February 7, 2025 • 27 mins
What if the next big decision-maker in your business wasn't a human, but an AI system designed to enhance human capabilities and drive strategic results?
In this episode of "What’s the BUZZ?—AI in Business," host Andreas Welsch engages in a compelling conversation with Kate O'Neill, the Tech Humanist, who shares her extensive knowledge on the interplay between technology and human experience. They explore how leaders can navigate the fast-paced changes in technology while keeping humanity at the forefront.
Together, they delve into crucial topics, such as why the future of work is a blended environment of humans and AI, how to cultivate clarity in leadership amidst ambiguity, and the importance of embedding human-centric values in technology decisions. What skills do leaders need to adapt to this new landscape, and how can businesses ensure that growth does not come at the expense of employee well-being?
Whether you're a seasoned executive, an aspiring leader, or simply fascinated by the evolving tech landscape, this episode provides valuable insights and practical frameworks for harnessing AI while enhancing human potential.
Ready to transform the way you think about AI in your organization? Tune in now and discover how to move beyond the hype and achieve meaningful business outcomes!
Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.
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Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andreas Welsch (00:00):
Today, we have an exciting episode for you.
I'm joined by Kate O'Neill, TechHumanist.
Kate, thank you so much forjoining, and for those of you in
the audience that don't knowKate yet, maybe you can
introduce yourself.
Kate O'Neill (00:11):
Thank you, Andreas.
It's so lovely to be here.
I love what you're doing withthe show.
I am Kate O'Neill.
I'm the tech humanist, as yousaid, my work is around the
intersection of technology andhuman experience.
And that's been for coming up onthree decades now, that's been
my focus in the technologyspace.
So emerging technology,different platforms.
(00:32):
Some of my highlights of mycareer have been that I was one
of the first hundred employeesat Netflix, which was a really
great and formative experience,but I've also been in healthcare
and around education, aroundservices, like all kinds of
different industries.
And then as a consultant andadvisor for the last really 15,
(00:54):
20 years.
It's really been a little bit ofeverything.
So most of my work now iswriting, research, and speaking.
I'm doing a lot of keynotespeaking, but I do some advisory
and consulting as well.
And it's just, it's so fun.
It's so interesting.
And I know Andreas, you have abackground that is very diverse
also, so you know howinteresting it is to be able to
(01:15):
apply the insights from one areato another as well, right?
Andreas Welsch (01:20):
Absolutely, and I think that's one of the great
opportunities of our times,right?
That the background and skillsthat we have, we can augment
that with AI and see how AIapplies to it and bring context
to others who are in the samesituation with similar issues.
Kate, excited to have you withus.
Kate O'Neill (01:39):
Thank you.
Andreas Welsch (01:39):
I know we'll talk a little bit about a
project that you're working onas well.
Maybe you want to share a littlebit about that before we get
started, too.
Kate O'Neill (01:50):
The biggest project I have currently in
front of me is that I justlaunched a book last week called
"What Matters Next?
A Leader's Guide to Making HumanFriendly Tech Decisions in a
World That's Moving Too Fast".
And I know that's that's got toresonate with a lot of the folks
who are watching this, right?
That the world does seem, Ithink, to many people to be
(02:11):
moving way too fast.
And then I think what I hearmost from leaders, and you
probably hear this as well fromleaders, is that decisions are
just so challenging these daysbecause of the, amount of
technology, the amount of changewithin technology, the sort of
scale and scope of technologyand what the ramifications and
(02:32):
consequences of those decisionsare.
So this book attempts todeconstruct that and offer some
frameworks and practicalguidance for people to make
better decisions in thatcontext.
Andreas Welsch (02:45):
That's awesome, and I think that's exactly what
we need.
I was just posting about this inmy newsletter this morning.
Just looking at the news overthe last three, four weeks, it
feels like there's one big newstheme with every cycle, right?
Hey, we know how to get to AGI,and we have our own definition
of it.
Hey, by the way, now we'reinvesting 500 billion in Project
(03:06):
Stargate to make AI run andserve us even more.
Then it's SaaS software as aservice is dead the next week.
It's, there's a new model and itturns everything upside down.
So I think that things aremoving incredibly fast, like you
said, so definitely someguidance on how to actually see
(03:26):
this.
This through and sift throughall these news items that are
coming my way is superimportant.
Now, folks, for those of you inthe audience, I'm always curious
how global our audience is.
If you want to put in the chatwhere you're joining us from
today, that would be awesome.
And also, if you have anyquestions for Kate, please feel
(03:47):
free to put them in the chat aswell and we'll pick them up in a
couple of minutes.
Kate, in good tradition, Itwouldn't be called"What's the
BUZZ?" If there wasn't thebuzzer in the game.
Yeah, I'm curious, what do youthink, if AI were a what would
it be?
So you have 60 seconds that I'llput on the clock, and I'm really
(04:08):
curious what you think.
Let's see here.
If AI were a book, what would itbe?
Oh, fitting.
Kate O'Neill (04:15):
Yes, it is fitting.
It seems like it would be the,like an encyclopedia because it
is all encompassing and it hasthe potential to be used in any
number of ways to expand theknowledge and expand the
thinking of the people who areusing it.
(04:35):
That's, I think, we'll come backto this theme probably a lot in
our discussion.
But I'm a real big believer thatthe promise of AI is how it
augments human intelligence.
And so I'm going to go with theultimate reference volume, the
the encyclopedia.
Andreas Welsch (04:51):
Awesome.
I love it.
I'm always amazed what my guestsanswer, because those questions
are actually answered on thespot.
We didn't talk about what thatwould be, but thank you for
coming up with an answer yet.
But we certainly have preparedsome questions to guide our
conversation today.
And I'm curious there, what doyou see?
(05:12):
And right a couple of weeks agowe saw that the likes of
Salesforce, Mark Benioff, oreven Meta, Mark Zuckerberg,
said, for managers, this is thelast time that they will manage
an entirely human workforce.
And so the AI community has beenquick to point out that's
already the case, right?
We are using AI very widely.
(05:35):
Zuckerberg said, hey, we aregoing to use AI a lot more for
development, for coding.
Eventually AI will code.
So what do you make out of allthis, news?
What's real and what do leadersneed to know?
Kate O'Neill (05:50):
Yeah.
I love the point that this isnot exactly new to think of a
blended workforce, right?
We have been using various kindsof automation and even
increasingly intelligentautomation for decades.
And maybe even beyond you couldsay, you could think back to the
automation within factoriesgoing back century and a half or
(06:13):
so.
So it's, not a new phenomenon,but I think obviously we know
that the spirit of what MarcBenioff meant was probably more
about the evolution of that thesort of the challenge of leading
this increasingly richly diverseworkforce in terms of the kinds
of capabilities of AI and ofbots within different
(06:38):
environments.
And then what humans areexpected to contribute and the
value that people can add inthese kind of blended
environments.
So that's going to require adifferent kind of leadership.
Then, what we've been asked forfrom leaders up till now, right?
Like the way that people whohave gone through and gotten
(06:59):
their MBA or gone throughbusiness school in decades past
were never given a propereducation that prepares them for
today, right?
They don't know how to do this.
And even.
I think one of the things thatreally strikes me and has struck
me for the last few years insomething I wrote about in"A
Future So Bright", which is thelast book I had before"What
Matters Next", is that we reallyhave let down leaders by not
(07:25):
helping them manageappropriately in remote and
virtual settings.
So you probably know you comefrom a tech background as well.
So much hand wringing over howdo you manage like programmers
and like lines of code, right?
Are we counting lines of code?
And obviously anyone who's doneany programming knows.
(07:47):
that the number of lines of codeyou write is not equivalent to
the elegance of your solution,right?
You might write, in fact, veryoften the most elegant solution
is actually shorter.
You've done a much moreefficient job.
You've figured out a way to trimsome of the looping, or you've
gotten things to make someinternal sense and have some
(08:08):
integrity in ways that aren'tabout the length of the code.
And it's really hard to managethat just as it's hard to manage
the productivity of a writer orany other kind of knowledge
contributor, knowledge worker.
So the kind of gap in leadershiparound those skills is already
(08:30):
making itself, has already beenmaking itself apparent in the
last particularly the last fiveyears around COVID timeframe.
But I think as we seeincreasingly virtual and remote
teams despite the coming back tooffice trend over the last
couple of years, we're stillseeing a lot of companies
embrace remote and virtual teamsand distributed teams.
(08:53):
And we just don't have theleadership skills for that.
And now when you think about thekind of blending of increasingly
automated systems and servicesand bots of various kinds and
algorithmic optimization and AI,we're just not set up for it.
So what I think we are lookingat is a real opportunity for
(09:14):
retraining and reskilling at themanagement level.
So much of what when we talkabout reskilling, when it comes
to digital transformation, we'reusually thinking about people at
the sort of entry level or lowlevel.
skills and it's actually I thinkin some ways even more relevant
to think about re skilling atthe senior and management level
so that people are adequatelyprepared to lead in these
(09:37):
changing environments.
Andreas Welsch (09:39):
Now, that really resonates with me.
I've led teams and organizationsin remote settings actually
during the pandemic, which wasincredibly hard just just being
virtual.
And I think it takes a differentkind of leadership and it takes
a different kind of empathy allof a sudden and trust, right?
Yes.
I think they're very validconcerns.
(10:01):
If I don't see this person inthe office every day, how do I
know that they're doing whatthey're telling you they're
doing?
Yeah.
You can measure the output asone example, but I think it also
needs a lot more empathy.
Now, when you enter then AI andAI agents into that workplace,
we need that same kind of trustand understanding, I think as
(10:23):
well.
Are these agents doing whatthey're supposed to?
And I think leadership andmanagement is a lot more than
about are they doing whatthey're supposed to?
So just as an as an aside, but Ithink if we're not adequately
prepared today to work withhumans, we'll have a real
challenge working with more AI.
Kate O'Neill (10:43):
It's such a good point.
And I wanted to add to whatyou're saying.
I think trust and and empathyare indeed critical skills.
But one of the other skills thatwe haven't been clear about is
this (10:56):
the skill of clarity, right?
It is the skill of actuallybeing clear and crisp about what
it is you expect of your teamand what, kind of, you have to
be able able to set a cleardirection, you have to be able
to make expectations understoodand make sure people know what
other people are doing and howtheir work contributes to the
(11:18):
greater picture.
That is a very much a part ofwhat matters next.
Breaking down one of the thingsthat I think lead leaders
struggle with is vision castingdoing the future visioning that
they need to do because theyfeel like the future is so
ambiguous and there's so muchuncertainty.
And so there, there seems to bethis sense that it's almost
easier in a sense to run in thestate of near blindness.
(11:43):
We're just going to operate aswe've been operating, and then
as big important things becomeknown, they'll become known, and
we'll deal with them as theyoccur to us.
It's that's not going to work.
We absolutely need to be.
Doing our best at understandinghow to use signals in the
culture and the trends around usand externalities to make better
(12:05):
forecasts and do better futurecasting.
This is one of the themes that Icome back to a lot in the book
that We use this term a lot inbusiness future proof, like we
want to future proof thebusiness.
And I think that's a very sillyterm actually, because we cannot
be future proof.
We can only be more or lessfuture ready.
(12:25):
So I think that's what we'rebeing, we're asking of leaders
now is to be more future readyby.
By creating these clearervisions of what it is you're
trying to achieve, trying to usebetter strategic skills to
understand what the uniquechallenges of your workplace
are, what the systems are thatyou're working with, and how to
really make that as clear and asdirected for both people and for
(12:51):
machines that are part of thatblended workforce.
Andreas Welsch (12:54):
The timing of what you just said couldn't be
better, right?
It's early February that we'relive here and many
organizations, many leaders aregoing through goal planning.
What are we going to do thisyear?
How are we going to measure whatwe are doing?
And so I think this, the skillof clarity of vision setting,
where are we going, why are wedoing this, connecting what your
(13:16):
team does to this largerobjective, I think is critically
important, obviously, and it'salways been, but again, now, as
we enter more technology, how dowe factor that into it as well.
So I'm curious there.
How can leaders then ensure asmore AI enters the workplace,
that those human centric valuesare not completely neglected or
(13:39):
thrown out the window, becausewe all of a sudden prioritize
even more so profits andproductivity, right?
We have agents.
They work 24/7.
They don't take sick days, maybea little maintenance here and
there.
But, we get constant output.
We get constant quality, highlevel of quality.
How do we make sure that we keeppeople, again, front and center?
(14:02):
And how do you see leaders shapethis?
Kate O'Neill (14:05):
This again, I think comes down to leaders with
the clearest vision, becauseit's very easy as a leader to
focus solely on profit andefficiency.
That's truly the easiest thingin the world.
That's what all of the signalsfrom business and the market
will tell you are important, butthose are not going to be the
only.
Metrics by which you can gaugesuccess over the long run.
(14:26):
And anyone who's been inbusiness long enough knows that
you end up eventually having todeal with cultural issues and
morale issues and talentretention issues and things
pertaining to trust in themarketplace, how your brand is
perceived how, whether consumersactually want to come back and
deal with you again, if they hada bad experience with you the
(14:47):
first time.
So there are many, signals thatneed to be blended.
as part of a holisticunderstanding of what effective
strategy is and what aneffective business management
is.
So it's gonna be tempting, Ithink, for people to use
productivity and efficiency astheir gauge.
It's especially going to betempting in a political
(15:10):
environment where we're dealingwith a lot of deregulation and a
lot of emphasis on growth andacceleration, the rapidity of
how and the, downscaling of whatgovernment looks like.
And that, everything that'sgoing on with not only the Trump
administration, but a lot ofgovernments around the world
(15:33):
taking this cue and, doing verysimilar kinds of descaling kinds
of activities where they're veryinwardly focused.
And this is a trend that I thinkwe're going to see obviously
we're going to be seeing it forthe next few years in the US
under Trump's administration.
I think we're going to be seeingthis for probably the next
(15:55):
better part of the next decadeplaying out in various ways
across the world.
And it's really important.
I think that people are preparedfor that and that leaders
themselves are prepared for thatbecause you're going to need to
have almost an arsenal ofmotivations and skills that are
at your disposal to be able tohave conversations with your
leadership team, with yourboard, with a stakeholder or
(16:17):
anyone who has a role in.
Directing what the companydetermines to be success.
And that needs to look likeempowering humans.
It needs to look like makingsure that we're using AI and
agents and the technologies atour disposal to really create
thriving and amplify humanpotential and look at what our
(16:40):
company exists to do and what itexists to do at scale in ways
that are about how does it alignwith the people inside and
outside of the company.
And how can we make sure thatwe're using technology to
amplify and accelerate thatalignment as opposed to merely
amplifying and accelerating theoutput and effectiveness of the
(17:02):
company itself.
This is just a shift.
All these things are is it'sgood vision casting and it's
clearer thinking, it's betterstrategy, and it's that future
readiness.
I think that is missing from thelarger business discourse,
especially now.
And so I am pleased to be partof helping bring that focus with
(17:23):
this book.
And I think it's just soimportant that people are able
to have that perspective inbusiness.
Andreas Welsch (17:30):
Now, there're so many great points in what you
just shared, right?
From what can you doindividually to where are things
moving?
In the U.
S.
also globally most likely overthe next couple of years.
And I think we just see that itcontinues to be a very dynamic
environment.
If I look into businesses.
(17:50):
If I talk to leaders, I seethat, yeah, they're wondering,
how do I make sense out of allthat?
How do I use technology withpurpose for achieving better
business results?
And as fluffy and corporate asthat might sound, at the end of
the day, I think we need betterresults.
So for me that was part of thereason to, write the AI
(18:13):
Leadership Handbook.
Kate O'Neill (18:14):
Oh, yeah.
Let's hold our books up.
Andreas Welsch (18:16):
And give people some practical advice.
How do you do that?
And how are others doing it?
But I'm curious, what gets youexcited among all those news,
right?
Just last week we DeepSeek.
It sent markets into a sell offand a little bit of a turmoil.
The week before we had the 500billion dollar investment in
(18:38):
Stargate.
Do we still need that?
Is that relevant?
DeepSeek, what's happening withmy data?
Can I trust this?
Are there any guardrails?
Does it say things that it'ssupposed to or it's not supposed
to?
So many bits and pieces of newsthat it's really hard for many
leaders to understand whatreally matters.
(19:00):
So I'm wondering what mattersnext?
Kate O'Neill (19:04):
I'm glad you're wondering that.
What I would say that at themoment it is chaos and, I think
it is really hard and I thinkwe're, not going to see that
slow down anytime soon.
So one of the skills I thinkleaders need to cultivate is
the.
Art of curation, and, reallyfinding their most reliable and
(19:24):
most important sources so thatthey can know what information
they really need to rely on andwhat they can just let wash over
them as, as just ambientinformation that, that that
maybe they'll pick up littlebits and pieces.
But I think what I'm excitedabout the idea that We see the
(19:47):
sort of hints of a trend aroundhow we could use AI and other
sort of exponential technologiesfor solving human problems at
scale.
And I know that doesn't seemlike it's the majority focus,
but I've been on this problemfor years.
In 2019, before we were evertalking about large language
(20:09):
models with ChatGPT, in 2019, Iled a panel at AI.
COP25, the climate change summitfor the United Nations, and it
was composed of all differenttech leaders from around the
world talking about how we canuse AI to fight climate change.
And, that conversation alreadyin place by 2019 has only
(20:29):
accelerated.
Obviously, we know even moresince 2019 about the harms that
climate catastrophe is wreckingon the world.
And we know how urgently we needto focus on that.
So what I see happening is thatwe look at things like the large
language model, kind of frontiermodel war and Stargate and as
(20:53):
being part of the, thatacceleration of that.
But then you also look atDeepSeq, and I know there's been
back and forth about howefficiently did they actually
build the model, but there issome indication that they were
able to be much more efficientin, at some level of,
engineering than what a lot ofthe current frontier models are,
(21:14):
using in terms of compute andthe energy resources.
We, there's a very good chancethat we are going to see,
Drastic, radical changes in theamount of efficiencies that,
that models are getting in thecoming years and we need to, and
then I hope what we're going tosee is beginning to also apply
(21:36):
those models to increasinglysustainable development goals,
related types of problems.
So how can we.
Create more efficiency in ourenergy sourcing.
How can we create more alignmentwith projects that are making
water more available, freshwater available in places and
(21:56):
managing the the drought inother places.
There's so many different kindsof to intervene in the urgent
and important issues around theclimate crisis, that AI actually
has an incredible role to playif we're going to use it
correctly.
And doing so with energyefficient compute is, I think, a
(22:18):
really important step in that.
So I take an encouragement, abit of encouragement from that.
from that trend over the lastcouple weeks of news.
I love it.
And I think it will spur evenmore innovation when technology
becomes available to an evenbroader and wider range of
companies in many differentsectors, different parts of the
world.
(22:39):
When the cost of that technologykeeps coming down, I'm very
hopeful there as well.
Now, I'm curious, what do youthink?
Where is this all going?
Are we all going to sit on thebeach, cocktail, and let the
agents do the work?
No, I think any type of, anytime we use that sort of
(23:01):
keynesian view of marketproductivity, where we say Oh
we're going to make it possiblethat humans won't have to work.
I think what we're overlookingis it isn't only about
technology or about efficiency.
It is about it.
Really capitalism, likecapitalism won't let us do that.
So at the moment, that's notreally the model we all operate
(23:23):
under.
I think what we're going to findmuch more likely over the years
to come is that our jobs, justas our jobs have been changing
and changing for decades,they're going to continue to
change and change.
And it's going to be up toindividuals.
to keep re educating themselvesand stay current with some of
the skills that some familiaritywith some of the tools.
(23:46):
It's going to be up to leadersat the business level to make
sure that they're up skillingand re skilling their teams and
that they're creatingappropriate pathways for people
and to Increasinglysophisticated jobs, and it's
going to be up to governmentleaders which I know is not very
encouraging right at the moment,but I think we're going to have
(24:08):
to face a moment wheregovernment leaders are going to
have to create pathways forpeople to reskill and upskill
appropriately.
And we see, we can see thishappening at state levels.
There've been some great casesin the U.
S.
And I think Nevada and Nebraskaare two examples where the state
put together programs thatpartner with the local libraries
(24:30):
and partner with a database ofjobs andthe skills required to
fulfill those jobs.
And so people who findthemselves being put out of work
by automation or being put outof work by AI.
by different kinds of disruptionin the marketplace can go to the
library and look for the kindsof jobs that are available and
the skills that it'll take tofulfill that.
(24:50):
And those skills are actuallyavailable to them in courses.
So it's awholesale holistic kindof opportunity for people.
I think we need to see a lotmore of that and that really can
happen at almost any level.
So that it's really, I think.
A lot of disruption and changeand evolution.
(25:11):
But I think the opportunitythere is so vast and it's so
important for us to stay focusedon how much opportunity there is
to really fulfill humanpotential at a level that we
have not been able to until thispoint.
Andreas Welsch (25:25):
So that was my dream of sitting by the beach.
Kate O'Neill (25:28):
Yeah, you can sit by the beach if you want to.
Andreas Welsch (25:30):
Yeah, with my laptop probably.
Kate O'Neill (25:32):
I'll support you.
I'll cheer you on.
Andreas Welsch (25:35):
No, awesome.
Hey Kate, we're getting close tothe end of the show and I was
wondering if you can summarizethe key three takeaways for our
audience today.
Kate O'Neill (25:42):
Yeah, I think if I summarized the points I really
want people to focus on, it'sthat human centered innovation
is key no matter how much AIevolves, I really want people
thinking about how we'recentering humanity and human
potential in all of this.
I'd really love to see us stayfocused on sustainability of
(26:04):
this progress.
How can we not only use at mostour compute power most
efficiently, but how can we makesure we're in alignment with the
most sustainable goals, those UNsustainable sustainable
development goals for a start.
And then how can we make surethat we're evolving leaders to
the level that we need them tobe to direct all of this for us
(26:26):
and lead us toward this betterfuture that we could potentially
have if we make the rightchoices on the way there.
Andreas Welsch (26:33):
Kate, it was great having you on the show.
Thank you for sharing yourexperience and your insights
with us.
Today, we have an exciting episode for you.
I'm joined by Kate O'Neill, TechHumanist.
Kate, thank you so much forjoining, and for those of you in
the audience that don't knowKate yet, maybe you can
introduce yourself.
Kate O'Neill (00:11):
Thank you, Andreas.
It's so lovely to be here.
I love what you're doing withthe show.
I am Kate O'Neill.
I'm the tech humanist, as yousaid, my work is around the
intersection of technology andhuman experience.
And that's been for coming up onthree decades now, that's been
my focus in the technologyspace.
So emerging technology,different platforms.
(00:32):
Some of my highlights of mycareer have been that I was one
of the first hundred employeesat Netflix, which was a really
great and formative experience,but I've also been in healthcare
and around education, aroundservices, like all kinds of
different industries.
And then as a consultant andadvisor for the last really 15,
(00:54):
20 years.
It's really been a little bit ofeverything.
So most of my work now iswriting, research, and speaking.
I'm doing a lot of keynotespeaking, but I do some advisory
and consulting as well.
And it's just, it's so fun.
It's so interesting.
And I know Andreas, you have abackground that is very diverse
also, so you know howinteresting it is to be able to
(01:15):
apply the insights from one areato another as well, right?
Andreas Welsch (01:20):
Absolutely, and I think that's one of the great
opportunities of our times,right?
That the background and skillsthat we have, we can augment
that with AI and see how AIapplies to it and bring context
to others who are in the samesituation with similar issues.
Kate, excited to have you withus.
Kate O'Neill (01:39):
Thank you.
Andreas Welsch (01:39):
I know we'll talk a little bit about a
project that you're working onas well.
Maybe you want to share a littlebit about that before we get
started, too.
Kate O'Neill (01:50):
The biggest project I have currently in
front of me is that I justlaunched a book last week called
"What Matters Next?
A Leader's Guide to Making HumanFriendly Tech Decisions in a
World That's Moving Too Fast".
And I know that's that's got toresonate with a lot of the folks
who are watching this, right?
That the world does seem, Ithink, to many people to be
(02:11):
moving way too fast.
And then I think what I hearmost from leaders, and you
probably hear this as well fromleaders, is that decisions are
just so challenging these daysbecause of the, amount of
technology, the amount of changewithin technology, the sort of
scale and scope of technologyand what the ramifications and
(02:32):
consequences of those decisionsare.
So this book attempts todeconstruct that and offer some
frameworks and practicalguidance for people to make
better decisions in thatcontext.
Andreas Welsch (02:45):
That's awesome, and I think that's exactly what
we need.
I was just posting about this inmy newsletter this morning.
Just looking at the news overthe last three, four weeks, it
feels like there's one big newstheme with every cycle, right?
Hey, we know how to get to AGI,and we have our own definition
of it.
Hey, by the way, now we'reinvesting 500 billion in Project
(03:06):
Stargate to make AI run andserve us even more.
Then it's SaaS software as aservice is dead the next week.
It's, there's a new model and itturns everything upside down.
So I think that things aremoving incredibly fast, like you
said, so definitely someguidance on how to actually see
(03:26):
this.
This through and sift throughall these news items that are
coming my way is superimportant.
Now, folks, for those of you inthe audience, I'm always curious
how global our audience is.
If you want to put in the chatwhere you're joining us from
today, that would be awesome.
And also, if you have anyquestions for Kate, please feel
(03:47):
free to put them in the chat aswell and we'll pick them up in a
couple of minutes.
Kate, in good tradition, Itwouldn't be called"What's the
BUZZ?" If there wasn't thebuzzer in the game.
Yeah, I'm curious, what do youthink, if AI were a what would
it be?
So you have 60 seconds that I'llput on the clock, and I'm really
(04:08):
curious what you think.
Let's see here.
If AI were a book, what would itbe?
Oh, fitting.
Kate O'Neill (04:15):
Yes, it is fitting.
It seems like it would be the,like an encyclopedia because it
is all encompassing and it hasthe potential to be used in any
number of ways to expand theknowledge and expand the
thinking of the people who areusing it.
(04:35):
That's, I think, we'll come backto this theme probably a lot in
our discussion.
But I'm a real big believer thatthe promise of AI is how it
augments human intelligence.
And so I'm going to go with theultimate reference volume, the
the encyclopedia.
Andreas Welsch (04:51):
Awesome.
I love it.
I'm always amazed what my guestsanswer, because those questions
are actually answered on thespot.
We didn't talk about what thatwould be, but thank you for
coming up with an answer yet.
But we certainly have preparedsome questions to guide our
conversation today.
And I'm curious there, what doyou see?
(05:12):
And right a couple of weeks agowe saw that the likes of
Salesforce, Mark Benioff, oreven Meta, Mark Zuckerberg,
said, for managers, this is thelast time that they will manage
an entirely human workforce.
And so the AI community has beenquick to point out that's
already the case, right?
We are using AI very widely.
(05:35):
Zuckerberg said, hey, we aregoing to use AI a lot more for
development, for coding.
Eventually AI will code.
So what do you make out of allthis, news?
What's real and what do leadersneed to know?
Kate O'Neill (05:50):
Yeah.
I love the point that this isnot exactly new to think of a
blended workforce, right?
We have been using various kindsof automation and even
increasingly intelligentautomation for decades.
And maybe even beyond you couldsay, you could think back to the
automation within factoriesgoing back century and a half or
(06:13):
so.
So it's, not a new phenomenon,but I think obviously we know
that the spirit of what MarcBenioff meant was probably more
about the evolution of that thesort of the challenge of leading
this increasingly richly diverseworkforce in terms of the kinds
of capabilities of AI and ofbots within different
(06:38):
environments.
And then what humans areexpected to contribute and the
value that people can add inthese kind of blended
environments.
So that's going to require adifferent kind of leadership.
Then, what we've been asked forfrom leaders up till now, right?
Like the way that people whohave gone through and gotten
(06:59):
their MBA or gone throughbusiness school in decades past
were never given a propereducation that prepares them for
today, right?
They don't know how to do this.
And even.
I think one of the things thatreally strikes me and has struck
me for the last few years insomething I wrote about in"A
Future So Bright", which is thelast book I had before"What
Matters Next", is that we reallyhave let down leaders by not
(07:25):
helping them manageappropriately in remote and
virtual settings.
So you probably know you comefrom a tech background as well.
So much hand wringing over howdo you manage like programmers
and like lines of code, right?
Are we counting lines of code?
And obviously anyone who's doneany programming knows.
(07:47):
that the number of lines of codeyou write is not equivalent to
the elegance of your solution,right?
You might write, in fact, veryoften the most elegant solution
is actually shorter.
You've done a much moreefficient job.
You've figured out a way to trimsome of the looping, or you've
gotten things to make someinternal sense and have some
(08:08):
integrity in ways that aren'tabout the length of the code.
And it's really hard to managethat just as it's hard to manage
the productivity of a writer orany other kind of knowledge
contributor, knowledge worker.
So the kind of gap in leadershiparound those skills is already
(08:30):
making itself, has already beenmaking itself apparent in the
last particularly the last fiveyears around COVID timeframe.
But I think as we seeincreasingly virtual and remote
teams despite the coming back tooffice trend over the last
couple of years, we're stillseeing a lot of companies
embrace remote and virtual teamsand distributed teams.
(08:53):
And we just don't have theleadership skills for that.
And now when you think about thekind of blending of increasingly
automated systems and servicesand bots of various kinds and
algorithmic optimization and AI,we're just not set up for it.
So what I think we are lookingat is a real opportunity for
(09:14):
retraining and reskilling at themanagement level.
So much of what when we talkabout reskilling, when it comes
to digital transformation, we'reusually thinking about people at
the sort of entry level or lowlevel.
skills and it's actually I thinkin some ways even more relevant
to think about re skilling atthe senior and management level
so that people are adequatelyprepared to lead in these
(09:37):
changing environments.
Andreas Welsch (09:39):
Now, that really resonates with me.
I've led teams and organizationsin remote settings actually
during the pandemic, which wasincredibly hard just just being
virtual.
And I think it takes a differentkind of leadership and it takes
a different kind of empathy allof a sudden and trust, right?
Yes.
I think they're very validconcerns.
(10:01):
If I don't see this person inthe office every day, how do I
know that they're doing whatthey're telling you they're
doing?
Yeah.
You can measure the output asone example, but I think it also
needs a lot more empathy.
Now, when you enter then AI andAI agents into that workplace,
we need that same kind of trustand understanding, I think as
(10:23):
well.
Are these agents doing whatthey're supposed to?
And I think leadership andmanagement is a lot more than
about are they doing whatthey're supposed to?
So just as an as an aside, but Ithink if we're not adequately
prepared today to work withhumans, we'll have a real
challenge working with more AI.
Kate O'Neill (10:43):
It's such a good point.
And I wanted to add to whatyou're saying.
I think trust and and empathyare indeed critical skills.
But one of the other skills thatwe haven't been clear about is
this (10:56):
the skill of clarity, right?
It is the skill of actuallybeing clear and crisp about what
it is you expect of your teamand what, kind of, you have to
be able able to set a cleardirection, you have to be able
to make expectations understoodand make sure people know what
other people are doing and howtheir work contributes to the
(11:18):
greater picture.
That is a very much a part ofwhat matters next.
Breaking down one of the thingsthat I think lead leaders
struggle with is vision castingdoing the future visioning that
they need to do because theyfeel like the future is so
ambiguous and there's so muchuncertainty.
And so there, there seems to bethis sense that it's almost
easier in a sense to run in thestate of near blindness.
(11:43):
We're just going to operate aswe've been operating, and then
as big important things becomeknown, they'll become known, and
we'll deal with them as theyoccur to us.
It's that's not going to work.
We absolutely need to be.
Doing our best at understandinghow to use signals in the
culture and the trends around usand externalities to make better
(12:05):
forecasts and do better futurecasting.
This is one of the themes that Icome back to a lot in the book
that We use this term a lot inbusiness future proof, like we
want to future proof thebusiness.
And I think that's a very sillyterm actually, because we cannot
be future proof.
We can only be more or lessfuture ready.
(12:25):
So I think that's what we'rebeing, we're asking of leaders
now is to be more future readyby.
By creating these clearervisions of what it is you're
trying to achieve, trying to usebetter strategic skills to
understand what the uniquechallenges of your workplace
are, what the systems are thatyou're working with, and how to
really make that as clear and asdirected for both people and for
(12:51):
machines that are part of thatblended workforce.
Andreas Welsch (12:54):
The timing of what you just said couldn't be
better, right?
It's early February that we'relive here and many
organizations, many leaders aregoing through goal planning.
What are we going to do thisyear?
How are we going to measure whatwe are doing?
And so I think this, the skillof clarity of vision setting,
where are we going, why are wedoing this, connecting what your
(13:16):
team does to this largerobjective, I think is critically
important, obviously, and it'salways been, but again, now, as
we enter more technology, how dowe factor that into it as well.
So I'm curious there.
How can leaders then ensure asmore AI enters the workplace,
that those human centric valuesare not completely neglected or
(13:39):
thrown out the window, becausewe all of a sudden prioritize
even more so profits andproductivity, right?
We have agents.
They work 24/7.
They don't take sick days, maybea little maintenance here and
there.
But, we get constant output.
We get constant quality, highlevel of quality.
How do we make sure that we keeppeople, again, front and center?
(14:02):
And how do you see leaders shapethis?
Kate O'Neill (14:05):
This again, I think comes down to leaders with
the clearest vision, becauseit's very easy as a leader to
focus solely on profit andefficiency.
That's truly the easiest thingin the world.
That's what all of the signalsfrom business and the market
will tell you are important, butthose are not going to be the
only.
Metrics by which you can gaugesuccess over the long run.
(14:26):
And anyone who's been inbusiness long enough knows that
you end up eventually having todeal with cultural issues and
morale issues and talentretention issues and things
pertaining to trust in themarketplace, how your brand is
perceived how, whether consumersactually want to come back and
deal with you again, if they hada bad experience with you the
(14:47):
first time.
So there are many, signals thatneed to be blended.
as part of a holisticunderstanding of what effective
strategy is and what aneffective business management
is.
So it's gonna be tempting, Ithink, for people to use
productivity and efficiency astheir gauge.
It's especially going to betempting in a political
(15:10):
environment where we're dealingwith a lot of deregulation and a
lot of emphasis on growth andacceleration, the rapidity of
how and the, downscaling of whatgovernment looks like.
And that, everything that'sgoing on with not only the Trump
administration, but a lot ofgovernments around the world
(15:33):
taking this cue and, doing verysimilar kinds of descaling kinds
of activities where they're veryinwardly focused.
And this is a trend that I thinkwe're going to see obviously
we're going to be seeing it forthe next few years in the US
under Trump's administration.
I think we're going to be seeingthis for probably the next
(15:55):
better part of the next decadeplaying out in various ways
across the world.
And it's really important.
I think that people are preparedfor that and that leaders
themselves are prepared for thatbecause you're going to need to
have almost an arsenal ofmotivations and skills that are
at your disposal to be able tohave conversations with your
leadership team, with yourboard, with a stakeholder or
(16:17):
anyone who has a role in.
Directing what the companydetermines to be success.
And that needs to look likeempowering humans.
It needs to look like makingsure that we're using AI and
agents and the technologies atour disposal to really create
thriving and amplify humanpotential and look at what our
(16:40):
company exists to do and what itexists to do at scale in ways
that are about how does it alignwith the people inside and
outside of the company.
And how can we make sure thatwe're using technology to
amplify and accelerate thatalignment as opposed to merely
amplifying and accelerating theoutput and effectiveness of the
(17:02):
company itself.
This is just a shift.
All these things are is it'sgood vision casting and it's
clearer thinking, it's betterstrategy, and it's that future
readiness.
I think that is missing from thelarger business discourse,
especially now.
And so I am pleased to be partof helping bring that focus with
(17:23):
this book.
And I think it's just soimportant that people are able
to have that perspective inbusiness.
Andreas Welsch (17:30):
Now, there're so many great points in what you
just shared, right?
From what can you doindividually to where are things
moving?
In the U.
S.
also globally most likely overthe next couple of years.
And I think we just see that itcontinues to be a very dynamic
environment.
If I look into businesses.
(17:50):
If I talk to leaders, I seethat, yeah, they're wondering,
how do I make sense out of allthat?
How do I use technology withpurpose for achieving better
business results?
And as fluffy and corporate asthat might sound, at the end of
the day, I think we need betterresults.
So for me that was part of thereason to, write the AI
(18:13):
Leadership Handbook.
Kate O'Neill (18:14):
Oh, yeah.
Let's hold our books up.
Andreas Welsch (18:16):
And give people some practical advice.
How do you do that?
And how are others doing it?
But I'm curious, what gets youexcited among all those news,
right?
Just last week we DeepSeek.
It sent markets into a sell offand a little bit of a turmoil.
The week before we had the 500billion dollar investment in
(18:38):
Stargate.
Do we still need that?
Is that relevant?
DeepSeek, what's happening withmy data?
Can I trust this?
Are there any guardrails?
Does it say things that it'ssupposed to or it's not supposed
to?
So many bits and pieces of newsthat it's really hard for many
leaders to understand whatreally matters.
(19:00):
So I'm wondering what mattersnext?
Kate O'Neill (19:04):
I'm glad you're wondering that.
What I would say that at themoment it is chaos and, I think
it is really hard and I thinkwe're, not going to see that
slow down anytime soon.
So one of the skills I thinkleaders need to cultivate is
the.
Art of curation, and, reallyfinding their most reliable and
(19:24):
most important sources so thatthey can know what information
they really need to rely on andwhat they can just let wash over
them as, as just ambientinformation that, that that
maybe they'll pick up littlebits and pieces.
But I think what I'm excitedabout the idea that We see the
(19:47):
sort of hints of a trend aroundhow we could use AI and other
sort of exponential technologiesfor solving human problems at
scale.
And I know that doesn't seemlike it's the majority focus,
but I've been on this problemfor years.
In 2019, before we were evertalking about large language
(20:09):
models with ChatGPT, in 2019, Iled a panel at AI.
COP25, the climate change summitfor the United Nations, and it
was composed of all differenttech leaders from around the
world talking about how we canuse AI to fight climate change.
And, that conversation alreadyin place by 2019 has only
(20:29):
accelerated.
Obviously, we know even moresince 2019 about the harms that
climate catastrophe is wreckingon the world.
And we know how urgently we needto focus on that.
So what I see happening is thatwe look at things like the large
language model, kind of frontiermodel war and Stargate and as
(20:53):
being part of the, thatacceleration of that.
But then you also look atDeepSeq, and I know there's been
back and forth about howefficiently did they actually
build the model, but there issome indication that they were
able to be much more efficientin, at some level of,
engineering than what a lot ofthe current frontier models are,
(21:14):
using in terms of compute andthe energy resources.
We, there's a very good chancethat we are going to see,
Drastic, radical changes in theamount of efficiencies that,
that models are getting in thecoming years and we need to, and
then I hope what we're going tosee is beginning to also apply
(21:36):
those models to increasinglysustainable development goals,
related types of problems.
So how can we.
Create more efficiency in ourenergy sourcing.
How can we create more alignmentwith projects that are making
water more available, freshwater available in places and
(21:56):
managing the the drought inother places.
There's so many different kindsof to intervene in the urgent
and important issues around theclimate crisis, that AI actually
has an incredible role to playif we're going to use it
correctly.
And doing so with energyefficient compute is, I think, a
(22:18):
really important step in that.
So I take an encouragement, abit of encouragement from that.
from that trend over the lastcouple weeks of news.
I love it.
And I think it will spur evenmore innovation when technology
becomes available to an evenbroader and wider range of
companies in many differentsectors, different parts of the
world.
(22:39):
When the cost of that technologykeeps coming down, I'm very
hopeful there as well.
Now, I'm curious, what do youthink?
Where is this all going?
Are we all going to sit on thebeach, cocktail, and let the
agents do the work?
No, I think any type of, anytime we use that sort of
(23:01):
keynesian view of marketproductivity, where we say Oh
we're going to make it possiblethat humans won't have to work.
I think what we're overlookingis it isn't only about
technology or about efficiency.
It is about it.
Really capitalism, likecapitalism won't let us do that.
So at the moment, that's notreally the model we all operate
(23:23):
under.
I think what we're going to findmuch more likely over the years
to come is that our jobs, justas our jobs have been changing
and changing for decades,they're going to continue to
change and change.
And it's going to be up toindividuals.
to keep re educating themselvesand stay current with some of
the skills that some familiaritywith some of the tools.
(23:46):
It's going to be up to leadersat the business level to make
sure that they're up skillingand re skilling their teams and
that they're creatingappropriate pathways for people
and to Increasinglysophisticated jobs, and it's
going to be up to governmentleaders which I know is not very
encouraging right at the moment,but I think we're going to have
(24:08):
to face a moment wheregovernment leaders are going to
have to create pathways forpeople to reskill and upskill
appropriately.
And we see, we can see thishappening at state levels.
There've been some great casesin the U.
S.
And I think Nevada and Nebraskaare two examples where the state
put together programs thatpartner with the local libraries
(24:30):
and partner with a database ofjobs andthe skills required to
fulfill those jobs.
And so people who findthemselves being put out of work
by automation or being put outof work by AI.
by different kinds of disruptionin the marketplace can go to the
library and look for the kindsof jobs that are available and
the skills that it'll take tofulfill that.
(24:50):
And those skills are actuallyavailable to them in courses.
So it's awholesale holistic kindof opportunity for people.
I think we need to see a lotmore of that and that really can
happen at almost any level.
So that it's really, I think.
A lot of disruption and changeand evolution.
(25:11):
But I think the opportunitythere is so vast and it's so
important for us to stay focusedon how much opportunity there is
to really fulfill humanpotential at a level that we
have not been able to until thispoint.
Andreas Welsch (25:25):
So that was my dream of sitting by the beach.
Kate O'Neill (25:28):
Yeah, you can sit by the beach if you want to.
Andreas Welsch (25:30):
Yeah, with my laptop probably.
Kate O'Neill (25:32):
I'll support you.
I'll cheer you on.
Andreas Welsch (25:35):
No, awesome.
Hey Kate, we're getting close tothe end of the show and I was
wondering if you can summarizethe key three takeaways for our
audience today.
Kate O'Neill (25:42):
Yeah, I think if I summarized the points I really
want people to focus on, it'sthat human centered innovation
is key no matter how much AIevolves, I really want people
thinking about how we'recentering humanity and human
potential in all of this.
I'd really love to see us stayfocused on sustainability of
(26:04):
this progress.
How can we not only use at mostour compute power most
efficiently, but how can we makesure we're in alignment with the
most sustainable goals, those UNsustainable sustainable
development goals for a start.
And then how can we make surethat we're evolving leaders to
the level that we need them tobe to direct all of this for us
(26:26):
and lead us toward this betterfuture that we could potentially
have if we make the rightchoices on the way there.
Andreas Welsch (26:33):
Kate, it was great having you on the show.
Thank you for sharing yourexperience and your insights
with us.
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