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

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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:
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Other episodes mentioned:344: Can Decentralized AI Fix Banking? Crypto, Brain OS, and the Future of Finance with Paolo Ardoino, Tether CEO
358: Inside Mastercard’s AI Adoption Journey: CTO George Maddaloni on Building Trust, Detecting Fraud, and the Future of Payments

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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 change
Why the biggest career risk today is not AI itself, but the decision to stop moving up the value stack of your current role
The 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 ever
Why a deterministic career plan is no longer a viable strategy, and what curiosity and experience-chasing actually look like as professional operating principles
What Tom believes will be table stakes in the workplace well before 2031, and why the building blocks are already visible today
Explore this conversation:
00:00 Intro and Fun Fact
04:08 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:
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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.

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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
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Connect with Oren on LinkedIn
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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 Newsletter
Connect with Jake on LinkedIn
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