouTube, watching YouTube videos to learn how to do stuff. learn how to use different software. This is a world when the cloud did not exist. Well, it probably the cloud did exist, but this is a world where, where people weren't migrating and stuff to the cloud, so the server was still in the office right next to you a big black heavy box.
This is the server. You gotta make sure the server and there's a backup server. You gotta make sure that stuff has backup all the time. [00:23:00] If that stuff crashes, it's game over for you. was my world. I was like the IT apprentice. And then there was a lady in the primary school who was like the IT manager and she played like other roles, but she was like, I was like her protege and then that's when I learned how to like start being with the world of like code and stuff was because I had waffled and said I can make websites when I couldn't. I had to learn very much on the job. I had to learn how to come up with new ways to like hack my things together. And that's where the hack energy kind of came from because one of the first things I ever did was, there was audio books that the school wanted to basically, I mean audio cassettes that they had. they wanted to basically upload them to the internet, or upload them to like this shared folder so that kids could listen to them and study without you having these like set players. And so that was the first challenge I ever had. I had to [00:24:00] almost like hack my way to do so, and that was like me. It was a very simple hack. I literally just I think I how to get the cassette player, connect it to a computer, it in audacity. Audacity, for those who don't know, was a recording software. If you ever were spitting and making music back in the days, you might put a beat, you put Audacity on there and you record like I was a music man, manmade music. Like, and that's the next step of the journey that comes into it.
And that was literally like my first time being told to come up with something and hacking your way together with technology. I didn't anything, but it was the ability to have a solution at the period of time. Understand what technology or what softwares or what things particularly exist and almost like come up with a solution. And that was a, you know, a very early stage example of [00:25:00] no-code movement in a way and that type of stuff. it intrigued my interest a lot further to want to explore it.
However, what happened as a football team back and said to me, Hey, hey Alex, do you want to come join us? Um, I think at the time I'd even tried for Barnett Football Club who were in League two at the time, but I was so outta shape. And everything. After working an office job for the first time in my life and drinking coffee and eating cakes that I performed terribly, so I had to get back in shape time.
Choosing Work Over School
David Elikwu: Just a quick question. You have now started work early and you are kind of now on a different path from a lot of your contemporaries. A lot of the people that you grew up with, you are working people are still at school at this point in time. Like people are still going to college, people are still going to school. People haven't even gone to university yet. You are already working, drinking coffee, going to an office every day. How did that feel and how did you adapt to that almost a completely different life. Because also, think you, you mentioned specifically that this was [00:26:00] like a very recent initiative, I remember this as well, like they'd only just started bringing back apprenticeships. And so before that point, those opportunities didn't even exist. So now you are on, you're kind of traveling an unmarked path. I'm sure even, if you looked a year or two above you, I don't even think anyone before you would've had that same opportunity to do that in the first place.
Alex Fefegha: I think it hold shoes to my personality. I think I was one of those people who was very much, I liked it. I think that's why I did it. I didn't have to be trapped in the force of education. If it wasn't because I was trying to pursue, pursue trying to be an, an athlete and have an, a career around sports, I didn't really mind aspects of like working, 'cause then I was like, okay, cool.
Breaking into the IT industry
Alex Fefegha: I was proper trying to build this whole career plan. How do I work in it? How do I get my qualifications? Like you need all this CompTIA A+, CompTIA ++. I remember some guy kept talking about co co, that's, he kept saying Co I just [00:27:00] hering it so much Ram like, and I was thinking, I cool. How do I get my comptia this comptia that, I remember at the time I was doing so well in the school that the school were proper thinking about how can I be a, like a proper employee and things like that. Like I was proper. enjoyed my time. The only issue is I wasn't getting paid on time and it wasn't a school's fault 'cause they weren't the people who employed me.
But I was enjoying my time. Like, I was like it person. But then before nine o'clock, I'm the receptionist man, I gotta pick up the calls I gotta hand in, you know, I gotta help, you know, parents, I gotta do this. I gotta do that 12 or 1230. Wintertime, lunchtime is, I'm a lunchtime helper. Like, that was it, you know? And the dinner ladies, they looked after me. Well, you know, they fed me. I was broke. So I was looked after quite well and supported really well. I made good friends with some of the teachers, like I would play Sunday League football one of the teachers at the time and play for the Sunday League [00:28:00] team. Like, so for me was like a really, it was actually a really cool wooden experience. I didn't really feel like, ah, I'm missing like out on friends and things like that. I was like, I see my friends after, I'm like, I'm getting paid and I'm working. And that was like, that was cool for me.
One Last Shot at Football
Alex Fefegha: But I obviously knew that I still wanted to pursue sports, I kind of quit the apprenticeship till go play for sports. 'Cause I thought my team was like, yeah, we want you to come play. So I went to pursue that and then kind of saw after a while that, okay, cool, I don't see myself getting a professional contract. Need to basically start thinking about other stuff.
Music, Startups, and Studio Life
Alex Fefegha: And so Richard was studying at Brunell at the time, and this goes back to music. And one of the things we had, there was three of us match it. Match. It was somebody I went to secondary school with and match it was making music and polish. So he was rapping and polish and things. And we would like collaborate. And there's like a song [00:29:00] with um, match it. And actually, Flo Flo, She's a rapper and she's bloody amazing. Like I love La Jo so much. name of the track was actually called Pure School's Records. I'm still trying to find that track. I might have to message Match it and ask him, yo, where that track at?
Those eras was cool, man. That was like some full creative energy stuff And I had a couple friends who wrapped and things we decided to create a record label called Peel School's Records a recording studio. school records was, I had a bunch of friends who made music and they were really cool and we thought, could we sign them and like, could we help them help their careers grow? it was like, how do we make money? And there was two things, make websites and that's what we did. 'cause Richard was trying to make a website. He didn't really have to make it. Ernest had a friend called Gabs who were studying computer science at Luton. then put us on how to make websites.
Learning to Code the DIY Way
Alex Fefegha: And from there I just ran with it. Like it was like, 'cause at the time I had really kind of gone out. Cool. I'm not gonna pursue sports [00:30:00] that from a professional capacity. 'cause I'm not sure if I'm gonna really be able to have that opportunity. and just whatever I put myself into, I'm just really gonna that same athlete mentality.
You wake up, you grind, you focus, you do do, it's the same thing I'm going to do. And so. You know, getting exposed to making sites, I was like, boom, I'm gonna make sites. I'm gonna learn how to make this stuff. I'm gonna learn how to make this thing even more creative than the other person. Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And that became my obsession, like for a period of years. And then we tried to, then we realized, I think we got like a startup loan. and then money from like making sites. And then we tried to fund an artist from Manchester who actually had been getting like a lot of listens and plays on radio. he had a really interesting single, and the single sounded so good. It got like, record of the week on like Charlie Slough's, BBC one extra. And paid, think we only sold 27 singles. Sutton [00:31:00] Crazy. It was so nuts. nuts. Like we put 6,000 pounds into a whole, we had like radio plugin, had we had a video shoot where you got the stylists, you get the DaVinci, you get this, you have the model, you have the studio, you have the Red camera.
It was shot on a Red camera bro. at the time that thing was not cheap, fam. You got a Red camera to shoot.
David Elikwu: Even now it's expensive.
Alex Fefegha: This is 2013, bro. 2013. am 19 bro. and this is what we were trying to do, a radio plug. I think she's really doing one. I think it's Wired pr. I might be so wrong, but her name was called Rachel. She was amazing. No, she was doing pr. We had a radio plug and she was doing PR like press, PR and stuff. so 27 singles and then we were like, the same it man.
Where Tech Meets Music
Alex Fefegha: But at the same time, I was very much inspired by Troy Parker and Screw Braun. Troy Parker was the manager of Lady Gaga. [00:32:00] Screw Braun is the manager of Justin Bieber. And at the time they were very much talking about like, there was a thing at the time when celebrities began to invest a lot in social media startups and other startups. And they were very much talking about how technology was gonna transform the music industry. I began to grow a lot more closely in it. I began to start buying into what they were saying, and then I was like, I want to be involved. Like I wanna, I wanna do that stuff. I wanna like get technology and music industry together because at the time, this is different now where Spotify streams, YouTube streams, all of that stuff contributes to somebody's charting position. At the time, the record labels hated Tech York destroying our business. You are eating ourselves. whatever, duh, duh duh, and so I became an advocate for that.
AI, Music X-Ray, and Finding Purpose
Alex Fefegha: And what actually happened was the first week of university where I meant to go to uni, I ended up in Barcelona to go to the musical tech conference 2013. There was a company called Music X-Ray, [00:33:00] is founded by a guy called Mike McCready. He had mentioned me on LinkedIn saying, I like your thoughts and perceptions. 'cause what I was doing at that time was I was spamming everybody's LinkedIn to the point that LinkedIn blocked me Adam P because people were like, who the heck are you? They don't know you.
What were you sending them?
Like, hey, I'm Alex Fager, the, the. Work with us and we can help your music artists grow in, in their like outreach with their fans.
David Elikwu: So were you branding this as like a agency, like a full agency already.
Alex Fefegha: That's where COMUZI came from. And I'm gonna explain where COMUZI the business community comes from.
It comes from the, the term is Community and music. and it was trying to how do we basically develop, do you develop communities around fans? It was playing around with the fan club concept. do you develop like stronger connection between a music artist and their fans? Many musical artists for every Drake who can stream millions, make millions. There's artists who struggled to make money and it was like [00:34:00] you had artist and you had a hundred very close friends and you are able to maybe, for example, a thousand pounds of value from each fan in some way that could be a mixture of concerts, merchandising, connection, building, whatever you could do. That's a hundred K. How much music artists can say they make a hundred k. Their art. And so we had that sort of passion, like could we somehow builders relationships and stuff? And this is kinda like a P Paton aspect. 'cause Patreon was launched to sort of help creators and music artists by paying monthly to support them in some way.
So that was our, our whole headspace. So at least she went round to every record label, every music agency. At first I went walking round with like paper and like throwing in and being like, Hey, can you give this in like a proper, I didn't know the game. I just went everywhere, bro. My whole strategy for years has [00:35:00] been, if you don't know me, the whole world's gonna know me. And that was my energy. It's been my energy throughout the whole journey, even of like, community where it is now comes from those same things.
And like I said, I stopped playing ball. So whatever I was gonna do now I need to make this thing work. That was my mentality, that was my headspace. I had dropped out of Uni, so I was, I was hungry fan in these streets. So I like literally was messaging people on LinkedIn, you know, trying to get them to understand that I think I was going to like music meetups, and basically saying the big three isn't Sony, Universal and EMI, it's like the big three is Spotify, Instagram, da da duh. That was heavy, my focus. And then went to the Future Music conference, which Mike McCreedy was a founder of Music X-Ray was sponsoring. I was planning to, you know, plan fresh this week. I just got my first student [00:36:00] finance payment. I changed my mind. I decided to go to University of West London, 'cause I had the London College of Music and I was actually gonna study music management. I made a full life pivot in like one month prior to all of these things. And then, you know, fortunately the University of West London had a scholarship program and, was grateful 'cause I did really well in college.
So that with the UCAS points thing, so I got like a, I actually got the first year of Muni funded. Through the scholarship. They had a chancellor's scholarship. So I was good. I was like, fan, you know, I didn't get the full student finance pay you know, you get like a loan and you get like a attendance loan just due to certain circumstances.
I only had the one level. I was like, ah, cool, I'm calm. So the piece had dropped. I'm thinking, yeah, I'm gonna stack this piece boy. And then I get an email saying, Hey Alex, da da. I met Mike McCready before a couple months before. and you know, we talked about music technology. So Music X-Ray, that's the first time I heard of AI music x-ray is basically, I dunno if it still does this now, but it was a platform where [00:37:00] music artists put or bought music artists could send their songs to this platform and pay, but the difference compared to this platform compared to others was music x-Ray had built a lot of relationships with a andrs. They would get guaranteed listens, 'cause I think that's the thing that every music artist, when they record labels used to have like these SoundClouds and all these places where it used to be like, Hey, send your music SoundCloud, send your music to this email. Or some record labels have no contact details whatsoever. Go to a Music M Night. And then the A Andrs had power but ARS had this great gravity of power around music. And so Music X-Ray's purpose was like you, the modern artist, you send your song to the platform because Music X-Ray has this relationship to ars. You get a guaranteed listen. But what Music X-Ray was doing, which was really cool, and this is where I first began to understand AI was they were basically trying to find out what made it hit single, [00:38:00] what makes a hit song. And so the data set they were creating was A, a and R's opinions on like looking at a song and being able to go, this is a hit song. This is not a hit song. These are the reasons why it's not a hit song. Being able to have that database of songs and then somehow trying to create this algorithm, this sort of artificial intelligent, I hate the word artificial intelligence to be fair, but a machine learning algorithm, which I should say that somehow could have the ability to predict what a hit song sounds like, or what it feels like or what it needs to come together.
So they were essentially trying to build like this really smart tool that could help, like record labels know how to piece a hit song together by using some sort of Ai. I use the term machine learning because I don't think computers are intelligent. I think they're very stupid. But I think artificial intelligence is the word that folks use and it's good for market ball reasons, but I like [00:39:00] to use the word machine
David Elikwu: Wait, do you mind expanding on that. Why do you think computers are stupid? Just quickly before you go back to the story.
Alex Fefegha: 'Cause computers are not that great. Like, I think they're great at being able to analyze data and stuff that is the prob artificial intelligence. It can produce and it can analyze, it can crunch, it can absorb mass amount of data at a very fast scale. Like very fast phase, very at scale. But when you work with this tech for so long, it's not that great, you know, it's of course, I think intelligent, right? It is an assumption of this autonomous being, this is a being who's autonomous has agency, who has a consciousness of what it does and how it uses its intelligence to influence a scenario.
If that is what intelligence looks like. If you were to ask someone what is intelligent or not, it's a problem solving aspect, and but from this autonomous, you can put, you know, [00:40:00] where when I think of AI, and you know, for me it's a tool that can analyze data and make predictions. It's a good predictor. It's sophisticated predictor. That's what it does. It makes constantly predictions based on the data you've trained it on, based on the task that you've set it, it has no consciousness of what the heck it's doing. It doesn't understand the impact of what it's doing. It just generates something, generates a result.
And so for me, I think, you know, as I've worked with technology over the years and predominantly focused on Ai, I've always seen that computers are stupid. And I really for a long time have been wanting to do a lot of work around, like computers are stupid. Like at pre covid, one of the things I, I'm trying to do with a bunch of University of Arts London students who studied advertising was to create an exhibition at London College of Communication, which is part of University of Arts London a exhibition on artificial stupidity. And what we were going to show was examples of how computers move stupid [00:41:00] and like, but it was to create this humorous, dark humor aspect of it.
From Fan Communities to Founding COMUZI
Alex Fefegha: because for me, I think throughout my whole journey when I first got immersed into the AI space, and just wrap up the COMUZI story, you know, I run a company called Comisi with two of my closest friends at Kiwan Richard. Camusi started from trying to bring music artists and fans together through technology. We decided to create our own app called the Community App, and we wanted to basically reward communities that were built around particular music artists. It was inspired by Lady Gaga's Little Monster, Lady Gaga used to have a social network called Little Monster.
I didn't really know how much of the users on there were actually real, but it was basically Lady Gaga universe in a way, and we were very inspired about how we can capture that and bring that around other artists. One of the issues at the time was we were good at, we've always been good at building stuff, you know, because we were hackers. We were hack something together. We'll make something together. We read all the books on building an MVP and all of these things. [00:42:00] But the issue was you would go to investors and investors would say, how do you bring a return on investment in three years? And in our heads you know, I think for us, when we've been so inspired about trying to build things that nobody else was doing, and looking maybe to America as our source of inspiration, we knew that some of the things we were trying to build were gonna take a number of years to have like, success and penetration. 'cause you're asking to change people's behaviors.
And if you're asking for us to bring a return in three years, I'm not sure we can do that, you know, unless you scale really fast. And we literally, we did not have the language to understand what the heck they were saying.
So what happened very early, we had to explore different ideas. We tried to build music tools, we tried to build small business tools, we tried to build healthcare tools. And the same issue happened throughout all the time. So we decided to say, you know what, cool for a couple of years, let's not build our own ideas. This build ideas for other people. And then that became a thing for [00:43:00] like, from like 2015 all the way to now. It's kind of been building stuff for other people. To be fair, AI comes to me around 2017 when I began to focus on it a lot more. and that was originally about, I actually don't have a bachelor's degree, but I managed to get into a master's to study innovation at University of Arts London. I got into that master's partially because I had a portfolio of work. I had my mind was set on three universities, Brunell, RCA, and Central St. Martin's, which is a college as part of University of London. And I heard of it 'cause Kanye West wanted to go there and he couldn't get in. My whole plan for university was literally, I don't have a bachelor's degree, but I have a ton of work and I have references that can back me up. I thought my headspace, it was a very arrogant approach to doing it.
And yeah, I got into a master's and then in that master's I began to be interested in artificial intelligence.
The Ethics of AI and Real-World Impact
Alex Fefegha: And what I was interested originally was about, I was exploring the ethical implications of, you know, AI and originally about [00:44:00] internet things, then I got bored 'cause the internet things I thought was boring. And there's been a lot of conversation about having smart objects and smart homes and devices in your house. And I thought, okay, let's just four artificial intelligence. And so the focus there began to grow on AI's role in society. And I began to look at it from the aspect of race and gender. So I looked at AI in policing, in the legal system in America where, you know, there was an AI tool that was being used to assess if folks were most likely to re-offend or not. And a bunch of investigative for journalists for the publication, proPublica was able to sort of do this investigation where they saw that this AI tool was basically saying a bunch of black folk were more likely to re-offend than those of other races who their criminal records were actually a bit more seasoned. They were seasoned criminals versus first time offenders, and the first time offenders are being considered to [00:45:00] most likely to be able to re-offend.
So I was very interested in exploring that because I was looking at, from a technology perspective, I think there was a lot of conversation about ethics and ai, but they were mostly done by academics. And I've mentally always struggled with theory, you know, I'm a very practical person. I'm very much like a maker. And I was interested in like all these ethical conversations that's going on, all these theoretical aspects that's happening on this high level heir. How do you take these theories and turn them into like implementable stuff that a designer or a developer who work with these technologies can actually embody into the design and the development of their software. All these tools that are powered by Ai, and so that was my interest.
And so I began to look at this particular re-offending tool and was trying to understand what was the issue. The issue was the dataset, you know, the data [00:46:00] set was fed on, you know, let's make of it, the criminal justice system isn't like the most lovely yes system dedicated to black folk in the world, right? So you have that issue. The second thing is they had a questionnaire which basically asked folk, like, when you get arrested, questions like, how many people in your family's been arrested? You know, how many of your friends have gone to prison? Like it tries to build this profile on you without maybe looking at going to six PA you black? Are you white? Are you, you know, from a Hispanic background? Are you from this, from that? No. It asks you particular questions, which can create this demographic information and try to produce that paints a particular picture. But this, what I say, I call, it's not intelligent, right? If it's intelligent, you would know, aI should be able to tell, okay, cool. Yes, this person might come from, like, if I use me as an example, which I used many times in the past, if you were to ask me some of these questions there, I could [00:47:00] answer those questions and say, yeah, you know, there are friends who have been to prison, they're at this, they're at that. This is my environment, these are my, background. but does that make me most likely to re-offend? And the intelligent aspect comes from being able to have that humanness, right. Where you got this tool and it's able to be able to go, well, okay, this person seems like they've offended, there's some context maybe why they've had this thing, somebody stolen a bike. There's probably a context behind that, you know? If I said, this person's most likely to re-offend, am I putting them through a system of I'm not really, you know, prison doesn't really hamate folks or rehelp them, get back into society really well, it doesn't, you know, am I now gonna put them through this cycle of in and out of jail? Or do I go first I'm offending? How do we implement systems or frameworks in the real world that will help this [00:48:00] person be able to live their life and continue to be, you know, grow to be amazing or whatever they want to be in that particular way, rather than putting them through this sort of chaos and, you know, system and stuff like that.
And obviously that's the song goes, isn't that the road of the human? But then I'm like, okay, this is why if humans can't even answer that question, well, what makes you think that AI is gonna be able to answer that properly? And so I used to have this saying that AI just makes up bad human decisions faster. That is the aspect and the difference. And so I began to focus a lot there, and then I actually stopped.
Being Tokenised and Walking Away
Alex Fefegha: And the reason why I stopped was, black guy talking about racial bias, talking about gender bias in AI systems. What folks were doing was ignoring everything I was talking about. I've got blog on the internet writing about design implementations, how companies can take design frameworks or approaches, how companies can care about these things. Like [00:49:00] I'm a designer, I'm a maker, I make stuff, I don't know anything about like, diversity, inclusion and know, disregard to those who do that. They're people who study and they know their stuff. Like they can break this down, they can speak it. They know the theories, the framework, the tools, the everything. I don't know that I know that stuff. I'm trying to make sure I don't swear, but I know that stuff, you know, and what was happening is I'm on panels.
Yeah. And I'm talking about these things and someone's coming to ask me questions about like diversity and inclusion. So how do we implement diversity and inclusion to, or like, I remember once having a company ask me to do diversity and inclusion workshops and I was like, yeah. and I didn't, and this is what I'm saying.
I have, when I described this, I'm not trying to devalue the importance of those, diversity inclusion and, you know, the efforts. There are many people I know who work in that space who are amazing and they actually do really great valuable work. But I'm not that person. That ain't my world. That's not my expertise.
Go to the experts and I would have to find [00:50:00] people who are experts and be like, this is the person. Work with them. I need my expertise. Like, I'm trying to be seen as a technologist. I'm trying to be seen as a designer. I'm trying to be seen as a researcher. I'm trying to be seen as those things, as somebody who has the ability to work with these AI models, create my own data sets, produce these things. And so I had to move away.
Like I stopped talking about it to the point where now there are people that still ask me, like, museums and all these places, Hey, let's come do this documentary, come do this thing, can you speak about this? And I go, no, I refuse it. Because like I felt like I was being devalued for what I cared about. So I decided to switch.
Finding Creativity in AI Again
Alex Fefegha: And that brought me to the world of AI and creativity.
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