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

Dan Turchin
  • 4.9 (34)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

🏆 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.

  1. 389: Building AI for Human Connection, Not Dopamine Hits, with Robb Wilson, CEO of OneReach.ai

    1D AGO

    389: Building AI for Human Connection, Not Dopamine Hits, with Robb Wilson, CEO of OneReach.ai

    Send us Fan Mail Robb Wilson is the CEO and co-founder of OneReach.ai, an agent-building platform focused on complex enterprise use cases across healthcare, government, and telecommunications. A serial entrepreneur and former creative executive at Time Warner, Robb has spent decades working at the intersection of design and technology. He is also the co-owner of UX Magazine, a global community of more than 640,000 members, and the author of two bestselling books, including Age of Invisible Machines. His career spans designing high-stakes systems like the Boeing 787 cockpit to building conversational AI platforms that rethink how humans interact with technology. Along the way, he earned an Academy Award nomination for Technical Achievement, reflecting his ability to bridge creativity and engineering at scale. In this episode, Robb draws on that rare combination of design, product, and systems thinking to challenge how companies are adopting AI today, and why most are optimizing the wrong layer of the problem. In this conversation, we discuss: Why companies are using AI to accelerate outdated software instead of rethinking what software should be, and how this creates the illusion of progress without meaningful changeThe fundamental mismatch between human communication and traditional interfaces, and why conversational interaction exposes how poorly most software has been designed for real usersWhat “getting AI” actually means inside organizations, and why productivity gains often hide the fact that teams are still building systems they plan to replaceThe concept of “invisible machines” and why the future of AI is not better interfaces, but removing interfaces entirely to prioritize human interaction over system interactionWhy evaluating AI systems based on what they do misses the point, and how understanding how they learn becomes the more critical question for decision-makersThe tension between building AI that drives engagement versus AI that strengthens human connection, and how market incentives continue to reward the wrong outcomes Explore the conversation: 00:00 Intro and Fun Fact  04:27 Robb Wilson's Journey at the Intersection of Design and Technology 06:26 The UX Collision: Why Using AI to Build Old Software Faster is a Mistake 10:47 Defining Human-First Design and the Concept of Invisible Machines 13:26 Lessons from the Boeing 787: Using Context to Remove Complex Interfaces 16:08 The Adoption Problem: Why We Must Evaluate How AI Software Learns 20:40 The OpenAI Dilemma: Choosing Between Dopamine-Driven AI and Healthy Innovation 25:22 The End of Compiled Software: Why True AI Transformation Requires Total Transparency 29:48 Future Interfaces: Valuing Human Connection Over Brain Chips and Productivity 35:09 Will Capitalism Reward Ethical AI? The Power of Consumer Choice 41:54 Where to Connect with Robb Wilson and OneReach.ai Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Robb on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How Steve Truitt Is Working to Save Humanity and Prevent AI From Ruining Us

    43 min
  2. 388: From AI Hype to Real Deployment: What Enterprise Leaders Keep Getting Wrong, with Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of Invisible Technologies

    MAY 11

    388: From AI Hype to Real Deployment: What Enterprise Leaders Keep Getting Wrong, with Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of Invisible Technologies

    Send us Fan Mail Matt Fitzpatrick is the CEO of Invisible Technologies, an AI platform used to improve models for more than 80% of the world’s leading AI companies, including Microsoft, AWS, and Cohere. The company has raised $100 million and scaled to $134 million in revenue, making it one of the fastest-growing AI companies globally. Before joining Invisible, Matt was the Global Head of QuantumBlack Labs at McKinsey, where he led large-scale AI and data engineering efforts and helped enterprises move from experimentation to production. In this episode, Matt draws on years spent inside enterprise AI deployments to challenge the gap between model progress and real-world adoption, and to explain why most organizations still struggle to turn AI into measurable business outcomes. In this conversation, we discuss: Why enterprise AI adoption lags far behind model performance improvements, and why most organizations still struggle to turn technical progress into real business impactThe hidden role of messy, fragmented legacy data, and why decades of accumulated systems make it nearly impossible to deploy reliable AI at scaleWhy defining “good” output in generative AI is far harder than expected, and how unclear standards stall deployment across high-stakes enterprise workflowsThe case for redesigning workflows from scratch, and why layering AI on top of existing processes fails to create meaningful efficiency gainsWhy most AI initiatives fail due to lack of business ownership, and how separating technology teams from operators prevents projects from reaching productionHow fear-driven narratives about job loss are slowing adoption, and why AI is more likely to shift work toward higher-value tasks than eliminate roles entirely  Explore this conversation:  00:00 Intro and Fun Fact  03:57 Matt Fitzpatrick's Path From McKinsey to Invisible Technologies  09:56 Scaling Enterprise AI with Modular Platforms and Clean Data  12:44 The Crucial Role of Expert Human Feedback in Model Training  17:56 Why 95% of Enterprise AI Projects Never Reach Production 21:38 The Missing Link: Why True AI Transformation Requires Business Ownership  26:54 Overcoming AI Fear and the Reality of Jevons Paradox  32:24 Responsible AI: Governing Outcomes Over Technology  39:05 The Future of Work: Moving From Administration to Innovation  44:12 Where to Connect with Matt Fitzpatrick and Invisible Technologies Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Matthew on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How Allison Baum Gates Reveals the Secrets to a Successful VC Career

    45 min
  3. Special Episode: Inside the 2026 Work Trend Index with Matt Firestone, General Manager for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agents

    MAY 7 ·  BONUS

    Special Episode: Inside the 2026 Work Trend Index with Matt Firestone, General Manager for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agents

    Send us Fan Mail Your employees are already ahead of you on AI. The data is in and the question is no longer whether this is happening, but what leaders choose to do about it. That is one of the key findings from Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index, and it is the starting point for this week's special episode. PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin sits down with Matt Firestone, General Manager at Microsoft leading product marketing for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agents, to unpack what trillions of anonymized signals across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem reveal about how AI is actually changing work right now. What pairing telemetry with survey responses and in-house research reveals about the gap between where employees actually are and where their organizations think they are is striking. And the numbers on how organizations reward, or fail to reward, the people already doing this work will make most leaders uncomfortable. The bottleneck, it turns out, isn't where most people expect it. In this conversation, we discuss: Why the job of a leader has shifted from designing transformation strategy to changing systems and cultureHow the report reframes agentic AI collaboration, not as a threat to human agency, but as an expansion of itWhat "frontier firms" and "frontier professionals" actually means, and why it's a mental model and rallying cry, not a marketing termHow building in the open, leaders experimenting visibly and removing the stigma of getting things wrong, is one of the most quantifiably impactful things a manager can doWhy agent adoption on the Microsoft 365 ecosystem is growing at a rate that will surprise even the optimistsExplore this conversation: 00:00 Intro 01:14 Inside Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index 02:22 Telemetry, Not Just Surveys: What the Data Reveal 03:09 Employees Are Ahead of Their Managers on Agentic AI 04:37 The Transformation Paradox and Broken Reward Systems 06:15 More Agentic AI, More Human Agency: The 49% Finding 09:28 How Leaders Should Respond: Build in the Open 11:26 Safety, Trust, and Responsible AI at Microsoft Scale 13:36 Building a Manager Equity Dashboard in 25 Minutes with Copilot 17:31 What Frontier Firms and Frontier Professionals Actually Do 20:04 AI, Toil, and the Fear of Becoming Obsolete 22:52 The 1 Billion Agents Prediction and What Comes Next Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Matt on LinkedInMicrosoft's 2026 Work Trend Index

    23 min
  4. 387: Agentic AI, Stablecoins and the Future of Money. Most Institutions Are Solving the Wrong Problem, with Emmanuel Daniel, Founder of TAB Global

    MAY 4

    387: Agentic AI, Stablecoins and the Future of Money. Most Institutions Are Solving the Wrong Problem, with Emmanuel Daniel, Founder of TAB Global

    Send us Fan Mail Emmanuel Daniel is an author, advisor, and global thought leader on geopolitics, the future of finance, and their intersection with business and society.  As the founder of the research and consulting house TAB Global and a recognized top 10 global influencer in the Fintech Power50, Emmanuel has spent decades looking under the hood of the global economy to understand how nations and institutions truly interact.  In this episode, Emmanuel draws on 25 years of building relationships with central bankers, policymakers, and fintech leaders across 157 countries to make the case that the disruption most financial institutions are bracing for is not the one that is actually coming, and that the leaders asking the wrong questions today will have no runway left when the real inflection point hits. In this conversation, we discuss: Why financial markets distracted everyone from the real AI disruption, and what happens to large organizations when agentic AI finally reaches the Internet of Things.Why the end user no longer interacts with your bank's app directly, and what that means for every institution investing in UX.Why Emmanuel argues that debt is the economy, and why the conversation about U.S. debt-to-GDP is asking the wrong question entirely.Why state-promoted digital currencies are structurally designed to fail, and what China's eCNY after 8 years in pilot reveals about the limits of government-driven innovation.Why stablecoins have enabled a parallel global economy that traditional banking missed, and what that signals for the institutions still holding the rails.Why originality of thought is the one human capability AI cannot replace, and why Emmanuel says AI is of no use to you if you cannot form the right questions yourself.Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Emmanuel on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How AI Voice Assistants Will Make Meetings More ProductiveOther episodes mentioned:344: Can Decentralized AI Fix Banking? Crypto, Brain OS, and the Future of Finance with Paolo Ardoino, Tether CEO358: Inside Mastercard’s AI Adoption Journey: CTO George Maddaloni on Building Trust, Detecting Fraud, and the Future of Payments

    1h 5m
  5. 386: Pace, Noise, and What's Really Blocking AI Transformation at Work, with Tom Scott, CEO of Wrike

    APR 27

    386: Pace, Noise, and What's Really Blocking AI Transformation at Work, with Tom Scott, CEO of Wrike

    Send us Fan Mail Tom Scott is the CEO of Wrike, the work management platform trusted by over 20,000 customers including Walmart Canada and Sony Pictures Television, across more than 140 countries and nearly 2 million end users. Tom's path to the CEO seat is anything but conventional. He spent over 20 years leading finance and operations across some of the most hardware-intensive sectors in tech, from building cell towers to running finance at Zebra Technologies and autonomous robotics company Fetch Robotics, before joining Wrike as CFO and transitioning to CEO in July 2023. In this episode, Tom draws on that rare vantage point (having led through multiple waves of technological disruption) to make a case that the leaders and companies that treat organizational intelligence as a combination of human judgment and AI capability, rather than a replacement of one by the other, are the ones building something that lasts. In this conversation, we discuss: Why transformation remains stubbornly hard in the AI era, and what leaders consistently underestimate about the real blockers to changeWhy the biggest career risk today is not AI itself, but the decision to stop moving up the value stack of your current roleThe two words Tom's customers and team use most to describe the current moment: pace and noise, and what that means for leaders trying to drive transformation.How Tom coaches his leadership team to hire for intensity and ownership over domain expertise, and why that philosophy matters more now than everWhy a deterministic career plan is no longer a viable strategy, and what curiosity and experience-chasing actually look like as professional operating principlesWhat Tom believes will be table stakes in the workplace well before 2031, and why the building blocks are already visible todayExplore this conversation: 00:00 Intro and Fun Fact04:08 Scaling Work Management with Tom Scott, CEO of Wrike 04:47 From Cell Towers to the CEO Seat at Wrike 05:51 How Wrike Helps Teams Connect and Accelerate Work 10:21 The Hardest Part of Transitioning to the CEO Role 14:13 Wrike's Origins: Building Scalability for Complex Workflows 17:04 Managing Pace and Noise During AI Transformations 21:20 Why True Organizational Intelligence Requires Human Judgment 25:54 Embracing Technology to Move Up the Value Stack 28:11 Why Curiosity Outweighs a Deterministic Career Plan 31:25 Hiring Empowered Teams: Selecting for Ownership and Intensity 34:31 The Future of Work: When Agentic AI Becomes Table Stakes 36:32 Where to Connect with Tom Scott and Wrike  Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Thomas on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How Decentralized Intelligence and Data Precision Are Reshaping the Future of AI

    39 min
  6. Authors on Redefining the Human at Work: The Shift from Efficiency to Meaning (Special Episode)

    APR 23 ·  BONUS

    Authors on Redefining the Human at Work: The Shift from Efficiency to Meaning (Special Episode)

    Send us Fan Mail In this special April compilation episode of AI and the Future of Work, we’re bringing back six great former guests who published popular books about how AI is redefining humans at work.  The future of work isn't about competing with algorithms. It’s about how we use technology to increase our capacity for trust, express our vulnerability, and discover meaning. This episode brings together insights from authors who explore how AI is reshaping work and what it means for individuals and organizations.  What You’ll Learn Why delegating routine tasks to AI frees us to explore our human superpowers like empathy, rational thinking, and compassion.How the future of knowledge work lies in navigating ambiguity and expressing entirely new ideas.Why leaders must move beyond monitoring and productivity theater to build cultures of trust and give teams the space to experiment.How the traditional, contract-based employment model is failing the next generation and what replaces it.Why the era of the “superhuman” leader is over, and how showing your human side earns loyalty in times of disruption.How the AI revolution is sparking a massive work quake, and why only you can write your own story and decide what gives you meaning.Featured Guests Bernard Marr, Futurist and Bestselling Author of Generative AI in Practice - Listen to the full conversation here: [https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/15441666] Atif Rafiq, Former Fortune 500 Executive and Author of Decision Sprint - Listen to the full conversation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/14507445] Brian Elliott, Executive Advisor and bestselling author of "How the Future Works". - Listen to the full conversation here: [https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/17282891] Josh Drean, Co-founder of the Work3 Institute and Co-author of Employment is Dead - Listen to the full conversation here: [https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/16473644] Linda Rottenberg, CEO and Co-founder of Endeavor, and Author of Crazy is a Compliment - Listen to the full conversation here: [https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/8356582] Bruce Feiler, Bestselling Author of The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World - Listen to the full conversation here: [https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/14158168] 💬 Inspired by something you heard in this episode? Share your favorite insight about redefining work, building trust, or finding meaning in the AI era, and tag us on social.  We’d love to hear what resonated with you. And don’t forget to subscribe to AI and the Future of Work for more conversations with the authors and leaders shaping what comes next.

    34 min
  7. 385: From API Management to Agent Control: Why Governing AI Actions Is the Only Path to Enterprise Value, with Oren Michels, Co-Founder and CEO of Barndoor AI

    APR 20

    385: From API Management to Agent Control: Why Governing AI Actions Is the Only Path to Enterprise Value, with Oren Michels, Co-Founder and CEO of Barndoor AI

    Send us Fan Mail Oren Michels is an entrepreneur, investor, board member, and advisor to technology startups in the US and Europe. He is the co-founder and CEO of Barndoor AI, the control plane for agentic AI, and the founder who previously helped define the API management category with Mashery, acquired by Intel in 2013. He is also a Tony-nominated Broadway and Off-Broadway producer whose credits include Romeo+Juliet and Good Night, and Good Luck starring George Clooney. In this episode, Oren draws on two decades of building foundational infrastructure for the enterprise to make the case that governing AI agents is not a security problem. It is an entirely new category of problem, and most companies do not yet have the vocabulary to describe it, let alone the tools to solve it.  If your agents can already write to your CRM, interpret your instructions, and act without life experience or fear of consequences, who is actually in control? In this conversation, we discuss: Why securing AI agents is entirely different from managing APIs, and why traditional security and identity access tools were never designed to handle what agents can do.The reason most so-called agentic AI is still glorified robotic process automation, and what it will actually take to unlock enterprise value.How Barndoor AI's "least privilege" framework for agents works, and why the permission logic goes far beyond the identity of the human using the tool.Why an agent with delete access to your CRM is one probabilistic misfire away from a catastrophic outcome, and why ultimate responsibility always comes back to the humans operating the tools.The BYO AI parallel to BYOD: why well-meaning employees using personal AI tools with company data may force the enterprise governance moment no one is ready for.Why the same instinct that took Oren from API infrastructure to Broadway and back to enterprise AI may be exactly the mindset the agentic era demands from its builders.Explore this conversation: 00:00 Intro and fun Fact 03:46 Oren Michels's Path From API Management to Building Barndoor AI 05:44 Redefining Trust: AI Lacks Life Experience and Fear of Consequences 08:24 History Repeating: Why AI Needs a Control Plane Just Like APIs Did 12:35 Deterministic APIs vs. Probabilistic Agents: Why Governing AI Is a Social Challenge 18:25 How Barndoor AI's "Least Privilege" Framework for Agents Actually Works 20:50 The Token Economy and Context Windows: Wandering Into the AI Home Depot 25:25 Preventing Catastrophic Failures: Why AI Agents Should Never Have Delete Access 31:39 The BlackBerry Moment of AI: Navigating the "BYO AI" Enterprise Trend 38:04 Balancing Tech and Creativity: From Enterprise AI to Producing on Broadway Resources Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Oren on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How AI may eliminate jobs: what the data reveals

    44 min
  8. 384: When AI Creates Art, What Stays Human? with Jake Saper, General Partner at Emergence Capital

    APR 13

    384: When AI Creates Art, What Stays Human? with Jake Saper, General Partner at Emergence Capital

    Send us Fan Mail Jake Saper is a General Partner at Emergence Capital, one of the most iconic venture firms in enterprise software, with a portfolio that includes Zoom, Gusto, Veeva, and Together AI. Emergence has backed some of the most category-defining B2B companies of the last two decades, and Jake has spent nearly 12 years at the center of that deal flow. What sets Jake apart is a life lived on both sides of the creativity question: he backs the companies building AI but also performs across genres from blues to metal as a working musician. In this episode, Jake brings that rare combination of investor rigor and artist instinct to one of the hardest questions AI is forcing us to face, and whether you leave reassured or unsettled may depend entirely on how much of your identity is wrapped up in the work you create. In this conversation, we discuss: How AI will democratize the creation of art but commoditize its execution, ultimately causing the value of live, dynamic human performances to skyrocket.The stunning acceleration of startup growth, with top-quartile B2B software companies now scaling from zero to $1 million in ARR in just four months.How the flood of AI-generated content is turning attention into the real bottleneck, and why curation and point of view become the new competitive advantage.Why Jake believes the market will self-regulate the anthropomorphization of AI agents in the workplace, and where that logic has a hard limit.What Geoffrey Hinton said about building AI "like a mother," why it was both comforting and deeply unsatisfying, and what it reveals about AGI risk.Why Jake argues disclosure matters during this transition period, but what he actually wants people to ask about art as AI becomes a normal creative tool.Explore this conversation: 00:00 Why AI Makes It Easier to Build a Demo and Harder to Build a Moat 05:25 From Cell Towers to Venture Capital: Jake Saper's Path to Emergence 08:53 How AI Is Compressing Startup Growth: From 18 Months to 4 Months to $1M ARR 18:05 What Art Actually Is: Compressed Human Experience and the Act of Making Meaning Shareable 23:30 How AI Can Unlock Latent Creativity in People Who Don't Think of Themselves as Creators 26:55 Why Disclosure Matters When Trust and Authenticity Are at Stake 30:19 Navigating a Post-Truth Era: When Everything Looks Synthetic, What Do We Believe? 32:14 Why the Value of Live Performance Is About to Skyrocket 35:58 As Soulless Entities Multiply, Soul-to-Soul Human Connection Becomes More Valuable 40:38 What Geoffrey Hinton Said About Building AI "Like a Mother" and Why It Was Unsatisfying 43:04 Why the Most Enduring Art Has Always Been About Transfer, Not Authorship Resources: Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Jake on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How AI Is Revolutionizing Creativity in Art, Music, and Education

    47 min
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4.9
out of 5
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About

🏆 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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