AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser

What if the future of AI is not bigger models in bigger data centers, but smaller ones running quietly on the devices you already use every day?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Jeffrey Li, COO of Liquid AI, about why the next phase of AI may depend less on giant cloud models and more on small, specialized models that run directly on phones, laptops, cars, and other edge devices. We explore the case for on-device AI, why ...

It’s happening everywhere. And no one’s really talking about it. What happens when your employees are already using dozens of AI tools your company never approved?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Rick Caccia, co-founder and CEO of Witness AI, about the rise of “shadow AI” inside enterprises and why it has become one of the biggest practical challenges in AI adoption. We explore how employees, often with good intentions, ...

What happens when an AI prediction does not just forecast the future, but helps create it?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with philosopher and ethicist Carissa Véliz about AI ethics, AI privacy, predictive AI, and the hidden power of algorithmic decision-making. We explore how AI systems used in hiring, lending, insurance, and other high-stakes settings can become self-fulfilling prophecies, shaping outcomes rather than simp...

What if the job you have today will soon require a completely different set of skills? 

In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Dan Roth, Editor in Chief of LinkedIn, about what LinkedIn’s data reveals about the future of work, the rise of AI literacy, and why deeply human skills may matter more than ever. We dig into LinkedIn’s “Skills on the Rise” research, what employers are actually looking for now, and why the shift toward ...

What does it actually look like to use AI tools in the real world, beyond the usual chatbot prompts and hype?

In this episode of AI-Curious, Jeff Wilser shares five AI tools and workflows that are shaping how he works right now, from Claude Code and personalized news briefings to NotebookLM, multi-model prompting, and using AI to write more closely in your own voice. The goal is not to offer a comprehensive list of every AI product ...

What happens when AI stops being a productivity tool and starts reshaping the structure of work itself?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Kelly Monahan, a future of work and AI advisor, about what AI may actually do to the workplace over the next few years, and why the reality is likely to be messier than both the hype and the fear suggest. We dig into the tension between using AI for augmentation versus automation, why so...

What happens when a business school decides AI isn’t a bolt-on elective, but the operating system for how students learn marketing, finance, entrepreneurship, and leadership?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we’re back with David Marchick, Dean of the Kogod School of Business, to see what changed after his earlier promise to become the country’s first AI-first business school. We dig into what “AI-first” actually means in practice, wh...

What happens when AI makes the news feel like it was made just for us, and the “objective” version quietly disappears?

Here we have something of a “very special episode” of AI-Curious. I was recently in Davos during World Economic Forum week, and was honored to speak on a panel on the Future of Media. This is that panel. 

We dig into the trust crisis in journalism, the attention economy, and how AI may accelerate the shift toward per...

Something I don’t usually say: This is one of my favorite conversations I’ve ever had in the AI space. Truly. 

The setup: What happens when an AI agent stops being a tool and starts acting like a coworker?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Dan Botero, who built an AI agent named Octavius Fabrius using OpenClaw. Octavius didn’t just chat or summarize. He applied to hundreds of jobs, built his own portfolio, experimented with...

What happens when AI agents start talking to each other in public, at scale, and we have to figure out how humans fit into that world?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we explore the “Moltbook moment” through a special live panel recorded at the Summit on Human Agency, convened by the Advanced AI Society (hat tip to Michael Casey and Tricia Wang.) Instead of a standard one-on-one interview, we moderate a wide-ranging conversation with...

What happens when a social network is built for AI agents, not humans, and millions of bots start posting, debating, and “performing” identity in public?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we break down Moltbook, the agents-only social platform that briefly became one of the strangest (and most revealing) experiments of the AI era. We unpack what Moltbook is, why it matters, and what it suggests about a near future where AI agents don’t...

What does it take to make AI adoption stick in a high-stakes, heavily regulated industry, without triggering job-loss panic?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we have a hyper-specific case study of AI adoption. Host Jeff Wilser talks with Krista Snelling (CEO and Chairman) and Matthew March (CIO and EVP) of West Coast Community Bank about their practical playbook for rolling out AI the right way: governance first, culture second, and m...

What happens when software stops just “chatting” and starts acting in the real world, across real workflows, with real consequences?

In this episode of AI-Curious, the Head of AI at Cognizant goes deep on AI agents and agentic workflows: what they are, why enterprises are investing heavily, and what it actually takes to make agent systems reliable and safe at scale. We unpack what separates an AI agent from a traditional chatbot, wh...

Is AI quietly creating more work than it’s replacing, and are we measuring the job market the wrong way?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with the CEO of Upwork, Hayden Brown, about what the platform is seeing across the global freelance economy, and why the “AI is killing jobs” narrative can miss what’s happening at the edges of the market. We also dig into how to adopt AI inside an organization without just “sprinkling fairy...

What does “human-first AI” actually look like when you have to make decisions under pressure, hit numbers, and keep trust intact?

In AI-Curious, we talk with Kate O’Neill — “the Tech Humanist” and author of What Matters Next — about how leaders can adopt AI in ways that strengthen human outcomes instead of quietly eroding culture, morale, and customer experience. We dig into why so many AI initiatives fail for non-technical reasons,...

What happens when the world’s most-used creative tools get smarter — and creators worry they’re losing the wheel?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Eric Snowden, Senior Vice President of Design at Adobe, about how Adobe is weaving AI into Photoshop, Lightroom, Acrobat, and beyond — while trying to keep the tools respectful of craft, muscle memory, and the human spark. We dig into the bigger question beneath the featur...

What happens when AI can “read the whole internet” but the internet stops volunteering its best work?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Medium, about what he calls AI’s “broken social contract” with the web, and why the next era may be less about a “dead internet” and more about a dead public internet. We unpack the incentives that made the open web thrive, how AI search summaries change the traffi...

Is AI making creators more powerful… or more replaceable? And if you start with a blank page for a living, there’s an even sharper question underneath it: should AI write for you… or write with you?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we sit down with Victor Varnado—a New Yorker cartoonist, comedian, actor, and creative technologist—to explore a grounded, practical philosophy for using AI without becoming a passenger.

Victor draws a sharp...

What’s actually happening with AI adoption inside U.S. businesses—and how much of the public discourse is just vibes?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we dig into the hard numbers behind AI spend and adoption with Ara Kharazian, an economist at Ramp and the leader of Ramp Economics Lab. Using anonymized, real-time corporate spend data across tens of thousands of businesses, Ara shares what the “receipts” reveal about who’s buying AI, ...