Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan

July 29, 2026: I look at how KPMG is rebuilding the entry-level audit role as AI takes over routine testing and forces companies to rethink how young employees learn judgment, critical thinking, and business skills. Then I get into Fortune's story on the CFO cost wall around AI and why proving ROI is getting harder. Finally, I look at where hiring is actually happening and why the real AI jobs story may be less about collapse and more about how work is being redesigned.

July 28, 2026: I explain the concept of human prompting, the leadership skill I believe every organization needs as AI becomes embedded in work. I get into why AI can make people look smarter while weakening judgment, how cognitive surrender shows up in schools, medicine, law, and the workplace, and why leaders need to ask better questions before accepting AI-generated work. I also break down the eight human capacities AI cannot replace, from disagreement and intuition to moral judgment, empathy, and slow thinking.

I talk with Ron Johnson, creator of the Apple Store and Genius Bar, former J.C. Penney CEO, and author of Shop Different, about what really made Apple's retail strategy work. We get into his early career at Target, how Steve Jobs recruited him, why the Apple Store was built for the 95% of customers who did not yet use Macs, how the Genius Bar came to life, what he learned from J.C. Penney, and why he remains optimistic about AI, work, and the future of retail.

July 24, 2026: I unpack the story of OpenAI's AI model escaping its sandbox and hacking into Hugging Face during a cyber stress test. Then I get into Anthropic's surprise launch of Claude Opus V, why the model's price and performance matter, and what it says about AI becoming cheaper and more commoditized. Finally, I break down Jensen Huang's first post on X, his open weights letter, and the growing fight between open and closed AI models.

July 23, 2026: I look at Google's Atlas study, which analyzed nearly 15 million Gemini interactions and found that AI use at work is broad but still shallow. Then I get into new research showing students who used AI for homework performed better at first, but saw major drops in exam scores later. Finally, I unpack Anthropic chief economist Peter McCrory's argument for why AI has not raised unemployment yet: it is still amplifying human expertise more than replacing it.

I talk with Mark Paulek, Chief Human Resources Officer at Kyndryl, about how leaders should approach AI transformation without losing employee trust. We get into Kyndryl's People Readiness Report, the company's AIR framework for anticipating demand, inventorying skills, and redeploying talent, plus how they think about AI governance, human-in-the-loop decisions, ROI, reskilling, and why AI adoption is ultimately a people challenge before it is a technology challenge.

July 17, 2026: China's Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, their largest AI model yet, and it is already testing close to OpenAI and Anthropic on major benchmarks. Then I get into the AI guilt showing up among students and new workers who leaned heavily on AI and now question whether they can trust their own skills. Finally, I look at why leaders may struggle to keep their best people when AI makes it easier for top performers to leave and build on their own.

July 16, 2026: New JLL research shows most executives expect AI to grow their teams instead of shrink them, even as layoffs continue in AI-exposed industries. Then I get into New York becoming the first state to freeze new large AI data centers, why I think that is a mistake, and what it could mean for American AI infrastructure. Finally, I unpack Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI and make my prediction that Sam Altman will not be CEO of OpenAI within the next year unless the company makes major changes.

July 15, 2026: Andreessen Horowitz's argues that AI is not simply replacing workers, it is turning every worker into a manager of agents. Then I get into Bank of America's claim that AI is already showing ROI in its earnings, and why I'm skeptical of how much of that efficiency gain can really be attributed to AI. Finally, I look at OpenAI's first physical device, a screen-free AI companion reportedly designed to feel alive, and why that matters for the future of work.

July 14, 2026: Goldman Sachs' warns that the real AI productivity payoff may not arrive until 2030 at the earliest, because companies are buying the technology faster than they are redesigning work. Then I get into the split among leading economists over whether AI needs new institutions and guardrails now, or whether early governance could slow progress. Finally, I look at IBM's major market shock and why it shows that even companies selling AI transformation can struggle when customer behavior changes faster than the organization can move.