The AI in Business Podcast Funding Agentic AI in HR Without Losing Control - with Carey Smith of Blue Cross and Blue Shield
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Mar 6, 2026 Carey Smith, CTIO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and President & CIO of XcelerateHealth, leads AI-driven digital products for healthcare insurance. He discusses structuring talent AI with clear decision rights and auditable reasoning. Short takes cover governance-first strategies, human-in-the-loop designs, and using agentic AI as a continuous workforce analyst to accelerate hiring while managing risk.
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Black Box Accountability Creates Legal And Cultural Risk
- Talent AI faces a black box accountability gap that mixes technical, legal, and cultural risks.
- Carey Smith highlights fragmented HR data, regulatory scrutiny, and explainability failures as the core collision driving workforce skepticism.
Prioritize Risk Controls Before Efficiency Wins
- Treat agentic AI projects as risk problems first and efficiency projects second.
- Carey Smith warns reputational and regulatory damage from biased or unclear agentic systems can be existential without transparent governance.
Agentic AI Should Augment Judgment Not Replace It
- Good HR agentic AI augments human judgment and provides an auditable reasoning trail rather than making final hire or fire decisions.
- Smith frames agentic systems as force multipliers that surface deep insights while keeping humans in control.