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Dan Turchin


Host Dan Turchin, PeopleReign CEO, explores how AI is changing the workplace. He interviews thought leaders and technologists from industry and academia who share their experiences and insights about artificial intelligence and what it means to be human in the era of AI-driven automation. Learn more about PeopleReign, the system of intelligence for IT and HR employee service: http://www.peoplereign.io.


AI and the Future of Work

Kate O’Neill is a leading voice on AI and tech humanism, known for helping organizations build more meaningful, human-centered futures. She has been featured by outlets like BBC, NPR, and NBC, and serves on the United Nations AI advisory board. A CX Hall of Fame inductee and award-winning entrepreneur, Kate brings a unique blend of optimism and realism to conversations about AI, data, and the future of work. Her latest book, What Matters Next, explores how to make human-friendly tech decisions.

In this conversation we discussed:

 • How tech humanism explains the relationship between people, technology, and business, and how leaders can design AI systems that strengthen the alignment
 • Why humans project intelligence and agency onto AI tools, and what it takes to build healthy, intentional habits around emerging technologies
 • Practical ways workers can use AI to elevate their roles rather than fear automation
 • The role of leadership in creating psychologically safe environments where employees can openly experiment with AI tools
 • The risk of designing systems that lead to “automated bureaucracy,” and how organizations can embed meaning into automated experiences at scale
 • Why meaning and purpose remain uniquely human, and how future workplaces can evolve by pairing human judgment with increasingly capable AI systems

Resources:

Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Kate on LinkedIn • or at 
KO InsightsAI fun fact articleOn How Unleashing Human Potential with AI

367: Inside the Tech Humanist Playbook: Kate O’Neill on AI, Purpose, and Meaningful Work

Sid Sheth is the CEO and co-founder of d-Matrix, the AI chip company making inference efficient and scalable for datacenters. Backed by Microsoft and with $160M raised, Sid shares why rethinking infrastructure is critical to AI’s future and how a decade in semiconductors prepared him for this moment.

In this conversation, we discuss:

 • Why Sid believes AI inference is the biggest computing opportunity of our lifetime and how it will drive the next productivity boom
 • The real reason smaller, more efficient models are unlocking the era of inference and what that means for AI adoption at scale
 • Why cost, time, and energy are the core constraints of inference, and how D-Matrix is building for performance without compromise
 • How the rise of reasoning models and agentic AI shifts demand from generic tasks to abstract problem-solving
 • The workforce challenge no one talks about: why talent shortages, not tech limitations, may slow down the AI revolution
 • How Sid’s background in semiconductors prepared him to recognize the platform shift toward AI and take the leap into building D-Matrix

Resources:

Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Sid on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How Mastering Skills To Stay Relevant In the Age of AI

366: Inside the Age of Inference: Sid Sheth, CEO and Co-Founder of d-Matrix, on Smaller Models, AI Chips, and the Future of Compute

In this special episode of AI and the Future of Work, host Dan Turchin looks back on what 365 conversations have revealed about how AI is reshaping the way we work.

What themes have emerged most consistently? Which ideas connect founders, researchers, and operators across industries? And what have these discussions taught us about the evolving relationship between humans and intelligent systems?

Featuring Guests:

 1. Mark McCrindle, Founder and Principal at McCrindle - Listen to the full conversation: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/13014260 2. 
 3. Pradeep Menon, CTO at Microsoft - Listen to the full conversation: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/13034974 4. 
 5. Dave Kellogg, EIR at Balderton Capital - Listen to the full conversation: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/16665133 6. 
 7. Alex Buder Shapiro, Chief People Officer at Jasper AI - Listen to the full conversation: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/17522593 8. 
 9. Gary F. Bengier, Writer, philosopher, and technologist - Listen to the full conversation: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/12934217 10. 
 11. Josh Bersin, Founder and CEO at The Josh Bersin Company - Listen to the full conversation: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/17863187 12. 
 13. Bryan Power, Head of People at Nextdoor - Listen to the full conversation: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/16837259 14. 
 15. Dave Treat, Chief Technology Officer at Pearson - Listen to the full conversation: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/17557154 16. 

💡 What You Will Learn

 • Why the future of work remains human-centered 
 • How AI amplifies human capability rather than replacing it
 • Why trust and transparency define successful AI-driven teams
 • How workplace culture is evolving as organizations adopt AI
 • Why meaning, empathy, and lifelong learning matter more than ever

💬 Inspired by this episode?

Share your favorite insight on social media and tag us (https://www.instagram.com/aifutureofwork/) 
And remember to subscribe for more conversations with the leaders shaping the future of AI and work.

Other special episodes:

Lessons from Four Unicorn CEOs Disrupting Massive Markets with AI (Special Episode)Artificial General Intelligence: Can Machines Really Think Like Us? (Special Episode)Ethical AI in Hiring: How to Stay Compliant While Building a Fairer Future of Work (HR Day Special Episode)AI and the Law: How AI Will Change Legal Careers (Special Episode)AI and Safety: How Responsible Tech Leaders Build Trustworthy Systems (National Safety Month Special)Lessons from Leaders: How AI Is Redefining Work and the Human Experience (Labor Day Special Episode)

365: AI and the Future of Work: What We’ve Learned from 364 Expert Conversations (Special Episode)

Darrick Horton is the CEO and co-founder of TensorWave, the company making waves in AI infrastructure by building high-performance compute on AMD chips. In 2023, he and his team took the unconventional path of bypassing Nvidia, a bold bet that has since paid off with nearly $150 million raised from Magnetar, AMD Ventures, Prosperity7, and others. TensorWave is now operating a dedicated training cluster of around 8,000 AMD Instinct MI325X GPUs and has already hit a $100 million revenue run rate. 

Darrick is a serial entrepreneur with a track record of building infrastructure companies. Before TensorWave, he co-founded VMAccel, sold Lets Rolo to LifeKey, and co-founded the crypto mining company VaultMiner. 

He began his career as a mechanical engineer and plasma physicist at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, where he worked on nuclear fusion energy. While he studied physics and mechanical engineering at Andrews University, he left early to pursue entrepreneurship and hasn’t looked back since.

In this conversation we discussed:

 • Why Darrick chose AMD over Nvidia to build TensorWave’s AI infrastructure, and how that decision created a competitive advantage in a GPU-constrained market
 • What makes training clusters more versatile than inference clusters, and why TensorWave focused on the former to meet broader customer needs
 • How Neocloud providers like TensorWave can move faster and innovate more effectively than legacy hyperscalers in deploying next-generation AI infrastructure
 • Why power, not GPUs, is becoming the biggest constraint in scaling AI workloads, and how data center architecture must evolve to address it
 • Why Darrick predicts AI architectures will continue to evolve beyond transformers, creating constant shifts in compute demand
 • How massive increases in model complexity are accelerating the need for green energy, tighter feedback loops, and seamless integration of compute into AI workflows

Resources:

Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Darrick on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How the new definition of work

364: Inside the AI Infrastructure Race: TensorWave CEO Darrick Horton on Power, GPUs and AMD vs NVIDIA.

Jeetu Patel is President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco. He previously served there as Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration.

He joined Cisco in 2020 after serving as Chief Product Officer and Chief Strategy Officer at Box, where he played a key role in expanding the company into a multi-product platform used by more than 100,000 customers. 

He currently sits on the board of real estate services company JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle) and holds a B.S. in Information Decision Sciences from the University of Illinois.

In this conversation, we discuss:

 • How Cisco is becoming an AI-first company and why fully embracing AI is now a requirement, not a choice
 • How AI will reshape every job, and which human skills will matter most in the decade ahead
 • The real constraints slowing enterprise AI adoption: power, trust, and data
 • The infrastructure, security, and data gaps limiting AI’s potential, and how Cisco is closing them
 • Why skill gaps are growing, and what workers can do to stay relevant as AI changes the workplace
 • How Cisco approaches new markets, strategic focus, and building products people love at global scale

Resources

Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Jeetu on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How AI helps serve 70 million meals every day
Past guests mentioned on this show:

Box´s CTO Ben Kus on Responsible AI Use, Innovation Culture, and Future AI TrendsBox’s Global CIO Ravi Malick on Why Every Problem Doesn't Need an AppCisco´s Former CEO on the Future of AI-Driven Work and Investing in PeopleReign

363: Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel on AI’s Real Constraints, Skill Gaps, and the New Rules of Work

In this special episode of AI and the Future of Work, host Dan Turchin examines one of the most urgent questions in technology today: how artificial intelligence is reshaping the law.

Who owns AI created work? Who is accountable when automated decisions cause harm? And how should legal professionals prepare for a world where AI influences every part of the practice?

This compilation episode revisits insights from five leaders who are redefining how the legal system approaches ownership, risk, compliance, and the future of legal work.

Featuring Guests

 • Robert Plotkin,Co-founder, Blueshift IP - Full episode: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/13061560 • 
 • Jim McKenna, CIO, Fenwick & West - Full episode: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/13373166 • 
 • Scott Stevenson, Co-founder & CEO, Spellbook - Full episode: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/17211693 • 
 • Rafie Faruq, Founder & CEO, Genie AI - Full episode: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/16949168 • 
 • Tamara Steffens, Managing Director, Thomson Reuters - Full episode: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/15250057 • 

💡 What You Will Learn

 • How AI is changing ownership, IP rights, and data confidentiality
 • Why law firms need strong governance to innovate safely
 • How legal AI tools reduce risk with verification and citations
 • How AI will reshape early legal careers and firm operations

💬 Inspired by this episode?

Share your favorite insight on social media and tag us.
And don’t forget to subscribe for more conversations with the leaders shaping the future of AI and work.

Other special episodes:

Lessons from Four Unicorn CEOs Disrupting Massive Markets with AI (Special Episode)Artificial General Intelligence: Can Machines Really Think Like Us? (Special Episode)Ethical AI in Hiring: How to Stay Compliant While Building a Fairer Future of Work (HR Day Special Episode)The Future of AI Ethics Special: Perspectives from Women Leaders in AI on Bias, Accountability & TrustAI and Safety: How Responsible Tech Leaders Build Trustworthy Systems (National Safety Month Special)Lessons from Leaders: How AI Is Redefining Work and the Human Experience (Labor Day Special Episode)

AI and the Law: How AI Will Change Legal Careers (Special Episode)

Faraj Aalaei is the Founder and CEO of Cognichip, an AI company building the world’s first Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI) platform to design semiconductors using AI. He brings four decades of experience in communications and networking, having led two companies (Centillium and Aquantia)through IPOs. Aquantia was later acquired by Marvell, where he also held an executive role. 

Prior to that, Faraj was Co-Founder and CEO of Centillium, which went public on NASDAQ just three years after its founding, the fastest IPO ever for a semiconductor company. 

He holds an honorary Doctor of Engineering from Wentworth Institute of Technology, where he also earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, along with an MSEE from the University of Massachusetts and an MBA from the University of New Hampshire.

In this conversation we discussed:

 • Why chip development cycles are trailing AI applications by years and how that disconnect leads to inefficient infrastructure and higher energy costs
 • How AI could help democratize chip design by enabling smaller teams outside traditional hubs to build customized, application-specific hardware
 • What Faraj sees as the real barrier to innovation: the time and cost of chip development, and how Cognichip is reducing both through compute-led design
 • How AI can augment, not replace, engineers by offering transparent, explainable design suggestions while keeping humans in the loop
 • The coming talent shortage in semiconductor engineering and how AI might close the skills gap and unlock new opportunities for nontraditional builders
 • Why every major technological shift creates more opportunity than it destroys, and how Faraj sees AI enabling people to work on more meaningful problems

Resources:

Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Faraj on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How To Drive Compelling Narratives in Youtube Videos.

362: How AI Is Transforming Chip Design and Solving the Engineering Shortage with Faraj Aalaei, Cognichip CEO

Grant Lee is the CEO and co-founder of Gamma, the company reimagining presentations by building what some call the “anti-PowerPoint.” Since its launch in 2022, Gamma has grown to over 70 million users, with 30 million gammas created each month, and has reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). These milestones were achieved profitably, with a team of just 50 people (that’s about $2 million in ARR per employee) and a Series B round at a $2.1 billion valuation, led by Sarah Wang at Andreessen Horowitz.

Before founding Gamma in 2020, Grant led finance at Optimizely, where he developed a passion for A/B testing. He began his career in investment banking and holds a BS in Biomechanical Engineering and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

In this conversation, we discuss:

 • How Gamma went from an idea to one of the fastest-growing presentation tools in the world with $100M ARR and a 50-person team
 • Why Grant and his co-founders set out to reinvent slides from scratch instead of improving on PowerPoint
 • Lessons from Optimizely that shaped Gamma’s culture of experimentation and rapid iteration
 • How Grant thinks about product-market fit and why every feature must solve real user pain instead of mimicking the competition
 • How AI serves as a design partner, not a replacement for human creativity, and why “human in the loop” is central to Gamma’s philosophy
 • The importance of building user trust in generative AI through transparency, feedback loops, and community programs like the “Gambassador” initiative
 • How resilience, early failures, and conviction helped Gamma survive investor rejection and a near-collapse during the SVB crisis

Resources:

Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Grant on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How To Revolutionize Finance and Financial Decision Making using AI.

361: Can AI Be a True Creative Partner? Grant Lee, CEO of Gamma, on AI Design Philosophy and Building the Anti-PowerPoint

Dennis Kozak is the CEO of Ivanti, a leading enterprise IT and security company generating over $1 billion in annual revenue and serving more than 40,000 customers. He previously served as Ivanti’s COO after holding senior leadership roles at Avaya. Earlier in his career, Dennis spent nearly 23 years at CA Software (now Broadcom), where he led global partnership sales and services teams. He holds a BS in Accounting from St. Joseph’s University in Long Island.

In this conversation, we discuss:

 • Dennis’s leadership journey from CA Technologies and Avaya to becoming CEO of Ivanti, and what prepared him to lead a billion-dollar IT security company
 • Why convergence between cybersecurity and IT operations is accelerating, and how Ivanti is positioning itself at the center of that shift
 • The impact of generative AI on IT support, including how Ivanti is building AI agents to handle routine tickets and empower human technicians
 • How organizations can reduce cyber risk by closing visibility gaps and simplifying their tech stack
 • The challenges of securing distributed workforces in a hybrid world, and why automation is critical to stay ahead of threats
 • Why Dennis believes the future of enterprise IT is about blending user experience with security, not choosing between them

Resources:

Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Dennis on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How to Reimagine Fan Experiences and Digital Transformation.

360: From Automation to Accountability: AI Governance, Hybrid Workforce Security, and Trust with Dennis Kozak, Ivanti CEO

Jim Curry is the co-founder and CEO of BuildGroup, a venture firm based in Austin that has raised $330 million since its founding in 2015 and backed companies like Anaconda, Vidmob, DigniFi, and Benefitfocus. He brings more than two decades of experience in product, strategy, and corporate development from roles at Rackspace and Dell, and he co-founded OpenStack, one of the most widely used open source cloud computing platforms. Jim serves on the boards of Generation Serve and the University of Texas School of Undergraduate Studies. He holds degrees from UT Austin and Harvard Business School.

In this conversation, we discuss:

 • Jim’s journey from Rackspace to launching BuildGroup and why he believes in “longer, slower capital” to support mission-driven founders
 • How his experience co-founding OpenStack shaped his thinking on community-driven innovation and open-source software
 • What AI startups can learn from the cloud era—and why infrastructure still matters in the age of foundation models
 • Why Jim believes VCs often push startups to scale too fast and what sustainable growth looks like in practice
 • The impact of AI on venture capital and how BuildGroup thinks about investing in software companies that solve real problems
 • How founders can balance product vision with pragmatism, especially when building in volatile markets

Resources:

Subscribe to the AI & The Future of Work NewsletterConnect with Jim on LinkedInAI fun fact articleOn How to Develop NLP and AI Data Harvesting Using Games and Blockchains To Earn NFTs

359: Why AI-Efficient Startups Are Forcing Venture Capital to Evolve with Jim Curry, CEO of BuildGroup

Christopher Penn writes one of the few newsletters I read weekly. I have no idea how I ended up on his mailing list but I’ll never opt out despite the rainbow “Unsubscribe here” buttons he prominently displays.

Christopher provides well-researched, thought-provoking commentary on all topics related to generative AI. Like recent guests Pradeep Menon and Ken Wenger Christopher doesn’t settle for soundbite-level commentary and he often shares unpopular opinions backed up with data.

Christopher is the Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist at TrustInsights.ai. He’s a six-time IBM Champion in IBM Data and AI, a Brand24 Top 100 Digital Marketer, an Onalytica Top 100 AI in Marketing influencer, and co-host of the award-winning Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast. He is also the author of two dozen marketing books. His list of accolades and accomplishments goes on for days.

Listen and learn...

 1. The number one question Christopher asks data-driven marketers
 2. What has surprised Christopher most about the capabilities of LLMs
 3. Why the 
letter to pause AI 4. was "dumb"
 5. The right way to remove bias and hate speech from LLMs
 6. Open source vs. closed source AI... and how it's related to making pizza
 7. Are we ready for AI vendors to censor content?
 8. Christopher's predictions for how all enterprise software will incorporate generative AI
 9. Why Christopher continues to hone his bow and arrow skills

References in this episode...

Pradeep Menon on AI and the Future of WorkKen Wenger on AI and the Future of WorkTiernan Ray on AI and the Future of Work • Christopher's (entertaining and informative!) 
newsletterDreamGPT • ... to glorify LLM hallucinations
The bots aren't sentient!

Christopher Penn, co-founder and Chief Data Scientist at TrustInsights.ai, discusses the state of generative AI

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