Who Gets to Shape AI?
Artificial intelligence is often presented as a tool that will make expertise more widely available. But what happens when people can produce expert-looking work without ever developing the expertise behind it?
Bo Young Lee, CEO of AI4ALL, joins Brian to explore why the future of AI depends on more than broader access to today’s dominant models. It also requires a wider range of people, cultures, experiences, and worldviews shaping the technology itself. Bo explains how concentrating AI development within a small number of frontier models can embed cultural assumptions into tools used around the world.
The conversation also examines what organizations lose when AI removes the demanding early-career work through which people learn to think critically, recognize patterns, exercise discernment, and eventually become experts. The risk, Bo argues, is not simply a deskilled workforce. It is the emergence of a “never-skilled” society, one in which people are asked to evaluate AI-generated work without having developed the experience needed to judge it.
Brian and Bo also consider what this means for education. When intelligence becomes increasingly accessible through technology, schools and workplaces will need to place greater emphasis on the human capacities that AI cannot supply: emotional intelligence, ethical understanding, critical thinking, communication, synthesis, and wisdom.
Finally, Bo raises a provocative concern about the growing wealth surrounding AI. As technology companies direct more philanthropic funding toward nonprofits and public institutions, whose worldview will that money advance, and how might it shape the conversations society is permitted to have about AI?
In This Episode
- Why the people creating AI should better reflect the people whose lives it affects
- The cultural and business risks of relying on a small number of dominant AI models
- How automating junior-level work may interrupt the development of future experts
- Why AI could create a “never-skilled” society rather than merely deskill workers
- How education must change when intelligence is no longer the primary differentiator
A Question to Carry Forward
As AI makes intelligent output easier to produce, how will we ensure that people still develop the experience, discernment, and wisdom required to recognize whether that output is worth trusting?
About Bo Young Lee
Bo Young Lee 이보영 is a globally recognized Workplace and AI/Tech Ethics, DEI, and ESG executive and widely sought-after public speaker and leadership coach. Bo serves as CEO of AI4ALL, ensuring the next generation of AI leaders represents humanity. Prior to her role at AI4ALL, Bo served as President of Research & Advisory for AnitaB.org, the leading mission-driven organization advancing women and non-binary technologists. Bo also served as Uber Technologies’ first Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, where she was tasked with leading the total transformation of the company’s culture, values, and equity environment.
Bo is currently pursuing a Master of Studies in AI Ethics and Society at the University of Cambridge/Leverhulme Center for Future Intelligence (UK) and has an MBA with distinction from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a BBA magna cum laude from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
About Brian Gorman
Brian Gorman is an executive advisor, author, speaker, coach, and host of Beyond AI: Wisdom at Work. He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom, helping CEOs, founders, boards, and senior leadership teams think clearly about AI, change, decision-making, culture, trust, and the future of work. His book, Leading into the Age of Wisdom: Reimagining the Future of Work, explores how leaders can move beyond intelligence alone and bring deeper wisdom to the decisions shaping people, organizations, and society.
To Continue the Conversation
If anything you hear in this podcast sparks a conversation you want to have or a question you want to explore, reach out.
Bo Young Lee
Website: https://ai-4-all.org/
Brian Gorman
Email: Brian@TransformingLives.Coach
Phone: +1 917.653.5198
Website: TransformingLives.Coach