Beyond The Prompt - How to use AI in your company

Ryan Holiday, bestselling author and modern Stoicism advocate, reflects on ancient wisdom applied to our AI moment. He argues wisdom cannot be outsourced and that AI amplifies who you already are. Conversation covers skepticism against confident AI nonsense, when offloading is helpful versus harmful, leadership and family priorities, and practical tactics to use AI as an editor and thought partner.

Laura Jones, Instacart CMO known for product-driven marketing and bold creative bets. She talks about why AI raises the bar for originality. She explains how tiny product details like banana preferences become brand signals and ad ideas. She discusses using AI to automate chores so teams can take creative risks and why human collaboration beats solo bot work.

Dan Klein, UC Berkeley professor and CTO at Scaled Cognition, studies NLP and building more reliable AI. He discusses why fluent AI can sound right but be wrong. He maps the jagged frontier of AI strengths and limits. He explains hallucinations as an inherent trade-off and argues working with AI requires new editing and verification skills.

Melissa Cheals, CEO of Smartly and leader in payroll and people-platform AI transformation, shares how AI reshaped product, leadership, and org design. She recounts using AI to reframe tough conversations, build cross-functional value streams, and make the pivotal choice to be AI-native versus layering on legacy systems. Practical leadership shifts and thinking bigger with AI take center stage.

Greg Shove, CEO and enterprise AI practitioner who helps companies capture productivity gains, discusses why AI value often flows to individuals, not organizations. He covers uneven adoption, people crossing role boundaries, fragile workflows from agent tools, and how leaders must decide where to reinvest time AI creates. Short, sharp takes on organizational friction and what top adopters do differently.

Leidy Klotz, a professor and author known for Subtract and research on additive bias, explains why we default to adding rather than removing. He recounts the Lego spark and shows how AI makes additive clutter worse. Short strategies include stop-doing lists, default kill dates, and designing environments that make subtraction visible and acceptable.

Richard White, founder and CEO of Fathom AI and product-focused engineer, explains building around transcription and generative models. He discusses how rapidly improving models turn roadmaps into R&D. He describes splitting exploratory AI teams from core engineering, the Jenga model for matching models to use cases, accepting frequent failures, and short, nimble planning to ride AI waves.

Bryan McCann, CTO and co-founder of You.com and former AI researcher, rethinks productivity by designing machines to run experiments and keep GPUs busy. He discusses search evolving into conversational, agent-driven systems. He argues for trying AI first to surface research gaps, scaling others by teaching AI workflows, and organizing companies more like neural networks with freer information flow.

Humza Teherany, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, discusses his unique journey from hands-on AI immersion to strategic leadership. He emphasizes the necessity for leaders to actively engage with AI, as it fosters credibility and smarter decision-making. Humza highlights MLSE's innovative 'build in a day' approach, which accelerates prototype development and democratizes idea generation through the IdeaGen system. Additionally, he shares insights on harnessing AI for real-world problems and his personal project, Story World, a bedtime story app for kids.

Mikkel B. Rasmussen, an applied anthropologist and founder of Human Activity Laboratory, dives into the intricate dance between anthropology and AI. He discusses how true insight often starts from being wrong and why moments of surprise signal valuable discoveries. Exploring themes of pain in the creative process, he shares how AI can enhance research but cautions against relying on it for final insights. Mikkel highlights his pivotal LEGO study, revealing the depth of children's play and the critical role of embodying surprise in fostering innovation.