The Josh Bersin Company

We are all living in a world of “beta products” from AI vendors, and whether we like it or not we’re stuck with the risks. Today I weigh in with my perspectives about what’s going on and how we, as consumers and builders, need to push back on Frontier Labs and force them to “fix” these issues.

Lots to debate and I look forward to meeting many of you this Fall as we travel the world discussing our new book Superpowered and our exciting new announcements around Galileo.

(Major launch tomorrow, stay tuned!)

References

“Superpowered,” our new book that explains the positive future of work

“1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World,” the history that’s repeating itself

Anthropic’s List of AI Cyber and Swarming Hacks

Dario’s “We Must Pace The Frontier” Article

Sam Altman Postpones OpenAI’s Public Offering Because of Safety Issue

 

Chapters

(00:00:00) - AI Doomsday Warnings and Corporate Hypocrisy
(00:00:50) - AI Values Reflect Society's Flaws
(00:02:35) - Comparing AI Risk to Boeing and Product Safety
(00:04:05) - Corporate Liability and Legal Risk of AI Vendors
(00:05:16) - Who's Responsible When AI Causes Harm
(00:06:15) - Design Flaws and the Jupiter Launch Preview
(00:06:59) - Defense, Ethics, and the Oppenheimer Parallel
(00:09:16) - Commercialism, Greed, and Historical Parallels
(00:10:29) - Railroad Era Comparison and Financial Mania
(00:11:05) - Political Divide Over AI and Data Centers
(00:12:55) - Data Center Politics and Mobility of Capital
(00:13:49) - Software Builders' Dependence on Reliable Models
(00:14:24) - Everyday AI Mistakes and Acceptable Risk
(00:15:50) - We're All Part of a Giant Beta Test
(00:16:25) - Closing Thoughts and Jupiter Teaser

Guess what. There is no AI jobs apocalypse, there’s an AI-fueled labor shortage. And this means human capital and leadership strategies will be more important than ever as we transform our companies around AI.

It also means that you, as a professsional or frontline worker, are going to see yourself become Superpowered, as we discuss in our new book. And the world of HR is moving quickly away from “HR as policy police” to “HR as a growth function.”

Listen in and you’ll see how HR 2030 and AI are reinventing our jobs, careers, and HR operations toward what we call “Dynamic Enablement for Growth.”

Additional Information

Our New Book “Superpowered,” Launching in October

US Workforce In 2035: A Few More Workers, A Lot More Output

Despite Massive AI Investments, HR Jobs Are Booming. Why?

HR 2030: How AI Superagents Transform HR From Service Delivery to Dynamic Business Enablement

 

Chapters

(00:00:00) - The AI Labor Shortage Thesis
(00:01:21) - Jobs Boom Driven by AI Infrastructure
(00:02:26) - Shrinking Labor Pool and Retention Challenges
(00:03:00) - Introducing HR 2030 Blueprint
(00:04:42) - Redesigning Jobs and Functional Silos
(00:06:00) - Managing AI Agents as Superworkers
(00:07:36) - Redefining HR's Mission as Growth Enablement
(00:08:53) - Asking About Business Growth Strategy
(00:10:32) - Retail Case Study: Growth-Aligned HR
(00:12:25) - HR as a Growth Function, Not a Cost Center
(00:13:56) - Closing Thoughts and Upcoming Galileo Release

What do you do when the funding that anchored your HR transformation disappears unexpectedly? For Seneca Polytechnic, a public college with 44,000 students in the greater Toronto area, the answer was redesigning the transformation itself.

In this episode, we speak with Diana Mohan, Executive Director of Transformation and Change at Seneca Polytechnic — a 2026 HR Pacesetter Award winner — about how her team chose to continue forward rather than press pause when regulatory changes created a structural deficit across Canada’s higher education sector.

Diana shares how Seneca’s HR team embraced AI to totally change how HR operates and scale HR services. Their approach began with listening, building trust and capability across the team, and empowering people at every level to create new AI use cases. The result has not only been more efficient service delivery and a better employee experience—it’s been a strategic shift to an insight-driven, advisory HR function.

Diana Mohan is a transformation specialist and trusted advisor specializing in over a decade of organizational strategy, AI adoption, and the future of work. With a career spanning Deloitte, Kearney, and executive leadership roles, she has helped many organizations translate bold ideas into practical transformation programs, enabling leaders to navigate uncertainty, accelerate change, and prepare for what’s next.

Additional Information

New Research: How AI Transforms $400 Billion Of Corporate Learning

US Workforce In 2035: A Few More Workers, A Lot More Output

The Great Decoupling: How Workers Became Disconnected From Companies And AI Will Accelerate This Trend

Get Galileo: How Seneca Transformed HR

Chapters

(00:00:00) - What Works: The Future of Work
(00:00:41) - HR Pacesetter Award Winners: Diana Mouhand
(00:01:52) - In the Know: The HR Team at Seneca Polytechnic
(00:02:47) - How HR is on a transformation journey
(00:05:13) - How Cognizant Went From Transformation to a Pivot
(00:06:59) - How To Build Trust in AI at Seneca
(00:12:19) - The HR org chart: AI Agents
(00:16:10) - What Makes an HR Team Flexible in the Age of AI
(00:18:10) - WSJD Live: The AI Transformation

The BLS forecasts an almost flat growth in the labor market in the next decade yet US GDP is expected to grow by 22-24% cumulatively. In order for this to work we are all going to be focused on “labor productivity.”

In this podcast I explain this new world of Superworkers and discuss why the word “labor” itself may be out of date. I also discuss why HR issues like org design, work design, dynamic enablement, talent density, pay equity, dynamic planning, and AI really change the dynamics of our businesses. And HR is now a growth professsion, growing faster than the GDP and increasing in economic value.

Additional Information

Our new book Superpowered, launching in October

US Workforce In 2035: A Few More Workers, A Lot More Output

Galileo will teach you how to drive productivity

 

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Labor Market: The super worker
(00:04:17) - Employee mobility and job and org redesign
(00:06:44) - Beyond HR: The Role of AI in Business

Rochana Golani, VP of Enablement at Databricks, is one of the most innovative and business-focused learning executives I’ve met. In this action-packed conversation Rochana shares the secrets of the company’s AI-powered dynamic training, learning, and enablement system, and how she runs internal and customer learning like a fast-growing business.

Databricks is one of the world’s fastest-growing enterprise software companies and a central player in the convergence of data infrastructure, analytics, machine learning, and generative AI.

Founded in 2013 by the UC Berkeley researchers who created Apache Spark, Databricks pioneered the “lakehouse”—an architecture designed to combine the scalability of a data lake with the management, reliability, and analytical capabilities of a data warehouse. Its platform now supports data engineering, business intelligence, AI development, governance, databases, and enterprise AI agents across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Databricks company overview

This amazing private company reports:

More than 20,000 customers

Approximately 70% of the Fortune 500

More than 10,000 employees

More than 8,000 cloud, software, and consulting partners.

As of August 2026, Databricks says it has exceeded a $7 billion annualized revenue run rate, growing by more than 80% year over year during its second quarter.

Additional Information

Corporate Learning: From Static Training to Dynamic Enablement

Galileo Learn: Experience Dynamic Learning Yourself

The Josh Bersin Institute: Masterclass in HR Excellence

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Interview With Databricks's Roshana Golani
(00:00:24) - Databricks CEO on the Disruptive Technology
(00:01:36) - How to Get Empowerment at Databricks
(00:03:16) - WSJD Live: Data & Machine Learning Lead the Way
(00:08:09) - Teaching and Enablement: The New Paradigm
(00:11:01) - How to Build a Better Solution with Databricks
(00:14:52) - WSJD Live: The Skills Taxonomy
(00:15:22) - What do you think happens to course content?
(00:17:13) - The source of content in the Learning Infrastructure
(00:22:52) - Databricks: The go-to training solution for business users
(00:24:25) - In the Era of AI, Who Will Lead the Transformation?
(00:26:57) - Subject Matter Experts and the Learning Infrastructure
(00:28:20) - A Day in the Life of Leadership Development