Can you trust an AI agent to act in line with your values — and who’s responsible when it doesn’t?

In this episode, Andreas Welsch talks with AI ethics consultant Rebecca Bultsma about the pitfalls of rushing AI agents into business workflows and practical steps leaders should take before handing autonomy to software. Rebecca draws on her early ChatGPT experiments and academic work in data & AI ethics to explain why generative AI raises fresh ethical risks and how organizations can reduce harm.

What you’ll learn:

• Why generative AI and agents amplify old AI ethics problems (bias, hidden assumptions, and Western-centric worldviews).
• Why you should build internal understanding first: experiment with low-stakes, traceable use cases before deploying public agents.
• The importance of audit trails, explainability, and oversight to trace decisions and assign accountability when things go wrong.
• Practical red flags: agents that transact autonomously, weak logging, and complacency about vendor claims.
• A legal reality check: new laws (like California’s chatbot rules) are emerging and could increase liability for organizations that deploy chatbots or agents prematurely.

The top takeaways:

• Learn by experimenting personally and internally in your organization to discover where agents fail.
• Start small with low-stakes, narrowly scoped tasks you can monitor and audit.
• Don’t rush; rather, observe others' failures, train your people, and build governance before going public.

If you’re a leader evaluating agents or responsible for AI governance, this episode gives clear, actionable advice for keeping your organization out of the headlines for the wrong reasons. Tune in to hear the whole conversation and learn how to turn AI hype into safer business outcomes.

Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.

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Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.

Level up your AI Leadership game with the AI Leadership Handbook (https://www.aileadershiphandbook.com) and shape the next generation of AI-ready teams with The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge (https://www.humanagenticaiedge.com).

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What actually changes when AI agents become part of your workforce — and which human skills still matter most?

In this episode, host Andreas Welsch talks with HR and talent-intelligence veteran Todd Raphael about the practical realities of bringing agentic AI into organizations. They move beyond proofs-of-concept to ask the tough questions: How do agents fit into daily workflows, what invisible human contributions should you protect, and how should HR and IT collaborate to redesign roles, org charts, and the employee lifecycle?

Listen for concrete thinking and strategic framing, including:

• The hidden value humans bring: Why many critical contributions (trusted relationships, customer touchpoints, institutional memory) don’t appear on job descriptions — and what that means when you automate tasks.
• Rethinking structure and advancement: How flatter org models and new measures of impact (knowledge, networks, influence) may change who gets promoted and how leadership is defined.
• HR’s seat at the table: Why HR is uniquely positioned to plan holistically for hire-to-retire changes, from skills-based hiring to internal marketplaces, reskilling, and retention when agents handle more tasks.

You’ll also hear examples and practical prompts for leaders: identify the intangible work that must remain human, map tasks vs. relationships before automating, and start workforce planning that considers people and agents together.

If you’re an HR leader, people manager, or technology decision-maker trying to turn agent hype into durable business outcomes, this episode gives you a playbook to start redesigning work the right way.

Tune in now to learn how to protect human advantage and build an effective human+agent workforce.

Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.

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Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.

Level up your AI Leadership game with the AI Leadership Handbook (https://www.aileadershiphandbook.com) and shape the next generation of AI-ready teams with The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge (https://www.humanagenticaiedge.com).

More details:
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When AI agents can self‑spawn, act at machine speed and delete their own trails, identity and trust become business-critical.

In this episode, Andreas Welsch talks with Tim Williams—an experienced practitioner who’s helped organizations commercialize AI—about the security gaps agentic AI exposes and practical ways to close them. Tim explains why traditional username/passwords and persistent tokens won't cut it, how trust for agents should be treated like a credit score rather than a binary yes/no, and why observability and transaction-level controls are essential.

Highlights you’ll get from the conversation:

• Why agents operate at a different scale and cadence than humans, and the new risks that creates.
• Real breach lessons (e.g., persistent token compromises) that show why persistent access is dangerous.
• The concept of sliding trust: using a trust score to gate actions (low-risk vs high-risk transactions).
• Short-lived, transaction-based approvals and why persistent credentials must be replaced.
• Why cryptographically verifiable, immutable identifiers (and why blockchain can help) matter for accountability.
• Practical governance: observability, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and preparing infrastructure in parallel with agent adoption.

Who this episode is for: business leaders deciding what to delegate to agents; security and identity teams rethinking access; product and platform builders designing safe workflows for autonomous systems.

If you want actionable guidance on how to let agents accelerate your business without exposing you to runaway risk, tune in and learn how to turn agent hype into reliable business outcomes.

Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.

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***********
Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.

Level up your AI Leadership game with the AI Leadership Handbook (https://www.aileadershiphandbook.com) and shape the next generation of AI-ready teams with The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge (https://www.humanagenticaiedge.com).

More details:
https://www.intelligence-briefing.com
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AI agents are reshaping how enterprises innovate, organize work, and experience disruption.

In the latest episode of “What’s the BUZZ?”, Andreas Welsch speaks with Christian Muehlroth, CEO of ITONICS, about how agentic AI will redefine innovation management and why many organizations remain structurally unprepared for it.

Here are the key insights from the conversation:

• AI’s foundations were created decades ago, but recent advances in computing, interfaces, and delivery models have turned it into a scalable innovation engine.
• Each technological wave builds on prior ones, accelerating change while large organizations slow down due to processes, politics, and legacy structures.
• Agents function as tireless digital interns with expert-level capabilities in narrow domains, amplifying the output of teams that already demonstrate initiative and creativity.
• Many place AI on top of legacy processes or rely too heavily on public LLMs, resulting in misaligned outputs and “AI tourism” instead of measurable impact.
• Clean enterprise data, secure deployment setups, and redesigned processes are essential to making agentic AI operational and strategically valuable.

Key takeaways:

1. Focus on real-value use cases: innovation begins with a business problem, not with experimenting for its own sake.
2. Prioritize structural readiness: clean data, redesigned workflows, and enterprise-grade AI infrastructure determine whether agentic systems deliver results.
3. Empower motivated teams: the highest return comes from equipping individuals who seek change with advanced tools that amplify their capacity, rather than attempting blanket adoption across the organization.

Leaders need to take disruption seriously, double down on strategic intelligence, empower the people who want change, and invest in data and platform foundations before scaling agents.

Is Agentic AI already disrupting businesses (or can we just not see it yet)?

Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.

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Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.

Level up your AI Leadership game with the AI Leadership Handbook (https://www.aileadershiphandbook.com) and shape the next generation of AI-ready teams with The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge (https://www.humanagenticaiedge.com).

More details:
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All episodes:
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Agentic AI is pushing leaders to rethink roles, processes, and governance far beyond another automation wave.

In this episode, Andreas Welsch speaks with Danielle Gifford, PwC Managing Director of AI, about how organizations should prepare for agentic AI. Danielle draws on frontline experience with enterprise pilots and deployments to explain why agents require new infrastructure, clearer role boundaries, and fresh approaches to governance and workforce design.

Highlights from the conversation:

• Why agents are different from classic rule-based automation: they’re goal-driven, context-aware and can act with autonomy, which creates both opportunity and risk.
• Where companies (especially in Canada) are on the adoption curve: pilots and POCs are increasing, but full-scale deployments need better data, guardrails, and change planning.
• How leaders should approach agent projects: start with the business problem, map processes, and decide where human + agent collaboration delivers the highest value.
• Workforce design and the “digital coworker”: practical advice on defining role boundaries, delegation rules, and how to evaluate outcomes when humans and agents collaborate.
• Multi-agent orchestration and governance: how to prevent agents from converging on weak solutions and how to build review, control, and accountability into agent systems.

Key takeaways:

1. Business first: define the problem before choosing technology. Agents aren’t a silver bullet — they must solve a real, scoped pain point.
2. Move from experimentation to implementation: Canadian enterprises are ready to progress beyond proofs of concept and invest in production-ready agent solutions with proper controls.
3. Agents ≠ automation: treat agents as goal-based collaborators that need explicit boundaries, evaluation metrics, and workforce redesign.

If you lead teams, product strategy, or AI initiatives and want practical guidance for turning agent hype into measurable outcomes, this episode is for you. Listen now to get the full conversation and actionable next steps.

Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.

Support the show

***********
Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.

Level up your AI Leadership game with the AI Leadership Handbook (https://www.aileadershiphandbook.com) and shape the next generation of AI-ready teams with The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge (https://www.humanagenticaiedge.com).

More details:
https://www.intelligence-briefing.com
All episodes:
https://www.intelligence-briefing.com/podcast
Get a weekly thought-provoking post in your inbox:
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AI agents are arriving fast, but the winners will be the organizations that pair them with trusted data, clear processes and security — not those who chase scale alone.

In this episode, Andreas Welsch talks with analyst and diginomica co-founder Jon Reed about what’s actually next for agentic AI: where real value is emerging, why many pilots stall, and how to move from hype to measurable outcomes. They cut through the noise around model releases and scary headlines, and focus on practical pathways for enterprise adoption.

Highlights include:

• Why throwing scale at models isn’t a cure-all and how enterprises succeed by constraining problems and adding domain context
• The “last mile” problem: when out-of-the-box LLMs miss industry-specific language, and when to fine-tune or use smaller domain models
• Data readiness as a multi-year journey — and how to weave data cleanup into early AI use cases so you can get wins fast
• Real business examples (procurement long-tail, finance workflows, shop-floor QA) where agents and ML already drive measurable impact
• Security, trust and identity for agents: new threat vectors, authentication challenges and when agent-to-agent interactions create additional risk
• Practical tech signals to watch: RAG + tool-calling, MCP/A2A protocols, zero-copy data approaches, and when to favor internal wins over multi-vendor orchestration
• People and culture: empower middle managers and junior staff to experiment safely, avoid short-sighted headcount cuts, and build communities of practice
• Legal and fairness considerations, including why frameworks like the EU AI Act offer useful risk-drive guardrails

If you lead an AI initiative, build data platforms, or are responsible for secure automation, this conversation gives realistic next steps — from choosing the right model size and partners to hardening agent deployments and capturing the first ROI moments.

Listen to the episode to learn how to move past hype and design agent strategies that actually deliver business outcomes.

Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.

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***********
Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.

Level up your AI Leadership game with the AI Leadership Handbook (https://www.aileadershiphandbook.com) and shape the next generation of AI-ready teams with The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge (https://www.humanagenticaiedge.com).

More details:
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AI is reshaping every job from the C-Suite to the front line. It's happening at a pace unlike any change we’ve seen before.

But most leaders are uncomfortable leading this change. Despite all the talk about technology, AI-driven uncertainty is a deeply human topic. Sitting it out or waiting for someone else to solve the big questions of self-identity, value, and skills is not an option.

In this episode of "What’s the BUZZ?," host Andreas Welsch sits down with Alison McCauley, Author and Digital Change Strategist, to explore how leaders can navigate the uncertainty AI brings to the workplace.

Catch the BUZZ:

• Why will every role will change and how can leaders prepare?
• What's the critical role of expertise in the AI era?
• How can you equip your team with AI skills and big-picture thinking?
• When should you use AI as a thought partner?

Whether you’re a CEO, a mid-level manager, or just starting your career, this conversation offers actionable ways to lead with confidence when the future feels unclear.

Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.

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***********
Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.

Level up your AI Leadership game with the AI Leadership Handbook (https://www.aileadershiphandbook.com) and shape the next generation of AI-ready teams with The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge (https://www.humanagenticaiedge.com).

More details:
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All episodes:
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Get a weekly thought-provoking post in your inbox:
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Large corporations and startups are dominating the AI conversation. But how do non-profits adopt AI without compromising trust?

In this episode of "What’s the BUZZ?," host Andreas Welsch welcomes Scott Rosenkrans, VP of AI Innovation at DonorSearch, to the show to discuss how non-profits use AI to make a measurable impact.

Catch the BUZZ:
• Why does “just because you can” not always mean you should?
• How can predictive and generative AI work together to support human fundraisers?
• Why must donor relationships come before fundraising transactions?
• How does culture readiness in addition to tech readiness drive AI success?
• Which success metrics in fundraising go beyond total dollars raised?

If you’re a non-profit leader or change manager tasked with delivering results from AI, this conversation will help you set yourself up for success.

Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.

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***********
Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.

Level up your AI Leadership game with the AI Leadership Handbook (https://www.aileadershiphandbook.com) and shape the next generation of AI-ready teams with The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge (https://www.humanagenticaiedge.com).

More details:
https://www.intelligence-briefing.com
All episodes:
https://www.intelligence-briefing.com/podcast
Get a weekly thought-provoking post in your inbox:
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