Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making.

AI doesn’t need permission to enter your organization anymore because it arrives bundled inside the software you already pay for. That is why “we don’t use AI” can be the riskiest assumption of all. We sit down with Chad Ratashak, an AI risk leader and the Midwest Frontier AI Consulting enterprise leader, to talk about what actually changes when generative AI becomes a background feature in email, search, documents, and video calls.

We dig into the hard problem most people hand-wave away: hallucinations in large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. Chad explains why the models can produce convincing falsehoods, why that risk is not “solved,” and what the legal world learned from the Mata v Avianca case where fake citations became a real courtroom issue. From there, we get practical about verification habits, risk appetite, and the time cost of validating AI output so you know when AI is worth using and when it is pure friction.

Then we move into AI transcription and meeting notes: the difference between built-in Zoom or Teams transcription and third-party bots that “join” as attendees, how default settings can leak sensitive pre-meeting banter, and why AI transcripts can omit key objections or misattribute who said what. We also talk shadow AI, why training beats forced AI mandates, and how agentic AI and coding assistants can create outsized damage unless you design for failure with backups, least privilege, and resilience testing.

We close with the darker side: deepfake voice and live video filters enabling cryptocurrency scams, fake family emergencies, and evolving ransomware tactics. If you want a clear-eyed, actionable framework for AI governance and cybersecurity risk, press play, share this with a colleague, and leave a review with the one AI risk you want us to tackle next.