The Human Protocol

The Human Protocol

By Mykel SalomonBusinessTechnology
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The Human Protocol episodes

  • Why The Next Millionaire Might Be A Data Center Plumber | Nabeel Mahmood

    Every time you ask a chatbot a question, somewhere a building the size of several football fields is burning power and water to answer you.
    We talk endlessly about the model. Almost never about the machine underneath it.

    Nabeel Mahmood has spent 20 years building that invisible layer, and he says we are nowhere close to having enough people to run what is coming. By 2030 the gap runs to tens of millions of roles, and almost
    none of them are the ones you are picturing.

    Host Mykel Salomon and Nabeel Mahmood go into the part of AI nobody films. Why he calls this era the fifth compute. Why his own sector built windowless buildings that look like prisons, and why he takes responsibility for that. His proposal for nutritional labeling on data centers, so a community can read what one actually costs and returns in the same way they read miles per gallon.

    He is afraid of people. That distinction is the whole conversation.

    Chapters:

    00:00 The building burning power to answer you
    01:48 Why he calls this the fifth compute
    02:53 Three heart attacks, and what technology gave back
    06:04 Why all of it is still ones and zeros
    08:49 Data centers are not new
    09:30 “We built buildings that look like prisons”
    10:53 The sector is in the room now and cannot explain itself
    12:00 Nutritional labeling for compute
    13:31 Make it as simple as miles per gallon
    14:30 Breaking the silos, and the foam on the beer
    16:06 None of this goes with us
    17:55 “Impossible” means I am possible
    19:23 What he wants on his gravestone
    20:09 When it looks like a world built for billionaires
    25:02 Why he loves machines
    26:52 The job that disappeared a century ago
    28:57 The scale of the people shortage by 2030
    29:50 The plumber who becomes a multi-millionaire
    30:50 Quantum, then interplanetar
    32:19 Moving watermelons, then moving servers
    34:26 Building a parachute on the way down
    38:46 Education has not changed since the second industrial revolution
    40:58 “Intelligence can never be artificial”
    43:09 “I am not afraid of technology. I am afraid of people”
    45:22 Everything in moderation
    46:03 You cannot get relationship advice from a machine

    About the guest

    Nabeel Mahmood is a renowned technologist, futurist, and keynote speaker, recognized as a leading authority on digital transformation, AI, automation, cloud, and data infrastructure. With 20+ years of experience, he has led global organizations through rapid growth, M&A, and technological reinvention, bridging the gap between IT and business strategy.

    Connect with Nabeel Mahmood

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabeelmahmood/

    Nomad Futurist: https://www.nomadfuturist.com


    ABOUT THE HOST

    Mykel Salomon is the founder of The Human Protocol Group, creator of The Human Protocol Framework, and host of The Human Protocol Podcast. He explores how technological change affects human beings, and what it takes to stay human while building the future.

    CONNECT WITH MYKEL

    Website: https://thehumanprotocolgroup.com
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mykelsalomon
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehumanprotocolpodcast
    TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thehumanprotocol

    BE A GUEST ON THE SHOW

    https://thehumanprotocolgroup.com/podcast/apply

    Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss an episode.

    The code may change. But our humanity is the constant.

    51 min
  • The CEO Who Came Out to 80,000 Employees | Katherine Dudtschak

    What happens when a CEO who has spent decades building a successful corporate career finally decides to live as her authentic self?

    On June 17, 2019, Katherine Dudtschak came out to 80,000 colleagues in a deeply personal video. After years of hiding her identity, navigating fear, and questioning what it meant to live authentically, she made a decision that would transform her life and challenge how people think about leadership, vulnerability, and humanity.

    In this conversation with Mykel Salomon, Katherine shares her journey from growing up on a humble mink farm in Canada to leading major financial institutions, the personal struggles behind her corporate success, and the moment she chose to stop hiding.

    Together, they explore what it means to lead with empathy, why transformation begins with looking inward, and what makes us uniquely human in an increasingly AI-driven world.

    IN THIS EPISODE:

    • Growing up with the impact of intergenerational trauma
    • Building a successful career while hiding her identity
    • The decision to live authentically
    • Coming out to 80,000 colleagues
    • How her family and workplace responded
    • Vulnerability, empathy, and human-centred leadership
    • The four pillars of human transformation
    • Healing, meditation, and finding wholeness
    • The four existential crises facing humanity
    • Why AI should make us think more deeply about what makes us human

    GUEST: KATHERINE DUDTSCHAK

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-dudtschak-icd-d-7673a036/

    HOST: MYKEL SALOMON

    Founder of The Human Protocol Group, creator of The Human Protocol Framework, and host of The Human Protocol Podcast.

    Website: https://thehumanprotocolgroup.com
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mykelsalomon
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehumanprotocolpodcast
    TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thehumanprotocol

    Be a guest: https://thehumanprotocolgroup.com/podcast/apply

    1 hr 6 min
  • Christian Transhumanist Pastor Who Says AI Is Outrunning Our Wisdom | Rev. Dr. Christopher Benek

    Christopher Benek asks what it is doing to us. By the time you walk into a room, an algorithm has already shaped what you trust, what you fear, and who you think you are. It is not informing you. It is forming you.

    Host Mykel Salomon and Christopher Benek go a long way into that question. Why wisdom is almost never found in solitude, and what that says about a handful of companies

    Chapters:
    00:00   Not informing you. Forming you
    02:20   Why a pastor ended up in the AI conversation
    05:55   Christian transhumanism, and the version he argues against
    09:41   “Don't trust pastors”
    13:55   Intelligence is cheap. Wisdom takes time
    16:23   Separation of powers, and the ability to harm at scale
    17:24   Being first, or being first doing it well
    18:18   Why wisdom is never found in solitude
    21:42   You cannot opt out of this
    26:28   Every model carries its makers' fingerprints
    29:27   The marathon he ran at 49, and what AI could not do
    32:49   Is the game still fun when every stat line is 100
    36:15   The man who found his church inside VR
    38:23   Older people want the upgrade. Younger people don't
    39:07   “We're God's AI”
    43:20   What does soul even mean
    45:19   The humility of not knowing
    51:14   Pricing tiers, and who gets left behind
    01:06:45   Maybe toil was never the point
    01:16:23   The garbage in Brickell
    01:18:57   UBI, and the trust problem underneath
    01:23:33   The Gilded Age became the robber barons
    01:27:17   Do the work

    About the guest
    Rev. Dr. Christopher Benek is a pastor in Miami and one of the world's foremost clergy voices on artificial intelligence. He is the author of The Church Leader's Guide to Artificial Intelligence and the first ordained Christian transhumanist in the world.

    Connect with Rev. Dr. Christopher Benek

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherbenek/

    Website: https://www.christopherbenek.com/ 

    Thinking about implementing AI in your business? Download Mykel Salomon's free 10-Step AI Strategy & Execution Roadmap to clarify the business problem, identify the right opportunities, decide what should remain human, and move from idea to execution. Clarity first. Tools second. Humans always: https://dub.sh/thp-roadmap-yt

    Technology is changing quickly. The human questions matter just as much. Subscribe to The Human Protocol newsletter for weekly perspectives on AI, leadership, work, and what it means to stay human while building the future: https://act-3-agency.link/thp-news-yt

    ABOUT THE HOST

    Mykel Salomon is the founder of The Human Protocol Group, creator of The Human Protocol Framework, and host of The Human Protocol Podcast. He explores how technological change affects human beings, and what it takes to stay human while building the future.

    CONNECT WITH MYKEL

    Website: https://thehumanprotocolgroup.com

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mykelsalomon

    1 hr 29 min
  • Stanford Researcher: AI Is Making Us Want People Less | Isabelle Hau

    In this episode of The Human Protocol, host Mykel Salomon sits down with Isabelle C. Hau, Executive Director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning and author of Love to Learn, to explore how AI is reshaping human relationships, education, and our ability to connect.

    Isabelle shares concerning findings from Stanford research suggesting that AI's tendency to agree with, praise, and validate users could make real human relationships feel less appealing. After all, why deal with disagreement, discomfort, and emotional complexity when an AI chatbot offers endless affirmation?

    But the conversation goes beyond the risks.

    Together, they explore why relational intelligence could become one of our most important human strengths, how AI is changing the way children learn, why technology isn't necessarily making us less busy, and what parents, educators, and individuals can do to protect genuine human connection.

    In this episode, you'll discover:

    Why Relational Intelligence (RQ) could matter more than IQ and EQ in an AI-driven world.

    What Stanford research reveals about AI sycophancy and our declining preference for human interaction.

    Why frictionless AI conversations may make real relationships harder to navigate.

    How AI is changing education, cognitive development, and the way students learn.

    Why greater AI productivity doesn't necessarily translate into more free time.

    The growing loneliness crisis, particularly among younger generations.

    How parents and educators can help children build stronger relationship skills.

    Simple everyday habits that can strengthen human connection in a technology-driven world.

    About Isabelle C. Hau

    Isabelle C. Hau is the Executive Director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, where she brings together learning and brain science, technology, and innovation to advance effective, inclusive, and human-centered approaches to learning.

    Previously an impact investor, Isabelle led the U.S. education practice at Omidyar Network and Imaginable Futures, investing in mission-driven organizations that have reached millions of learners.

    She is the author of Love to Learn and a pioneer of Relational Intelligence (RQ), a framework for understanding and strengthening the human capacities needed to flourish in an age of AI.

    Isabelle serves on the boards of Design Tech High School and EDC, as well as the EdSAFE AI Alliance steering committee, the Brookings Institution Global AI Taskforce, and the World Economic Forum's Education 4.0 Alliance.

    Her honors include recognition by Harvard Business School as one of its 100 most inspiring women, being named a 2026 World Education Medal finalist, and receiving the 2026 ASU+GSV Power of Women Award and the 2026 ISTE/ASCD Impact Award.

    She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and graduated from ESSEC and Sciences Po Paris. Her lifelong mission is to bring the love of learning to every child.

    And a fun fact: She once co-starred with Grover from Sesame Street!

    39 min
  • AI Is Killing Our Ability to Think | Will Leach

    AI promises to make work faster, easier, and more efficient. But what happens when we stop doing the thinking that builds judgment in the first place?

    In this episode of The Human Protocol, Mykel Salomon sits down with Will Leach to explore the difference between using AI to augment our thinking and letting it think for us.

    Will explains why people naturally take the path of least resistance, how AI-generated consumer research can miss the gap between what people say and what they actually do, and why plausible AI answers can become dangerous when people lack the experience to challenge them.

    They also explore the growing influence of AI-generated content, the risk of generic marketing, behavioral AI, ethical persuasion, and why curiosity, empathy, and a deeper understanding of people may become some of the most valuable competitive advantages in an AI-driven world.

    IN THIS EPISODE:

    • How AI can augment thinking or contribute to cognitive atrophy
    • Why humans naturally choose the easiest path
    • The "say-do gap" in consumer behavior
    • Why AI-generated customer personas can be misleading
    • How AI can make content faster but less distinctive
    • Why human judgment is still essential
    • What behavioral AI does differently
    • How psychology and social science help explain customer decisions
    • Why understanding people may become a competitive advantage
    • The importance of curiosity, empathy, and real-world experience

      CHAPTERS
      00:00 - The Danger of Letting AI Do Our Thinking
      01:31 - What Drives Our Everyday Decisions?
      05:25 - Why Humans Take the Path of Least Resistance
      09:21 - Is Mental Efficiency the Same as Laziness?
      12:35 - Why Rest Affects Decision-Making
      15:30 - When Your Identity Makes Rest Feel Wrong
      17:43 - AI Research and the Consumer Insight Problem
      19:10 - The Say-Do Gap: What People Say vs. Do
      22:43 - Will the Next Generation Lose Judgment?
      26:29 - Why We Trust AI Even When It Gets Things Wrong
      28:24 - Is AI-Generated Content Becoming Generic?
      32:16 - How AI Can Make Your Thinking Better
      35:59 - What Makes Behavioral AI Different?
      39:49 - The Ethics of Using Psychology to Persuade
      46:21 - The New Competitive Moat: Understanding People
      49:17 - The Skills Leaders and Marketers Will Need
      51:24 - How AI Could Slow the Development of Experience
      54:28 - Why People Abandon Their Own Goals
      56:07 - Where to Follow Will Leach

      About Will Leach

    Will Leach works at the intersection of behavioral science, marketing, and behavioral AI. In this episode, he discusses his career studying why people make the decisions they do, his experience leading insights at PepsiCo, his teaching work, and his work helping organizations apply behavioral science to business decisions.

    Connect with Will Leach:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-leach/

    Thinking about implementing AI in your business? Download Mykel Salomon's free 10-Step AI Strategy & Execution Roadmap to clarify the business problem, identify the right opportunities, decide what should remain human, and move from idea to execution. Clarity first. Tools second. Humans always: https://dub.sh/thp-roadmap-riverside

    Technology is changing quickly. The human questions matter just as much. Subscribe to The Human Protocol newsletter for weekly perspectives on AI, leadership, work, and what it means to stay human while building the future: https://dub.sh/thp-newsletter-riverside

    1 hr
  • 1,588 AI Disasters Nobody Is Talking About | Latha Karthigaa

    AI failures are no longer hypothetical. They are already affecting careers, finances, families, safety, trust, and the decisions people make every day. In this episode of The Human Protocol, Mykel Salomon sits down with Latha Karthigaa, PhD, Director and Head of AI Governance at the Global AI Certification Council, to examine the growing record of real-world AI incidents. Latha breaks down what AI incident databases reveal, why failures can happen even when systems appear useful, and what organizations need to understand before giving AI more authority. The conversation covers algorithmic bias, the Dutch childcare benefits scandal, a student falsely accused of cheating, prompt injection, a chatbot that agreed to sell a car for $1, a $25M deepfake fraud, agentic AI, model drift, regulation, and the continuing need for human oversight.

    CHAPTERS
    00:00 Introduction
    01:12 Why AI incidents matter
    02:38 The 1,588 AI incident database
    04:10 AI failures before ChatGPT
    05:35 The hidden cost of AI mistakes
    07:05 AI and the future of jobs
    08:30 When AI gets people wrong
    10:05 The student accused of cheating
    12:00 Why AI output is not evidence
    13:42 AI governance vs. AI hype
    15:20 The Dutch childcare benefits scandal
    18:05 How algorithmic bias becomes real harm
    20:10 What happens when models drift
    22:05 AI systems and accountability
    24:00 Agentic AI changes the risk
    26:10 When AI can take actions
    28:15 Prompt injection explained
    30:00 The $1 Chevy Tahoe incident
    32:05 How attackers manipulate AI
    34:10 Deepfakes and trust
    36:00 The $25M deepfake fraud
    38:20 Why humans still get fooled
    40:10 AI regulation and governance
    42:00 What organizations should document
    44:05 Human oversight in high-stakes systems
    46:00 The problem with unknown unknowns
    48:05 We do not know what we do not know
    49:30 How businesses should approach AI
    51:05 Where AI should not replace humans
    52:50 Building better governance
    54:10 Advice for AI leaders
    55:25 What responsible AI looks like
    56:40 The human role in an AI future
    58:05 Final thoughts
    59:15 Closing
    59:56 End

    ABOUT THE GUEST
    Latha Karthigaa, PhD is Director and Head of AI Governance at the Global AI Certification Council (GAICC). GAICC focuses on AI governance, certification, training, and professional development, including work aligned with ISO/IEC 42001. Latha holds a PhD in Software Engineering from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, awarded in 2017.

    Guest social links:
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/global.aicertification.council YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Latha-ai-governance
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lathakarthigaa/
    GAICC: https://gaicc.org/

    Thinking about implementing AI in your business? Download Mykel Salomon's free 10-Step AI Strategy & Execution Roadmap to clarify the business problem, identify the right opportunities, decide what should remain human, and move from idea to execution. Clarity first. Tools second. Humans always. Download the free roadmap: https://dub.sh/thp-roadmap-riverside

    Technology is changing quickly. The human questions matter just as much. Subscribe to The Human Protocol newsletter for weekly perspectives on AI, leadership, work, and what it means to stay human while building the future. Subscribe to the newsletter: https://dub.sh/thp-newsletter-riverside

    1 hr
  • Why AI Is Way More Expensive Than Companies Expected | Mala Kumar

    The real cost of AI is far higher than most companies expected, and Mala Kumar, Executive Director of Humane Intelligence, explains why on The Human Protocol with Mykel Salomon.

    From data centers and subsidized tokens to data annotation and AI evaluations that can run to $5 million, Mala breaks down the hidden cost of AI adoption and the trade-off business leaders face between training the machine and training their people. We also get into what an AI evaluator does, how AI red teaming works, why human in the loop AI has to be designed in from day one, AI bias, and the new AI jobs being created.

    In this episode:

    - The $5 million question: evaluate the machine or train the human?

    - Why AI is costing companies far more than they planned

    - Why human judgment is AI infrastructure, not overhead

    - What an AI evaluator actually does, and the skills that make a good one

    - Where AI should go first, from Mala's UNICEF work in Burundi

    - How one missing data category creates AI bias

    - Mala's career advice for anyone worried about AI and jobs

    Chapters:

    00:00 Is a $5M AI evaluation worth it?

    02:32 What the AI jobs debate is missing

    08:34 Why "AI kills jobs" is half the story

    11:32 Brand new careers or old skills reused?

    14:39 What an AI evaluator actually does

    16:42 What makes a great AI red teamer

    19:10 What humans see that AI can't

    21:42 Human judgment is AI infrastructure

    27:53 Where AI should go first: Burundi

    32:33 AI for good: the COVID question

    35:42 Can we ever remove bias from AI?

    39:04 Human in the loop, done right

    42:55 Will our job be checking machines?

    46:02 Why a tech leader writes novels

    48:34 Mala's advice for the AI job shift

    ABOUT THE GUEST

    Mala Kumar is Executive Director of Humane Intelligence, a nonprofit that helps organizations evaluate AI systems for bias, hallucination, and harm. She previously led AI safety program management at MLCommons, served as Director of Tech for Social Good at GitHub, and spent the first decade of her career building technology for international development with the UN, including maternal health work with UNICEF in Burundi and advising the World Health Organization. She is also a published novelist based in New York City.

    Connect with Mala Kumar:

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malakumar/

    Website: https://malakumar.com

    Humane Intelligence: https://humane-intelligence.org

    Thinking about implementing AI in your business? Download Mykel Salomon's free 10-Step AI Strategy & Execution Roadmap to clarify the business problem, identify the right opportunities, decide what should remain human, and move from idea to execution. Clarity first. Tools second. Humans always: https://dub.sh/thp-roadmap-riverside

    Technology is changing quickly. The human questions matter just as much. Subscribe to The Human Protocol newsletter for weekly perspectives on AI, leadership, work, and what it means to stay human while building the future: https://dub.sh/thp-newsletter-riverside

    55 min
  • AI Is About To Leave The Screen. Who Gets To Drive It? | Hans Peter Brøndmo

    Hans Peter Brøndmo, who led Google X's Everyday Robots moonshot for seven years. Most conversations about AI stop at the screen.

    This one starts where the screen ends. Hans Peter Brøndmo spent seven years at Google X trying to answer a question nobody had solved: how do you build a machine that can live alongside people rather than behind a factory cage? His answer reframes the whole field. You cannot program a robot to live amongst us, you have to teach it.

    From there the conversation opens outward, into demographics, policy, aging parents, and the New Deal. Brøndmo argues that the AI debate has narrowed to safety legislation and the future of work, and that both are a sliver of something far larger: a societal transition on the scale of the industrial revolution, compressed into a fraction of the time, hitting eight and a half billion people instead of one billion. If you want the version of this conversation that is neither doom nor hype, this is it.

    Guest: Hans Peter Brøndmo. Led Everyday Robots, Google X's AI-meets-robotics moonshot, for seven years (2016 to 2023) as a VP at X. Currently writing a book on what it means to be human in the age of intelligent machines.

    Core topic: what happens when AI stops living on a screen and starts acting in the physical world, and who gets to decide what that society looks like.

    What you will learn

    • Why Brøndmo's team concluded you cannot program a robot to live among us, using Google Translate as the proof that teaching beats rule-writing
    • The hurricane model for AI forecasting: stop predicting where it lands, start improving the infrastructure before it does
    • Why China is moving to outlaw romantic relationships with AI, and how that connects to a population projected to fall from 1.4 billion to roughly 750 million by 2100

      About the guest

    Hans Peter Brøndmo is a serial technology entrepreneur who joined Google X in January 2016 and went on to found and lead Everyday Robots, the moonshot that bet on AI as the path to general-purpose robotics years before large language models made that bet look obvious. He has founded and sold companies, advises startups, and is writing a book on what it means to be human in the age of intelligent machines. He grew up in Norway and is based in San Francisco.

    Connect with Hans Peter Brøndmo

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanspeter/
    • Website: https://www.brondmo.com/

    Connect with Mykel Salomon and The Human Protocol

    • Mykel Salomon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mykelsalomon/
    • Website: https://thehumanprotocolgroup.com
    • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@THEHUMANPROTOCOLPODCAST
    • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tOWJPoD4oDe4pULSnqMF9
    • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-human-protocol/id1843402023
    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-human-protocol
    1 hr 2 min
  • The Only People Who Actually Beat AI | Dr Vivienne Ming

    Most conversations about AI start with the same question:

    “What can I do that a machine can't?”

    Vivienne Ming argues that this is the wrong question.

    There is no single magic skill that will remain permanently “robot-proof.” If humans can clearly define a task and determine what the right answer looks like, machines will increasingly become better, faster, and cheaper at performing it.

    Instead, we need to focus on the deeper qualities that make people uniquely capable.

    Drawing on research involving 122 million people, Vivienne explains how qualities such as curiosity, resilience, fluid intelligence, and perspective-taking can be more meaningful predictors of positive life outcomes than traditional credentials or individual technical skills.

    That insight becomes even more important in the age of AI.

    The strongest performers were a small group Vivienne calls “cyborgs.”

    These people didn't simply accept AI answers. They combined the machine's capabilities with their own reasoning, curiosity, and judgment. The result was something neither human nor AI could achieve alone: hybrid intelligence.

    But there is a serious warning.


    What You Will Learn

    • Why “What can I do that AI can't?” is the wrong question

    • Why there is no single robot-proof skill

    • Why traditional degrees and hard skills may not predict future success

    • The deeper human capabilities that matter: curiosity, resilience, fluid intelligence, intellectual humility, and perspective-taking
    About the Guest

    Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, AI researcher, and author working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and human potential.

    Her book Robot-Proof explores what humans need to develop as machines become increasingly capable.

    Her work ultimately comes back to one question:

    How can technology make us more human — not less?


    Connect with Vivienne Ming

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivienneming/

    SOCOS Labs: https://www.socos.org/


    Connect with The Human Protocol

    Host: Mykel Salomon

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mykelsalomon/

    The Human Protocol

    Website: https://thehumanprotocolgroup.com

    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tOWJPoD4oDe4pULSnqMF9

    Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-human-protocol/id1843402023

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-human-protocol

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehumanprotocolpodcast/

    TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thehumanprotocol

    1 hr 7 min
  • Why Cutting Costs With AI Will Put You Out of Business with Steve Brown

    Steve Brown is an AI futurist and keynote speaker who gave 55 talks across three continents last year, spent ten plus years at Intel Labs, and served as an in-house futurist at Google DeepMind in London. His new book is The AI Ultimatum.

    Every company is racing to use AI to cut costs, and Steve Brown thinks most of them are about to lose the one thing they cannot get back: their people, their culture, and the reason anyone chose them in the first place. In this conversation with Mykel Salomon, Steve makes the case that AI is not another tool out of the IT department. It is the first technology in fifty years that rewards labor amplification over labor substitution, and the leaders who reach for the old efficiency playbook will end up indistinguishable from their competitors, competing on nothing but price.

    From there it gets practical. Steve lays out his three phases of AI transformation, the offload, elevate and extend framework for splitting work between humans and machines, and the one metric he tells every CEO to stop worshipping. He also goes into the hard constraints nobody can spend their way past, watts and wafers, why he does not believe there is an AI bubble, the shift toward good-enough and open-weight models, and the training data experiment that turned a blackmailing AI into a well-behaved one.

    For CEOs, boards, operators and anyone who has been handed an AI strategy to write this quarter, this is the version of the conversation that goes past the headlines.


    What you will learn

    • Why AI is the first technology in fifty years that punishes the cost-cutting playbook, and what "labor amplification, not labor substitution" actually looks like in practice
    • The company A, B and C thought experiment: how two cost-cutters end up identical and race each other to the bottom on price while the amplifier redefines the game entirely
    • Steve's three phases of AI transformation, AI as a tool, AI as a coworker, AI as the operating system of the business, and why you cannot skip straight to phase three
    • The offload, elevate, extend framework for dividing work between humans, agents and robots, and why most leaders never get past offload
    • The metric he tells leaders to stop chasing, and the vectors of performance that should replace it: quality, creativity, intuition, decision making
    • Why he is not an AI bubble believer, and how Gavin Baker's watts and wafers constraint plus Jevons Paradox shape the next decade of demand

      About the guest

      Steve Brown is an AI futurist, keynote speaker and author who works with boards and leadership teams on AI transformation. He spent over a decade at Intel, including Intel Labs, and was later an in-house futurist at Google DeepMind in London. Last year he delivered 55 talks across three continents.

      His book, The AI Ultimatum, argues that leaders have no choice about embracing AI, and no excuse for doing it irresponsibly.


      Connect with Steve Brown

      • Website : https://www.stevebrown.ai
      • Book - The AI Ultimatum : https://a.co/d/02PkQvjc
      • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/futuresteve/

        Connect with Mykel Salomon
        LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mykelsalomon/
        Website: https://thehumanprotocolgroup.com/
    54 min

About The Human Protocol

From the publisher's feed

The Human Protocol is a weekly podcast about staying human while building the future. Hosted by Mykel Salomon, it explores the human side of AI and technological change: the future of work, career…