📌 THE POINT IS: Leaders cannot promise which AI future we’ll get. We can commit to helping people learn, giving them a voice in changing their work, and making sure the benefits extend beyond the balance sheet.
I recently watched The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell. I loved it. I also needed to take a break during it and then unpack its discussion with my spouse afterward.
One possible future looks like Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek: abundance, discovery, and people freed to pursue meaningful lives. Another starts with The Terminator and ends in The Matrix. Try teaching the machines morality and perhaps we take a detour through I, Robot.
Science fiction has given us plenty of destinations. It hasn’t handed us a reliable map on how to get to any of them though.
Agency could simply mean keeping your wits about you
What I took from Dario Amodei’s comments in the film was permission to keep living while staying engaged: pay attention, consider the consequences, and make our voices heard through democracy.
Uncertainty doesn’t require paralysis. For leaders, it requires honesty.
Don’t confuse reassurance with a plan
“AI will free everyone to do more meaningful work” sounds wonderful. It also skips the decisions that would make it true.
Gallup’s research, Using AI More Does Not Reassure Workers, Managers Do, found that frequent AI users were more likely to fear losing their jobs. Supportive management was associated with less concern, but familiarity alone wasn’t reassurance. In some cases, people who are closest to helping adopt AI end up sabbotaging it because of that uncertainty about their own jobs.
People can see the technology improving. They want to know where they fit.
A credible leadership message sounds more like this:
We expect work to change. We don’t yet know every role that will change or how quickly. Here’s what we’re testing, how you’ll participate, and what we’re investing in to help you prepare. We’ll update you as we learn.
Then we have to deliver on it.
Give the time back to something human
On September 30, at ITC Las Vegas, a mega-conference for insurance-related technology, I participated with other leaders in imagining work with fewer spreadsheets and more conversations with clients and partners.
Here’s an example that I shared as a possible future:
Imagine my AI-powered data lakehouse alerts me that Mary has become an auto insurance client. It suggests a conversation about her broader protection needs.
I call Mary. We talk about her home, her pets, and the people who depend on her. When life insurance comes up, she tells me she’s always thought it was a scam. I have time now to educate her in a human-to-human way. My AI assistant feeds me helpful resources and information in context of the conversation, but I build the relationship and trust with Mary to help her imagine her future.
Now I have something worth doing. I listen. I understand why. I explain coverage, costs, and tradeoffs in ways that matter to her. AI can help me prepare; I remain responsible for the advice. Mary decides what fits her life.
That is a relationship, with room for judgment and trust.
But that outcome requires a choice. If we use every saved minute to increase call quotas, we haven’t created more space for humanity. We’ve created a faster treadmill.
Learning has to become part of the job
The documentary’s education possibilities stayed with me: patient, personalized help, available when someone needs it. For people poorly served by traditional classrooms, that could open doors throughout adulthood.
There is encouraging evidence. Harvard’s Greg Kestin and Kelly Miller have studied tailored AI tutoring in introductory physics, reporting stronger learning in that setting. They also caution against using AI to bypass thinking. A good learning experience still needs deliberate design.
Imagine bringing that approach into work: an associate rehearsing a difficult client conversation, a manager learning a new discipline, an executive questioning an unfamiliar recommendation.
Ethan Mollick’s recent The Overhang identifies deep knowledge, wide knowledge, taste, and agency as important human advantages. Those capabilities deserve investment. I’ve mentioned that “humans need to do human stuff.” These factors are a great framework by which we can think about where we spend our time in the future.
As leaders, simply saying, “upskill yourself,” is a weak way of doing it. If we provide neither time nor support, the signal will be that it’s either not important or that it’s hopeless for people to keep up. That’s when things like sabbotage will happen more frequently and significantly. Give people protected learning time, practical coaching, and opportunities to apply what they learn. And make sure to include your executive team!
Horizontalification is key…your departments aren’t your customer’s problem
As you build the future of your company, look across entire journeys. Now is the time! Mary needs to experience one relationship with us; our departmental boundaries are our problem (and opportunity to simplify). Redesigning that experience requires leaders and associates to learn beyond their silos.
Agency includes a say in who benefits
Agency means having the understanding and influence to make meaningful choices. At work, people need to question recommendations, challenge assumptions, and help shape the workflows they will use.
It matters at home and at the ballot box, too.
Senator Chris Murphy’s book, Crisis of the Common Good, connects our struggles with meaning and belonging to a culture that puts profit and individual advancement ahead of shared purpose. His argument reaches beyond scarcity. Having more does not automatically mean feeling connected or having power over your life.
AI could help create abundance. How we distribute its benefits will determine whether people experience it that way.
For business leaders, that becomes concrete:
Does productivity fund better service, employee development, and opportunities to advance? Do associates help define success? Can clients like Mary make informed choices without being steered into whatever maximizes our revenue?
We should measure those outcomes alongside cost savings.
Which way do we go from here??
I don’t know whether we’re heading toward Star Trek or The Matrix. I do know, however, that our choices today can give people more knowledge, more influence, and more time for one another.
That’s direction that I’m leading towards.
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