In Manage the Machine: How to Harness Human-AI Collaboration at Work, Paula Goldman argues that AI has crossed over from being a tool to being a partner, and that the companies that win will not be the ones automating the most or the fastest, but the ones that deliberately design around where humans still need to lead.
Goldman is the first-ever chief ethical and humane use officer at Salesforce, where she is also EVP of Product, and previously led the Tech and Society Solutions Lab and impact investing at Omidyar Network. She has served on the US National AI Advisory Committee, chairing its generative AI working group. Her new book is a practical guide to integrating AI across functions from sales to HR to legal, setting out how to decide which tasks can safely be delegated to AI, which should stay with people, and what guardrails keep either from going astray.
In her conversation with Adam Job, senior director at the BCG Institute, she discusses her "human at the helm" model of AI adoption, the role customer emotion plays in deciding where AI belongs, whether AI erodes the very human judgment it depends on, how to measure AI ROI beyond time saved, and what it takes to move from pilots to enterprise-wide rollout.
Key topics discussed:
01:01 | What changes for leaders once AI shifts from tool to partner
02:28 | The "human at the helm" model in practice
07:09 | How the chief ethical and humane use officer role fits into AI governance
09:43 | Customer and employee emotion as a design input
12:39 | Skill decay: does the model erode itself over time?
15:54 | The jagged technological frontier and where to deploy AI
18:32 | Calculating AI ROI: cost savings versus new products
22:14 | Navigating two moving frontiers, better and cheaper
27:09 | Getting from successful pilot to enterprise rollout
