AI Sweetshop #001: From sweets to software

AI Sweetshop sounds like something invented for the current AI era. The name actually starts much earlier.

I grew up working in my family's sweetshop. It was a small business, but from behind that counter you saw a constant stream of people, conversations, products, problems and ideas.

You also learned that a shop is never really just the products on the shelves. It is the system around them: what people want, what runs out, what gets noticed, what gets ignored and what makes somebody come back.

Years later, I realised that was a useful metaphor for the way I approach technology.

AI Sweetshop is my digital version of those shelves.

Instead of sweets, newspapers and everyday essentials, it holds experiments: AI tools, prototypes, accessible technology, creative ideas and things I am curious enough to test.

Some experiments might become products. Some might influence another project. Some may simply teach me something and then disappear.

That freedom is important.

Not every AI experiment needs a business plan or a launch announcement. Sometimes the best way to understand new technology is to play with it, break it, rebuild it and see where it becomes genuinely useful.

Accessibility will naturally appear often because it is part of how I see technology. So will design, coding, sign language, automation and creative AI.

The Sweetshop gives all of those things one place to live without pretending they have already become finished products.

From sweets to software is not really about replacing one world with another. It is about recognising the thread between them: curiosity, people, business and making things useful.

The shelves are open.