The AI Leadership Studio With Dan Verton

Most enterprise AI initiatives are failing to deliver true transformation—and the gap between retrofitting workflows and redesigning them for AI-native execution is quickly becoming a competitive fault line. In this editorial episode, Dan Verton explores the structural shift driven by agentic AI, drawing on insights from the Harvard Data Science Initiative and real-world experience building AI-pow...

We have all this new AI, so why is work actually getting harder? In this episode of AI Leadership Studio, host Dan Verton speaks with Gabriela Mauch, Chief Customer Officer and head of the ActivTrak Productivity Lab, about one of the most revealing workforce studies of 2026: a three-year behavioral analysis of 163,000 employees across more than 1,100 companies. The findings challenge one of the mo...

AI agents are rapidly moving from experimental tools to operational workforce components, forcing leaders to rethink how work gets structured, managed, and governed. In this episode of the AI Leadership Studio, the conversation explores the rise of "agent-first" organizations—where autonomous AI systems take on defined roles, execute workflows, and operate with increasing independence inside enter...

Search isn't dead—but the way people discover brands is fundamentally changing. In this episode, we break down what "life after search" really means as AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Bing reshape how information is surfaced, trusted, and recommended. Joined by USC Annenberg lecturer and StarGrow.ai founder Emily Kosko, we explore the shift from traditional SEO (search e...

Generative AI adoption is accelerating—but true enterprise maturity remains rare. In this episode of the AI Leadership Studio , host Dan Verton sits down with Marcelo Tamassia (Global CTO, Syntax) and Dessalen Wood (Chief People Officer, Syntax) to explore what it really takes to move GenAI from pilot programs to scalable, enterprise-wide impact. While nearly every organization is experimenting wi...

The first draft isn't the bottleneck anymore. Generative AI collapsed the cost of producing content — marketing copy, code, campaign variations, executive summaries — to near zero. What didn't collapse is everything around it: editorial review, source verification, brand governance, and the accountability structures that were built for a world of content scarcity. Most content and knowledge-worker...

Episode Description: AI governance just got real. Colorado's high-risk AI law took effect February 1, 2026. The EU AI Act's first enforcement wave followed three days later. And the bigger wave—fines up to €35 million or 7% of global turnover—hits August 2, 2026. That gives most organizations roughly five months to get their house in order. The problem? Most don't even know where AI is running ins...

When AI Finds the Bugs Jeff Williams  · Co-Founder & CTO, Contrast Security · Founder, OWASP A few weeks ago, Anthropic published research showing that Claude identified real, exploitable vulnerabilities in production code — software it had never seen before. Most of the industry covered it as a benchmark story. But for enterprise leaders, this isn't a benchmark story. It's a capability trajectory...