Shaun Davies, a former Microsoft content safety director and senior journalist, has launched The AI Training Company, a new venture aimed at closing the gap between AI ambition and execution in media, marketing, and communications focused workplaces.
Based in Sydney, the company launches as organisations grapple with the challenge of turning AI enthusiasm into effective use. While executives see AI’s transformational potential, Davies says many employees have limited experience with the tools.
In a chat with Mediaweek, Davies talked about that experience gap: “I’ve done a lot of training and I’ve noticed people are often less advanced than the management teams assume they are. So there are some people who are really frozen by it, and even the ones who are playing with it usually haven’t gotten past the stage of putting some things into a chatbot from time to time.”
Most users haven’t touched an AI platform using advanced reasoning models or created custom GPTs. “It’s not enough to write a policy and purchase licences,” Davies said. “Your teams need training in AI fundamentals like prompting, safety, and testing to move from beginner stages to more impactful use cases.”
Shaun Davies
Davies’ research with industry professionals has identified recurring themes: uncertainty over which tools to adopt, demand for more training, and a mix of excitement and apprehension. Without clear guidance, some employees experiment with AI on personal accounts — creating what Davies calls a “shadow AI” problem — while others avoid it altogether.
Davies states that there are valid reasons why a business might encourage employees to experiment with AI on their own. “You don’t want to stand in their way. But when that never gets reined in, when that phase never ends, what you see, especially in a larger organisation, can be a real bloat in the number of AI tools in use across the business.”
He raises the example of staff using their own AI notetakers in meetings: “I’m sure everybody’s had the experience of seeing about 10 different AI note takers pile into a meeting, and it might be of all different kinds. There’s a couple of problems there. One is that you’re missing out on chances to both manage that data and to get a more cost effective way of doing it by buying an enterprise licence at scale. But you also can get the situation where AI use becomes very siloed.”
Davies is in the early phase of launching The AI Training Company, so is finding his way into where he can deliver the most value.
“Right now, I’m more focused on businesses, and I’m sort of focused in on the sort of the higher end of SMEs,” he says, clarifying that he is targeting business’ with between 30-500 staff. But he is also working with individual practitioners and points to a partnership he has with the communications-focused publisher Telum Media.
“I have a beginner’s session and an advanced session. They’re a half-day workshop. In the beginner’s session, you get a sense of what generative AI is. You can do it if you’ve not really even touched a chatbot before. And you walk away with some really discreet and specific skills. And I think that kind of thing works for individuals,” Davies says.
“You need to walk away with something tangible that you can actually do with it. One thing that I’ve heard about other training is that it can be too academic, maybe too much of a focus on learning about how the models work and things like that. People really just want to get their hands dirty and figure out what they can do with these things.”
Training and consulting services
Drawing on his background in disinformation and content safety, responsible AI use will be a core focus. The company will offer needs assessments, pilot programs, policy development and industry-specific training to support safe and effective adoption.
Davies’ 20-year career includes leading AI safety and quality for a Microsoft content feed with over one billion users, and working with Google and Bastion Digital to train newsrooms across Australia and the Philippines. He is also the independent reviewer for the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation.
The AI Training Company’s offerings include:
• Corporate training workshops – From AI fundamentals to tool-specific sessions on Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini, as well as role-based bootcamps for marketing, communications, journalism, financial services and more.
• Executive and board programs – Strategic briefings, hands-on labs and immersive workshops on competitive landscape and governance.
• Strategic AI consulting – Bespoke solutions including AI strategy and roadmap development, pilot program execution and policy creation.
With there being such an AI gold rush on right now, Mediaweek was curious as to why Davies was running a training company rather than trying to mount his own AI startup.
“I like teaching,” Davies says.
“I really get a lot of energy out of it. And I get a lot of satisfaction out of helping people solve real problems and seeing the penny drop for them. I also saw that there’s a lot of gaps in the market at the moment.
“One gap that I saw was that there were some organisations that are offering AI training, but they mostly seem to be bolt-ons to existing training. I thought there was a way to come at this more holistically from someone who has direct industry experience to be able to create training programmes that really tap into what’s important to learn about AI. And that gets straight to practical and immediately useful use cases.”