Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work

In this episode, Brian Gorman speaks with Jonathan Schaeffer, founder of Synsira Software Solutions, inventor of Kind, and an AI pioneer who has spent more than 40 years working at the forefront of artificial intelligence.For Jonathan, the arrival of ChatGPT was not the beginning of AI. It was the moment when decades of largely invisible development suddenly became visible to everyone. He sees enormous potential in what comes next, from advances in medicine and education to safer transportation and greater access to knowledge. But he is equally clear that the technology we have today remains imperfect, and that its rapid advancement is outpacing our ability to fully understand, govern, and use it responsibly.At the heart of the conversation is a different way of thinking about our relationship with AI. Jonathan prefers augmented intelligence to artificial intelligence: using AI to extend what people can do rather than simply using it to automate work away.His metaphor is powerful. Make AI the apprentice.Let it gather information, surface possibilities, summarize data, and offer perspectives you might not have considered. But stay in charge. Understand the context. Question what comes back. Verify the facts. Decide what matters. And take responsibility for the outcome.Brian and Jonathan also explore what happens when people turn too much of their thinking over to AI. If technology takes on work that once developed analytical ability, writing skills, and leadership capability, organizations have to become more intentional about how those capabilities will be developed. The answer is not to reject AI, but neither is it to unquestioningly accept whatever AI produces.The conversation closes with another dimension of staying in charge: the data we give AI access to. Jonathan discusses privacy, accuracy, environmental impact, and why those concerns led him to develop KIND, an AI tool designed to work locally with a user’s own data.AI can do extraordinary things. That does not make it the expert, the decision-maker, or the accountable party. Stay in charge. Make AI the apprentice.In This EpisodeWhy ChatGPT represented a seismic shift after decades of largely invisible AI developmentHow augmented intelligence reframes AI as a resource for extending human capability rather than simply replacing workWhy treating AI as an apprentice keeps context, discernment, decision-making, and responsibility with the humanHow leaders can use AI without allowing important human skills and capabilities to atrophyWhy accuracy, privacy, data ownership, and environmental impact matter in deciding how and where we use AIAbout Jonathan SchaefferJonathan Schaeffer is the inventor of KIND and has been at the forefront of artificial intelligence for more than 40 years. An AI researcher, entrepreneur, and inventor, he has spent his career building practical AI systems designed to solve real problems with greater accuracy, transparency, and trust.KIND was first conceived in 2017 while Jonathan was teaching full-time and responding to hundreds of student emails. He created an AI system that interacted only with documents he explicitly provided, giving him a way to generate reliable, explainable answers grounded in trusted information. After years of personal use and refinement, that system evolved into KIND, a downloadable desktop application that allows users to curate their own data, interact with it in depth, and uncover insights without sacrificing privacy.Today, Jonathan is focused on advancing a more trustworthy model for AI that gives users greater control over their information and reduces dependence on opaque, cloud-based systems. Through KIND, he is working to make AI more private, accurate, and useful for individuals and organizations alike.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation or a question you want to explore, reach out.JonathanWebsite: https://kind.synsira.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-schaeffer-phd-frsc-aaai-fellow-3318015/BrianEmail: [email protected]; +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach

AI adoption is often treated as a technology challenge. Choose the right tools, train people to use them, and improve the workflow. But resistance to AI runs deeper than the resistance that accompanies most workplace technologies.In this episode of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work, Brian Gorman speaks with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, founder of Disaster Avoidance Experts and author of The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results, about the psychology beneath AI resistance.Gleb identifies three forces that distinguish AI adoption from more traditional technology change: fear, threats to professional identity, and shame. Employees may fear that using AI means helping train their replacement. They may resist handing over work that has long been part of how they define their professional value. And even those who use AI may hide that use from colleagues, limiting the ability of teams and organizations to learn from one another.Brian and Gleb explore why successful adoption begins by involving people rather than imposing solutions on them. One practical starting point: use AI first to take away the work people find frustrating, repetitive, or burdensome, not necessarily the work they value and want to keep doing. As people experience the benefits and organizational norms begin to change, adoption can expand.The conversation also looks ahead to how roles themselves may evolve. Gleb argues that middle management will remain important, but its work will change as employees increasingly supervise AI agents. Coordination, collaboration, guardrails, and governance become critical leadership responsibilities. And because the technology continues to evolve, continuous learning and unlearning become essential.Ultimately, AI adoption is not simply about what the technology can do. It is about understanding how people experience the change and creating the conditions in which they can move through it.In This EpisodeWhy fear, professional identity, and shame can drive resistance to AIHow “shadow AI” can increase individual productivity while limiting organizational learningWhy involving employees in deciding where AI can help creates stronger buy-inHow the role of middle managers may shift as people increasingly supervise AI agentsWhy continuous learning, unlearning, and human wisdom become more important as AI capability growsAbout Gleb TsipurskyDr. Gleb Tsipursky, called the “Office Whisperer” by The New York Times, helps leaders turn AI hype into measurable results as CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts. He is the author of eight books, including the forthcoming The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results from Georgetown University Press, and his work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Time, Forbes, and The New York Time.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation you want to have or a question you want to explore, reach out. GlebEmail: [email protected] Phone: +1 614-407-4016Website: Disaster Avoidance ExpertsBrianEmail: [email protected]; +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach

In this episode of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work, Brian Gorman speaks with Michael Privat, Chief Data and Engineering Officer at Availity, about a question reaching far beyond software engineering. When AI can perform more of the tasks that once defined our jobs, what does the work become?Michael challenges the assumption that the task itself is the profession. In software engineering, writing code has long been central to professional identity. But as AI becomes increasingly capable of writing that code, Michael argues that the opportunity is not simply to produce more, faster. It is to focus more deeply on why the work is being done, the value it creates, and the human beings it ultimately serves.The conversation also explores Michael’s concept of “talent density”, having sufficient depth across multiple neighboring skills rather than deep expertise in only one. While Michael illustrates the idea through software engineering, its implications reach across the workplace. AI can bring enormous depth to a task very quickly. The human challenge is having enough breadth to understand that depth, connect it to adjacent areas, recognize where it fits, and carry the work from task to meaningful outcome. As AI takes on more specialized tasks, the ability to work across boundaries rather than remain narrowly defined by a single expertise becomes increasingly important.Brian and Michael also examine one of the less visible consequences of AI adoption. What happens to human development when machines take over the work through which people once gained experience. Michael’s distinction between the “map” and the “territory” points to what AI cannot provide. It may give us access to enormous amounts of accumulated knowledge, but it has not walked the territory. Wisdom still develops through experience, accountability, reflection, and ownership.Rather than eliminating opportunities for people early in their careers, Michael argues that leaders need to rethink how those people learn. AI output can become something to examine, challenge, understand, and ultimately take responsibility for, not simply something to accept.Ultimately, the conversation moves from efficiency to purpose. The question is no longer simply, Can AI do this task? It is: What are people now free, and responsible, to contribute?In This EpisodeWhy AI forces us to separate a profession from the tasks historically associated with itWhy “talent density”, sufficient depth across multiple adjacent skills,  matters more as AI provides specialized depth on demandWhy AI amplifies what already exists, including complexity, weak processes, and poor qualityWhat organizations risk losing when AI removes the work through which people develop experience and wisdomWhy understanding, ownership, lived experience, and creating something “lovable” remain distinctly human contributionsAbout Michael PrivatMichael Privat is a Chief Data and Engineering Officer leading a global team of 500+ engineers. With 25 years in tech, he helps organizations unlock speed, clarity, and accountability. He turns stalled engineering teams into high-performing systems built on ownership, discipline, and modern AI-driven workflows through his “accountable autonomy” model.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation you want to have or a question you want to explore, reach out. MichaelLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelprivat/Substack: https://michaelprivat.substack.com/BrianEmail: [email protected]; +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach

AI is rapidly expanding what individuals and organizations are capable of doing. But greater capability raises a deeper question: What are we going to do with it?In this episode of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work, Brian Gorman speaks with Jeff Westphal, author of A Work Life Worth Living and former chairman and CEO of Vertex, about meaning, purpose, and the distinctly human choices that become more important as artificial intelligence grows more powerful.Jeff describes AI as a force multiplier for intelligence. It can research, analyze, synthesize, and help us make better-informed decisions. But it cannot decide what we should care about, what risks are worth taking, or what purpose all that intelligence should serve.Their conversation explores what makes work meaningful and why meaning differs from one person—and one stage of life—to another. Jeff shares how his own experiences with mentors, leadership, family, and recovery taught him that wisdom is formed through lived experience and human connection, not analysis alone.As AI increasingly becomes the smartest presence in the room, the traditional leadership advantage of having the answers begins to disappear. What remains is something more demanding: creating the conditions for people to bring their intelligence and wisdom together, deciding what matters, and resisting the temptation to turn AI into the decision-maker.Ultimately, the opportunity AI presents may be larger than greater productivity or economic growth. With more intelligence and capability available than ever before, we have an opportunity to ask what kind of work, organizations, and world we actually want to create.In This EpisodeWhy meaningful work is deeply personal and why meaning can change throughout our livesWhy AI can multiply intelligence but cannot determine what we should care aboutHow greater technological capability makes purpose more important, not lessWhy leadership increasingly depends on bringing human wisdom together rather than being the smartest person in the roomThe need to recover our ability to choose what matters instead of allowing institutions, or AI, to choose for usAbout Jeff WestphalIn the mid-1990s, Jeff Westphal worked his way up to run his father’s upstart sales tax software business and, over the next two decades, built it into a dominant industry leader with nearly one thousand employees. Under Jeff’s leadership, Vertex became an essential cog in the commerce machine, relied upon by more than ten thousand of the largest companies in the world.In July of 2020, after Jeff’s retirement as CEO in 2017, Vertex went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange and is now valued in the billions. It is a great American success story—but telling that story is not the purpose of this book.Behind this success story is another, more complex story of how a leader found, then lost and found again, meaning in his life and work—and how, by helping his employees create meaning in work as seemingly mean­ingless as sales tax software, he helped his company survive challenges and thrive.Today, Jeff is a seasoned executive, entrepreneur, philanthropist, corporate culture enthusiast, and conser­vationist. In addition to leading Vertex for two decades, he has founded two new ventures—MeaningSphere® and Mosaic™—as he continues to give back and encourage others to create meaning in their learning and working lives.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation you want to have or a question you want to explore, reach out. Jeff WestphalWebsite: www.jeffwestphal.orgBrian GormanEmail: [email protected] Phone: +1 917.653.5198Website: https://TransformingLives.Coach

Artificial intelligence is often presented as a tool that will make expertise more widely available. But what happens when people can produce expert-looking work without ever developing the expertise behind it?Bo Young Lee, CEO of AI4ALL, joins Brian to explore why the future of AI depends on more than broader access to today’s dominant models. It also requires a wider range of people, cultures, experiences, and worldviews shaping the technology itself. Bo explains how concentrating AI development within a small number of frontier models can embed cultural assumptions into tools used around the world. The conversation also examines what organizations lose when AI removes the demanding early-career work through which people learn to think critically, recognize patterns, exercise discernment, and eventually become experts. The risk, Bo argues, is not simply a deskilled workforce. It is the emergence of a “never-skilled” society, one in which people are asked to evaluate AI-generated work without having developed the experience needed to judge it.Brian and Bo also consider what this means for education. When intelligence becomes increasingly accessible through technology, schools and workplaces will need to place greater emphasis on the human capacities that AI cannot supply: emotional intelligence, ethical understanding, critical thinking, communication, synthesis, and wisdom.Finally, Bo raises a provocative concern about the growing wealth surrounding AI. As technology companies direct more philanthropic funding toward nonprofits and public institutions, whose worldview will that money advance, and how might it shape the conversations society is permitted to have about AI?In This EpisodeWhy the people creating AI should better reflect the people whose lives it affectsThe cultural and business risks of relying on a small number of dominant AI modelsHow automating junior-level work may interrupt the development of future expertsWhy AI could create a “never-skilled” society rather than merely deskill workersHow education must change when intelligence is no longer the primary differentiatorA Question to Carry ForwardAs AI makes intelligent output easier to produce, how will we ensure that people still develop the experience, discernment, and wisdom required to recognize whether that output is worth trusting?About Bo Young LeeBo Young Lee 이보영 is a globally recognized Workplace and AI/Tech Ethics, DEI, and ESG executive and widely sought-after public speaker and leadership coach. Bo serves as CEO of AI4ALL, ensuring the next generation of AI leaders represents humanity. Prior to her role at AI4ALL, Bo served as President of Research & Advisory for AnitaB.org, the leading mission-driven organization advancing women and non-binary technologists. Bo also served as Uber Technologies’ first Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, where she was tasked with leading the total transformation of the company’s culture, values, and equity environment. Bo is currently pursuing a Master of Studies in AI Ethics and Society at the University of Cambridge/Leverhulme Center for Future Intelligence (UK) and has an MBA with distinction from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a BBA magna cum laude from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.About Brian GormanBrian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.To Continue the ConversationIf anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation you want to have or a question you want to explore, reach out.Bo Young LeeWebsite: https://ai-4-all.org/Brian GormanEmail: [email protected] Phone: +1 917.653.5198Website: TransformingLives.Coach