Q&A with Rupert Kemp, Director of Strategy and Special Projects, Office of the CEO, Google DeepMind

Rupert Kemp, director of strategy and special projects in the office of the CEO at Google DeepMind, advises mid-market leaders to skip large bets on specific AI tools and build flexible foundations instead: robust data infrastructure, open API layers and unified cloud environments that let them swap models as better ones emerge. His second theme is curiosity, and using the AI systems themselves as the fastest way to learn.

Key takeaways

• Avoid long-term bets on specific AI applications while the technology is moving this fast, and invest in flexible foundations instead.
• Prioritise robust data infrastructure, flexible API layers and unified cloud environments so you can swap models and avoid vendor lock-in.
• Watch agentic tools: agent systems and agentic IDEs such as Antigravity can enhance workflows in almost any role.
• Drive adoption by giving users genuine, repeatable value and focusing on a core group rather than chasing a broad rollout.
• Start by exploring with an AI chat system, and ask it to help write your prompts rather than labouring over them yourself.

Rupert Kemp joined Google DeepMind in 2017 after completing his MBA at London Business School. Before that, he spent eight years at a brand and intangible asset valuation consultancy, leading projects for major global brands and helping launch its Africa office. At DeepMind, he works on strategy and special projects within the CEO’s office, with a front-row seat to where the technology is heading before most organisations have clocked it.

What capabilities should mid-market business leaders be watching right now?

“Agent systems are going to be incredibly powerful, both personally and professionally. Companies that can harness the power of AI systems enabling their employees to be more effective and efficient are likely going to be able to capture more value or be more efficient with how they go about it.”

The technology moves fast. How should a mid-market business think about when to commit to a tool or approach, and when to hold off?

“The technology is moving incredibly fast, making long-term bets on specific applications risky. Instead, I would invest in foundational solutions, such as robust data infrastructure, flexible API layers, and unified cloud environments, that provide a stable base for multiple tools. This modular approach ensures you remain nimble and agile, allowing you to swap out individual AI models or providers as superior versions emerge. Agility is the primary competitive advantage in this landscape; by avoiding vendor lock-in and focusing on interoperable systems, businesses can integrate cutting-edge breakthroughs in months rather than years.”

You built yourself a personalised training app using Gemini in a couple of hours. What’s the equivalent starting point for a non-technical business leader?

“Something super powerful and incredibly easy is creating infographics from text. Go to Gemini, drop in a bunch of text or docs, ask it to simply represent the content as an infographic. It’s a pretty powerful way to convey a lot of information graphically, rather than hitting people with a wall of text.

I also find Gemini in Google Slides is incredibly useful as a co-creator of slides. You give it a range of your content and it will draft something up for you to review and edit from there.”

Are there categories of internal tooling most businesses haven’t clocked yet?

“Probably agentic tools like Antigravity. These look like traditional IDEs for coding, but really you can use them to accomplish almost anything, and almost any role in the business could be using it to enhance their workflows.”

Your background is in social anthropology, not computer science. What does that say about the skills that matter when it comes to getting value from AI?

“Much like what businesses can do to stay up to date, I think the most important thing individuals can do is be curious. That’s something that stuck with me from my anthropology studies and I still find it valuable every day.”

Tools deployed, people not really using them. What do organisations that actually crack adoption do differently?

“Two things. Firstly they provide real value, and by that I mean the users find it useful and keep coming back over and over again. Secondly, they don’t necessarily go after a huge market, they focus and obsess their core users.”

You’ve described a world where the real competition for marketers isn’t for human attention, it’s for the attention of personal AI agents acting on behalf of users. Is that already happening?

“I think we’ve seen hints at this, for example people trying to understand how to get a chatbot to list their product or service when answering a user’s prompt. But it’s still early days, and in the future I can imagine far more sophisticated systems that are a lot more personalised and connected across more areas of your life.”

If a mid-market CEO said “I know I need to do something with AI but I don’t know where to start” – what’s the first thing you’d tell them?

“The AI systems themselves are some of the best teachers around. They have almost infinite knowledge, they can recast things in different ways to help you understand, and they can answer follow-up questions until you understand. They can even walk you through step by step how to do something. So I’d say, use one of the AI chat systems and start exploring what you would like to know more about.”

What’s the thing most people do first that turns out to be a waste of time?

“People start to realise that the more detailed your prompt is the better the answer you get. But then they start spending a lot of time drafting their prompts. In fact, you can prompt the system to help you design a sophisticated and detailed prompt – this is a huge time saver and opens up ideas you hadn’t thought of.”

What do you use AI for every day that would surprise people?

“I have a script that runs behind Gmail – Gemini helped me write it – and it consolidates all my newsletters into one summary email, marks the originals as read and archives them. It declutters my inbox and gets me a quick high-level summary of all the newsletters I received.

Another one is a summary of meeting notes from across my team. As a team we keep central notes related to certain meetings we’re each attending throughout the day. Instead of going through meeting notes for each meeting, I now get one summary at the end of the day to get a summary of the discussion and any key actions coming out of it.”