What Happens When AI Learns Your Company’s Knowledge? How Do Humans Stay Valuable When AI Gets Smarter? How Do Companies Redesign Work Around AI?
In this episode of The Future of Less Work, host Nirit Cohen sits down with Katy George, Corporate Vice President of AI and Work Transformation at Microsoft and co-author of the Becoming a Frontier Firm playbook, to explore the business case for humans in an AI-powered organization. George explains why so much knowledge work is still tacit, undocumented and shaped by experience, relationships and context, and why organizations first need to understand how work actually happens before they can redesign it with AI. Together, they explore what happens when that tacit knowledge is codified into AI systems. George describes a continuous learning cycle in which humans teach AI what the organization knows, AI adds capabilities humans did not have before and people continue to apply judgment and creativity to raise the bar again. They also discuss why the real opportunity is not simply to make existing work faster, but to use AI to create new capabilities, experiences and forms of value.
The conversation also examines how organizations will need to change around that cycle: redesigning early-career development so people still build judgment, loosening traditional job boundaries, moving toward more dynamic roles and end-to-end work, and changing what managers are expected to do. George shares Microsoft’s early thinking that humans may increasingly “aim the machine, train the machine and own and govern the machine,” while acknowledging that the operating model to support that continuous learning system is still being worked out.
Whether you are leading AI transformation, redesigning work or thinking about the future of human expertise, this conversation asks a deeper question: as AI learns more of what organizations already know, how do people keep creating what comes next?
Guest Information:
Katy George is Corporate Vice President of AI & Work Transformation at Microsoft. She leads a team focused on understanding AI’s impact on labor markets and shaping Microsoft’s AI & Work strategy. Previously, she was Chief People Officer and a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, where she led global operations and workforce research. Katy holds a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard and a B.A. from Oberlin College. Her work bridges technology, labor economics, and organizational design to prepare for the future of work.
Links:
Chapters:
00:00 What Is A Microsoft Frontier Firm?
02:24 What Is The Human Role In AI Transformation?
03:37 How Do You Capture Tacit Knowledge With AI?
05:12 What Happens When AI Learns Human Judgment?
06:41 How Should Early-Career Jobs Change With AI?
08:54 How Do People Build Judgment And Experience With AI?
10:27 How Microsoft Is Codifying Tacit Knowledge Into AI
12:34 How Can AI Create New Value, Not Just Efficiency?
14:22 Why Organizations Block AI Transformation
16:19 How Do You Redesign Work From An AI-First Blank Page?
18:29 What Is The Manager’s Role In Human-AI Teams?
21:11 Why Managers Need To Use AI Themselves
23:02 What Human Skills Will Matter As AI Agents Improve?
24:54 Can Large Organizations Really Transform With AI?
25:47 What Skills Will Keep Humans Valuable In The AI Age?
26:26 What Should Early-Career Professionals Do About AI?
