Produced by Glean and co-hosted by Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson this was an enjoyable and insighful afternoon hearing from a wide range of leaders and subject matter experts.
Hosted in NYC on 19 Nov 2025 what follows are my notes on what I found interesting from the event - the full recording is available here.
The Adoption Problem: Why AI Only Works If People Trust It
with Chris Duffy, Connie Noonan Hadley, and Stephen Wunker
Obstacles
Suggestions
HR should be involved in the change
AI is not a tool, it's a paradigm shift
Focus on the business objective, communicate this to employees so they are less afraid and more invested
Consider the possibility of building a skills bank of employees so that your in-house AI interface can suggest work colleagues to talk to on a particular subject. This can increase human connections and decrease loneliness & siloes
How can you measure the ROI or effectiveness of your AI usage?
- Don't just focus on Engagement and Productivity metrics
Rebuilding Enterprise AI: What Comes After the Pilot Era
with Ruchir Puri and Nicholas Thompson
The use of agents is not evenly distributed across the org, but they are already prevalent in software engineering
He has agents debugging & documenting legacy code written in Cobalt to understand it better
We have to rethink how we work, not just use AI as a tool to automate tasks
Although new AI companies will be quicker to rethink how we work, legacy enterprises have horizontal reach which will help with implementing AI everywhere, as a platform feature
AI does not have self-improvement yet, whereas humans do. Humans know what we don't know, Models do not.
- "Knowing what you don't know is intelligence" - Ruchir
Requirements for Intelligence
The most successful agents will be the ones best calibrated for knowing when to ask for human intervention
What are the differences between AI and Human intelligence?
- You can audit the bias of AI and try to make it unbiased. Humans are much more opaque!
How do you measure intelligence?
IQ - Intelligence
EQ - Emotional
RQ - Relationships
AI's will struggle with 2 + 3 (they can't hug someone!)
Five Shifts Every Organization Must Make for the Age of Superintelligence
with Rebecca Hinds and Nicholas Thompson
Psychological (employee buy-in)
Just 9% employees see AI as a team mate rather than just a tool - but these people tend to be more successful in using AI
Don't gamify AI clicks per employee!
Top down change + Bottom up change
Identify supporters and people within each function to identify use cases for AI acceleration
Establish a firm wide low code platform to reduce tool sprawl and security risks
Ask "How can this make the team/org better - not just the individual"
Toggle Tax is real - the number of times employees have to switch between tabs, apps, slack etc. Don't make this worse with you AI implementation!
Org chart needs rewiring, we're seeing HR & IT become more closely aligned in the rollout of AI org wide.
We may see more flattened org structure between product, engineering, design & data as AI helps each discipline cross boundaries and understand the other areas. However, be careful to mind the difference between heads-down and heads-up style work where this approach could be detrimental.
What should organisations do tomorrow?
Understand what departments need to be better connected
Moderna merged HR & IT (for example)
Collaboration will be key
Making AI Real in Complex Enterprises
with Conor Grennan, John Borthwick, and Rohan Sharma
How to be successful with AI?
Rohan Sharma - suggested Blackstone are a good example and are doing well with their AI pilots
John Borthwick - It's a behavioral shift. We all need to consider how we work with AI. We know well how to interact with people and software but this is a new interface
Conor Grennan - ChatGPT adoption is through the roof as it's a better Search Engine. You don't have to leave the page.
