AI at Work

If your organization switched off its AI systems tomorrow, would customers, employees or the finance team notice any meaningful difference?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Frank Böhmer, founder and CEO of Ninox, about the growing gap between AI activity and measurable business value. Companies can count tokens, prompts, users, copilots and prototypes, but those numbers mainly reveal participation. They do not show whether a customer issue was resolved faster, an audit passed, an error rate fell or a team handled additional work.

Frank argues that token consumption is a p...

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Rohan Kodialam, co-founder and CEO of Sphinx AI, about the difference between an AI system that sounds capable and one that understands how a business defines truth. Sphinx AI describes itself as an AI research company building human-interpretable context graphs that can support agents across different models and enterprise systems.

Rohan argues that consumer AI can feel impressive because many everyday questions are supported by information in the public domain. The situation changes inside a company. Questions about customer churn, product performance, acquisition costs, or operational efficiency...

What should a finance leader be able to prove before giving an AI agent permission to act?

In this episode of AI at Work, I welcome Danny Fields, Chief Technology and Customer Operations Officer at Avalara, for a conversation about the distance between a convincing AI pilot and a finance workflow people can trust. We discuss the appeal of faster execution alongside the evidence, controls and business ownership needed when software begins making decisions or recommending actions.

Avalara's research provides the starting point. Its global survey of 1,505 CFOs and senior finance leaders found that 92% felt...

How much autonomy should an AI agent receive before it has proved that its work can be trusted?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Alexey Korotich, Chief Product Officer at Wrike and a former Dell software leader. Wrike supports around two million users, along with a growing number of agents, giving Alexey a close view of how enterprise teams are trying to move from AI experiments into daily work.

Alexey challenges two popular measures of progress. A dashboard built in an hour may look impressive, but enterprise software creates lasting value...

How do you give AI agents greater responsibility without losing control of the decisions they make or the costs they generate?

On AI at Work, I’m joined by Jason Kurtz, Chief Executive Officer of Basware, to discuss governed autonomy, financial accountability, and what businesses need to consider as AI begins taking a more active role in their operations. For finance leaders, the challenge extends beyond choosing a tool. They need to understand what an agent is authorized to do, where human judgment remains necessary, and how to establish whether the investment is delivering useful results.

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What evidence shows that AI is making a business more productive, more resilient, and more valuable to a potential buyer?

In this episode of AI At Work, I speak with Robby Riggs, Global Chief Transformation and Operations Officer and Head of Coverage at Equiteq. Robby previously built a consulting business with a cofounder and sold it to North Highland. His experience as an operator informs the way he now works with founders and investors assessing technology services and consulting businesses.

Our conversation begins with the gap between AI claims and operating reality. Robby says buyers...

Are businesses investing in tomorrow's artificial intelligence while continuing to operate with yesterday's organizational structures? And could that explain why so many enterprise AI initiatives struggle to deliver the results leaders expect?

In this episode of AI at Work, Neil C. Hughes is joined by Jesper Schleimann, Head of Business AI for EMEA at SAP, to discuss why adopting AI technology and achieving meaningful business transformation are two very different challenges.

Jesper shares what he's seeing across organizations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, where AI adoption is accelerating but progress remains uneven. While...

How can customs agencies inspect vast volumes of cargo without slowing legitimate trade or handing consequential decisions entirely to an algorithm?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with David Smason, founder of CargoSeer and Head of Customs AI at BigBear.ai, about a form of workplace AI that operates far from the usual office productivity conversation. CargoSeer was built to help customs teams combine cargo documents, x-ray images, routes, commodity codes, tariffs, and historical patterns before an experienced officer makes the final decision.

David explains why traditional customs work can overwhelm even...

Why are so many enterprise AI programs still stuck in pilot mode when powerful models are widely available?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Emma McGrattan, Chief Technology Officer at Actian, about why model selection may be receiving more attention than it deserves. Emma argues that models are becoming increasingly interchangeable, while an organization’s proprietary data, business definitions, governance controls, and data culture remain much harder to reproduce.

Emma explains why familiar terms such as customer, revenue, and churn can mean different things across sales, finance, tax, and operational teams. AI...

What happens when software can reason like a person, move at machine speed, and use every permission it receives?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Adam Ochayon, VP of Product Strategy at Oasis Security, about why autonomous AI agents create a different identity and access problem from the software businesses have secured for decades.

Adam explains that traditional software is fast but generally deterministic, while people can reason but usually act slowly enough for organizations to intervene. AI agents combine reasoning with machine speed. They are goal-seeking, capable of choosing different...

How can a business tell whether workplace AI is producing a meaningful result rather than another encouraging adoption chart?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Scott Pope, Director of Value Advisory at Nexthink, about a problem facing many technology leaders. AI tools are reaching employees quickly, but deployment, usage, and business value are often treated as though they describe the same thing. They do not. A company can distribute thousands of licenses and report active users without knowing whether work became faster, easier, less expensive, or less frustrating.

Scott argues that...

What happens when companies stop adding isolated AI tools and begin redesigning entire business processes around AI employees?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Surojit Chatterjee, founder and CEO of Ema, which stands for Enterprise Machine Assistant. We discuss why the debate about AI replacing jobs often misses the larger business question: how should organizations redesign work when intelligent systems can coordinate tasks, access enterprise knowledge and complete workflows across multiple applications?

Surojit describes this as “agentic business transformation.” Instead of giving every employee another chatbot or assistant, organizations can use coor...

Why are some businesses generating measurable value from AI while others remain surrounded by pilots, rising costs and impressive demonstrations that never reach daily operations?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Brad Hairston, Director of Strategy at SS&C Blue Prism, about the operational and cultural foundations that separate productive AI programs from expensive experimentation.

Brad spent 30 years in consulting before joining SS&C Blue Prism around seven and a half years ago. He now works within the company’s Customer Zero program, which deploys SS&C’s automation technology internally befo...

If anyone can produce a professional-looking image or video with AI, what will make audiences care about one piece of content over another?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Joaquín Cuenca, co-founder and CEO of Freepik, about how generative AI is changing creative work, business workflows, and access to professional production. Freepik serves over one million paid subscribers, while Joaquín says the platform attracts over 70 million monthly visitors.

At that scale, Freepik has seen the difference between an impressive AI demonstration and a tool people can rely on for re...

What does an AI first workplace look like when every employee has an agent but every person remains responsible for the outcome?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Alex Svanevik, co-founder and CEO of Nansen, about how his company is integrating AI agents into daily operations while retaining human judgment, security boundaries, and quality control.

Nansen has around 80 employees, and Alex says each person has been given an AI agent. His own agent, Winnie, prepares draft agendas using previous meetings, company objectives, strategy, and cultural context. Alex then works with the...

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with John Nay, founder and CEO of Norm Ai, about Agentic Law, AI native legal services, outcome based pricing, and the proposed legal framework for companies managed by AI agents.

John has worked on the application of AI to law and public policy for around 14 years. His research predates the current generative AI era and includes GovDeVec, an early attempt to train neural networks on legal and government text so they could identify concepts embedded across large bodies of policy information.

The arrival of frontier language...

How much productive time disappears because somebody misheard an instruction, missed part of a meeting, or could not fully express an idea?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Paul Lee, CEO of Bridge and InnoCaption, about communication friction and why it deserves greater attention in the workplace AI conversation.

Bridge provides AI-powered real-time captioning, transcription, translation, meeting summaries, and meeting intelligence. InnoCaption provides AI and human-powered telephone captioning for eligible Americans who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability. Paul explains how the experience gained from captioning over 30...

Would you trust an AI system to prepare your taxes if it could not reliably tell HMRC guidance from information published by the IRS?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Arjun Kumar, cofounder of Taxd, about AI tax automation, digital tax filing, and the continuing role of human judgment in regulated financial services.

Arjun began his career at PwC after joining through a school-leaver program. While working in expat tax, he and his cofounder saw how professional services firms often relied on offshoring and annual cost reductions rather than sustained investment...

What separates an AI agent that becomes part of everyday operations from one that remains trapped inside an impressive demonstration?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Jacob Kosior, who leads client strategy at EliseAI. The company builds vertical AI agents for the housing industry, handling property management workflows such as answering leasing inquiries, scheduling tours, processing renewals, collecting rent, and coordinating maintenance.

EliseAI says its technology is live across over six million housing units in the United States and Canada. Jacob brings an unusual perspective because he spent over a decade...

How do you know whether AI is making your company smarter rather than simply filling dashboards with impressive activity?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Michael Speranza, CEO of Kantata, about why familiar productivity metrics may be giving business leaders an incomplete picture of AI ROI. Companies can measure time saved, tasks completed, and documents generated, but those figures say little about whether AI is improving commercial decisions, creating revenue, or producing better client outcomes.

Michael introduces the idea of the expertise compounding rate. This measures how effectively a company captures...

What should IT leaders do when employees adopt AI tools faster than their organization can evaluate or approve them?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Hemant Sahani, Vice President of Product Management for Workspace ONE at Omnissa, about the rapid growth of unsanctioned AI applications across the digital workplace.

Omnissa’s State of Digital Workspace 2026 research found that workplace use of AI assistant applications grew by nearly 1000% during 2025. Hemant describes this period as AI’s iPhone moment, with employees choosing the tools that help them work faster instead of waiting for an o...

Is artificial intelligence really eliminating entry-level jobs, or is something much bigger happening beneath the surface? As businesses race to improve productivity and invest in AI, many graduates and early-career professionals are wondering whether the first rung of the career ladder is quietly disappearing.

In this episode of AI at Work, I welcome Trent Cotton, Head of Talent Insights at iCIMS, for a data-driven conversation about how AI is changing hiring, workforce development, and the future of careers. Drawing on decades of HR experience and the latest workforce research, Trent separates headlines from reality and explains why...

What if your business doesn't actually own its website, customer data, or digital marketing infrastructure? It's an uncomfortable question, but one that many founders never ask until they try to switch providers and discover just how difficult it is to leave.

In this episode of AI at Work, I welcome David V. Kimball, Co-Founder and CEO of lilAgents, for a conversation that challenges many of the assumptions businesses have made over the last decade about websites, software subscriptions, AI, and digital ownership. David argues that convenience often comes at a hidden cost, with businesses gradually handing control...

What if the next competitive advantage in business isn't working faster with AI, but making better decisions because of it? As organizations rush to become AI-native, many conversations still focus on productivity, automation, and shipping work more quickly. But is speed really the outcome that matters most?

In this episode of AI at Work, I welcome Jorge Valdivia, Chief Technology Officer at Fleetio, for a thoughtful discussion about what AI is actually changing inside modern organizations. Rather than adding another voice to the growing hype around artificial intelligence, Jorge offers a refreshingly practical perspective on why the...

What if the biggest obstacle to AI success isn't the technology at all, but the way your business actually works?

In this episode of AI at Work, I sit down with Justin Watt, CEO and Co-founder of Switchboard, to discuss why so many AI initiatives disappoint and what organizations should focus on before adding another AI tool to the mix. Justin has spent his career helping growing businesses replace disconnected spreadsheets, manual handoffs, and fragmented workflows with systems that are designed to support the way people really work.

During our conversation, Justin explains why many...

What does it take for AI agents to move beyond impressive demonstrations and become part of the working day?

In this episode of AI at Work, I speak with Will Del Principe from Thoughtly about what happens when AI voice agents are deployed into live customer and revenue operations. While many organizations are still evaluating where AI fits, Thoughtly is already helping businesses automate conversations, qualify leads, and manage customer interactions at a scale that would have been impossible just a few years ago.

Will explains why the first breakthrough for AI voice isn't replacing...

What if the biggest AI challenge facing organizations has nothing to do with technology at all? In this episode of AI at Work, I sit down with Lee Senderov, Chief Transformation Officer at Travelport, to discuss why AI should be viewed as a workforce transformation rather than a technology project, and why many organizations are still framing the opportunity in entirely the wrong way.

While many businesses continue to focus on AI pilots, innovation labs, and isolated technical use cases, Lee argues that the real opportunity lies in empowering every employee. Drawing on Travelport's own AI journey...

What happens when AI-generated code ships faster than humans can properly review it, and who takes the blame when something breaks?

In this episode of AI at Work, I sit down with Cameron Etezadi, Chief Technology Officer at LaunchDarkly, to tackle one of the most uncomfortable questions facing modern software teams. As developers increasingly rely on AI coding assistants, copilots, and public LLMs to accelerate delivery, organizations are finding themselves caught between productivity gains and growing governance risks.

Cameron explains why “Shadow AI” has become the modern evolution of Shadow IT, and why the stakes are...

Why are so many organizations investing millions into AI while still struggling to prove meaningful productivity gains?

In this episode of AI at Work, I spoke with Rahsaan Shears, Principal and AIQ Program Lead at KPMG, about a major new study conducted alongside the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin that analyzed 1.4 million real workplace AI interactions. What emerged from that research challenges many assumptions business leaders currently hold about AI adoption, productivity, and the future of work.

One of the most surprising findings was that the most effective AI...

What happens when AI agent creation stops being the job of engineers and starts landing in the hands of the people who actually understand the business problem?

In this episode of AI At Work, I sat down with Cien Solon, CEO and Founder of LaunchLemonade, to talk about why the next chapter of AI may have less to do with hype and more to do with practical problem-solving. Cien describes LaunchLemonade as the Canva for AI agents, and that immediately caught my attention because it gets to the heart of what so many businesses are looking for...

What happens when software stops being something we use and starts becoming something that works alongside us?

In this episode of AI at Work, I sat down with Mark Skelton, CTO at Node4, to explore how AI is moving beyond content generation and into something far more transformative. Mark has spent more than a decade operating at CTO level, helping organizations navigate shifts from traditional infrastructure to cloud, and now into a world shaped by AI agents, automation, and entirely new ways of delivering technology.

We begin by unpacking the evolution from generative AI to...

How do you keep product teams aligned when AI is speeding everything up, but people, priorities, and expectations are still pulling in different directions?

In this episode of AI At Work, I sat down with Dave West, CEO of Scrum.org, to talk about one of the most overlooked challenges in modern product development: stakeholder collaboration. While so much of the conversation around AI focuses on faster delivery, automation, and productivity, Dave makes the case that the real pressure point is still human. As teams ship more, communicate faster, and rely on AI to remove friction, weak...

What does AI actually change once you move beyond the pilot phase and into the messy reality of live deployment? In this episode of AI at Work, I sit down with Jack Siney, CRO and co-founder of FrontRace, to separate operational truth from industry hype and explore what he calls the “Great Upheaval” already reshaping how organizations generate revenue, measure performance, and define success.

Drawing on experience from the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels program, PwC, multiple startup exits, and now hands-on AI implementation across hundreds of companies, Jack offers a practitioner’s perspective on where AI is de...

What if the best way to improve your negotiation skills was to rehearse the conversation before it ever happened?

In this episode of AI at Work, I sit down with Professor Alexandra Mislin from American University’s Kogod School of Business to explore how AI is quietly reshaping the way professionals prepare for high-stakes conversations. Recently featured in Fortune, Professor Mislin has been teaching her students to use AI as a negotiation practice partner, helping them clarify priorities, test assumptions, and even role-play difficult scenarios before walking into the room.

Negotiation is one of those sk...

How do you move AI from a flashy demo on a conference stage to something that can handle real customer pressure on a Monday morning when the tickets are piling up?

In this episode of AI At Work, I sit down with Niraj Ranjan Rout, Founder and CEO of Hiver, to unpack what it really takes to build AI that works inside high-volume support environments. With more than 10,000 teams using Hiver, including brands like Flexport, Capital One, and Epic Games, Niraj has had a front-row seat to both the promise and the pitfalls of AI in customer...

What does AI at work really look like once the hype fades and the day-to-day reality sets in?

In this episode of AI at Work, I’m joined by Nicole Leib, Regional Vice President of People for the Americas and Global Head of Inclusion at monday.com, for a grounded, refreshingly honest conversation about how AI is actually being used in modern organizations. We recorded this during CES week, when every headline seemed to promise disruption, reinvention, and job loss. Yet the data Nicole brings to the table tells a very different story.

Drawing on Mo...

What if the most important jobs of the next decade already exist, but we just have not named them yet?

In this episode of AI at Work, I sit down with Marinela Profi from SAS to unpack how artificial intelligence is reshaping work at a deeper level than most headlines suggest. We are not just talking about tools, automation, or faster workflows. We are talking about new roles, new decision structures, and a fundamental shift in how humans and machines collaborate inside modern organizations.

Marinela brings a grounded, enterprise-tested perspective to agentic AI, cutting through...

What happens when eighty percent of the global workforce receives less than one percent of technology investment, and why has this imbalance gone largely unchallenged for so long?

In this episode, I sat down with Emma Seymour, Chief Financial Officer of Deputy, to unpack the realities facing the world’s so-called invisible workforce. Deskless workers power healthcare, retail, hospitality, and frontline services, yet the tools built to support them have historically lagged far behind those designed for office-based teams. Emma brings a grounded, finance-led perspective on why this gap exists and why it is finally starting to cl...

Are today’s AI tools actually doing the work, or are they still sitting on the sidelines offering advice that humans have to act on?

In this episode of the AI at Work podcast, I sat down with Oren Michels, Founder and CEO of Barndoor AI, to explore why so much enterprise AI still feels stuck in what he calls “advisor mode.” We talked about the gap between AI that summarizes and AI that acts, and why that distinction matters far more to knowledge workers than most leaders realize. Oren drew on his experience building Mashery during the ea...

What does AI at work really look like once the conference buzz fades and teams have to turn ambition into execution?

In this episode of the AI at Work Podcast, I sit down with Diego Lomanto, Chief Marketing Officer at Writer, to unpack how marketing teams are actually using AI and agents inside real enterprise workflows. Diego brings a grounded perspective shaped by more than two decades in enterprise software, spanning analytics, automation, and now AI, including his time leading product marketing at UiPath during its rapid growth years.

We talk candidly about why AI...