Q&A with Tim El-Sheikh

From the recent RealmIQ: Sessions podcast

Q&A with Tim El-Sheikh: The broken state of AI ethics, the commodification of personal data, why regulation is necessary but insufficient, and how trust—not scale—will define the next wave of innovation.

Curt: Welcome, Tim! So great to have you on. How are you doing today?

Tim: I'm good. Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Curt: I’ve been following you on LinkedIn for a while and appreciate your candid, pithy commentary on AI, politics, and tech in general. I really respect how you're pushing ethical conversations in AI. Let’s talk about your background. If you were a pro athlete, how’d you get into tech and AI—and then add that ethical layer?

Tim: Honestly, it was accidental. I was one of those hyper, disruptive kids. My dad was an engineer in Abu Dhabi back when it was mostly desert. Since I got kicked out of schools, he’d take me to work—massive old-school data centers. That’s how I got introduced to tech at age five. Around the same time, my parents signed me up for martial arts to channel my energy, and I got into competitive karate. Later, I fell in love with basketball and learned to code at age 10. Both passions—sports and tech—grew in parallel. I eventually moved to the UK, studied biomedical science, and played on my university’s championship basketball team. That’s also when I first encountered AI in the late '90s.