AI and the Future of Work: Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Business, Ethics, HR, and IT for AI Enthusiasts, Leaders

Recent episodes

1. 400: Wade Foster, Zapier CEO: What Happens When Every Knowledge Worker Gets a Coding Engine

   Aug 3, 2026

   Send us Fan Mail Wade Foster is the CEO and co-founder of Zapier, the workflow automation and AI orchestration platform used by more than 4 million people to connect over 7,000 work apps. Since launching in the Y Combinator Summer 2012 batch, Zapier has automated more than 81 billion tasks, users have built more than 25 million Zaps, and the company has bootstrapped its way to a valuation north of $5 billion. He holds degrees in industrial engineering and business administration from the University of Missouri, and has spent more than a decade on a single problem: making the tools people work in every day work for them instead of against them. He is also one of the show's rare repeat guests. His first conversation with Dan was in January 2024, back when coding agents mostly did not work. In this episode, Wade draws on running the automation layer that sits between thousands of enterprise tools to argue that the frontier model leap of late 2025 handed every knowledge worker an engineer, and that the companies still waiting on returns are the ones that never changed how the work itself gets done. In this conversation, we discuss: Why the late 2025 model leap means every knowledge worker now has an engineer, and what that changes about ordinary work. Where deterministic workflows still beat AI at work, and why the most sophisticated teams refuse to choose between the two. What happens when white collar workers start pasting API keys into files, and the third option most security leaders are missing. Why Wade says culture, not tooling, is the real constraint, and what leaders get wrong when the board demands AI first. Why individuals report real AI gains while their organizations report none, and what has to be rethought before that gap closes. How Zapier built its AI Fluency Framework from its own teams, and why version one was already dated the day it shipped. Explore this conversation: 00:00 Welcome to Episode 400 02:01 AI Fun Fact: Is Agentic AI the End of SaaS Tools? 04:35 Introducing Wade Foster: How Zapier Bootstrapped to 81 Billion Automated Tasks 06:01 From Coding Agents That Kind of Worked to an Engineer for Every Knowledge Worker 07:53 What Zapier Does Today: Deterministic Workflows Meet Non-Deterministic AI 11:12 Hybrid Workflows: Build It With AI, Run It Like a Program 13:30 MCP and the Orchestration Layer: API Keys, Agent Harnesses, and the Daily Recap 20:23 The Third Option for CISOs: Governing AI Agents Without Saying No 24:00 Foot Guns and Default Settings: The Product Judgment Behind Agent Permissions 27:03 Accountability When Software Is No Longer Deterministic: Evals and Spec Adherence 28:34 AI Strategy Office Hours: Why Individual AI Gains Are Not Becoming Institutional ROI 33:03 The Zapier AI Fluency Framework: Why Version One Was Dated on Arrival 36:15 Looking Ahead to 2028: The Hive Mind Company and a New Management Playbook Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Wade on LinkedIn AI fun fact article On How One Good Decision Made Thomas Otter The Accidental HR Tech Pioneer

2. 399: Vasant Dhar, NYU Stern Professor, on the New Divide: Superhuman With AI or Dependent on It?

   Jul 27, 2026

   Send us Fan Mail Vasant Dhar teaches data science at NYU's Stern School of Business and has spent more than 45 years at the frontier of artificial intelligence. He brought machine learning to Wall Street in the 1990s and founded SCT Capital Management, one of the first machine learning based hedge funds. He hosts the Brave New World podcast, downloaded more than a million times, where he has interviewed Nobel laureates, technologists, and global thinkers on the implications of AI. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Wired, and MIT Technology Review. His latest book, Thinking with Machines, traces AI from its origins to the present. For more than forty years, Vasant has built systems that sat right on the edge of human trust. People had to decide whether to rely on them or walk away. In this episode, he makes a stark claim: AI will not just change how we work; it will sort us into two groups. One uses it to extend their judgment. The other slowly hands that judgment over. The gap comes down to habits you are forming today, not some distant future. In this conversation, we discuss: Why trusting AI comes down to just two variables, and the simple test Vasant has applied since his Harvard Business Review piece a decade ago The bifurcation Vasant believes AI is about to create, splitting humanity into two groups, and which side you do not want to be on What tennis great Roger Federer's win rate reveals about succeeding with algorithms, and the counterintuitive math behind every winning edge Why the edge returns to humans the moment everyone runs the same algorithms, and what only people can do in situations no system has seen The one word in the title Thinking with Machines that Vasant says matters most, and what it asks of how we work alongside AI The areas of life where Vasant argues we may need to restrict AI entirely, and the legal framework we already have to govern it Explore the Conversation 00:00 Intro & AI Fun Fact: Trustworthy AI from Principles to Practice 04:13 Meet Vasant Dhar: From the Internist System to Machine Learning on Wall Street 07:10 The Origins of Thinking with Machines: The Biggest Surprise in 45 Years of AI 09:33 Written for Everyone: AI's Accelerating Pace and the Call to Get Engaged 11:23 When to Trust an Algorithm: The Green Zone and the Human Edge 20:24 The Bifurcation of Humanity: Superhuman Amplification or Cognitive Decline 24:52 The Four Eras of Machine Intelligence: From Specification to General Intelligence 29:22 The Ethics of AI Agency: Where Machines Need Limits and Obligations 34:14 Who Governs AI: Tort Law, Liability, and Emerging Legal Precedent 37:44 AI in 2036: Multisensory Machines and the Integration of the Senses 40:33 Teaching Machines to Smell: AI, Olfaction, and Disease Detection 43:35 Where to Find Thinking with Machines and Connect with Vasant Dhar Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Vasant on LinkedIn AI fun fact article On the decision sprint process with Atif Rafiq, CEO & Bestselling Author

3. 398: Ariel Assaraf, CEO and Co-Founder of Coralogix, on How AI Turns Observability into Business Intelligence

   Jul 20, 2026

   Send us Fan Mail Ariel Assaraf is the CEO and co-founder of Coralogix, a leading observability platform that most recently raised $115 million at a unicorn valuation. He started the company in 2014, and today Coralogix serves more than 4,000 customers, monitors more than 500,000 applications, and processes over 3 million events per second. Before co-founding Coralogix, Ariel served in Israel's Elite Intelligence Unit 8200, where the sheer scale and complexity of data he worked with made one thing clear: existing architectures weren't built for what was coming. He later joined Varent Systems, a homeland security company, leading automation, integration, and QA. In this episode, Ariel draws on more than a decade of building at the frontier of data infrastructure to argue that observability is no longer just a tool for preventing downtime. It is becoming the most truthful, real-time source of intelligence any company owns. In this conversation, we discuss: The evolution from the data collection era ("oil phase") to a landfill crisis, and now the AI-driven "brain phase" where telemetry has become the most valuable raw material for business decision making How Coralogix separates the data plane from the control plane, storing data in open format on the customer's own infrastructure to enable data ownership, infinite retention, and freedom from vendor lock-in Why Ariel invested over $100 million in R&D to build query engines that always return answers, not constrained by predefined schemas that agents will quickly exceed How SREs evolve from reactive incident responders into autonomous operators as agents like Ollie, Coralogix's AI agent, take over incident triage, root cause analysis, and narrative generation The emerging role of the AI-forward product manager who sits between customer needs and autonomous agents, reshaping how software gets built, priced, and sold in real time How Ariel thinks about linear versus exponential impact as a leadership principle, and why the intuition to prioritize exponential value is something agents will never replicate Explore more in the conversation: 00:00 Welcome & AI's societal impact paradox 01:53 AI Fun Fact: New data on productivity and employment 04:15 Introducing Ariel Assaraf and the Coralogix origin story 05:15 Evolving data architecture: from oil to landfill to brain phase 07:28 Coralogix's data ownership and open format advantages 13:27 From telemetry data lake to autonomous, agent-driven analytics 20:00 Building scalable, answer-guaranteeing query engines for complex data 25:44 The future of natural language interfaces like Olly for SREs and DevOps 28:15 Orchestrating multiple AI agents for better decision-making 30:20 Responsibility, autonomy, and the evolving role of customer success 35:37 How Coralogix turns telemetry into strategic business decisions 38:18 Linear vs. exponential value in your career Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Ariel on LinkedIn AI fun fact article On How Personalized Healthcare Is Being Transformed Through AI and the Human Microbiome

4. 397: Maryjo Charbonnier, Kyndryl's Former CHRO & Executive Advisor, on Transforming Skills into Visibility with AI

   Jul 13, 2026

   Send us Fan Mail Maryjo Charbonnier is the former CHRO and Executive Advisor at Kyndryl, the world's largest provider of IT infrastructure services , with more than 70,000 employees across roughly 60 countries. When Kyndryl was spun out of IBM in 2021 as one of the largest public company spin-offs in history, Maryjo helped build its culture and people strategy from the ground up, which is why she and others have called it the world's largest startup. She has spent nearly two decades as a public company CHRO on both sides of the Atlantic, including Wolters Kluwer (traded on the Dutch exchange) and Broadridge Financial Solutions, after a formative run at PepsiCo where she led change management for Frito-Lay. She was named CHRO of the Year in the Netherlands and earned her MBA at Southern Methodist University. In this episode, Maryjo draws on a career spent leading messy transformations and building a 70,000-person workforce to argue that as AI automates tasks and chunks of jobs, the work that defines a career is moving from what you know to how you judge, lead, and decide, and most organizations are not teaching for it yet. In this conversation, we discuss: Why Maryjo “seeks the heat” in messy transformations and what she learned leading HR through turnarounds, spin‑offs, and large‑scale change. How Kyndryl defined the “Kyndryl way” with six core behaviors and uses culture as an operating plan in the world’s largest startup. Why HR must focus on which skills are rare and most valuable, and how Kyndryl’s Make Yourself Discoverable campaign turned skills into a strategic asset. How AI-powered career profiles, skills-based redeployment, and role-specific AI curricula were intentionally designed to show Kyndryls that AI is an asset to their career, not a threat to it. Why Maryjo believes HR has three roles in AI, including reshaping commercial work and building an AI governance council that balances speed with risk. How leadership “ORE” (organizational design, risk management, empathy) and human skills like change management and people leadership will define careers in an AI‑enabled workplace Explore the Conversation 00:00 Intro and AI Fun Fact: Bias in AI Hiring Tools and Your Rights as an Applicant 03:46 Meet Maryjo Charbonnier: CHRO at Kyndryl, the World's Largest IT Infrastructure Provider 05:29 Seek the Heat: Why Career Growth Lives Where the Problems Are 07:19 Building Culture at the World's Largest Startup: Why Kyndryl Doesn't Say "Employees" 09:58 The Real Function of HR: Helping Human Beings Excel at Work 12:35 The Employee-Employer Relationship When Everyone Fears an AI Replacement 15:45 The Three Roles of HR in AI and Defining the Skills That Matter Most 19:05 Make Yourself Discoverable: Operationalizing Skills Data From 1.0 to 3.0 23:15 Leadership in the Age of AI: Closing the Trust Gap With the ORE Framework 28:51 The Future Org Chart: Why Every New Technology Brings a Boom of Jobs 31:51 Advice to the Kids: Why You Get Paid for People Leadership, Not Just Smarts 35:28 Where to Connect With Maryjo Charbonnier and Kyndryl Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Maryjo on LinkedIn AI fun fact article On How Rory O'Driscoll Explains Success Modes for AI Companies and Three Essential Startup Strategies Episode with Keith Sonderling, then an EEOC Commissioner and now the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor

5. 396: Trond Undheim, Author of The Platinum Workforce, on Why Knowledge Is Becoming Superfluous and System Awareness Is the Skill That Lasts

   Jul 6, 2026

   Send us Fan Mail Trond Undheim is a futurist, innovation expert, and research scholar at Stanford University whose work spans governments, startups, and leading academic institutions. His ideas have been featured in outlets including Forbes, The Boston Globe, Fast Company, Fortune, and MIT News, and he previously hosted the Futurized podcast. He holds a PhD in AI and cognition from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and is the author of eight books, including The Platinum Workforce, which explores how to train and hire for the twenty-first century’s industrial transitions. In this episode, Trond draws on decades of interdisciplinary work on emerging technologies, systemic risk, and workforce transitions to argue that system awareness, not traditional knowledge, will determine who thrives in an AI-defined economy. In this conversation, we discuss: Why Trond says knowledge has become superfluous, and what that claim means for how we define expertise in an AI era. Why cutting junior hires to cash in on AI efficiencies bakes a failure mode into your organization. What “system awareness” looks like in practice, and how it changes the way leaders think about skills and careers. Why socio-technical thinking matters, and how treating humans and machines as mutually constitutive systems reshapes AI design and governance. Why humanity is unprepared to operate at gigascale, and what megaproject research suggests about the cost of that gap. How The Platinum Workforce maps twelve durable skill domains, from socio-technical capabilities to maker and maintenance skills, that will outlast multiple AI waves. Explore this conversation: 00:00 Intro and AI Fun Fact: Pew Research Americans More Concerned Than Excited About AI 04:22 Introducing Trond Undheim, Futurist and Author of The Platinum Workforce 05:09 Why the Workforce Is the Single Biggest Lever for Human Survival 09:08 System Awareness: The Only Knowledge That Matters in the AI Era 15:06 Socio-technical Systems: Co-Evolution of Humans and Technology 17:54 Human Agency Over Technology: Who Really Sets the Rules 23:24 The Human Skills AI Cannot Replace: Making, Maintaining and Place Maximizing 31:12 Workforce Preparation for the AI Era: Training Juniors and Experimentation 34:08 Macro Challenges: Giga-Scale Projects and Management at Scale 45:33 The Augmented Workforce: What AI Integration Must Look Like in 10 Years 54:39 Where to Connect with Trond Undheim and Learn More About The Platinum Workforce Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Trond on LinkedIn AI fun fact article On How AI Will Transform Tax Filing: Insights from Daniel Marcous, Founder and CTO of April and Former CTO of Waze

6. 395: Lev Gonick, CIO at Arizona State University: Why Higher Education Must Disrupt Itself and the New Definition of AI Literacy

   Jun 29, 2026

   Send us Fan Mail Lev Gonick is the CIO at Arizona State University, one of the largest and fastest-growing universities in the United States, with over 200,000 students across campuses in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Washington, and 35 partner institutions around the world. He won an ORBIE Award in 2023 as a top large Enterprise CIO, was named a Top 50 Educational Technology Influencer by EdScoop in 2022, and holds a PhD in International Political Economy from York University. Before joining ASU, he was one of the rare CIOs who came from the classroom, having spent the first decade of his career as a teacher and researcher before pioneering online learning in the 1990s, long before it became an industry. In this episode, Lev draws on more than 40 years at the intersection of technology and education to make the case that AI is not the disruptor of higher education, it is the accelerant, and that the institutions treating it that way are already building what everyone else is still debating. In this conversation, we discuss: Why AI is not the disruptor of higher education, and what has actually been driving the disruption for decades How ASU went from survival mode during the 2009 financial crisis to building the largest online learning operation in the country, and why the same instinct is now driving its AI strategy What ASU's data from 200,000 students using AI daily actually reveals about which skills will endure and which ones will not How the role of university faculty is fundamentally changing in the AI era, and why the hardest question has nothing to do with cheating What the "Agentic self" means for creatives, and how a unique course taught by Will.i.am is helping students protect and amplify their creative futures. How the traditional responsibilities of the Chief Information Officer are expanding beyond basic operations to actively shaping institutional strategy and innovation. Explore this conversation: 00:00 Intro and AI Fun Fact: Blue Books vs AI Rethinking Academic Integrity 04:25 Introducing Lev Gonick, CIO at Arizona State University 05:17 From Classroom Teacher to Academic Disruptor at ASU 08:16 ASU Principled Innovation and the Design Build Approach to AI 13:23 Co-Creating with Industry: AWS Zoom and the GSV Summit at ASU 17:35 Soft Skills Are Smart Skills: Rethinking AI Literacy in Higher Ed 23:25 Rethinking Assessment: What Faculty Must Adapt to in the AI Era 27:01 Why a College Degree Still Matters in the Age of AI 30:37 From YouTube to ASU: Meeting Learners Where They Are 34:22 Disrupt or Be Disrupted: ASU Mission to Reach 300000 Students 35:57 From Operator to Strategist: The New Playbook for the Modern CIO 40:26 Connect with Lev Gonick and Arizona State University RESOURCES Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Lev on LinkedIn AI fun fact article: Blue Books Are Making a Campus Comeback via Axios, by Josephine Walker On what most entrepreneurs get wrong when pitching to VCs.

7. 394: Dr. Muthu Alagappan, CEO of Counsel Health: Democratizing Primary Care with Semi-Autonomous AI

   Jun 22, 2026

   Send us Fan Mail Dr. Muthu Alagappan is the Founder and CEO of Counsel Health, the company automating access to high-quality, personalized medical advice from doctors. Counsel recently closed a $25M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures, following an $11M seed round that included A16Z, Asymmetric Capital Partners, Floodgate Fund, and Pear VC. He holds an MD from Stanford Medicine and a B.S. in Biomechanical Engineering from Stanford, and was among the earliest AI researchers to publish on clinical applications of machine intelligence. In this episode, Muthu draws on 15 years at the intersection of AI research and frontline clinical medicine to explore the shift toward semi-autonomous care. In this conversation, we discuss: How AI addresses the limitations of traditional primary care by offering a highly personalized, knowledgeable, and always available medical experience. Why patients might leapfrog clinicians in their willingness to adopt AI for medical advice, and how this shift challenges the traditional identity of physicians. What semi-autonomous care actually looks like in practice, and how Counsel Health uses a clinician cockpit to augment human compassion with real-time machine intelligence. How to leverage population-level patterns without compromising patient privacy. Why the double standard applied to AI is misplaced, and why Muthu argues we should hold AI to a much higher benchmark than human doctors simply. What the future of global healthcare could look like when cognitive medical expertise is fully democratized, ensuring that a patient's zip code no longer dictates the quality of care they receive. Explore the Conversation 00:00 Intro & AI Fun Fact: Big Data Limitations and Bias in Clinical AI 03:52 Meet Dr. Muthu Alagappan: From Stanford AI Researcher to Counsel Health CEO 06:51 Why Primary Care Falls Short: The Case for AI-Augmented Medicine 09:05 Human Doctors Are Human: How Patients Are Adopting AI Medical Advice 12:20 Patient Privacy and Population Health: Learning Without Training on Data 14:17 Inside the Clinician Cockpit: Real-Time AI Support for Doctors 16:17 Why Counsel Health Employs Its Own Physicians: Messaging-Based Care 19:00 From Semi-Autonomous to Fully Autonomous Care: Healthcare's Next Era 24:19 AI Ethics in Medicine: Safety Standards, Model Values, and Data Ownership 27:22 The AI Double Standard: Why Machines Deserve a Higher Benchmark Than Doctors 31:07 Founder Lessons: Building a Category-Defining Healthcare AI Company 33:53 Rewriting the Commencement Address: Medicine as Lifelong Learning 35:37 Where to Connect with Dr. Muthu Alagappan and Counsel Health Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Muthu on LinkedIn AI fun fact article: Artificial Intelligence in Health Care: The Ethical Frontier via Conexiant On the future of AI, Silicon Valley and Venture Capital

8. XD Huang, CTO at Zoom | Live from HumanX 2026

   Jun 18, 2026

   Send us Fan Mail XD Huang is the CTO of Zoom, where he is leading the company's shift from hosting meetings to completing work, a vision he calls conversation to completion. He joined Zoom after 30 years at Microsoft, where he served as Azure AI CTO and a Technical Fellow and helped ship Azure OpenAI Services. A pioneer in speech recognition for four decades, he led the Microsoft team that first reached human parity in transcribing conversational speech. Recorded live from the floor of HumanX 2026, this lightning round explores what it takes to turn everyday conversation into finished work. XD and host Dan Turchin dig into Zoom's federated approach to AI, the cost and accuracy tradeoffs hidden inside every model decision, and why, after a career spent solving the hardest technical problems, he believes taste and judgment are the qualities that still belong to people. What You'll Learn What "conversation to completion" means for the way work actually gets done How Zoom's federated approach combines multiple frontier models into one stronger result Why every AI decision is a tradeoff between cost and accuracy, and how to control for it How an open ecosystem lets the same AI work across Zoom, Google, Microsoft, and in-person meetings Why taste and judgment are the qualities XD hires for that AI cannot replace 🎙️ Part of our HumanX 2026 compilation series. Listen to the full compilation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19363520 Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter. Connect with XD on LinkedIn.

9. Dr. Jaime Lien, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist of Archetype AI | Live from HumanX 2026

   Jun 18, 2026

   Send us Fan Mail Dr. Jaime Lien is the Chief Scientist and a co-founder of Archetype AI, where she is building a foundation model that turns complex sensor data into meaning people can actually act on. A signal processing scientist by training, she earned her PhD working on RF imaging from satellites and later helped develop the first radar embedded in consumer smartphones at Google, before leaving with four colleagues to start Archetype AI. Recorded live from the floor of HumanX 2026, this lightning round explores how AI can read the rich, non-human signals all around us and translate them for the people who rely on them. Jaime and host Dan Turchin dig into how machines distill signal from noise, why a reasoning and communication model matters more than a straight-to-action one, and why keeping a human in the loop is a requirement, not a feature, when the stakes are physical. What You'll Learn How AI separates meaningful signal from noise across the sensors already around us Why Archetype builds a reasoning and communication model, not a straight-to-action one Why keeping a human in the loop is treated as a requirement, not an optional feature How interpretability and explainability have to be designed in from the start, not added later Why discovering something new about the physical world matters more than automation alone 🎙️ Part of our HumanX 2026 compilation series. Listen to the full compilation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19363520 Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter. Connect with Jaime on LinkedIn.

10. Dr. Ali Agha, CEO and Co-Founder of FieldAI | Live from HumanX 2026

    Jun 18, 2026

    Send us Fan Mail Dr. Ali Agha is the CEO and co-founder of FieldAI, where he is building general-purpose "brains" for robots across different forms, environments, and tasks. He has spent nearly two decades in AI autonomy, including years at NASA JPL and research roots at MIT, putting software and intelligence on drones, legged robots, and other platforms. Recorded live from the floor of HumanX 2026, this lightning round explores what it takes to bring AI safely into the physical world, where people already live and work. Ali and host Dan Turchin dig into why reliability is the overlooked challenge of physical AI, why a robot should communicate how confident it is before it acts, and where the line sits between the tasks machines should take on and the ones that should always stay human. What You'll Learn Why reliability, not lab demos, is the real test for AI in the physical world How robots that measure and share their own uncertainty earn human trust on the job site Why the future of robotics is hundreds of specialized form factors, not one humanoid How FieldAI targets the dirty, dull, and dangerous work to keep people out of harm's way Where the boundary sits: the creative, strategic, and human-touch decisions that stay with people 🎙️ Part of our HumanX 2026 compilation series. Listen to the full compilation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19363520 Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter. Connect with Ali on LinkedIn.

11. Christine Yen, CEO and Co-Founder of Honeycomb | Live from HumanX 2026

    Jun 18, 2026

    Send us Fan Mail Christine Yen is the CEO and co-founder of Honeycomb, the observability platform that helps engineering teams understand what their software is actually doing. A developer by background, she built products at Facebook before co-founding Honeycomb to bring fast, flexible observability to the rest of the world. Recorded live from the floor of HumanX 2026, this lightning round explores what observability means now that both humans and agents are writing, shipping, and debugging code. Christine and host Dan Turchin dig into why the code was never the real source of truth, why "more" has become the watchword of the agentic era, and what it takes for teams to agree on what good actually looks like before they build it. What You'll Learn Why the code was never the real source of truth, and what to observe instead How the software development lifecycle is collapsing as PMs, designers, and engineers become builders Why the system that writes the code should not be the one that judges it How defining "good" in plain English keeps quality measurable, whether people or agents build it What responsible AI looks like in practice, from disclosure norms to protecting human attention 🎙️ Part of our HumanX 2026 compilation series. Listen to the full compilation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19363520 Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter. Connect with Christine on LinkedIn.

12. SE 26: Designing AI for Accountability and Harmony with Leaders from Honeycomb, FieldAI, Archetype AI, and Zoom | Live from HumanX 2026 Special Episode

    Jun 18, 2026

    Send us Fan Mail In this special compilation episode of AI and the Future of Work, we are bringing you four conversations recorded live on the show floor at HumanX 2026. This is the second and final compilation of our three-part HumanX Live series. Our first compilation explored how AI amplifies the human potential it can never replace. This one turns to the technical side, and to a question that gets harder the more these systems touch our lives: how do you build AI you can actually trust not to fail when it matters most? As technology reaches further into the moments that count (the systems that monitor our health, drive our cars, and work alongside us on the job), these four builders share how they design for accountability, safety, and harmony between people and machines. What You'll Learn Why reading code is no longer enough, and how observing real outcomes (not system metrics alone) is the only way to know whether AI is actually serving the people who depend on it What "AI values" are, and why companies will soon need shared norms for how people disclose, review, and engage with work produced by agentic systems How robots earn trust on a job site by measuring their own uncertainty, asking questions, and communicating their intentions before they act Why the most valuable place for automation is the dirty, dull, and dangerous work humans were never meant to do, and what that means for keeping people safe Why physical AI should be built first as a reasoning and communication model that can explain its thinking to people, rather than one that jumps straight to action How "harness engineering" moves teams beyond prompt and context engineering, and why orchestrating several frontier models together can outperform any single one Featured Guests Christine Yen , CEO and Co-Founder of Honeycomb. Listen to the full conversation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19362645 Dr. Ali Agha , CEO and Co-Founder of FieldAI. Listen to the full conversation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19362711 Dr. Jaime Lien , Co-Founder & Chief Scientist of Archetype AI. Listen to the full conversation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19363341 XD Huang , Chief Technology Officer of Zoom. Listen to the full conversation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19363454 Inspired by something you heard in this episode? Share your favorite insight about the future of work and tag us on social: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/ai-and-the-future-of-work Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aifutureofwork/ And don't forget to subscribe to AI and the Future of Work for more conversations with the leaders shaping what comes next. Explore the Full HumanX 2026 Series This episode is part of a special three-part series recorded live at HumanX 2026: Episode 1: Special conversation with Stefan Weitz, CEO of HumanX: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19210355 Episode 2: Compilation featuring the CEOs of Scribe, Operative Games, and Dataiku, and the Chief Business Officer of Zensai: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19257142

13. 393: Dan Roth, Editor in Chief at LinkedIn, on Career Skills Rewarded in the AI Age

    Jun 15, 2026

    Send us Fan Mail Dan Roth is the Editor in Chief and a Vice President at LinkedIn, where he has led the world's largest professional editorial operation since 2011. Business Insider once called him the most powerful business journalist on the internet, and over more than a decade he has helped turn LinkedIn from a networking site into a global media platform, building out its editorial team, top voices, and Influencer Program. He also hosts the popular This Is Working podcast. Over 15 years watching professionals navigate every major shift in the workplace, from the rise of social media to the agentic AI era, Dan has developed a clear and counterintuitive view of what actually drives a durable career. In this episode, he draws on LinkedIn's data from over a billion members to make the case that the skills employers are hunting for right now are not the ones most professionals are building, and that the gap between what AI can produce and what humans can offer is closing faster than anyone is prepared for. In this conversation, we discuss: Why AI has commoditized knowledge itself, and what professionals actually come to LinkedIn for that no chatbot can give them What separates content that spreads beyond your network from content that stays stuck inside it, and what LinkedIn's systems are really looking for Why AI is a great tool for getting your voice out, and the exact moment it starts working against you instead The mindset Dan drills into his team about passion and failure, and the one thing he says you are never allowed to get wrong How a mission-driven company resists the pull to chase clicks and ad revenue, and what Dan's old-world instincts taught him to unlearn The two categories of skills surging in demand right now, and why the second list is the one most people overlook Explore this conversation: 00:00 Intro and AI Fun Fact: Stop Giving AI Human Adjectives 04:10 Introducing Dan Roth, Editor in Chief at LinkedIn 05:50 Leadership Lessons from 15 Years at LinkedIn Mission and Failure 12:30 LinkedIn Authenticity AI Content and Protecting Community Integrity 18:27 Moderation vs Distribution: What LinkedIn Promotes and Why 23:55 Ad Revenue vs Mission: The Cost of Chasing Clicks 28:24 Skills on the Rise: What to Build in an AI World 34:29 Going Undercover and Staying Flexible in Your Career Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn AI fun fact article On How AI is making networks smart Other episode mentioned in the show: 315: Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Medium, On Human Curation, Subscription-Driven Quality, and Fixing the Internet

14. 392: Sophia Kianni, CEO of Phia, on Scaling to 1.4 Million Users Through Feedback, Experimentation, and AI-Driven Efficiency

    Jun 8, 2026

    Send us Fan Mail Sophia Kianni is the co-founder and CEO of Phia, an AI shopping agent with more than 1.4 million users that has raised over $43 million from an investor list that includes Kris Jenner, Sara Blakely, and Hailey Bieber. Sophia and her co-founder built the company out of their Stanford dorm room on a single thesis: in the future, every consumer will have a personal AI shopping assistant. Sophia is also the co-host of The Burnouts, a podcast with more than 600,000 followers and over 200 million downloads. Earlier in her career, she founded Climate Cardinals, the world's largest youth-led climate nonprofit with more than 20,000 volunteers, and became the youngest United Nations advisor in U.S. history. In this episode, Sophia draws on her experience building high-velocity ventures before the age of 25 to challenge how founders think about feedback, team culture, content creation, experimentation, and workflow efficiency. She also makes a compelling argument for how AI should be used at work: removing friction from the parts of a workflow that drain time and energy without adding value. In this conversation, we discuss: Why the intersection of social and shopping looked like a solved problem to most founders, and the gap that Sophia and her co-founder saw inside their Stanford dorm room How Sophia thinks about team building as company building, and the specific qualities she screens for before resumes, credentials, or experience How a consumer-first mindset and relentless customer feedback help Phia iterate faster and build a product users love Why building close to your user is still the most underrated advantage in AI, and what most founders miss when they try to scale it Why Phia and The Burnouts built data-oriented content engines that operate like scientific labs, testing hooks, fonts, retention curves, and B-roll as measurable variables rather than relying on creative instincts alone How Sophia uses AI tools like Adobe Firefly to increase workflow efficiency by removing friction from repetitive tasks, not to replace creative work, but to protect it The framework Sophia uses to decide whose feedback shapes her decisions and whose she treats as noise Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Sophia on LinkedIn

15. SE 25: What AI Can't Replace, with the CEOs of Scribe, Operative Games, and Dataiku, and the CBO of Zensai | Live from HumanX 2026 Special Episode

    Jun 4, 2026

    Send us Fan Mail In this special compilation episode of AI and the Future of Work, we are bringing you four conversations recorded live on the show floor at HumanX 2026. This is the second episode of our three-part HumanX Live series. In an era dominated by headlines about displacement and disruption, these four founders share a grounded optimism about what AI cannot replace: human judgment, creativity, and the drive to do work that matters. Each of these leaders is building in a different space, but they arrived at the same conviction. The companies and people poised to win in the AI era are not the ones moving fastest to automate. They are the ones who understand what humans are uniquely built to do, and build systems that make space for it. What You'll Learn Why most organizations cannot answer a basic question: how does work actually get done here, and why that gap is now a strategic liability How AI-powered learning can shift employee development from a compliance obligation to a genuine driver of engagement Why storytelling will remain a human craft, and what the Pixar transition teaches us about navigating creative disruption The case for asynchronous AI collaboration, where systems work overnight and humans return to exercise judgment Why optimism about the human worker is not naive, and what the data actually shows How to balance AI use cases that replace humans with those that create new value and grow the economy Featured Guests Jennifer Smith , CEO & Co-founder of Scribe. Listen to the full conversation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19257070 Robin Daniels , Chief Business Officer at Zensai. Listen to the full conversation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19257107 Jon Snoddy , CEO of Operative Games. Listen to the full conversation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19257113 Florian Douetteau , CEO of Dataiku. Listen to the full conversation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19257131 Inspired by something you heard in this episode? Share your favorite insight about the future of work and tag us on social. And don't forget to subscribe to AI and the Future of Work for more conversations with the leaders shaping what comes next. Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Explore the Full HumanX 2026 Series This episode is part of a special three-part series recorded live at HumanX 2026: Episode 1: Special conversation with Stefan Weitz, CEO of HumanX: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19210355 Episode 3: Compilation featuring leaders from Honeycomb, FieldAI, Archetype AI, and Zoom: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19363520

16. Florian Douetteau, CEO at Dataiku | Live from HumanX 2026

    Jun 4, 2026

    Send us Fan Mail Florian Douetteau is the CEO and co-founder of Dataiku, the enterprise AI platform he has been building for over a decade to make data and AI accessible at scale. Recorded live from the floor of HumanX 2026, this lightning round explores how the rise of agents is reshaping the role of data teams and what a genuinely AI-native way of working looks like in practice. Florian and host Dan Turchin go deep on where agentic AI actually creates economic value, why most enterprises are still thinking about agents the way people thought about websites in 1997, and what it means for humanity when machines start doing things we thought only humans could do. What You'll Learn How Dataiku evolved from data science platform to full agent studio for the enterprise Why business teams need to become their own AI enablers, not just consumers of data insights What a truly agentic workday looks like for knowledge workers in the near future Why the dystopian AI narrative misses the use cases that actually grow the economy What it means to be human when intelligence is no longer exclusively a human trait 🎙️ Part of our HumanX 2026 compilation series. Listen to the full compilation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19257142 Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Florian on LinkedIn

17. Jon Snoddy, CEO at Operative Games | Live from HumanX 2026

    Jun 4, 2026

    Send us Fan Mail Jon Snoddy is the CEO of Operative Games and a veteran storyteller with a career spanning NPR, Lucasfilm, Disney Imagineering and a co-venture with Spielberg and Sega. Recorded live from the floor of HumanX 2026, this lightning round explores what happens when you combine Disney-level character craft with large language models to create a completely new kind of interactive storytelling. Jon and host Dan Turchin dig into how Operative builds AI-powered characters that feel emotionally real, what the entertainment industry gets wrong about the AI disruption, and why small studios have an edge that no major franchise can buy. What You'll Learn How Jon went from Disney Imagineering to building AI characters you can call on the phone Why emotional fidelity matters more than photorealism in AI-driven storytelling How Operative thinks about guardrails, ethics and responsible AI in immersive entertainment What the Pixar disruption can and cannot teach us about the AI moment in entertainment Why big studios are watching but not moving, and why that's an opportunity for startups 🎙️ Part of our HumanX 2026 compilation series. Listen to the full compilation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19257142 Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Jon on LinkedIn

18. Robin Daniels, Chief Business Officer at Zensai | Live from HumanX 2026

    Jun 4, 2026

    Send us Fan Mail Robin Daniels is the Chief Business Officer at Zensai and a seasoned tech executive with stints at Salesforce, LinkedIn, Box and WeWork. Recorded live from the floor of HumanX 2026, this lightning round explores what it really takes to create an environment where people are motivated to grow, learn and do their best work every day. Robin and host Dan Turchin dig into why most LMS platforms have failed employees, how AI is changing the relationship between learning and performance, and why investing in people is not just the right thing to do but a proven path to better business outcomes. What You'll Learn Why 80% of employees are disengaged and what organizations can do about it How AI-powered learning delivers the right skills at the right moment, not generic compliance training How Zensai uses AI to coach managers and strengthen the employee-manager relationship Why proving the link between learning and performance is the key to making L&D a strategic priority Why the future belongs to humans who combine technical skills with taste, judgment and soft skills 🎙️ Part of our HumanX 2026 compilation series. Listen to the full compilation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19257142 Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Robin on LinkedIn

19. Jennifer Smith, CEO at Scribe | Live from HumanX 2026

    Jun 4, 2026

    Send us Fan Mail Jennifer Smith is the CEO of Scribe and a former McKinsey consultant turned venture capitalist who interviewed over 1,200 enterprise CIOs before founding her company. Recorded live from the floor of HumanX 2026, this lightning round covers how AI is helping organizations finally understand how work actually happens inside their teams. Jennifer and host Dan Turchin explore why even Fortune 500 leaders don't truly know how their companies operate, and what that means for AI transformation. What You’ll Learn Why process visibility comes before any AI initiative How Scribe maps workflows across 600,000+ companies Responsible AI and building a data-driven culture Humans and agents working side by side Helping people spend more time on the work they love 🎙️ Part of our HumanX 2026 compilation series. Listen to the full compilation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19257142 Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Jennifer on LinkedIn

20. 391: Andrew Palmer from The Economist on Why AI Productivity Isn’t Showing Up Yet

    Jun 1, 2026

    Send us Fan Mail Andrew Palmer is a long-time editor and columnist at The Economist, where he writes the widely read Bartleby column on work and life. He also hosts Boss Class, one of The Economist's most popular podcasts, whose most recent season explored generative AI in the workplace, a topic Andrew approached not just as a journalist, but as a self-described unsophisticated user determined to get smarter by doing. In this episode, Andrew draws on his reporting and interviews with leaders across industries to offer an outside-in view of where AI adoption actually stands, and why the gap between the hype and the reality is not a sign of failure, but of how complex change really is. In this conversation, we discuss: Why AI adoption faces three distinct barriers (behavioral, technical, and organizational) and why solving one without the others leaves productivity gains stranded. Why structural reskilling frameworks (like Denmark's flexicurity model and Singapore's voucher-based lifelong learning system) offer a more credible response to AI disruption than waiting for policy to catch up. Why Johnson & Johnson's "let a thousand flowers bloom" approach to AI experimentation produced a Pareto effect (15% of projects generating 85% of value) and what they changed as a result. How the AI productivity boom is real at the individual level but not yet showing up in aggregate data, and why Andrew believes that gap is a question of time, not technology. Why enlightened corporate leadership requires transparency about potential job disruption and a commitment to adjacent career planning rather than performative optimism. What work in 2036 might look like, and why Andrew's most unsettling prediction has nothing to do with jobs, and everything to do with privacy. Explore this conversation: 00:00 Introduction to AI and the Future of Work episode 391 01:14 AI fun fact: AI legislative speed versus technological advancement 03:51 Meet Andrew Palmer The Economist Bartleby Column Boss Class 06:14 Digital Doppelganger and AI Personality Traits 07:57 AI Adoption Barriers Behavioral Technical and Organizational 11:01 AI Impact at Work Startups vs Large Organizations 14:15 Leadership Humility and AI Uncertainty in the Workplace 17:41 AI Experimentation at Scale Lessons from Johnson and Johnson 24:26 AI vs SaaS Productivity Data and the Speed of Adoption 27:35 Balancing AI Automation with Human Meaning at Work 31:26 AI Policy Reskilling and Lifelong Learning for the Future 36:03 Work in 2036 AI Monitoring Privacy and Constant Surveillance 38:47 Who Really Controls AI and What That Means for Workers 44:08 Connect with Andrew Palmer and Boss Class The Economist Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn AI fun fact article On How Arvind Jain Is Shaping the Future of Enterprise Search Another episode mentioned in the interview: How we can take back control from Big Tech with Tom Wheeler, former FCC Chairman, CEO, VC, and author of Techlash.