AI-isms: Human Rhythms in a Synthetic World

Artificial intelligence is transforming more than business. It’s transforming the way we think, work, communicate, lead, and live. On AI-isms, transformation strategist and advisor Shulagna Dasgupta explores the human side of AI through conversations with executives, innovators, founders, and change-makers navigating one of the biggest technological shifts of our time. With more than 20 years of experience guiding CXOs through complex transformation journeys, Shulagna brings a practical and deeply human perspective to the AI conversation, focusing not just on what AI can do, but what it’s doing to us. Each episode examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping behavior, decision-making, leadership, workplace culture, creativity, productivity, identity, and the future of work. Through thoughtful interviews, lived experiences, and strategic insights, AI-isms helps leaders and professionals become more intentional about the role AI plays in their organizations and everyday lives. If you’re interested in artificial intelligence, business transformation, leadership, digital transformation, innovation, or the future of work, this podcast is for you. AI-isms — Human rhythms in a synthetic world.

AI-isms: Human Rhythms in a Synthetic World is a general podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 2 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts AI-isms: Human Rhythms in a Synthetic World, a general show with 2 episodes published.

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  Episode #5

  AI-isms: Drift | Kelly Monahan | Is AI accelerating leadership drift?

  Sep 11, 202640 minS1

  Nobody takes a leadership job planning to burn people out. And yet that is how most workforces would describe the people leading them. So something happens along the way. Kelly Monahan has spent fifteen years studying how organizations actually work, at Deloitte, Accenture, Meta and Upwork, and now at Beyond the Desk, the company she co-founded. In her book Reclaim the Plot, out this month, she gives that something a name. Drift. The slow slide away from the values that got you into leadership in the first place. Metrics over meaning, performance over purpose, control over trust. In this episode I ask Kelly the question I have been sitting with since I read her early pages. Is AI accelerating drift? Her answer is not the one I expected. AI does not change people. The pressure around it does. A gap between what AI companies promise, what boards then expect, and what implementation delivers, on top of a market that pays two to three times the valuation for anything that can call itself an AI company. Leaders drift into that gap. So I put Kelly in the hot seat with three CEOs in trouble, one for each stage of her book. The Drift. The Delirium. The Dream. What we get into: • Why the power paradox makes drift close to inevitable, and how to design against it • The expectation gap that turns AI adoption into performative theatrics • Why a one-year AI roadmap is the tell • The AI-ism minted live: sometimes the right answer is no AI • What a leader has to say out loud to bring a drifted organization back • Two AI-isms for leaders running an AI transformation, two for the employees living through one • Why your body tells you when you have drifted, before your dashboard does Kelly also names three times she drifted herself, including the year Meta went from the year of learning to the year of efficiency. Chapters 00:00 The conversation around leadership has shifted 01:41 Meet Kelly Monahan 02:21 We have lost the plot on what AI is for 04:05 What drift is 05:55 The power paradox 07:13 Is AI accelerating drift? 08:03 The expectation gap 08:35 Performative theatrics 09:05 Stop chasing the one-year roadmap 11:10 Case one, the Drift 15:44 Redefining value, from labour to capital 17:50 Case two, the Delirium 19:34 Solve the business problem before you buy the technology 21:30 Sometimes the right answer is no AI 22:52 Commoditising the very thing that made you different 24:08 Case three, the Dream 26:45 Humility, ego, and what a workforce needs to hear 29:38 Community is the answer 31:22 Two AI-isms for leaders 32:40 Two AI-isms for employees 35:05 Kelly's own drift 39:20 The body tells you when you have drifted This is AI-isms, human rhythms in a synthetic world. AI will not correct a leader who has drifted. It will hand them a faster way to keep going. Guest: Dr. Kelly Monahan, co-founder, Beyond the Desk. Author of Reclaim the Plot (Wiley, September 2026). Host: Shulagna Dasgupta.

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  Episode #5

  AI-isms: Coaching | Pam Baker | To Infuse AI into Coaching or not

  Aug 20, 202640 minS1

  AI-isms — Ep05: Pam Baker, Coaching In this episode of AI-isms I sit down with Pam, CEO and founder of Women's Coaching Alliance, the organization she built out of her husband's question. Young women get recruited, interviewed, trained, paired with a co-coach, given an adult mentor, paid, and then handed a team as head coaches. Not assistants. Head coaches. They run the practices, manage the parents, lose some games, and course correct with each other. It is leadership development disguised as a Saturday morning. Then I did what I always do and dragged a beautiful human conversation into AI. The idea that stayed with me came from one of Doug's friends. Two coaches at a sales meeting, and one asks the other how his season went. The answer: I don't know. I'll let you know in 30 years. Pam's point is that a coach is not looking at the scoreboard, she is looking at who these kids become. Sit with that next to every AI business case you have been asked to defend inside a quarter. What we get into: Why the barrier every young woman named was not the game, it was the difficult parents, and why that is the same muscle you use on a difficult stakeholder at work Why Women's Coaching Alliance pays its teenage coaches, and how Pam connects that to the gender wage gap Where AI genuinely helps a small organization: synthesis, and turning long manuals into something a 16-year-old will actually read Why reading off an AI script makes you blind to the person in front of you, the eye contact, the shoulders, the thing that tells you it is working or failing Three real scenarios, Pam as coach: the 20-year-old who feels like she is reading someone else's words, the parent with the wearable data, the company swapping human mentoring for AI coaching AI is sycophantic. A real mentor tells you that will not fly here What happens when someone discovers a new AI capability and cascades it everywhere without asking whose job it was Why Pam does not use AI for parenting, and the line underneath it: there is no way AI knows more about my kids and me and our relationship than I do Chapters 00:00 Where are all the women coaches? 01:10 Meet Pam Baker 01:52 The question Doug kept asking 02:44 Great coaching is great leadership 04:27 Eighteen young women raise their hands 06:09 She will not raise her hand on her own 10:17 Why every coach gets paid 10:35 A hard pivot into AI 11:38 How a coaching organization actually uses AI 13:05 No AI knows what is happening in front of you 13:33 "I'll let you know in 30 years" 16:13 Case 1: the coach who feels like she is reading a script 19:43 Case 2: the parent with the wearable data 21:58 An amazing player is not a great team 24:08 Snatching someone else's agency 25:44 Case 3: swapping human mentors for AI coaching 28:13 AI is sycophantic. A mentor is not. 33:08 What AI cannot know about your kid 39:09 The two things that stayed with me This is AI-isms, human rhythms in a synthetic world. AI can build your practice plans. It is never going to be the person who believes in you before you believe in yourself. Ask yourself who that person was for you, and whether you are being that person for anyone. Topics: coaching, leadership development, mentoring, AI coaching, AI mentoring, sycophancy, youth sports, women in sports, gender wage gap, culture, team culture, human-AI collaboration, AI adoption, parenting and AI, future of work, Women's Coaching Alliance, Pam Baker

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  Episode #4

  AI-isms: Authenticity | Lynn Perkins | How to Remain Authentic in the age of AI

  Aug 7, 202637 minS1

  Be your authentic self. We have spent years fighting the stories we were told in order to get there. And then the LLMs showed up, and a polished version of your work, your thoughts, even your introduction, became available at the click of a button. So what happens to the battle for authenticity now? It just got a lot harder. In this episode of AI-isms I sit down with Lynn Perkins, co-founder and CEO of UrbanSitter. Lynn works in a category where authenticity matters more than almost anywhere else. You are letting a stranger into your home to care for the person you love most. So we set care aside and talked about the thing underneath it: trust, and what happens to it when a generation of people start using AI to rewrite who they are on paper. The idea that stayed with me: imperfect human beats AI-generated polish, and it is not close. Lynn told me about a competitor that let care providers use AI to write their profiles. Two things happened. Everyone started to sound the same, and the platform's own fraud detection stopped working, because suddenly every profile sounded a little fake. Perfect turned out to be the tell. What we get into: • The science of trust (background checks, credentials) versus the art of it (values, connection, work ethic), and why AI can only fake one • Why a too-polished proposal reads as less care, not more • The fraud-detection paradox: when everyone sounds the same, the machine can't tell real from fake • Four real scenarios, Lynn as coach: the non-native English job applicant, the exhausted sales rep, the 90%-automated inbox, the artist who refuses AI • The pattern underneath all four: human-first for the deep and creative work, AI-first pass for the repeatable • How UrbanSitter scaled AI by curiosity, not mandate, and why they share their failures out loud • The one thing Lynn does to stay authentically herself Chapters 00:00 The battle for authenticity just got harder 01:28 Meet Lynn Perkins 02:36 Trust has a science and an art 04:46 When the profile isn't the person 06:09 Why "too perfect" erodes trust 08:27 The AI proposal that felt like less effort 09:43 When everyone sounds the same, fraud detection breaks 10:54 Why competitors share their mistakes 13:07 Scenario 1: the non-native English job applicant 16:15 Scenario 2: the exhausted sales rep 18:47 Scenario 3: the 90%-automated inbox 21:45 Scenario 4: the artist who refuses AI 24:53 Adoption by curiosity, not mandate 30:43 Where UrbanSitter measures the outcome 33:11 Staying authentically Lynn: share the snafus 35:55 The AI-isms from this episode This is AI-isms, human rhythms in a synthetic world. The next time you are tempted to run yourself through the machine until you sound perfect, ask what you are trading for it. Tell me what you find. Topics: authenticity, trust, AI and hiring, resumes and AI, personal branding, fraud detection, human-AI collaboration, AI adoption, bottoms-up adoption, change management, marketplaces, childcare, UrbanSitter, Lynn Perkins, future of work

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  Episode #3

  AI-isms: Role Modelship | Eli Potter | How to Role Model when AI is Listening

  Jul 21, 202637 minS1

  What am I role modeling today? Most of us think that question belongs to the most senior people in the building. This episode is here to convince you otherwise. In this episode of AI-isms I sit down with Eli Potter, one of the most respected CIOs in Silicon Valley and an advisor to 125+ organizations. Eli was born in Cold War Bulgaria, arrived in the US with two suitcases, and learned English from the Beatles. Out of a lifelong love of words she coined one the moment needed, role modelship, and wrote the book by the same name. The idea that stayed with me: AI can't be what it can't see. AI isn't just code and models, it's a mirror of our habits, our relationships, and our values, and it learns and unlearns the way we do. Which makes role modeling everyone's job, not just the CEO's. Every prompt is training the thing someone you love will one day ask for advice. What we get into: • Why the gap beyond leaders and managers is the who, and how role models "engineer identity" • AI as a mirror, and why it's dangerous to treat it as an independent thing • The five disciplines of role modelship, through real cases you're probably living right now • Creator vs. consumer: why opting out of AI is a destiny choice, not a tech choice • Mentorship vs. sponsorship, and the reputational chip nobody talks about • What happens when a young employee asks the CEO, "what are you doing to learn AI?" Chapters 00:00 What am I role modeling today? 01:34 Meet Eli Potter 02:13 The origin of role modelship 03:39 Managers, leaders, and the missing "who" 06:27 Role modelship in the age of AI 08:02 Why AI is a mirror 09:43 The five disciplines 10:24 Stewardship: the biased hiring AI 13:52 Fellowship: creator vs. consumer 17:25 Mentorship vs. sponsorship 22:25 Leadership: the town-hall question 27:12 The AI-isms Eli lives by 30:20 The five-year-old who got it 32:05 Finding your voice in a second language This is AI-isms, human rhythms in a synthetic world. Next time you open a chat window, ask yourself: what am I role modeling today? Tell me what you see. Topics: role modelship, AI and leadership, AI as a mirror, stewardship, fellowship, mentorship, sponsorship, creator vs consumer, AI-first vs human-first, future of work, CIO leadership, Eli Potter

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  Episode #2

  AI-isms: Uncertainty | Liz Fosslien | How to calibrate Uncertainty in AI-times

  Jul 11, 202637 minS1

  At the heart of anxiety is uncertainty. There's research that when your brain has full certainty about what's coming, even if what's coming is an electric shock, you feel calmer than when you don't know. Now look at where we are. AI everywhere, no real playbook, a dozen versions of the future arriving at once. Of course we feel uncertain and anxious. In this episode of AI-isms, I sit down with Liz Fosslien to talk about what AI is doing to how we feel at work. Liz studies human emotions at work. She's the author and illustrator of the bestsellers Big Feelings and No Hard Feelings, her work has run on NPR, TED, and Good Morning America. She and her co-author Molly Duffy recently concluded a study on how AI is making us feel at work. The idea that stayed with me is ambivalent anxiety, two opposite emotions in the same body at the same time. I'm scared this ends my job. I'm relieved I might not have to do the part of it I hate. Both, at once. And most of us are performing 'calm' over the top of it. What we get into: • Why "uncertainty" has outgrown the word, and the research on why we'd rather know a bad thing is coming than sit with a fifty-fifty chance • Ambivalent anxiety: holding fear and relief at once, and the quiet tax of performing calm at work • The early-career squeeze, when the first rung is the first to get automated, and the human skills that travel across any industry • Chasing curiosity instead of fear: peer learning, skills swaps, and how to move when nobody hands you a playbook • Why pretending to have it figured out is the biggest mistake leaders make right now, and why the honest questions create more clarity than fake answers Chapters 00:00 The uncertainty under the anxiety 01:36 Meet Liz Fosslien 02:36 We need a new word for uncertainty 03:26 Why humans hate uncertainty 07:25 Enter AI: ambivalent anxiety and performing calm 12:57 Case 1: early career and the "AI slop" moment 17:37 AI-isms for early career, and the mid-career squeeze 20:38 Chasing curiosity: peer learning and skills swaps 23:11 Not everything catastrophic will happen 26:35 Leading a transformation with no playbook 30:31 The illustration: ambivalent anxiety on a swing 34:04 How Liz processes her own emotions 35:54 The AI-isms I took from this one This is AI-isms, human rhythms in a synthetic world. If you're leading people through this shift, what are you feeling underneath the calm? Tell me what you see. Topics: AI and emotions at work, uncertainty and anxiety, ambivalent anxiety, the future of work, early career and automation, reskilling and peer learning, leadership in uncertainty, performing calm, Liz Fosslien, Big Feelings, No Hard Feelings

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