Lead From the Heart

Paula Goldman has been thinking about the role AI should play in our workplaces long before the current boom. As Salesforce’s first Chief Ethical and Humane Use Officer, she has spent years helping one of the world’s largest technology companies determine how powerful technologies can be developed and deployed in ways that earn trust and serve people.

Her work has included building ethical frameworks, establishing safeguards, engaging employees and stakeholders, and helping make ethical decision-making part of how technology gets built—not something added after the fact. Goldman argues that ethics is not a checklist; it is a mindset and a culture in which people throughout an organization take responsibility for the consequences of what they create.

Now, as AI moves rapidly toward autonomous agents capable of taking action, Goldman is focused on a bigger question: How do we make AI work for people rather than simply make people work differently for AI?

Her new book, Manage the Machine: How to Harness Human-AI Collaboration at Work, explores that question. Rather than viewing the future as a contest between humans and machines, Goldman envisions a workplace that is “human elevated”—one in which AI takes on more of what machines do well while people contribute more of what makes human judgment valuable.

That requires leaders to rethink jobs rather than simply automate existing tasks. It means deciding where AI belongs, where human judgment must remain central, and how employees can develop the skills to work effectively with increasingly capable machines. Goldman has argued that the old idea of keeping a “human in the loop” is no longer sufficient as AI becomes more autonomous. The better model is “human at the helm”: people remain accountable for determining how AI is used, interpreting its output and making consequential decisions.

The conversation also explores what happens when technology begins to resemble a colleague, why humans so readily attribute intelligence and agency to machines, and what leaders need to understand about creativity, discernment and common sense that cannot simply be automated.

Most importantly, Goldman challenges leaders to look beyond the immediate promise of productivity. If AI is going to transform work, the critical investment is not only in the technology. It is in people—their skills, AI fluency, judgment and ability to know when a machine should be trusted and when it should not.

For leaders trying to navigate AI without losing sight of the people who make their organizations work, Goldman offers a compelling argument: the future of work should not be about replacing human beings with machines, but about using AI to elevate what people are uniquely capable of doing.

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Sherry Turkle is one of the most influential voices in the study of how humans relate to technology, and this conversation with her covers new ground on that subject. Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, and a licensed clinical psychologist. For nearly five decades, beginning with the earliest days of personal computing, she has studied the psychological and social consequences of the machines people build and the relationships people form with them.

Her earlier books, including The Second Self, Alone Together, and Reclaiming Conversation, have shaped how a generation of researchers, technologists, and leaders think about digital life — and Alone Together, published over fifteen years ago, anticipated with striking accuracy a future in which people would come to see robots and machines as companions worthy of real emotional investment.

That future has arrived. Turkle’s newest book, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines, examines what happens when AI chatbots move beyond productivity tools and begin positioning themselves as friends, romantic partners, and therapists — always available, endlessly patient, and asking nothing in return. Her concern is not that these systems are unconvincing, but that they are convincing enough: that people are beginning to accept the performance of empathy as a substitute for empathy itself, with consequences for solitude, intimacy, and the capacity for genuine human connection.

The conversation traces Turkle’s intellectual journey from her early predictions to the present moment, explores what is fundamentally different about AI compared to the technologies she has studied before, and presses into the distinction between authentic care and its convincing imitation. It moves into the workplace, examining what happens to human agency, purpose, and mastery when AI absorbs more of the thinking and communicating people once did themselves — and what is at stake when the relationship between a manager and the people who report to them, long understood as one of the most powerful drivers of well-being, becomes a task AI is asked to perform rather than a bond a human being chooses to show up for.

The discussion also turns a critical eye toward the technology industry itself, questioning predictions from prominent tech leaders about AI companionship and probing the well-documented pattern of executives who limit their own children’s exposure to the very technologies they build. It closes with a forward-looking question: what must be protected, deliberately and urgently, to ensure AI serves humanity rather than the reverse.

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What happens when the machines we build begin to reshape the way we think about ourselves?

For centuries, every major technological revolution has forced humanity to confront the same fundamental question: As our tools become more powerful, what remains uniquely human?

Financial Times journalist, Sarah O’Connor has spent years exploring that question. In her remarkable book, We Are Not Machines, she examines how technology has transformed the world of work—from the agricultural revolution to the Industrial Revolution, the rise of computing, and now the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence. Through reporting from factories, workplaces, warehouses, and organizations on the front lines of technological change, she explores not only what technology can do, but what it means for the people who use it.

Her central argument is both timely and profound: The greatest danger may not be that machines become more like humans, but that humans begin to see themselves through the lens of machines.

In an era where organizations can measure more, automate more, and optimize more than ever before, leaders face a critical choice. Will technology be used to make work more human—or will it reduce people to data points, productivity metrics, and interchangeable parts?

This conversation explores the lessons Sarah learned while researching the future of work, including what she discovered inside one of Amazon’s most advanced fulfillment centers, where humans and sophisticated robotics work side by side. It also examines the growing debate about artificial intelligence and whether predictions that AI will replace vast numbers of white-collar jobs reflect reality—or misunderstand the complexity of human contribution.

As AI becomes increasingly capable, Sarah challenges leaders to consider a deeper question: What qualities make human beings valuable when machines can perform more tasks than ever before? Creativity, judgment, empathy, relationships, curiosity, and purpose may become not less important, but more essential.

The conversation also explores who should decide how AI is introduced into organizations and what responsibility leaders have to ensure technology strengthens rather than undermines employee well-being. The future of work will not be determined by technology alone. It will be shaped by the choices leaders make about the kind of workplaces they want to create.

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Paul Osterman is Professor Emeritus of Human Resources and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and one of the most important scholars examining how the structure of work is profoundly changing in organizations today.

His research focuses on a growing and often overlooked shift in employment: the rise of “disposable workers.” Osterman estimates that roughly 35% of today’s workforce now falls into this category in some form.

While public attention often centers on gig work — Uber drivers, DoorDash couriers, and freelance labor — his work shows that this is only a small part of the story. In fact, gig workers make up just around 2% of the workforce, and many use that work as supplemental income rather than their primary employment.

The deeper transformation, Osterman argues, is happening inside traditional organizations. Increasingly, companies are redesigning jobs and employment relationships in order to greatly reduce the compensation and benefits they offer. This doesn’t just apply to custodial or cafeteria workers, it includes adjunct professors who earn substantially less money than their peers and have zero chance of every earning tenure. It applies to attorneys in elite firms who are precluded from ever becoming a partner — and contract or contingent workers embedded within major companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple. These workers often perform similar functions to full-time employees but remain structurally separated from the organizations they serve.

Osterman’s work highlights a fundamental shift in how companies think about labor. Rather than hiring employee as long-term investments, organizations are increasingly guided by a hierarchy of choices: automate work where possible, outsource when automation is not feasible, rely on contractors when outsourcing is more efficient, and hire full-time employees only as a last resort.

On the surface, this approach is often justified in terms of efficiency, flexibility, and competitiveness. It allows firms to scale labor up and down in response to market demands and reduce the fixed costs associated with permanent employment. But Osterman’s research raises deeper questions about the broader consequences of this model — not only for workers, but for organizations themselves.

What happens to trust, commitment, and organizational culture when a growing share of the workforce is structurally temporary or peripheral? What are the psychological and social effects on individuals who are fully inside organizations in terms of output, but not fully included in terms of opportunity, training, stability, or belonging?

These are not abstract concerns. They go to the heart of how modern work is experienced — and whether the current trajectory of employment is sustainable in the long run.

In this conversation, Osterman explores the economic logic driving these changes, the historical evolution of employer-employee relationships, and the implications of accelerating automation and AI. He also examines whether these trends are an inevitable outcome of capitalism, or whether alternative models of work are still possible — ones that balance flexibility with dignity, and efficiency with long-term human investment.

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In an era marked by rising depression, loneliness, distractibility, burnout and overall declining well-being, many leaders are searching for more effective ways to support their own flourishing and that of their teams. In this compelling conversation, Cortland Dahl, PhD, shares truly transformative insights from his new book, Born to Flourish: How New Science and Ancient Wisdom Reveal a Simple Path to Thriving, co-authored with renowned neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson.

Dahl serves as a Contemplative Scientist at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. With a unique background that includes nearly a decade living in Himalayan monasteries and Tibetan refugee communities, years of solitary retreat, fluency in Tibetan, and the translation of classical meditation texts, he brings rare depth to the intersection of ancient contemplative wisdom and cutting-edge neuroscience.

Together with Davidson, Dahl has helped develop the Healthy Minds Framework — a practical, research-backed model showing that humans are literally born with an innate capacity to flourish. The book reveals that genuine well-being arises not from mindfulness alone, but through the cultivation of four interconnected skills: Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose.

These trainable practices, grounded in both brain science and timeless wisdom, can be developed in just a few minutes a day and have been shown to rewire the brain for greater resilience, kindness, and meaning — even amid life’s inevitable challenges.

This episode dives deep into each of the four skills, exploring simple, everyday ways individuals can build them, while also addressing the critical question of how workplace leaders can intentionally model and cultivate these qualities to elevate employee well-being and create healthier, more connected organizational cultures.

Dahl shares why mastering all four skills together produces results far more powerful than any single practice, and how flourishing can become contagious within teams. If you care about leading with heart, reducing burnout, strengthening human connection, and helping people thrive rather than merely survive, this conversation offers both hope and practical guidance.

Tune in to discover how ancient truths and modern science can transform the way we work and live.

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