Future Tested First Dr Ben Warner is co-founder of Electric Twin and helped shape COVID policy in Downing Street. Now he's building AI tools that let leaders simulate the future - before making a single decision.

In the world of leadership, timing is everything. Make the right decision too late, and it can feel like no decision at all. Make it too early - without data or foresight - and it risks being disastrously wrong.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Ben Warner, a theoretical physicist turned government advisor, sat at the centre of this tension. "During COVID-19, they tried to base as many decisions as possible on data," he says. "They were doing their best to follow the science. But sometimes, the sort of information and data just wasn't there, and they had to rely on their own gut feeling."

That reliance on instinct - necessary but risky - in the absence of real-time evidence drove Warner toward a question that has since become his life's work: What if leaders could test decisions before they even made them?

Building a Twin for the Real World
Now co-founder of Electric Twin, a London-based company that develops synthetic populations and tools to simulate human behaviour, Warner's answer to that question is unapologetically ambitious. The startup builds software that allows organisations to simulate real-world decisions in real time, predicting how people might react to policies, messages, or product changes.

"So the idea behind Electric Twin is to create synthetic populations to allow decision-makers to make decisions at speed," Warner explains. "We build out software products that allow you to gain a deep understanding of your audience, and then generate and test hypotheses, at speed."

Rather than relying on traditional methods like surveys or polling - which are slow, expensive, and often outdated- Electric Twin enables users to model and test their assumptions digitally.

"Rather than guessing as to how a population might react, or what message or content might resonate with your audience, you can actually test it," he says. "And that's all done within software tools so that you essentially have access to cutting-edge data science in seconds."

Replacing Gut Instinct?
The implications are vast. Warner imagines a future where simulations are so fast and reliable, they begin to supplant gut instinct altogether. Are we there yet? "We're getting close. Which means that you can make bad decisions," he adds pointedly. "But we use real-world data to create our synthetic populations." Importantly, Electric Twin isn't trying to discard traditional methods - it's aiming to enhance them.

"When we think about traditional methods, we're also talking about simple models which haven't changed for a large number of years," Warner says. "So actually, all we're doing is coupling the best of the traditional methodologies in terms of data collection with the best of modern AI technologies, to give decision-makers the best possible information they can have at the speed they need it."

In Warner's view, Electric Twin isn't a replacement for human leadership - it's a partner to it. One that accelerates insight and opens space for greater creativity, boldness, and nuance.

Lessons From the Pandemic
Looking back on his time in government during COVID-19, Warner sees a clear use case for the technology he's now building. "I think there are some real highlights," he says. "For instance, the ONS infection study is a great example of really high-quality, good data collection for the real world." But, he argues, that wasn't where the biggest problems lay. "Where we fell down in COVID-19, I think, is when it came to trying to understand human behaviour - either how people would react to policy, or what policies would get the behaviour we needed."

That's where Electric Twin could have made the difference. "We could have been able to test different ideas in seconds and give the Prime Minister, and other decision-makers, the information they needed to try and make decisions."

From Delay to Velocity
Today, in both business and government, leaders are under pressure to make high-stakes decisions faster than ever before. Speed is no longer a luxury - it's a requirement. "If it takes two weeks to get a market research study back, what are you going to do?" Warner asks. "That's where AI is really helpful." The tool is already proving its value.

"Sometimes, before we've even had our kickoff meeting with customers, they've already used it within the business on a decision," he notes. Whether it's marketing, product development, or public health policy, Electric Twin is helping teams simulate reactions and test messaging in real time. "It's really exciting to see how it's developing and how businesses are using it to really have an impact in their business."

Democratising Insight
While many enterprise AI tools are reserved for senior execs or locked behind expensive licenses, Warner envisions something different: accessibility. "Usually, these are tens of thousands of pounds. It might be only the CMO who commissions them," he says. "But there are hundreds of people across an organisation who care about trying to give the best possible service to their customers or build the best possible product."

Warner calls this shift the "democratisation of insight." "So everyone in an organisation is suddenly using really good, realistic insights of the population," he explains. "Everyone is making better decisions." That includes even the most junior staff. "It also empowers people, including the more junior employees who are thinking about where should we put our advertising, etc? How can I make my bit of the company better?"

The result? Smarter, faster, more confident decisions - at every level.

Human + Machine, Not Versus
If it all sounds like algorithms are taking over, Warner is quick to clarify: AI is here to empower human decision-making, not replace it. "Businesses are using technology to make decisions all the time," he says. "There are hundreds of decisions being made every day in business. What we're really doing with AI is moving a lot of the small decisions to AI, so we can concentrate on the biggest, most important decisions."

Electric Twin is about giving leaders the best possible tools - not removing them from the process. "It's about empowering and enabling a human - to give them the best possible information so that they can make that big strategic decision, rather than spending ages trying to work it out."

And what about creativity? "There's always room for creativity. I think creativity is probably the most underappreciated thing," Warner says. "Science has always been a creative endeavour. I think AI allows us to be the most creative that we've ever been before."

A Rare Optimism in UK Tech
In a time of economic uncertainty and political fatigue, Warner remains disarmingly hopeful about the UK's place in the global AI race. "If you look outside of the US and China, the UK is the clear leader," he says. "We are very lucky to have DeepMind, which is the heart of Google, sitting in London... there is no other country in the world that has a research institute like DeepMind."

He points to the UK's world-class universities, the concentration of AI talent in London, and the rise of ambitious start-ups. "We've got everything here to really become one of the powerhouses of AI," he says. "I think we just have to be really careful that we continue to culture it, to improve it."

He also sees early promise in UK government efforts. "The AI Safety Institute is superb," he says. "Government is doing a good job as well. But again, those are small-scale programmes."

The challenge, he argues, is scale. "We've got to think about how we're driving them into really changing the percentage the government spends, rather than just smaller innovation projects."

What Comes Next?
The stakes are no longer theoretical. Crises - from climate change to healthcare to public trust - demand decisions that are faster, smarter, and more in tune with how people actually behave. "Organisations are trying to do the best they can. But at the moment, the tools they have are slow, they're expensive. And Electric Twin allows you to be faster, and with the same accuracy," he says.

At its core, Warner's vision isn't about replacing human leaders - it's about equipping them. "We're trying to use AI to actually shine a floodlight on the most human of all problems - which is understanding how humans behave."

And maybe - just maybe - this kind of technological advancement can help us stay one step ahead of the next crisis.