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What the Hell is Going on with Work Right Now? w/ HR Brew's Adam DeRose and People Managing People's David Rice

• Francesca Ranieri

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What the hell is happening at work right now?

After a spring packed with HR, AI, leadership, and future-of-work conferences, we sat down with Adam DeRose (HR Brew) and David Rice (People Managing People) for an honest conversation about what they’re actually seeing inside organizations right now.

And honestly? The vibes are weird.

In this episode, we dig into:

  • why work feels increasingly unstable and disconnected
  • the growing trust gap between leaders and employees
  • AI adoption vs. actual transformation
  • layoffs being made on “promises that haven’t reconciled”
  • burnout, disengagement, and survival mode at work
  • why organizations keep layering new strategies onto systems that can’t support them
  • the tension between speed, pressure, and thoughtful leadership
  • what gives them hope (yes, there’s some hope)

This isn’t a polished “AI will save us” conversation.

It’s four people who spend their lives studying work, reporting on work, and redesigning work trying to make sense of a moment that feels increasingly uncertain for a lot of people.

Come for the state of work.


Stay for the existential crisis, plumber bots, and surprisingly deep thoughts about human greatness.

Featuring:

New episodes every Tuesday (sometimes Wednesday - hey, we're indie) from Your Work Friends.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.

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Welcome And The Tension At Work

Speaker 3

Cause honestly, with the outside world, work could be somewhat of a refuge if it made any sense, but it doesn't.

Speaker 8

Welcome to Your Work Friends. I'm Francesca. And I'm Mel. And we're breaking down the now and next of work so you stay ahead. So this episode is our state of the union for 2026 about work right now. Mel and I sat down with Adam DeRose, who's a reporter from HR Brew, and David Rice from People Managing People. He's the executive editor over there. We love those guys. Between the four of us, we've been through every single Future of Work or Work or HR conference that's been in existence in the United States for the last five months. We've also been doing our own client work. We've been looking at also the news with AI launches and all these companies going through layoffs, transformations, and one thing just keeps coming up: work feels off. And there's a whole bunch of other components, people are exhausted, leaders are squeezed, The trust level with employees is absolutely in the tank. And the other thing that's also happening is companies are making massive AI bets while quietly wondering if any of this infrastructure can actually support it. TLDR, we're not quite sure. But underneath all of it is this weird tension that no one can quite name.

Speaker 9

Yeah. Yeah. So we're asking a simple question: What the hell is actually happening at work right now? I think we're constantly asking ourselves that question, by the way. Yeah. So we're getting into all of the AI hype that was heard across all the conferences, the burnout issues, the layoffs, collapsing trust within organizations, which many have told us they feel, all of the cognitive overload, regulation, leadership, and why so many people just feel like they're living in a permanent workplace of triage. And I think someone once told us, Francesca, right? There's no such thing as an emergency outside of the ER, but it feels like corporations are living in emergency land. So- Yeah this is super candid amongst friends, maybe a little existential, as you do during giant transformations sometimes, um, and, uh, hilarious 'cause we tell some good jokes. So this is a conversation you wanna listen to if you wanna hear what's going on.

Speaker 8

And with that, here's David and

Speaker

Adam, hi.

Speaker 2

Hi.

Speaker

Hi. David, hi.

Speaker 2

Hello.

Speaker

Welcome. We're stoked to have you. Listen, Mel and I wanted the four of us to get together because we've just come out of spring-ish. Big fan of ish, using a lot of ish lately. Adam, you're the senior reporter at HR Brew. David, you're the executive editor at People Managing People. Mel and I are constantly looking at what's happening at work and we're in orgs helping them determine what their future will be in work. And it feels like the four of us have unique perspectives on what the hell is happening with work right now, and we wanted to jam about it, and so that's what we're here today to do. Between the four of us, we've hit up almost every major work conference from the spring. So I think we have interesting points of view to talk about it. What do you think?

Speaker 3

We're well positioned.

Speaker 2

I'm into it. I want- Yeah I'd like to hear more.

Speaker

So I'm gonna start with a pretty big question, which is... I

Why Work Feels Insecure Now

Speaker

was thinking about this the other day. Work just feels different. The more people I talk to, the more I'm just like, I have yet to meet somebody that is like, "I love my job. Things are going great." Work just feels different right now. What do you think actually feels different about it?

Speaker 3

It depends on where you sit, right? If you sit in the C-suite- I think it feels a lot like the-- You're being asked to do something that you didn't go to school for. They've had a lot of certainty on, in their growth over the years, particularly once they make it to a certain level. You kinda... Traditionally, the things that you learned in business school and a lot of your power was knowing things.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Now you don't know anything, essentially, or everybody knows what you know, and so now what you're being asked to do is changing, just like everybody else, except you don't sit in as much peril as everybody else. Because for the rest of us, it's just like teetering on a knife edge of s- what am I doing? Am I screwed? Am I, How do I adapt and change? And there's all this talk about skills and how I've got to evolve and start thinking of myself as my own economy. And, you hear these things, right? That leaders say, and you're like, "What are you even talking about, man? Are you gonna fire me or not?" Yeah. That's what most people are thinking. And there's just no way around it. And it's what's created this reaction to work. 'Cause honestly, with the outside world, work could be somewhat of a refuge if it made any sense, but it doesn't.

Speaker 2

Yeah. I think it-- I don't know if it feels different, but it feels really insecure- including the folks, by the way, that are the ones who are d- making the decisions. A lot of folks don't know what is about to happen to their work, to their workflow, to their job security, to maybe even their industry or whatever work that they've spent, years or decades trying to, find a place for.

AI Hype Versus Reality

Speaker 2

We heard a lot around this kind of productivity boom that we were promised with AI, and we've had a little bit of time here to experiment and beta and pilot some stuff. And I don't necessarily know if the transformation that made a lot of those headlines in 2021, 2022, 2023 I don't know if a lot of that has been realized. Maybe what feels different is there's a more of an an acknowledgement of, that exists now and that a different way to both, train and facilitate AI readiness and our approach to where AI tools maybe make sense in our organizations. Maybe that's the moment that we've arrived in, and it could potentially be useful to employees who are worried about whether or not they're gonna, have the same job and paycheck in the next year or so. I don't mean to be, like, drinking the sorrow juice or anything, but it does feel a little bit like we're a little bit on bated breath at the moment. Yeah. Where not a lot of things is working right. Not a lot of stuff is going well.

Speaker 3

No, and I think the gap between what's talked about and then the reality is just really wide right now. One thing that came out of-- I came out of conference season with was, like, even despite all this innovative stuff and these ideas, the infrastructure isn't there to support a lot of this stuff.

Speaker

Yeah. That's-

Speaker 3

And it's just not really becoming a reality.

Speaker

That's the majority of the work that Mel and I do is we say we want this, but your system has not changed at all. And a lot of times, not a willingness to change the system either. So we're layering this promise of AI over the top of a system that can't support it. And it doesn't turn out surprisingly, not surprisingly, right? So S-

Speaker 2

yeah, suddenly it's not-- there's no AI flick switch to flick on, right? No. It's not just about getting the the AI in there and it magically solves all of these, challenging workflows with this boost in productivity and that's not actually how any, anyone who's been moderately successful it isn't just like a toggle switch. You don't just get an AI product and it transforms the way you work. And we have to be, at least conscious that there are people who think like that, so that's gonna appear to, to happen in the workplace with, mass layoffs to make room in budgets for this wonderful tool that you're gonna flick on and then suddenly it's gonna transform the way you work. We have to operate under the idea that some people are thinking like that, whether or not it's true in the results is, another story. I don't think that's borne out in the, any of the research or maybe some pilots or specific pro-programs are being really transformational, but It's not a button. It's not a button you flip on.

Speaker 5

So I did a lot of HR tech implementations throughout my career. That's been a common red thread, so the IT folks are my buds. I learned a lot from them. I think they know a lot and pay attention to them. This is the first time I've ever think I've experienced us letting the tech lead instead of understanding our requirements first as businesses. You never do that. You do the requirements first. You think about how the systems need to change, how this is actually gonna solve real problems, and then you experiment, you pilot, and you go out, right? You take safer risks on some of this stuff. But there's a real risk that came out in a few headlines for me this week that I saw that I think is the dangers, and I keep coming back to the story of Theranos and Bad Blood, that book Bad Blood you're selling air hair. And I'm not saying AI is air. There's real use cases. It's very powerful. Some good things absolutely will come from it, right? But Pocket OS, did you hear the story about they're this SaaS company that supports rental car businesses, and they were using Claude Cursor, and somewhere in that it wiped out their entire main database and all of their backup databases in nine seconds. Their entire business gone. And that's a real risk when you think you're just turning a light switch on, right? Or Uber burning through their entire budget after doing AI layoffs for engineers running to pay for their budget. running through that budget in four months in 2026. So there are these real risks that are just like no one's slowing down to evaluate. That's This is the first time I've really There's something the need to, for speed is confusing to me a little bit.

Speaker

I think that's the biggest thing for me, especially coming out of all the conference seasons is we are making huge decisions about our business about our people based on a promise that hasn't reconciled. I don't know how many people and how many transformation sessions are We're doing really transformational stuff, and the big transformational stuff they're doing is things like getting rid of the nine box, which if you don't know what the nine box is, it's the performance management process, where we're l- ranking people and putting them in different spaces in a box, and that's something we talked about getting rid of in 2017. And so on one hand, we have an Ethan Mollick saying the AI training you did in January is already obsolete, and then I'm going into these sessions in these orgs that are saying the transformational shit we're doing to meet the moment is something we should've been doing in 2017. And on the same token, we're seeing organizations laying people off, 10% of their people, 15% of their people, on a promise. And really freaks me out a lot of times because to your point, Mel, we're not really designing the requirements, or we're not really thinking about why are we even freaking doing this?

Speaker 2

I've been actually really curious slash fearful in the last several weeks around, I think similarly I don't know- I don't have the backing for this, so this is just my experience out in the reporting field.

Speaker 4

Sure.

Speaker 2

I think about AI in the context of like Netflix and like Uber, and so the i- this idea of transforming the way we watch TV or transforming the way we get a ride somewhere, and the promise was always to make like that thing better. What it really just did was change who we paid to get that thing in our lives, right? Like now we, we don't pay the cable company, we pay Netflix and about 40 other companies for our TV, and we don't pay the cab driver, we pay, Uber or Lyft, et cetera. And this conversation around AI tokens and AI spend, and then on top of that, those headlines around all the major layoffs to make room to pay for this, It makes me curious and a little bit fearful of what does this workplace look like once we start investing at the very explicit expense of our human capital? What's gonna happen when we, realize that this really is just like a new way to to think about who we pay for some of the same productivity, and we don't have the resources to put out a product or whatever service that we were doing before. The separation of the human talent from all this AI transformation is really scary when you think about what are we gonna be left with? And I don't wanna be in a position where organizations just have to pay Silicon Valley what they would've paid for, you know- Totally 30 employees in their tech and development department.

Speaker 4

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3

No, it's a-- I think one of the things that's shaping how we all feel is that the mission is clear, right? You can see what they're working at. They brought in Uber to replace cab drivers. Once they got rid of all the cab drivers, what happened? They started paying everybody less. Every Uber driver- Totally makes less and less, right? And now the Uber driver's being replaced by Waymo. So we're already seeing like the full- Yeah completion of that cycle. But we're all- Yeah we're all in some field, it feels like, where that cycle is in some stage. Like they're already automating this part of my job and that part of my job, and sometimes you're being asked to automate yourself out of that job. It's an awful experience and it's leading to a lot of resentment and quiet resistance, right? Like you learn how to say the right things so that you sound like you're on board, and then quietly folks try to basically sabotage the AI effort or don't buy into it, don't support it, don't do the things that they say that they're gonna do. And when You you listen to the speakers at Transform, you can see that there's this gulf between leaders and their people, and there's zero trust coming from the people side, right? Like the employees. They just don't believe anything that you say right now. I'm like that position is earned, quite frankly. By constantly going in the way of capital over humans, that's what we've done. We've created an environment where their trust cannot exist. So and they're watching it play out in real time, and that's what's really like making this whole thing feel so tense, along with everything else that's going on in the world, obviously. But yeah, I just think that there's this tension in the air that we're all on borrowed time.

Speaker 5

There's also the conflict, right? In the messaging at Unleash, we heard, "Humans are your competitive advantage." Yeah. Last year, "Humans in the loop are gonna be so critical," right? Yeah. So there's all this human, and w- that's our ethos. We believe humans are important. And I watched an, a speaker a couple weeks ago talk about how, everything in the AI is on yesterday's information, so if you want real innovation, you have to rely on humans and their lived experience to think differently and creatively, because it's not going to do that for you. That's unique to humans, at least today, let's preface with that to be kind. But it's almost think about the span of COVID, of we're all in this toget- like the messaging, the confusing... It feels like you're getting gaslit by a bad ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend in college or something. Like- we're in this together. That's happened. That's happened. You're more, you're so important to our organization just six years ago to, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out."

Speaker 2

Yeah. No, 'cause they're still lying about the door- Yeah hitting you on the way out, right? The lie is still around how valuable humans are in this space- as I lay off 10% of my workplace. The lie is still holding it both. And of course your workforce doesn't believe you. A, you don't exactly know yet, and that is fair. I'm not trying to be unkind. You don't know 'cause we don't know. The, like we-we're in the testing and pilot, we don't know. But like you can't keep lying to folks about what their expectations should be because you don't know gulf is real, it's o-on top of everything else. It's probably lacking my-- It, impacts my motivation, my, my own productivity, my own interest in like staying with this company because I don't know if I'm in their long haul vision. But so should they be in my long haul vision? I don't know. Maybe I need to, take up 10 side hustle jobs in order to survive in this new economy.

Two AI Worlds Not Talking

Speaker 3

It's interesting too so I'm at Transform. It's HR Summer Camp as everybody's kept calling it. And it's like- You're hearing these conversations about humans in the loop, helping people develop the expertise to challenge AI outputs. This is very much like the human side of the challenge, right? You get over-- I get to HumanX in San Francisco, and it's talking about agents monitoring agents, governance that's completely automated. You're talking about literally an ad campaign from one of the companies that says, "Stop hiring humans." Granted, they're trolling. They're trying to ruffle feathers with that and rage bait as an ad strategy, but it's still this idea that permeates, right? And you're listening to experts and they're talking about all the different things that this technology will do unsupervised. And you're like, these two worlds, one of them is builders, one of them is the people side, and they're not talking to each other. I had a moment with one of the few other HR-focused people or people-focused people at HumanX, and she said, "Do you notice that we are among only a handful of HR people in this entire conference?" And I was like, "Yeah. We're just not in the-- They're just not in the room." But then I'm at Transform, and I'm like, "Yeah, but nobody else is in the room there either." So somewhere along the line, I think we've got to get these worlds together to jive and work together because otherwise you said it, the tech side is leading. It's the first time. But it shows up in the results, right? It shows up in how it's communicated, in the ideas that are presented. It That's the side that's leading.

Speaker

What's it gonna take for those sides to come together?

Speaker 3

The problem is like you have to talk the tech side off the speed, massive adoption, like y- we're just gonna go until everything breaks mentality, which I don't know if you can do that. Because there's a lot of people that are making decisions within that sector that quite frankly, the whole system could collapse, but they are not going to feel it like everybody else would, i'm sitting there listening to the guy from AWS, I can't remember what his position was, but he's talking about, "Yeah, it's gonna kinda cause a lot of market pain." And I'm like, "Yeah, for me, but you make how much money?" I don't think- Yeah you're going to feel it like the rest of us do. And so you can casually yeah, it's gonna do this," but you're talking about I could be living in a tent city. So this is a massive sort of like gap in the d- in the understanding of it and the reality of it. And that's like the part that bugs me is there's just so little concern. And like when we-- This is why we keep talking about empathy and leadership, like- You have to, at some point, it's gonna take leaders that are going to be more interested in the greater good of society, which I'm not saying that they all don't. They-- there are those that want to do this responsibly or ethically, but there's also board pressures. There's also, a lot, just a lot of mitigating factors that they have to live with as part of that role that is gonna cause decisions that are not at the, for the greater good of all of us. And so I don't... That's why it's as you look at the two, as I look at the two conferences in my mind, I'm just like, I don't know how to get them together, to be honest, 'cause I don't think they have a common interest. And that's a problem.

Speaker 2

What Mel had suggested earlier too, like the tech is leading in this, and I think it's compounded by how fast the capabilities are changing and like what we're expecting from the technology inside our workplace keeps changing. There was a, a time several years ago, but like the really cool stuff that like ChatGPT could do that we had never seen like a tool be able to produce before was really eye-opening. And I think it, it made folks like really interested and excited around what the possibilities could be. But then we kept iterating on all of that. And again, like some, I think David m- like agents managing agents on an orchestration level, which was always a thing that like humans were supposed to be doing with their strings or whatever. Part of, I think the problem is like tech is leading, but also we don't know where w- like it's iterating as fast as we're developing programs, and we're not doing what Mel has suggested, which was what do we need the tool to produce for us? Or how do we get that result, and where can the tool best, make some impacts on our productivity or our speed or whatever the piece is that's, the hassle for each individual organization or each honestly individual workflow inside the organization.

Regulation Governance And Trust

Speaker

I keep thinking about where's regulation, and especially where's US policy, especially when we think about regulating AI. Fun fact, I almost punched somebody in the face at Unleash because the only government person there was the chief innovation officer from the Department of Labor, who basically said not only are they focused on AI upskilling through text messages right after Ethan Mollick said, your your training is gonna be obsolete. And the other thing that they said And they're getting $10 billion of money from the Department of Education over to the Department of Labor in order to do that. And I was like, "I need to hit someone right now." This is just feels like completely asinine to me. That's a very long way of asking, where does government play in this? And did you hear anything about where government regulation is? Does it have a space here? What are you hearing on the ground around regulating this shit?

Speaker 2

Everyone looks at Europe and just hope and pray. There isn't really a good answer for that domestically. The, I think the idea around the- quilt patchwork of legislation across states is what, folks are trying to guard against or at least be prepared for. The indication from Congress and at least the Trump administration is, yeah, we don't want regulation involved in this process to stifle innovation, and we're gonna facilitate opportunities for innovation, which seems like the priority, and compliance and regulation doesn't feel like it's on the radar. But it's obviously on the radar, but it doesn't feel like that's a priority. So I know a lot of organizations look to Europe and then just assume that eventually someone will screw the nuts back on our brains, and we'll have some legislation that'll be way, late and not useful

Speaker 3

yeah. I think I also heard that Department of Labor spiel about the Make America AI Ready, say, program, and I, all I could think was, like, so this, the government putting this program on our phones? All right. I can already see the trust issues forming, but beyond that what are they teaching? Is it AI fundamentals? Is it Grok telling me about my skill relevancy? Grok. Grok. The range of possibilities with this group of people that would be making these decisions is quite wide and frightening. In terms of like regulation, it's gonna have to happen at the state level, right? There's no national discourse that's meaningful that's gonna happen. Not during this administration. Maybe in the years to come after it. God knows where we're at by then. But yeah, it's gotta happen at the state level, and it's really gonna be down to enterprises that do, that are multinationals that have to adopt this as a standard practice because they're operating in other places where there are restrictive rules. And so that just becomes the norm. That's one hope. Then yeah, the other would just be, ethical organizations, 'cause really you're shaping a lot of this in real time, right? That's one of the things with governance that happens is why it can't keep up is that it's literally just being invented piecemeal a lot of the time. So yeah, I don't know where the big hope is, but I do think governments have a big role to play. And not just in how businesses use it, but like what the tools themselves can be developed to do. At some point, it's, this, we-- I think we've seen enough bad evidence of it being a person's therapist- that it's time to start thinking about what's okay for this thing to do and what's not.

Speaker 5

I live in Connecticut, and that's one of the states, they have several bills that have just gone through our Senate and passed the Senate to have tighter restrictions around AI to protect consumers, protect residents even in protect, like employer protections, trying to think through what that looks like. Francesca and I were joking. I know we put out a little meme with a wolf in sheep's clothing in a field with a bunch of other sheep because when we did the math on a Friday afternoon out of curiosity or just feeling like, "What's happening here?" It's like governments need to come together with the Fortune 50. The C-suite does have a opportunity here to really shape something meaningful with the government on how this is gonna impact the future of work, how this will impact even just society as a whole, and how do we wanna come through this together. But to your good point, which administration is gonna support that, right? But...

Speaker 3

You know what I'm interested to see, though? You remember how like during remote work there were like states that became like remote destinations? I think like Tulsa, Oklahoma was a good example. Oh, yeah. Tulsa. "Remove here, work remotely," and all that. They're trying to give breaks. I'm like- Yeah will there be like one state that's "AI is banned in employment"? 'Cause if you wanted to expand your tax base real quick, it's

Speaker 5

gonna be a New England state. I'm calling it now. Maine just banned data centers.

Speaker 3

There you go. So- Yeah. We just,

Speaker 5

Yeah

Speaker 3

even here in Atlanta, like they just sh- stopped one just from going further because they're like we need to reassess this first." So there's a lot of like growing- Yeah sentiment about how this technology works and what it's actually meant to do.

Speaker 2

And it shows just the proliferation of the mistrust that the American public, right? It's not just in our own spaces, but are we scared that these, this technology is gonna destroy our communities, our environment? Like it is beyond just is this robot gonna replace me in writing newsletter articles. It's will this robot contribute to some really catastrophic irreversible damage to like our society or our planet? It's, those are real concerns. I don't wanna sound like gloomy, but those are real concerns.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 3

It's a part

Speaker 2

of it. And you have to operate, like that's a reality in your workplace too that like people mistrust this technology not just in their own personal usage in the workplace, but as like a new phenomenon that's happening in the society that is under thoughtful, under thought about and like the hallway, halls of power th- that no one's moving on it. Like somebody, someone's gotta move on it.

Speaker 3

It's interesting too- Yeah 'cause like I've had that conversation with some of my colleagues, right? About are you using it for a LinkedIn post 'cause I don't know, do you wanna consume the power of a small business and like sap water from, like whatever the bigger concern is. Do you wanna do that for a LinkedIn post, or do you just wanna write it 'cause you're a writer, by the way, so just write it. And reaction that you get, and it's not just amongst my team, this is with anybody that you talk to is "Oh God, are you thinking about that too?" Because the nature of everything now is so exhausting and-

Speaker 2

Yeah

Speaker 3

it's everywhere, that it's almost like I can't consider that as well. And I understand, but like it might be one of the most important questions we ask ourselves.

Speaker 2

Just because there is so much happening and there's so much to consider doesn't mean that we shouldn't be slowing our breaks and figuring out how we want to be intentional about using this really transformational technology. If you acknowledge that it's really transformational, why wouldn't you put time and effort into figuring out what are the implications? What are the best ways to reap its productivity? What are the, things to be cautious about or things that we need to guard against? That all feels like needs to be more prominent in the conversation. And again, if folks aren't hearing that from their leaders, they're gonna continue to mistrust What's happening with the technology in their own backyard.

Speaker 5

Well,

Speaker 2

you have a- Or literal backyard as in, in David's backyard.

Speaker 5

You have a sustainability play on your website. You care about ESG and sustainability. Like, how are you not putting that as part of, like, how you think about using this tool?

Speaker 2

'Cause you're scared of the federal government.

Speaker 5

There you go.

Speaker 2

Honestly- You want to be labeled woke not that they should be, but I mean- Yeah I think ESG is often under the same umbrella as the DEI, initiatives and there's a lot of pressure by some organizations and some in the federal government to readdress how we think about our social responsibility at work and how we think about diversity and inclusion at work. That's why. Yeah

Speaker 3

they're absolutely in the same bucket.

Speaker 2

Yes.

Speaker

Yeah.

Practical AI Use Cases That Work

Speaker

Something else I can't reconcile is some of the examples of what great AI looks like, and I do want to pivot to other forces at work besides AI. But something I was really taken with, and Mel, you and I talk about this all the time, and I'm not gonna name names, and it... God bless him. God bless him. But, when we ask any of these research firms or big consulting firms and experts, "Who's nailing AI right now? Who's doing this really well and very thoughtfully within an organization?" It all comes back to this one guy that is doing a great job of AI adoption and AI integration in their company, and all of these companies are like, "This guy is the golden child of AI right now in terms of how we integrate AI in our organization." And it's great. One guy. One guy, okay? And when you look at that guy's organization, it is, I believe, less than 500 people, and they sell AI. And yet all of these organizations are holding this guy up as the arbiter of what we should be doing, as opposed to thinking about what is really right for our organization and going slow to go fast. One of the best examples I heard at Unleash of AI was in the elevator on the way down to the fucking conference, because at the same time, you know how in Vegas there's multiple conferences running at once? Yeah. There was a first responder conference going at the same time as Unleash, and we're going down in the elevator, and we're jaw wagging as you do. Somehow came on AI, and he's "Oh, we're using AI." And I'm like, "No shit. How are you using AI?" It turns out that most of 911 calls are butt dials or they're drunk people. And there's a massive need for dispatchers, and it's a very high turnover role. And so they had a very specific problem that AI could solve in terms of being that first rung to determine is this a call that needs a dispatcher or not? And in one year they saved 65,000 garbage calls, so the dispatchers could really get to calls that mattered, and it helps them with their talent problem. And that's the best fucking use of AI I've heard all year.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker

I know that sounds really dumb, That was one of the things I was really taken with was like there's one person.

Speaker 2

N- no, it doesn't sound dumb. It sounds like it's a very specific question- and a very specific application to the technology that addresses only that question. And I think you'll find more and more that that's the only approach to this technology that's gonna make any kind of benefit. Maybe some folks with a lot of resources and budget and time to tinker with A groups and B groups could, but the average employer can't, again, flip on a switch, buy a product, say they're gonna do AI, and tell everyone to do AI, and just that solves the question.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 2

The only approach to transforming has to be, like, specific workflow challenges, and you design the specific AI intervention to address that. If you're just gonna add AI to every part of the process, you're not... That's not strategic at all.

Speaker

No. No. No. It's like we've totally lost any g-good organizational design or resource management philosophies in this whole thing.

Speaker 3

It's like- The thing, the, the- Like- things that I've seen that are, like, actually, useful or, practical are just things that are, like you said, niche- there's a lady named Erin Turnmire, does a lot of cool stuff with Claude around HR. She ma- built a thing that was essentially customized to their company's benefits offerings, and was like a benefits coach. Yeah. So allowed the employee to tell it what their needs were, and then, it just works with them to select the best program for, all the little things that they need in their benefits package. Now, that is something that A, she's probably not doesn't have a lot of time to do, but enhances the employee experience, makes it easier for the person to then figure out. Because, we all have selected benefits. It's not a great, fun process, right? It's like- what does half of this mean? To be able to design something that addresses that thing and then also answers all these questions that you would be answering manually- That's a genuinely useful and practical thing, but it is just about benefits.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 3

So it is just about this one thing, and I think that is the stuff that 99% of people who are getting anything from it, that's what they're doing, is addressing like Adam said, a very specific problem.

Speaker 5

It made me think of like for attorneys, right? In a highly regulated industry, and I think there was a Am Law firm this week, Am Law 50 firm this week that got caught in federal court with a filing that I, I don't know if it was, like, 20 wrong cited case law cases. I was a paralegal many moons ago. I also worked in a big law environment and I could see it saving hours of time in things like doc review, right? So there's real use cases in terms of getting back that time for other things. But if you're gonna get back that time, then you're reviewing the research and the cited case law before you file it in federal court. So there are, like, these huge gaps now that are happening for organizations. Again, I think it all keeps coming back to this this friction between the need for speed, and the need to really slow down and be like, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should. How is this really valuable for us, and what does this change?" That's, that friction is driving everything right now.

Burnout Noise And Constant Triage

Speaker

Obviously AI was a huge topic, continues to be. I understand why it dominates everything, 'cause it just gets its tentacles in and here we go. And I'm also curious about other forces that are impacting work, companies, or workers right now. What else are you hearing out there besides the AI story? What else is going on for companies, for workers?

Speaker 3

I think it's the general noise of the world is the number one thing that comes to mind, right? The news is a constant barrage of almost, what the hell, has this ever happened before? Have you ever seen anything like this? 'Cause in my lifetime, w- I don't know how many times I've had that discussion of what is going on? This is the weirdest timeline that we live in. And so it's disorienting. And then you lo- you go and you navigate the world just living your life, and things that are, just bizarre a lot. Like we're, there's more integration of technology just into everyday life, you go to a store, you can't talk to a person. And suddenly becomes more and more on you to create your own experience, where it used to just be a thing that you did. And everything is more demanding of you is what it feels like. Everyday experiences, not even just work. And then on top of that, yeah, then there's this constant noise in the background of they're bombing this now, or this crisis is happening, or this bizarre incident, in, in your local news, right? Could be, like, anything. I've had some pretty weird ones lately here in Atlanta that I won't go into, but it's been like that's in the background. And then you've got your actual life. How do you balance all that? Most people are burnt out from the moment they wake up.

Speaker 2

I think there's a lot of fear around reacting to what's happening in the world too, and those impacts on the workplace or my livelihood, right? The moves of the administration have often been loud and a little chaotic in a way that encourages people to react to them, whether positively or negatively. Although some of those reactions can put your, livelihood at risk because we have such a online world we were just in a pitch meeting at the beginning of an Iran war, and we spent the majority of the time talking about the fact that there's a new Middle East war happening right now. And I think there's, folks have reactions and responses to that, but it feels less secure to express my opinions about those things or whatever. And maybe as a reporter I shouldn't anyway. But the general, working public, I think there's a risk. There's a risk that comes with speaking out or a risk with the saying the wrong thing that the wrong person hears and then targets your job or your livelihood. We've seen that happen a lot since the beginning of I guess since the winter really where folks are reacting to the news. And maybe there's a some kind of reaction that other folks don't like, and then it gets whipped up and people lose jobs. I think that's a real fear that people have right now too.

Speaker 3

And then there's also like we are a part of generations that we talk about our mental health more openly, or we think about it, I think, a little bit more than previous generations may have. And so I, that's all part of it. I sit and have the conversation with myself once a week probably about like circle of influence, circle of control. Stay focused here 'cause what do you want me to do about that? I can't- Yeah I don't have access to the files. I can't tell you what happened on that island or whatever, whatever it is today. Yeah. And so it's like I just gotta s- I j- I just gotta be David. I just gotta talk about AI and leadership and stay there, and then at night paint. Try not to pay attention to all this, try to hold it together. And that's really what it is.

Speaker 2

And but the emotional labor to do all of that is actually- Yeah really stressful on top of it, right? The fact that we're actually just expected to show up to work when all of this is happening is actually, I think like an underreported phenomenon, right? This is an exhausting time to just be around, and to have to go in and like phoning in or talk about AI and as if it like means something that there isn't like bombs falling on people halfway across the world. That's an additional mental challenge. I don't think it's anywhere near as challenging as- living abroad, but I think you have to live with both of those things and still put out a good work product because you're scared your job might, become a robot's job in a year or six months even

Speaker 5

or piling on just the regular life shit. Like maybe you're dealing with taking care of your aging parent, or you've got kids that are struggling, or your pet. Or just the or or, the mental labor of it all is so exhausting that I think people are just disassociating in real time for survival, it seems

Speaker 2

this is like the folks are not quitting their job 'cause they're scared. There is no other jobs out there to move to. So like we all collectively feel like we're stuck in the job that we have. We're thankful almost because it is not a robot's job just yet, and everything is pretty miserable. I'm not very motivated to do all of the things I'm supposed to do because I'm just kinda waiting for that other shoe to drop anyway. Like the thing we're asking just like the general public as a workforce to do it's pretty crazy that that's the baseline expectation.

Speaker

Yeah. There's another layer I'll add, which is m- a lot of orgs have delayered over the last two years, meaning they've taken out manager layers. They have increased the spans of control of their employees. So somebody that used to manage five employees is now managing nine, right? And potentially an offshore, and now they're adding a genic, right? And so more and more people I'm talking to too, it just feels like they're in this constant state of triage- As opposed to being able to get on top of anything or get ahead of anything. It's just triage constantly.

Speaker 3

No, and you have like millennial generation, right? We've all been through just one crisis after another. I was talking to somebody recently. My question to them was like, "When was the last time you felt like y- in your role you were doing what you were supposed to be doing?" Or like- 2017. Or that you were doing something that was like, how you envision the role. And they just sat there and looked at me for a bit, and I was like it was like this awkward silence. I'm like, "I don't know." And his answer was eventually like, at the end of the day, like I got a $2,000 car bill right now, car repair bill. I've got-- I just broke up with my girlfriend. I'm trying to move. There's too much. I don't, I don't-- Who has time to think about this? You know what I mean? I just wanna go, I wanna do what I gotta do to get the check and pay the bills and get it over with." And we are constantly in that state of survival it feels you can never thrive as long as all you're just doing is surviving, right? But you have no choice. It's what am I supposed to do? Let the lights go out? It's not an option.

Speaker 2

I think that phenomenon too, this lack of engagement, this lack of trust and transparency in my employment like system anyway, right? The I just work here phenomenon. Like I don't even have the capacity to be mad about whatever- The like big suits in the C-suite are deciding for me about AI because like I literally just need to make sure that my mortgage gets paid and that there's food like this week, and it feels like I couldn't get those things done if I left for a different job because they're just not out there. So I think on top of that, there's this whole burnout engagement like phenomenon inside the workplace that it just, yeah, it feels like it's a challenging time for everyone.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker

That's

Speaker 3

right.

Speaker 2

Unless you're a big tech company with an AI product or

Speaker 3

something. I saw somebody on LinkedIn say "If you're gonna tell me to take ownership of something, I'm gonna tell you to show me my profit share from that." Yeah.

Speaker 2

That's

Speaker 4

right.

Speaker

What's

Underhyped Risks And Brain Drain

Speaker

underhyped right now? What are you hearing that you're like, "Why aren't we talking more about this?" Or needs more airtime? Is maybe a glimmer of hope that's being underhyped right now. What is underhyped? I mean- Please, God, give me a glimmer of hope.

Speaker 3

Aliens? Aliens? On the underhyped side, honestly, I don't know. This is not a glimmer of hope. Sorry. I think that there are glimmers of hope. Like one thing that gives me a little bit of hope, for example, is I am hearing more talk about accountability, right? So these AI things go wrong, whether it's a decision or an initiative that, blows up in your face, who owns it? Who are the people that drove that decision to take us to that place? Not just legally or organizationally, but like governance structures that should answer the question, don't exist or exist. I wrote an article about how like actually if you think about it, the anthropic versus the government situation is a perfect example of no one owns these decisions, and so now, like it's up to the CEO to do the right thing. How often do you want that to be the case? Like- Exactly leave it up to the CEO to do the right thing. It's and I think that this problem will get louder before it, calms down, but the conversation is happening- in important circles, so I think that is encouraging. On the not so encouraging side, I think that people are downplaying like the spatial AI aspect of AI coming into it and navigating our world. There's some cool things that could come out about this, like in terms of, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics. There's some things that could really be interesting. But also, it just means that there are like even more cameras everywhere, accessed by God knows who. Every time I see one, I'm like, "Ugh, that's another job. There's another job," and so that is something that was just going to proliferate. I know we've said for a long time like blue collar work is safe." For now, but the plumber bot will eventually exist. And what happens then? That's just a... How do we prepare people for that reality? And it's-

Speaker 2

We just need to only focus on jobs that will take, more than five years in order to be fully replaced. Like we're, we gotta only focus on jobs where the plumber bot has taken so long to develop.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 5

There, so good luck getting around a Victorian house with a

Speaker 3

plumber bot. It'll just somersault up the stairs or,

Speaker 2

I also don't have anything positive. The only thing I would like people to be talking about more is the, like the cognitive decline that is associated with repetitive AI use, more people should be talking about their like repetitive tasks and how, what the outputs of those repetitive tasks do for our knowledge and our productivity and our own understanding of what we're doing and how it contributes to whatever the output is. We're losing that kind of like cognitive expertise that I think should be reported and studied more.

Speaker 3

That is one thing I'm talking a lot about. Like- no it's been a point of concern since the first time I saw ChatGPT. My first thought was like about GPS and how many people I know who can't get to the grocery store without their phone.

Speaker 4

And

Speaker 3

there was an immediate thought that I had is like, all technology does is dumb us down, rot our brains, right? I- it's great. Don't get me wrong. I use it as much as anybody, but who can navigate a library anymore? You gotta be over a certain age, otherwise you just Google. Like right? Well- Yeah. We're old enough. Look at this, this says he's been to a library, knows how to get around, but

Speaker 5

beautifully seasoned. Yeah. I was a c- child of the '80s. I knew everyone's phone number memorized.

Speaker 3

Oh, yeah. Can you still do that now? The older

Speaker 5

people- Everyb- everyone's phone number. I was listening to someone yesterday talk about hearing loss, 'cause I recently had a hearing test at 46, y- as you do. When you start to lose your hearing, it really contributes to onset dementia because the act of hearing actually- It does signals certain things in your brain. That overuse of these types of tools, essentially like hearing loss, could contribute to something like dementia down the road because you're no longer relying on your, yourself to use those muscles. I don't know. That's such a good point. No, it's,

Speaker 3

it's an incredibly big concern. Yeah. There's a lot of research around it, There's a lot more talk around how to use this technology in a way that still challenges you, that still helps you develop and, keeps your expertise intact. I sat in on two different sessions during this conference run that were listening to folks talk about how they can't stand people using it to write emails. And I'm like have you communicated to them what they should be doing with

Speaker 5

it?" Good question.

Speaker 3

Like you've gotta give them the use and say "I expect you to write me your Slack message. If I find all the little AI writing tropes in there, we're gonna have to have a conversation. I need to hear from you. I need to see your professional development and how you communicate." Like those are things that you're gonna have to say explicitly. You can't just be like they'll figure it out." No they won't. They'll just use this thing for everything. And I heard, I had one expert on the podcast, she called it the Jiffy lubrication of every job. And I was like, "Oof, that's a good one."

Speaker 5

I hope people also start to realize they're capable. You were capable before this technology existed. You're still capable without it. So just starting with your own capability first as a rule of thumb feels like a really good thing to

Speaker 2

follow. There's no corporate jargon for, Mel slop or Adam slop, right? There's only a corporate jargon for AI slop. We are unique and special. Yeah.

Speaker 3

Intention is as powerful as speed. So if you're approaching it with a certain intention and You're being very specific in targeting what you want, it may come out of the AI, but it's still what you wanted. So you- Yeah created it through the AI, but you didn't just put in something and go, "Oh, that looks great," copy, paste. No, that's not what I meant. What I'm looking for is this. Please look at this. You're being more specific. You are challenging it. You are trying to think. Like-

Speaker

Yeah

Speaker 3

it's not the old-fashioned way of doing it, but I don't bang out these stories on a typewriter either, so like it is what it is. The... Things change, and that's okay. I'm okay with things changing, but we have to keep ourselves intact. And like- Yeah a lot of that is going to come down to just being super intentional about it.

Speaker

I wanna do some

Advice For The Next Generation

Speaker

rapid round stuff based on- Okay some of this discussion could be a sentence, could be a word. You can go longer. It's fine. Okay. Ready for it? Here, I wrote these down, so this is gonna be a little impromptu. Okay. What would you recommend a loved one do after high school, now?

Speaker 5

Travel, if they can. Really experience the world and people.

Speaker 3

It will help you remember that people are largely good, very similar. Yeah. We all want the same things out of life mostly. Restore your faith in the bigger picture. So that is good advice. I always recommend people travel. You know what? Actually, this is my answer, which is that is the million-dollar question right now, and I don't think that there is an answer. Travel's a good one because I don't think that blue collar is gonna, be some silver bullet. I don't think our knowledge work is gonna get any better anytime soon. I think if you wanna build data centers, you can kinda get into IT infrastructure and try to physically build out these things in the next five years. That's probably a need that won't evaporate, although eventually probably will be replaced by some sort of automation. I don't know what to do. Go farm. Yeah. I always recommend grow your own food. That's all- get started that's good advice for anybody. It's true.

Speaker 2

But

Speaker 3

I think if... It depends on what you wanna do, but if you can identify something that you feel like, "Yeah, that could be my road forward," and in that field there's any kind of apprenticeship, go that way. Because you can make some money, survive, but learn in real time. College is quite frankly, in 10 years, it doesn't keep up now, I can't even imagine in 10 years what it's gonna be. It's essentially just gonna be a big networking event is what you're really doing, is networking with peers your age, which has value. But if you just wanna get straight into work or you wanna do something different, maybe you don't feel like college is for you, then I think try to find something where you can be trained in real time and see the challenges of the roles that you wanna take on. And I think apprenticeship will grow and become more important as we try to figure out how to redesign entry-level roles. 'Cause Adam said, it's the million-dollar question and there is no clear answer.

Speaker

Yeah. I hope more people go back for journalism. Sure. No.

Speaker 3

I do not recommend- I do

Speaker 4

i- I know, but we need more journalists. Yeah. We need more journalists.

Speaker 3

It's a tough time. God.

Speaker 4

Yeah. You both are like, "No, don't do it, don't do it."

Speaker 5

Trend here, though, is the advice, I think, across the board is figure out who you are- Outside of what everyone else is telling you need to be. Because the future is changing so fast and just being written so quickly that it's just like really focus on yourself and getting to know who you are and what you want out of life and only that. You define your success. Work on defining what success looks like for you.

Speaker 2

I do actually think that younger folks who are entering the kind of adult world right now are better at that than- Yeah Our generation, right? I think people are better at, what David said, find what you like and make a YouTube channel and a TikTok about it. Like, how many random, people's hobbies are, Instagram channels that you follow now because they were really interesting. And it's, I don't know, it's not it's not like the end-all job, grow an expertise. Grow, do something you like and try to find a way to get paid for it.

Speaker 3

And what Mel just said I think is great advice for all of us, which is we all could probably do with a little less defining ourselves by what we do for a living. And I would tell a young person don't start down that road. Define yourself, be comfortable with that, live in your own skin, and then yeah, find a way to pay the bills." 'Cause they're all just jobs. We call them careers, but at the end of the day, it's just a series of jobs. Yeah.

Speaker

All right. Here's my last question for you.

Magic Wand Changes To Work

Speaker

If you could wave a magic wand and make anything happen I'm just making stuff up, universal basic income or healthcare for all or the stock market goes away, whatever it is. If you could make anything happen, what's one thing that you would implement to make work better for humans?

Speaker 3

I think UBI is a strong one 'cause it would release some of the tension around I need this badly. Universal, healthcare essentially does some of the same thing. To not have your access to it based on whether or not you're employed is a massive difference, right? And like that would improve a lot of lives, but I think just to navigate the stress of the years to come, UBI would be massive. If we could just wave a wand and make that happen, I think that would be a world of difference.

Speaker

UBI b- u- being universal basic income, I know a lot of the numbers right now are s- anywhere from 20,000 to 65,000 a person. I would love to see those numbers go up a little bit to a absolutely livable wage. But yeah, it's a great point.

Speaker 2

I also would be fearful with UBI that we would start gutting other social services, because I think a lot of the transition could be viewed by many people as we don't need that if everybody has access to whatever. We can rely on the private sector for everything." And I would be fearful that our social services and our social safety net would start to get gutted because people are misthink or misunderstand that suddenly everyone has access to, what, $20,000 that they can get the healthcare that they need, which is just baloney.

Speaker 5

I think I paid that for my co-pay for that hearing test. No, I'm just kidding. Just kidding. This wouldn't

Speaker 3

even surprise me.

Speaker 5

If I could wave a magic wand, yes to removing healthcare from employers, for sure. I agree with that. It's regulation on layoffs. If you look at the history of what companies could or couldn't do, that became really relaxed, what, in the Reagan era, I think. I think. Don't quote me on that. I'm not... I gotta look it up and cite whatever. But especially in this day and age where there's these sweeping decisions, I feel like there needs to be, like, you need to prove that these layoffs are for AI, Because this is societal impact now-

Speaker

Yeah

Speaker 5

that your company's making. So it's like there's gotta be some sort of measure or formula that shows what is the impact going to be now for this community or the... I don't know. There's gotta be something there. France,

Speaker 3

France just did that. They just passed a law- Oh, did they? Yeah, they just passed a law- Ooh. Gotta look that up where you have to show, like-

Speaker 5

Okay

Speaker 3

negative impact- Yeah and what your plan is to help address that. You can't just fire these people. It's not possible, is it? Or you're gonna end up with sanctions or fines or whatever.

Speaker 4

Yeah

Speaker 3

you just said Reagan, which made me think of honestly, as an editor, one thing I'd love to see changed, raise the editorial standard of everything that you see, is bring back the fairness doctrine. He repealed that.

Speaker

What is that? What is the fairness

Speaker 3

doctrine? So before 1987, in news, you would have to show both sides of a story so if you were talking about some policy initiative, you'd have to show the argument for and the argument against, right? And weigh that out. Yeah. And n- when they repealed it, of course, it just opens the floodgates to things like Fox News or, any other news outlets that just only gives you one point of view. That was the beginning of that, and I would like to see that can we at least get back to where our news was actually thought-provoking- Oh, that's good instead of just trying to tell me how to be a man or, or whatever other toxic thing is coming out of it now.

Speaker 2

Billionaires probably, and figure out like a- Yeah some place to put a 100% tax on, and so start to give folks who wanna be rich a finish line, and everything else is ours as a society. Yeah. I think it's fine to wanna be rich. I- I'm not gonna change that out of this society, but I do think that there should be an, end to your wealth gathering, and we should figure out what that is. I don't know, I'm not an expert, and find out what it is and tax it at 100%. Is there-

Speaker 3

This is a good one, too. I've thought about this a lot, and is there that much difference between your life as a person with $900 million or $1 billion? Like you always- I think that- hit a certain point where come on, what else do you need?

Speaker 2

You hit that point and you wanna beat all the other rich guys, and it becomes a separate game. So if you just put a finish line there- Cut it off there, nobody gets to be better than that. There's no internal competition between, amongst them 'cause society gets the rest. If you wanna make a massive amount of money, then you should give most of it back.

Speaker

That's like my biggest fear in this AI race is that this is just a pissing war.

Speaker 2

Oh, it is. Yeah.

Speaker 3

It definitely is.

Speaker

Yeah. But I like the threshold a lot of that's the finish line. You met it. You're done. Go compete on watches or something.

Speaker 2

Build a submarine to visit the Titanic, but no one's done that really well.

Speaker

I know. This is my thing, and I know we're over- I got

Speaker 5

canceled for laughing at the Titanic. No.

Speaker

I

Speaker 3

shouldn't have

Speaker 2

said that. That

Speaker 3

was so bad. Everybody watched that documentary and laughed 'cause that guy was crazy. Oh, that

Speaker

guy was nuts.

Speaker 5

And

Speaker

Listen- there's a lot of good jokes there. There's a lot of good jokes there. All right. What is your, what,

Speaker 5

what is yours? What is your... What would you- Yeah wave your magic wand for?

Speaker

I for me right now, it's just I can't stand the cycle of the stock market. Everything is just this short-term thinking, and I think it's killing us. When you're inside a lot of these public companies too, everything is going in for the the r-earnings calls and everything else, and it's just so much.. A lot of people like to move fast and break things, but I feel like really sustainable, good stuff comes from being able to play the long game. And when you're in an environment and in soil that incents yesterday and efficiency and quick, it's harder than shit to get there. I... And that's where I'm just like, we're not even putting the conditions in for this to happen.

Speaker 2

When I think about what killed news, it's the quarterly earnings call, right? The- Oh, no shit the moving of, what newspapers into some sort of "Oh, you should always be making money." That's not what the commodity was. And when it was a family-run newspaper, the commodity was deliver the news to the community, and then when it was some sort of company that wanted to raise all of the money for assets real estate assets, and then continue to s- to suggest that folks need to be making, a quarterly profit every single quarter on doing the same thing over and over again. Maybe we should ban quarterly profit reports. Yeah. I like Francesca's idea. Yeah. I think that's right.

Speaker

This idea of, news being a public good. I think there's some organisms that should not run quarterly, that should not run on a capitalistic model because that's not the intent. Yeah. And what happens when you do... It's great for some things. It's amazing for some things, right? That's how we get good burritos. It's blowing my mind. It's blowing my mind. I just want everything to slow down, basically.

Speaker 3

No, and that's why when I talked about the fairness doctrine the level of public discourse has got to come back up.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Like- Yeah we're gonna, we can't get anywhere on anything 'cause we don't even live in the same reality. You know what I mean? No. Somebody was saying, like my dad, he's still like ways back in his mind, I think. And he's you can always just talk to people." I'm like, "You can't talk to people. Are you out of your mind?" There's no- Yeah everybody's entrenched. If you don't live in the same reality, and almost none of us do, there's not really a substantive conversation that can come out of that. Yeah. We're just inherently broken from the minute that we start a conversation. Yeah. Almost like the foundations of it don't exist because we don't perceive the same things. And so it's like it's a risk talking about politics with anybody. You know what I mean? Or policy, things like that. It's... You don't know who this person is or kinda like how their opinions have been formed, what information they've been gathering. And so I think we've gotta get back to a place of here's the objective reality. Yeah. You can form your opinions based on that, but we're not gonna argue about, like- Just completely fabricated things. But we gotta start there at least.

Speaker 5

We all need a drink or something after this. Yeah.

Hope Resilience And Human Greatness

Speaker 5

No. Are you guys, are you l- are, is, do you have, are you, are we hopeful about

Speaker

anything?

Speaker 3

Are we hopeful about- You know what? Just name this ep- Yeah. You know what, you talked about move fast, break things. I want you to name- Yeah this episode move at a normal thing, speed, make things better. Like

Speaker 2

Avoid the broken things.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Can we just stop breaking things? 'Cause- Truly I think what w- what comes out of this conversation is everything is broken, and that's really what the core of our issue is. W- what people are like at work and how, what they're experiencing is like everything is broken. Feels like- nothing can work, like government doesn't work, society doesn't work, our conversations aren't working for God sakes, so it's like what does work? It's technically the AI, but it doesn't work 'cause it gave me a bunch of BS.

Speaker 2

So I will say I'm most hopeful for a- as a, a detractor, I am most hopeful for AI. I do think that there we have no other choice but to be resilient through this period of time where it's gonna be- Yeah really silly for people. Yeah. And then at some point the tides will change and we'll realize as a, like a wider whole what the four of us have talked about on this conversation. Which is that like we need people to make important things happen, and we need to equip those people with the right training and approach to get the work done in some sort of AI enabled way. Which unfortunately to get to that point is just gonna take some really awful work, and I- Yeah I wanna give each and every one of you and of all your listeners like some resiliency and some grace with themselves. Everyone has to have some grace with themselves In the scary interim. I am hopeful, but I just think that I'm mindful that there's gonna be more shit to swim through before we get there, and that's gonna be really un-fun and sad.

Speaker 3

One thing that gives me comfort is like what is the, one of the core tenets of capitalism, right? It's competition. And eventually everybody has these tools, and I... It's like Van Jones said this at Transform, but it's something that I talk about all the time as well, is like eventually everybody has the tools. The tools themselves don't actually have a point of view. They just can transmute, like transmit knowledge, but they don't have a perspective through which to see it 'cause they've never been in the world, right? And your people are still the thing that's going to make you unique. It's gonna differentiate you in the market. It's gonna make your marketing sing and your sales more effective more efficient, 'cause they're gonna see the things and they're gonna communicate in ways that are more effective. So I don't-- I think that there will come a moment in the next few years where it's like we've gone too far. We've got to actually go back the other way now and find a better balance because we've left it to these things and they're not effective, or they're, we've capped out their effectiveness without human intervention. So it will come. It's just like Adam said, there might be a little bit more pain first.

Speaker 4

I believe that.

Speaker 5

I'm hopeful for the challengers in the organization, though, who are bringing these things up, those folks who are willing to maybe put their social capital on the line within an org to say, "Hey, can we think about this differently?" 'Cause I do think we're hearing more rumblings, at least in some of the conversations I'm having. Or, I think Francesca, you've shared a few, and even in this discussion, right? We're hearing those pockets of people who are willing to say, "Hey, let's think about this differently." So that gives me hope that there are those people who are willing to not just be like rah, AI." It's you can be positive about AI, but also be like, "Hey, we need to think, just slow, slow down for a bit." So I'm hopeful for that, more of that.

Speaker 3

I think I have two. One is if we do get universal high income, right? That maybe it's just all we get to retire and live in this like Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville and do whatever the fuck we want, and that kind of appeals to me some days. Golf carts, such. But the other probably more realistic one is I think- It's really gonna differentiate great leadership, great creatives, great writers, great sculptors What's gonna come to light is greatness, human greatness. Because that will rise to the top when everything else is AI, and that's interesting. I think this is gonna be painful, but I also think that's very interesting, too.

Speaker 5

It's the next renaissance. We're gonna get some good art out of this. Yeah.

Speaker 2

Yeah, TikTok videos with the fruits.

Speaker

All right. Adam, David, Mel, thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker

Thank you.

Wrap Up And Subscribe

Speaker 6

Thanks for joining us today. Music was by Pink Zebra. This episode was produced, recorded, and edited by yours truly, Francesca and I of "Your Work Friends." And we're an indie pod, folks. We drop new episodes each week on Tuesday, so please

Speaker 7

come back to check them out. Like, subscribe on the platform of your choice, and if you want one big meaty insight about work every single month, subscribe to our newsletter on yourworkfriends.com. Bye, friends.

Speaker 6

Bye,

Speaker 7

friends.

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Francesca Ranieri

Co-host
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Mel Plett

Co-host