#206: Building AI Councils That Work, Motivating Passive Adopters, Why Pilots Stall, and Amazon’s AI Slowdown

#206: Building AI Councils That Work, Motivating Passive Adopters, Why Pilots Stall, and Amazon’s AI Slowdown

From The Artificial Intelligence Show by Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput

March 26, 2026 · 54 min · Episode 206

About this episode

The episode discusses the challenges and strategies of AI adoption in companies, addressing common pitfalls and the future of knowledge work.

Not a single company leader Paul has spoken with is fully prepared for what AI is about to do to their workforce. In this AI Answers episode, Paul and Cathy work through 15 real questions from a recent Scaling AI class, covering everything from the AI divide inside companies to why most AI strategies fail before they start. Topics include job displacement and underemployment, why enterprises handed AI to IT and get stuck, the automation-vs-augmentation spectrum by seniority level, what knowledge work looks like in three years, and why showing a skeptical CEO results beats showing them prompts every time. 00:00:00 — Intro 00:06:09 — Is Amazon slowing its AI rollout a sign of maturity? 00:08:58 — Are large enterprises structurally disadvantaged in the AI era? 00:12:14 — Who owns the AI adoption and data readiness problem? 00:14:56 — Is there a growing AI divide between power users and everyone else? 00:21:16 — What AI take do most people disagree with? 00:22:47 — Can companies automate too much too fast? 00:26:19 — Does automation eventually take over or do we land in the middle? 00:28:24 — What does the average knowledge worker's job look like in three years? 00:35:02 — What are…

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Hosts: Paul Roetzer, Mike Kaput

Guest: Cathy

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Organizations: Amazon

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