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

Hosted by Dan Turchin

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354

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Jun 2026

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About the show

🏆 Ranked #3, Best 30 HR Tech Podcasts in the US — Million Podcasts (2026). Host Dan Turchin, PeopleReign CEO, explores how AI is changing the workplace. He interviews thought leaders and technologists from industry and academia who share their experiences and insights about artificial intelligence and what it means to be human in the era of AI-driven automation. Learn more about PeopleReign, the system of intelligence for IT and HR employee service: http://www.peoplereign.io.

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June 15, 2026Episode 39338 min

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

Send us Fan MailDan 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 themWhat separates content that spreads beyond your network from content that stays stuck inside it, and what LinkedIn's systems are really looking forWhy AI is a great tool for getting your voice out, and the exact moment it starts working against you insteadThe mindset Dan drills into his team about passion and failure, and the one thing he says you are never allowed to get wrongHow a mission-driven company resists the pull to chase clicks and ad revenue, and what Dan's old-world instincts taught him to unlearnThe 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 Failure12:30 LinkedIn Authenticity AI Content and Protecting Community Integrity18:27 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 NewsletterConnect with Daniel on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How AI is making networks smartOther episode mentioned in the show: 315: Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Medium, On Human Curation, Subscription-Driven Quality, and Fixing the Internet LIVE EVENT: See how leading enterprises are using agentic AI to give employees back 4–6 productive hours every week. Join PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin for a live demo on June 25, 2026.Register here: https://go.peoplereign.io/live-demo-how-agentic-ai-is-being-used-by-global-enterprises

June 8, 2026Episode 39223 min

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

Send us Fan MailSophia 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 roomHow Sophia thinks about team building as company building, and the specific qualities she screens for before resumes, credentials, or experienceHow a consumer-first mindset and relentless customer feedback help Phia iterate faster and build a product users loveWhy 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 aloneHow 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 itThe framework Sophia uses to decide whose feedback shapes her decisions and whose she treats as noiseResourcesSubscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Sophia on LinkedInLIVE EVENT: See how leading enterprises are using agentic AI to give employees back 4–6 productive hours every week. Join PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin for a live demo on June 25, 2026.Register here: https://go.peoplereign.io/live-demo-how-agentic-ai-is-being-used-by-global-enterprises

June 4, 202628 min

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

Send us Fan MailIn 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 LearnWhy most organizations cannot answer a basic question: how does work actually get done here, and why that gap is now a strategic liabilityHow AI-powered learning can shift employee development from a compliance obligation to a genuine driver of engagementWhy storytelling will remain a human craft, and what the Pixar transition teaches us about navigating creative disruptionThe case for asynchronous AI collaboration, where systems work overnight and humans return to exercise judgmentWhy optimism about the human worker is not naive, and what the data actually showsHow to balance AI use cases that replace humans with those that create new value and grow the economyFeatured GuestsJennifer 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. ResourcesSubscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterLIVE EVENT: See how leading enterprises are using agentic AI to give employees back 4–6 productive hours every week. Join PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin for a live demo on June 25, 2026.Register here: https://go.peoplereign.io/live-demo-how-agentic-ai-is-being-used-by-global-enterprises

June 4, 202621 min

Florian Douetteau, CEO at Dataiku | Live from HumanX 2026

Send us Fan MailFlorian 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 LearnHow Dataiku evolved from data science platform to full agent studio for the enterpriseWhy business teams need to become their own AI enablers, not just consumers of data insightsWhat a truly agentic workday looks like for knowledge workers in the near futureWhy the dystopian AI narrative misses the use cases that actually grow the economyWhat 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/19257142ResourcesSubscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Florian on LinkedInLIVE EVENT: See how leading enterprises are using agentic AI to give employees back 4–6 productive hours every week. Join PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin for a live demo on June 25, 2026.Register here: https://go.peoplereign.io/live-demo-how-agentic-ai-is-being-used-by-global-enterprises

June 4, 202625 min

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

Send us Fan MailJon 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 LearnHow Jon went from Disney Imagineering to building AI characters you can call on the phoneWhy emotional fidelity matters more than photorealism in AI-driven storytellingHow Operative thinks about guardrails, ethics and responsible AI in immersive entertainmentWhat the Pixar disruption can and cannot teach us about the AI moment in entertainmentWhy 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 ResourcesSubscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Jon on LinkedInLIVE EVENT: See how leading enterprises are using agentic AI to give employees back 4–6 productive hours every week. Join PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin for a live demo on June 25, 2026.Register here: https://go.peoplereign.io/live-demo-how-agentic-ai-is-being-used-by-global-enterprises

June 4, 202621 min

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

Send us Fan MailRobin 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 LearnWhy 80% of employees are disengaged and what organizations can do about itHow AI-powered learning delivers the right skills at the right moment, not generic compliance trainingHow Zensai uses AI to coach managers and strengthen the employee-manager relationshipWhy proving the link between learning and performance is the key to making L&D a strategic priorityWhy 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 ResourcesSubscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Robin on LinkedInLIVE EVENT: See how leading enterprises are using agentic AI to give employees back 4–6 productive hours every week. Join PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin for a live demo on June 25, 2026.Register here: https://go.peoplereign.io/live-demo-how-agentic-ai-is-being-used-by-global-enterprises

June 4, 202621 min

Jennifer Smith, CEO at Scribe | Live from HumanX 2026

Send us Fan MailJennifer 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 initiativeHow Scribe maps workflows across 600,000+ companiesResponsible AI and building a data-driven cultureHumans and agents working side by sideHelping 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 ResourcesSubscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Jennifer on LinkedInLIVE EVENT: See how leading enterprises are using agentic AI to give employees back 4–6 productive hours every week. Join PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin for a live demo on June 25, 2026.Register here: https://go.peoplereign.io/live-demo-how-agentic-ai-is-being-used-by-global-enterprises

June 1, 2026Episode 39146 min

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

Send us Fan MailAndrew 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 39101:14 AI fun fact: AI legislative speed versus technological advancement03:51 Meet Andrew Palmer The Economist Bartleby Column Boss Class06:14 Digital Doppelganger and AI Personality Traits07:57 AI Adoption Barriers Behavioral Technical and Organizational11:01 AI Impact at Work Startups vs Large Organizations14:15 Leadership Humility and AI Uncertainty in the Workplace17:41 AI Experimentation at Scale Lessons from Johnson and Johnson24:26 AI vs SaaS Productivity Data and the Speed of Adoption27:35 Balancing AI Automation with Human Meaning at Work31:26 AI Policy Reskilling and Lifelong Learning for the Future36:03 Work in 2036 AI Monitoring Privacy and Constant Surveillance38:47 Who Really Controls AI and What That Means for Workers44:08 Connect with Andrew Palmer and Boss Class The EconomistResources:Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Andrew on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn 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. LIVE EVENT: See how leading enterprises are using agentic AI to give employees back 4–6 productive hours every week. Join PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin for a live demo on June 25, 2026.Register here: https://go.peoplereign.io/live-demo-how-agentic-ai-is-being-used-by-global-enterprises

May 25, 2026Episode 39045 min

390: Automate the Work, Amplify the Humanity, with Snowflake's CPO Arnnon Geshuri

Send us Fan MailArnnon Geshuri is Chief People Officer at Snowflake, where he leads culture development, talent strategy, and organizational design at one of the world’s leading data cloud companies. His career spans decades of scaling high-growth technology organizations, including leadership roles at Google, Livongo Health, and Tesla, where he oversaw its growth from a 400-person startup to a 35,000-person transportation juggernaut.Throughout his career, he has consistently chosen companies that demand a people function as innovative, as creative, and as forward-thinking as the business itself. And across every role, he has focused on one core idea: the people function must evolve as fast as the business itself, grounded in data, experimentation, and trust.In this episode, Arnnon draws on that experience to challenge how leaders think about AI in the workplace, arguing that the real opportunity is not automation alone, but redefining how humans contribute, decide, and grow inside modern organizations.In this conversation, we discuss:Why the people function must speak the language of data and analytics to influence engineering-led organizations and earn credibility in high-growth, technical environmentsThe shift from transactional HR to a strategic role focused on connection, education, and rebuilding trust after workforce disruption and disconnection during COVIDHow Snowflake frames AI adoption by automating repetitive work, augmenting creative tasks, and preserving human judgment in decisions that require empathy and contextWhy employees adopt AI faster when leaders encourage curiosity, remove fear of experimentation, and make tools accessible through simple interfaces like natural languageThe risks of over-automating decisions like hiring and performance reviews, and why removing human accountability breaks trust inside organizationsHow building a culture of experimentation, measurement, and iteration allows people leaders to scale organizations without relying on intuition aloneExplore the Conversation00:00 Intro & Fun Fact: How AI manipulation threatens autonomy05:06 Meet Arnnon Geshuri: CPO at Snowflake, from Google, Tesla, and Livongo Health10:24 The Evolution of HR: From Transactions to Amplifying Humanity13:37 Snowflake's AI Framework: Automate, Augment, and Preserve Human Judgment21:44 Driving AI Adoption: AI for Everybody and a Culture of Experimentation26:26 Data Privacy and Trust: Building Guardrails for Enterprise AI28:36 AI in Hiring: Mitigating Bias to Rescue Human Connection32:28 Setting AI Boundaries: Why Algorithms Should Never Conduct Performance Reviews34:16 Scaling Culture in Hyper-Growth: The Power of People Analytics41:33 The AI Ride-Along Prediction and What Comes Next43:15 Where to Connect with Arnnon Geshuri and SnowflakeResourcesSubscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Arnnon on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How Rodrigo Liang, Raised Over $1B to Build the First Generative AI UnicornLIVE EVENT: See how leading enterprises are using agentic AI to give employees back 4–6 productive hours every week. Join PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin for a live demo on June 25, 2026.Register here: https://go.peoplereign.io/live-demo-how-agentic-ai-is-being-used-by-global-enterprises

May 21, 202649 min

Special Episode: Why Real AI Progress Starts With Saying "I Don’t Know", with Stefan Weitz, CEO of HumanX - Live from HumanX 2026

Send us Fan MailIn this special episode of AI and the Future of Work, we are bringing you an exclusive conversation recorded live on the show floor at the HumanX 2026 event. This full interview kicks off a special three-part series, with the upcoming two episodes releasing in a compilation format. To start things off, we are sharing our uncut conversation with the man who made this entire gathering possible.Stefan Weitz is the Co-founder and CEO of HumanX, an organization and premier event dedicated to cutting through the AI hype to find practical, world-changing applications. He joined Microsoft in 1996, working alongside leaders like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer on iconic product launches and foundational tech like Bing and Windows.In this live episode, Stefan draws on his extensive product development background to explain why our survival in the AI era depends on treating technology as an evolving tool and why the most powerful thing a leader can say today is "I do not know".In this conversation, we discuss: Why relying on focus groups and lean product development is the wrong approach for building breakthrough AI hardware and software.The reason established tech giants risk losing the AI race if they rely solely on distribution over building superior products.How AI differs fundamentally from all previous human tools and why its ability to learn creates unprecedented exponential growth.Why the speed of current technological adaptation threatens to outpace our natural ability to transition roles and find new purpose.The danger of anthropomorphizing artificial intelligence and why framing it as human creates unnecessary fear and resistance.How saying "I do not know" has become the most powerful leadership tool in a non-deterministic technology landscape.Resources:Connect with Stefan on LinkedInLIVE EVENT: See how leading enterprises are using agentic AI to give employees back 4–6 productive hours every week. Join PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin for a live demo on June 25, 2026.Register here: https://go.peoplereign.io/live-demo-how-agentic-ai-is-being-used-by-global-enterprises