Don't Stop Us Now AI Edition

Are you hearing about AI agents everywhere right now? Whether it's their presence in the software you use daily, special purpose or task “agents”, or customer service “agents”, it's safe to say they are the topic 'du jour'. 

In this week’s episode, we segment this confusing landscape and cut through the hype to help you make more sense of it all.

After weeks of interviewing guests across different corners of the agentic AI world, we realised the market has become genuinely bewildering, even for us! Vendors are slapping the word "agent" on almost anything, and it's getting harder to tell what's substantive and what's marketing.

Listen in to hear about the simple framework we've developed to bring clarity to the whole ecosystem. It maps out the key choices facing any business considering agents, the questions you should be asking, and where the real risks are quietly hiding.

Regardless of whether your organisation is ready to start experimenting with agents or not, this episode will help you take the first steps when you are ready. As they say, when you can see something clearly, your decisions become easier.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• The four very different ways to bring agents into your organisation — and why the question isn't "which is best?"
• Why some of the SaaS tools you already pay for might quietly be putting you in a "hostage situation"
• What a team of Harvard, MIT and Stanford researchers just uncovered about one of the most hyped agent platforms on the market
• The layer of the agent ecosystem where the real cyber security risks live
• Four sharp questions to ask any vendor before letting their agent anywhere near your data and systems

Enjoy this practical and jargon-light guide to a topic that isn't going away anytime soon.

Useful Links

• McKinsey / Quantum Black report: Seizing the agentic AI advantage
• Capgemini report - ‘Rise of Agentic AI’ 
• MIT Sloan & BCG Report - Leading in the age of AI Agents (useful for Governance and structuring once you’ve made agentic decisions)

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What does it actually mean to have a colleague who never sleeps, never calls in sick, and can hold thousands of conversations at once? Not in theory but right now, in real organisations?

Our guest this week is Patrick Forth, an Group Executive Director at FutureSecure AI, a company that builds what they call AI co-workers: sophisticated agentic systems that sit on org charts, have names and personas, and are managed much like human employees. 

Patrick shares what some of the AI co-workers they’ve built so far actually do in enterprises today and what it takes to get them working inside organisations.

In this episode you'll hear:

• About the AI co-worker managing thousands of scheduling conversations on WhatsApp
• Why their AI co-workers focus on complex, high-return use cases rather than simple automation 
• Patrick's take on the job loss debate
• How one organisation puts humans and AI co-workers on the same org chart just in different colours, and 
• Whether AI co-workers should be treated like software or like colleagues.

If you want a glimpse into the possible future of your workplace and colleagues then enjoy this episode with someone who’s at the coalface helping companies choose use cases and deploying AI co-workers right now

Useful Links

FutureSecure AI website 

Patrick Forth on LinkedIn

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AI shopping agents aren't just on the horizon, they're here, already transacting, and already raising some important questions.

In this episode, we speak with Katja Forbes an award winning customer experience futurist, business strategist, and keynote speaker recognised for her insights into the intersection of AI, design, and human behaviour. She is also the author of Machine Customers: The Evolution Has Begun, a book about what happens when your best customer is no longer human.

In this fascinating conversation we cover everything from what's already happening with agentic commerce right now, to an incredible story out of China that reveals just how fast consumer behaviour can be reshaped at massive scale.

•   Why the shopping agents built by the retailers you already use may not be working in your interest 

•   What it means that AI agents now have access to their own credit cards and the guardrails (or lack thereof) around them

•   How some of the world’s largest businesses are already using AI to handle a significant share of their procurement 

•   The practical steps marketers and business owners should be taking right now, before agentic commerce becomes the norm, and . . .

•   Why your website could become largely irrelevant  and what that means for how you show up to both humans and machines.

Katja also shares a candid look at the environmental and ethical questions we need to be asking as frictionless purchasing increasingly becomes a reality. 

This conversation is set to change how you think about your next online purchase and, if you’re in marketing or procurement or e-commerce, then this is one you simply cannot miss. 

Enjoy this episode with the passionate and ahead-of-the-curve, Katja Forbes.

Katja Forbes website

Katja Forbes on LinkedIn

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Most conversations about AI implementation come from consultants selling solutions or vendors pitching tools. This one doesn't.

Sean Seah is SVP of Strategy, Technology and Innovation at Langham Hospitality Group, where he's leading AI adoption across a global luxury hotel portfolio. With over two decades in digital transformation at Microsoft, HSBC, and Zuji, Sean brings a rare perspective as he's living inside the messy reality of making it actually work.

What emerges from our conversation is a refreshingly practical playbook for AI implementation. Sean reveals why the "boring stuff" nobody discusses—data infrastructure, change management, measurement frameworks—determines whether AI delivers business value or not. He advocates starting small, proving value in weeks rather than years, and letting success create momentum for long term transformation.

We explore how Sean balances short-term wins with long-term strategic vision, how he thinks about his AI strategy in a global context, and why luxury hospitality, with its complex blend of human service and operational efficiency offers surprisingly universal lessons for AI implementation across industries.

In this episode:

• How Sean's approach to long term tech transformation includes the necessity that it must deliver short term value as well.
• Why one of Langham's first major AI investments is customer facing and how it’s faring
• Examples of how they practically trained their AI agents and staff, and
• How Sean’s ensured Langhams isn’t reliant on any one large language model

Whatever sector you’re in, Sean's boots-on-the-ground experience offers a practical roadmap for leaders navigating the gap between AI potential and AI reality.

Enjoy this episode!

Useful Links:

Sean Seah on Linkedin

Langham Hospitality Group

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Happy New Year to you dear listener! 

Have you ever felt that familiar January anxiety either because you’re feeling guilty that you don’t have a perfect set of goals for the new year or because you’re second-guessing if your goals are ambitious enough, structured enough, or even the right ones? If that’s you then this episode is for you. (Happens to us every year!) 

They say it takes one to know one 😂so as 2026 began, we both wanted to help ourselves (and hopefully help you too) get the year off to a great start. 

We got busy on our laptops and in this episode, we share our personal experiments where we used AI to reflect on 2025, as well as help us set meaningful goals for the year ahead.

We road-tested ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.

The results were super interesting . . . and helpful. One model delivered a remarkably accurate summary of Greta's entire year (likely because she'd used it most consistently), while another coached Claire through building a custom Project that will track her goals throughout 2026. 

In this episode we discuss:

• The tension between letting AI lead your thinking versus using it as a thought partner
• How to set up an AI project (or GPT, Gem etc.)  that coaches you through goal-setting 
• How you can quickly create vision boards and mind maps, and . . . 
• How AI may just change how you frame and think about your entire year. 

Whether you're a seasoned AI user or just getting started, listen now for  practical approaches you can try out right away. 

Wishing you an intentional, productive and fulfilling 2026!

Useful Links

Claude – Anthropic's AI assistant

ChatGPT – OpenAI's AI assistant (try "show me my year" for your personalised review)

Google Gemini – Google's AI assistant (find Nano Banana here by looking in the prompt window on the bottom left and clicking on ‘tools’ then choose ‘create images’.``)

Notebook LM - Google’s interesting AI tool that will allow you to create a Mindmap, an audio episode, presentations, flashcards, and many other forms of content from uploaded files. Definitely worth a play.

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If you've heard the term 'AI agents' but aren't quite sure what they actually are or how they could help you at work, this is the episode for you.

Our guest is Dominick Ng, Director of Engineering at Relevance AI, a platform that helps businesses build and deploy AI agents. Before joining the startup world, Dom spent nine years at Google, rising from software engineer to senior manager. He also holds a PhD in Computational Linguistics and won a Fulbright Scholarship to UC Berkeley.

What makes Dom such a brilliant guide for this topic is his ability to explain complex technology in human terms. As he puts it, agents are fundamentally about adding human-like decision making to automation — handling the qualitative judgments that previously only people could make.

In this conversation you'll hear:

•   A clear explanation of what agents actually are and why they're different from previous automation

•   Real examples of agents creating entirely new business possibilities that couldn't exist before

•   How to address privacy and security concerns when handing tasks to agents

•   Dom's advice for anyone feeling overwhelmed by all of this

Dom is refreshingly honest about both the opportunities and the concerns he has about AI's impact. His perspective on how humans and AI can work together — and the 'spark' that makes human creativity irreplaceable — is genuinely hopeful without being naive.

If you've been curious about agents but not sure where to start, this is the conversation you can thank us for later.

As this is our final episode of the year, we want to wish all our listeners Season's Greetings. Thank you for listening throughout the year, and we wish you a kind and fulfilling new year ahead.

Enjoy this episode with the ever-curious and articulate Dominick Ng...

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Recently we spoke with a group of CEOs who said they felt confident leading their organisation's AI investments. Yet when we asked how often they actually used AI, only one third of the group used it daily.

This disconnect is everywhere. Around boardroom tables and in senior leadership meetings, executives aren't using AI consistently. The latest data backs this up: most people still aren't using AI daily and that's a problem given how fast AI is changing and improving.

If you're not using AI regularly; learning from it and about it as you go; how can you effectively contribute to, or lead, your organisation's AI strategy?

So in this episode, we get super practical to help leaders become power users. We share five specific ways we use AI to amplify our own leadership work and impact, including practical tips on how exactly you do this. Our use cases range from handling difficult conversations to tackling the strategic challenges that keep us awake at night.

We also reveal which AI model significantly outperformed the others for a particularly valuable leadership task and why one very specific technique of using AI as a thought partner has become indispensable in our own work.

Enjoy this super practical episode with ideas we know you’ll want to start using immediately.

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Ever wondered if you’re missing out on some easy AI hacks? 

We were both surprised recently to read the results of some research we'd conducted with senior executives about their AI usage to see that most people are barely scratching the surface of what these tools can do. That’s prompted us to create this episode bringing you a practical guide to the techniques that actually make a big difference.

We're sharing the most powerful techniques and hacks we've discovered after constant AI use and refinement. These aren't theoretical concepts or beginner basics, they're the strategies and simple steps that can transform how effectively you work with tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Co Pilot.

In this episode, we reveal four separate and easy approaches that will upgrade your AI outputs immediately. Don’t worry, you won’t need to spend hours learning or implementing any of these hacks.  

For example, you'll discover how to get AI to do the heavy lifting on prompts themselves (yes, really), and learn a great way to tackle repetitive tasks with ease, avoiding re-inventing the wheel time and time again.

Some of the techniques you’ll hear about include:

• The metaprompting technique that can save hours of prompt refinement
• How Projects, Gems, GPTs and Custom Co Pilots may turbo-charge your productivity 
• A step by step explanation of how you can set up these tools, and
• Exactly how AI was used to help generate some of the copy you’re reading now. 

Whether you're already comfortable with AI or still finding your feet, we’re confident that at least one of these techniques will help you level up your own AI skills and outcomes. 

Listen now for practical and real examples of how these techniques work in action to help you work smarter with AI. 

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What happens when a group of friends gathering at Starbucks on Sundays to experiment with ChatGPT evolves into a global movement spanning more than 40 cities?

That's the journey of Build Club, and its founder Annie Liao has some compelling insights about what it takes to actually make AI adoption work—not just in theory, but in practice.

Annie, who recently raised over $1.7 million and relocated to San Francisco, has a front-row seat to how AI is reshaping work. From her early days in data science at Westpac to strategy consulting at BCG and venture capital, she's now solving what she calls the "AI adoption problem" that enterprises are struggling with worldwide.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why Annie's "AI Champions" approach has been Build Club’s most successful way of helping companies embrace AI 
• How she struck partnership deals with big names like Nvidia and Lovable
• Annie’s prediction we’re all likely to have agents working overnight on our behalf and what that means
• The AI tools Annie uses in her daily workflow, and
• What makes San Francisco's AI ecosystem fundamentally different from Australia's

From her vantage point in the Bay Area, Annie shares what excites her most about seeing people use AI for the first time, why there might be too many no-code tools flooding the market, and the practical steps anyone can take to position themselves for what's coming next.

Enjoy this episode with the indomitable Annie Liao. 

Useful links:

Build Club website

Annie Liao on LinkedIn

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This week we explore how AI is transforming the way we approach and develop strategy - not just in boardrooms, but in so many of the myriad of decisions businesses and leaders need to make almost daily.

Our guest is Ross Dawson, a globally recognised futurist, keynote speaker, and strategy advisor. Ross is the bestselling author of ‘Thriving on Overload’ and founder of the Humans + AI community. Ross’s clients around the globe have included Google, Microsoft, American Express and Procter & Gamble.

Ross's work today is focused on what AI can do to augment and support humans in a positive, value-adding way. He neatly combines both the big-picture vision of a futurist and the practical insights of someone experimenting with these tools daily.

What struck us most about this conversation was Ross's articulation of how AI can be used across four distinct domains of strategy and how he’s observed few organisations have sharp clarity on each of these distinct and important elements. He also shares how AI is prompting forward thinking leaders to think about their strategy development and decision processes in different ways now AI can be injected into the process.

In our conversation, you'll also hear Ross share:

• The technique Ross learned from Nvidia's CEO for optimising AI outputs using multiple models
• Practical examples of AI being used in boardrooms including a unique conversation ‘monitor’
• The 2 most important human skills Ross believes we all need in an AI-augmented world, and . . . 
• How threatened entry-level jobs can be completely reimagined to create value for both the individual and the business. 

This is a thought-provoking exploration of how humans and AI can work together to create better strategies and better outcomes, so enjoy this episode with the forward-thinking Ross Dawson.

Useful Links

Ross Dawson’s website  

Humans + AI Community

Ross's book - Thriving on Overload 

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