Building AI Systems Since 1982 | Phil D Hall

The Tingle Zone with Andrew Miller · Oct 1, 2026 · 1h 15m

Phil D Hall has been building conversational AI systems since 1982, decades before most people had heard the term. He built his first chatbot on a ZX Spectrum as a teenager, then spent years as a motorcycle courier and furniture maker before training as a systems integrator and studying anthropology, a path that eventually led him to found Elzware in 2002.

In this episode, Phil talks about swimming against the AI hype cycle, why he thinks most of what gets called "AI" is really just applied statistics, and the projects he's building now in healthcare, wellbeing and the charity sector, all…