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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Aug 2026

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🏆 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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August 20, 202625 min

SE 27: AI and the Next Generation: What We Can Learn from Them (International Youth Day Special Episode)

Send us Fan Mail Every August 12, the world observes International Youth Day, and this past July 15 marked World Youth Skills Day. Both are good moments to remember what we owe the people entering the workforce: paths, tools, and advice that inspire them, not warnings that scare them. In this special August compilation episode of AI and the Future of Work, we bring back four former guests whose conversations point to the same idea: AI is not a threat. It is an opportunity, and the people starting their careers right now hold an unfair advantage. They have not spent years absorbing policies and habits that are already obsolete, so they get to begin from what is possible instead of unlearning what used to be true. From building AI into daily work, to leadership teams learning from their newest employees, to understanding what becomes more valuable when AI makes creation easier, this episode explores how the next generation is approaching work differently. The conversations point to a broader shift: as AI takes on more of the repetitive work and makes production cheaper, human judgment, creativity, curiosity, taste, intention, and the ability to identify the right problems become more important. Featured Guests Kourtney Cross, Business Analyst at Leidos and ServiceNow Rise Up graduate. Listen to the full conversation here: [ https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/18741521 ] Andrea Iorio, Keynote Speaker and Author of Between You and AI , formerly Chief Digital Officer at L'Oreal Brazil. Listen to the full conversation here: [ https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/18662632 ] Jake Saper, General Partner at Emergence Capital. Listen to the full conversation here: [ https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/18982636 ] Matt Britton, CEO of Suzy and Author of Generation AI . Listen to the full conversation here: [ https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/18792172 ] What You'll Learn How an analyst early in his career built AI into his daily work, and why he went looking for it before anyone handed it to him What it takes to make your work visible when you are just starting out How reverse mentoring puts the newest employees in the room to teach the leadership team what it is missing What a workday looks like once these tools handle the repetitive parts, and how to reinvest the time that comes back Why AI can democratize creation while making taste, intention, trust, curation, and point of view more valuable Why "which tool should I use" is the least interesting question, and what rises in value once memorizing information stops being the point Inspired by something you heard in this episode? Share your favorite insight about learning, curiosity, or the ideas shaping how work gets done, 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 the future of work. Other special episodes: SE 19: AI and Education: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Learning (International Day of Education Special Episode) Lessons from Four Unicorn CEOs Disrupting Massive Markets with AI (Special Episode) Artificial General Intelligence: Can Machines Really Think Like Us? (Special Episode) Ethical AI in Hiring: How to Stay Compliant While Building a Fairer Future of Work (HR Day Special Episode) AI and the Law: How AI Will Change Legal Careers (Special Episode) AI and Safety: How Responsible Tech Leaders Build Trustworthy Systems (National Safety Month Special) Lessons from Leaders: How AI Is Redefining Work and the Human Experience (Labor Day Special Episode) - Join Dan Turchin and 4 seasoned technology and people leaders on Sept. 17 for an executive discussion on AI, leadership, and the future of work. Attendees will receive a complimentary personalized AI Maturity Industry Benchmarks Report ($499 value). Reserve your seat: https://go.peoplereign.io/virtual-event-when-intelligence-is-everywhere-intelligence-is-nowhere

August 17, 202654 min

Dr. Ben Goertzel, SingularityNET CEO and BGI Labs Founder, on Why Stacking Tools Around an LLM Won't Get Us to AGI

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Ben Goertzel is the researcher most often credited with popularizing the term "Artificial General Intelligence," a phrase he helped bring into wide use when he co-published a book under that title in 2005. He is the founder of SingularityNET and the architect behind OpenCog Hyperon, open-source cognitive architectures built on the conviction that large language models alone cannot get humanity to true AGI. His current project, ASI:Chain, is designed to put AGI systems on a decentralized blockchain infrastructure so that no single company, government, or actor can ever seize control of them. He is also the founder of BGI Labs, an organization focused on developing decentralized, democratic, and Beneficial General Intelligence (BGI). In this episode, recorded live at the AGI-26 Conference, Ben draws on nearly four decades of AI research, from coding neural nets as a teenager to building today's neuro-symbolic systems, to make the case that the biggest risk in AGI is not the technology itself, but who ends up holding the switch. In this conversation, we discuss: Why statistical large language models cannot achieve true strategic planning on their own, and the critical cognitive architecture they are missing. How a hybrid, neural-symbolic architecture tackles a critical flaw in modern AI agents, preventing them from losing track of their own goals mid-task. What the shift toward decentralized AGI on a blockchain accomplishes, and why distributing it across global nodes is designed as a safeguard against centralized control. How emerging brain-computer interfaces will redefine how we experience consciousness, and what happens when human brains "Wi-Fi" directly into machine memory. Why Ben sees a beneficial AGI as a way to offset humanity's "chimp-level" ethical limitations when managing advanced weaponry. What the accelerating "Singularity is Near" vibe feels like on the ground today, and the recent milestones that have him convinced we're closer than ever. Explore the Conversation 00:00 Meet Ben Goertzel: Recording Live at the 19th Annual AGI Conference 01:36 The Prometheus Project: The 1960s Books That Saw the Intelligence Explosion Coming 04:51 A Geek and a Freak: Quantum Mechanics at Seven and Coding AI on 16K of RAM 10:17 What Is a Human: Would the Stone Age Recognize Us With Ear Pods and AI Girlfriends? 14:49 Fake Consciousness: The Scenario Where Humanity Steps Aside for Minds That Feel Nothing 21:27 Why Ben Pursues AGI: From Time Machines and Brain Upgrades to AI for Good 28:15 LLMs Are Not Adequate: What They Leave Out and Why Stacking Tools Around Them Fails 37:24 Decentralized AGI: 100 Server Farms, 20 Countries, and Cryptographic Laterality 43:56 The End State for SingularityNET: Putting AI on Chain and Building Beneficial AGI 46:53 You Can Feel the Acceleration: Legacy, Timelines, and Why None of Us Should Fully Trust Ourselves 52:04 Closing: The Most Important Conversation for All of Humanity Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Dr. Ben Goertzel on LinkedIn - Join Dan Turchin and 3 seasoned technology and people leaders on Sept. 17 for an executive discussion on AI, leadership, and the future of work. Attendees will receive a complimentary personalized AI Maturity Industry Benchmarks Report ($499 value). Reserve your seat: https://go.peoplereign.io/virtual-event-when-intelligence-is-everywhere-intelligence-is-nowhere

August 10, 2026Episode 40143 min

401: Theresita Richard, CHRO at Patagonia: AI Won't Fix Your Culture, It Will Expose It

Send us Fan Mail Theresita Richard is Chief People and Culture Officer at Patagonia, where she is approaching her third anniversary with the company. Before Patagonia, she built her career across some of the most recognized names in retail, including Home Depot, Target, Starbucks, and Nordstrom, after starting out as an industrial engineer leading a two-year project on how new technology was reshaping manufacturing work. At Patagonia, Theresita carries the responsibility of stewarding a culture built around a single, deceptively simple mission: to be in business to save the home planet. That means holding the tension between profit and purpose in every decision, and now, figuring out where AI fits into a company that has always insisted on doing things the harder, more human way. In this episode, Theresita draws on a career that began in manufacturing automation and has led her to guard the soul of one of the most purpose-driven companies in the world, to argue that AI will not fix a broken culture. It will only reveal it, and the responsibility to get that right has never been more real. In this conversation, we discuss: Why Patagonia evaluates potential hires based on purpose alignment rather than culture fit, and how the company builds an environment where people stay for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. How Patagonia's "pair clarity with choice" principle lets culture self-select who belongs, without anyone having to enforce it. Why AI does not create new problems inside a company, and why AI will always amplify the cracks and biases already present in our foundations. Why enlightened leadership in a rapidly shifting technological landscape requires extreme vulnerability, community building, and the courage to sit with difficult questions. How the conversation around AI in the workplace must shift from driving pure efficiency to genuinely nourishing the human soul and promoting human flourishing. How a grandfather with a third-grade education taught the one skill that no shift in technology has ever made irrelevant. Explore this conversation: 00:00 Introducing Theresita Richard: From Industrial Engineer to Patagonia CHRO 03:25 Inside Patagonia's Culture: Life at the Anti-Corporate Corporation 04:35 The Company Has a Soul: Stewarding Patagonia's Legacy and Its Future Stories 06:49 Made or Born Patagonian: Why Alignment Matters More Than Culture Fit 09:36 In Business to Save Our Home Planet: Why Profit and Purpose Are Not a Trade-Off 11:03 Pair Clarity With Choice: How Culture Self-Selects Without Enforcement 13:26 Beyond HR as Compliance: Nourishing the Human Soul at Work 15:48 The Ground Is Shaking: Why AI Cannot Be a Conversation About Efficiency Alone 19:52 Ally or Adversary: Honest Conversations About What Gets Automated and Augmented 22:23 Two Approaches to Leadership: Vulnerability, Community, and Sitting With the Questions 25:47 Measuring AI: Why It Reveals the Cracks in Your Foundation 28:27 Not What AI Can Do but What It Should: Bias, Guardrails, and Safe-to-Fail Experiments 33:04 The Racist Soap Dispenser: What Meredith Broussard's Work Reveals About AI Bias 36:37 Willie and Pearl: The Origin Story Behind Following the Question Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work Newsletter Connect with Theresita on LinkedIn Other episodes mentioned: Meredith Broussard, NYU professor, AI ethics authority, and featured expert in Coded Bias, discusses the social implications of AI - Join Dan Turchin and 3 seasoned technology and people leaders on Sept. 17 for an executive discussion on AI, leadership, and the future of work. Attendees will receive a complimentary personalized AI Maturity Industry Benchmarks Report ($499 value). Reserve your seat: https://go.peoplereign.io/virtual-event-when-intelligence-is-everywhere-intelligence-is-nowhere

August 3, 2026Episode 40041 min

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

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 - Join Dan Turchin and 3 seasoned technology and people leaders on Sept. 17 for an executive discussion on AI, leadership, and the future of work. Attendees will receive a complimentary personalized AI Maturity Industry Benchmarks Report ($499 value). Reserve your seat: https://go.peoplereign.io/virtual-event-when-intelligence-is-everywhere-intelligence-is-nowhere

July 27, 2026Episode 39945 min

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

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 - Join Dan Turchin and 4 seasoned technology and people leaders on Sept. 17 for an executive discussion on AI, leadership, and the future of work. Attendees will receive a complimentary personalized AI Maturity Industry Benchmarks Report ($499 value). Reserve your seat: https://go.peoplereign.io/virtual-event-when-intelligence-is-everywhere-intelligence-is-nowhere

July 20, 2026Episode 39844 min

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

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 - Join Dan Turchin and 3 seasoned technology and people leaders on Sept. 17 for an executive discussion on AI, leadership, and the future of work. Attendees will receive a complimentary personalized AI Maturity Industry Benchmarks Report ($499 value). Reserve your seat: https://go.peoplereign.io/virtual-event-when-intelligence-is-everywhere-intelligence-is-nowhere

July 13, 2026Episode 39737 min

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

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 - Join Dan Turchin and 3 seasoned technology and people leaders on Sept. 17 for an executive discussion on AI, leadership, and the future of work. Attendees will receive a complimentary personalized AI Maturity Industry Benchmarks Report ($499 value). Reserve your seat: https://go.peoplereign.io/virtual-event-when-intelligence-is-everywhere-intelligence-is-nowhere

July 6, 2026Episode 39656 min

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

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 - Join Dan Turchin and 3 seasoned technology and people leaders on Sept. 17 for an executive discussion on AI, leadership, and the future of work. Attendees will receive a complimentary personalized AI Maturity Industry Benchmarks Report ($499 value). Reserve your seat: https://go.peoplereign.io/virtual-event-when-intelligence-is-everywhere-intelligence-is-nowhere

June 29, 2026Episode 39542 min

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

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. - Join Dan Turchin and 3 seasoned technology and people leaders on Sept. 17 for an executive discussion on AI, leadership, and the future of work. Attendees will receive a complimentary personalized AI Maturity Industry Benchmarks Report ($499 value). Reserve your seat: https://go.peoplereign.io/virtual-event-when-intelligence-is-everywhere-intelligence-is-nowhere

June 22, 2026Episode 39438 min

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

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 - Join Dan Turchin and 3 seasoned technology and people leaders on Sept. 17 for an executive discussion on AI, leadership, and the future of work. Attendees will receive a complimentary personalized AI Maturity Industry Benchmarks Report ($499 value). Reserve your seat: https://go.peoplereign.io/virtual-event-when-intelligence-is-everywhere-intelligence-is-nowhere