Humans of AI: Presented by WRITER

WRITER's Humans of AI takes listeners behind the business of AI and into the intimate stories of those at the forefront of the AI era. Listen to leaders as they navigate how generative AI is changing their work, and lives.

Humans of AI: Presented by WRITER is a business podcast hosted by WRITER, with 57 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

WRITER hosts Humans of AI: Presented by WRITER, a business show with 57 episodes published.

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  Humans of AI: Presented by WRITER

  From ZMOT to the AI Marketing Canvas: Jim Lecinski on the five stages marketers can't skip

  Sep 16, 202616 min

  In 2014, inside a room at Google, Jim Lecinski watched AI teach itself to play Pong. No rules, no programming. The machine learned over a weekend. He'd been in the room when the web went commercial twenty years earlier. Now he was watching it happen again. Jim Lecinski has spent thirty-seven years in marketing — twelve at Google, where he published "The Zero Moment of Truth," a framework that over 300,000 marketers downloaded and that changed how an entire generation understood customer behavior. Now a clinical professor at Northwestern's Kellogg School, he's written a second book, "The AI Marketing Canvas," mapping the five stages of AI marketing maturity. Jim shares why 85% of marketing teams are stuck in AI transformation — and why the problem isn't technology. It's people. He introduces the evolution of the Zero Moment of Truth from three sources to five, the concept of "whole brain marketing," and a practical tool: synthetic personas that keep the customer in the room. And he has a warning. "Don't give into cognitive surrender." The temptation to accept AI's first draft without questioning it. Every time we do, we chip away at the craft that makes our work worth reading. Alaura asks the question every CMO is asking right now: what are we building toward? Subscribe to Humans of AI for more stories from people navigating the intersection of business and artificial intelligence. Watch the full video interview on the WRITER YouTube channel for bonus content and deeper insights. Learn more about WRITER at writer.com.

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  Humans of AI: Presented by WRITER

  Slow down to speed up: Megan Filbin on where value lives when AI does the work

  Sep 2, 202629 min

  If you’re a marketer at a company implementing AI, you’re likely wrestling with this question: what defines your value when AI does, or changes, what you used to do? As Senior Lead of Marketing Strategy and Operations at WRITER, Megan Filbin found her answer in systems thinking: looking at the big picture to understand how the components work together before jumping in with a solution. But that discovery raised a harder question: if her value is in systems, where does everyone else's value live on her team? In this episode, Megan joins hosts Diego Lomanto and Alaura Weaver to break down a framework that doesn't touch the org chart. Instead, it names four functions already emerging on marketing teams: strategy (setting direction and making the high-stakes calls), curation (defining what good looks like), architecture (building the systems), and orchestration (running the work). These are functions, not job titles — most people combine two or three of them within a single role. Execution moves to agents. And the creative work, the part that actually differentiates a brand, gets more time. This is the honest version, including the parts that usually get cut: the maintenance tax, the talent pipeline fear, and the gap between what AI can produce and what it takes to know whether the output is any good. Real AI maturity isn't measured by how much you automate. It's knowing what to automate, what to augment, and what still requires human judgment. Subscribe to Humans of AI for more stories from people navigating the intersection of business and artificial intelligence. Watch the full video interview on the WRITER YouTube channel for bonus content and deeper insights. Learn more about WRITER at writer.com.

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  Episode #5

  From magic to muscle: Qualcomm's Brent Summers on why people — not models — drive enterprise AI transformation

  Jul 1, 202619 minS5

  In this episode of Humans of AI, hosts Alaura Weaver and Diego Lomanto sit down with Brent Summers, head of AI platforms and GTM innovation at Qualcomm. Brent shares his journey from a UX-obsessed kid on dial-up bulletin boards to leading AI transformation at one of the world's great engineering companies. We explore what it means to be a "human marketer" in an organization that bends physics, why AI needs to transition from "magic to muscle" through daily practice, and why the most important part of any AI transformation is the people in the middle. Plus, Brent offers a bold contrarian take — the biggest risk of AI isn't that it makes us less human. It's that we use it as an excuse to avoid the hard, uniquely human work of building relationships. Subscribe to Humans of AI for more stories from people navigating the intersection of business and artificial intelligence. Watch the full video interview on the WRITER YouTube channel for bonus content and deeper insights. Learn more about WRITER at writer.com.

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  Humans of AI: Presented by WRITER

  Marketing AI Institute’s Cathy McPhillips on the new productivity, and the value of productive struggle

  Jun 17, 202617 min

  Cathy McPhillips spent nine years at Content Marketing Institute building content marketing before most companies had a budget line for it — back when executives still asked where “content” even fit in the org chart. Now, as Chief Growth Officer at the Marketing AI Institute, she's watching the same pattern play out again with AI. In this episode, Cathy, Diego, and Alaura dig into what that pattern means for marketers right now — specifically, the risk of using AI to do more of the wrong things, faster. When execution gets effortless, the question shifts from “how do we produce this?” to “should we produce this at all, and does it actually earn trust?” They get into the “productive struggle,” the friction that builds judgment, sharpens instinct, and can't be automated away without real cost. And the hardest question of this moment — in a world of infinite content, how do we protect the work that's worth reading? This one's for anyone who's been moving fast and wondering if they're building or just busy Subscribe to Humans of AI for more stories from people navigating the intersection of business and artificial intelligence. Watch the full video interview on the WRITER YouTube channel for bonus content and deeper insights. Learn more about WRITER at writer.com.

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  Humans of AI: Presented by WRITER

  The messy reality of enterprise AI: Lilly Raymond on adoption, trust, and human judgment

  Jun 3, 202627 minS0

  <p>We don’t always talk about the human side of transformation. We like the case studies. We like the ROI slides. But what happens when you bring powerful new tools to teams of experts who care deeply about quality, judgment, and craft?<br/>In this episode of Humans of AI, host Alaura Weaver and WRITER CMO Diego Lomanto sit down with Lilly Raymond, a marketing executive who has led MarTech and AI transformation across major financial services brands. Lilly shares a practical perspective on leading marketing teams through AI adoption in complex, highly regulated environments.<br/><br/>We explore th...

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