Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan

May 29, 2026: Costco's CEO Ron Vachris said it plainly this week: "I don't see AI making choices for Costco" — and with $440 billion in market cap and 17% stock gains this year, the companies doubling down on human judgment are quietly outperforming the ones cutting workers for AI. On today's episode, Jacob Morgan breaks down three stories that together reveal the gap between what companies say about AI and what they're actually doing: why Costco, IBM, and Delta are winning by betting on humans; why corporate America is getting the bill for "tokenmaxxing" — the practice of deploying AI everywhere without measuring whether it works — and what disciplined AI investment actually looks like; and what OpenAI's newly published Frontier Governance Framework, which formally maps its own risk categories including "loss of control," means for every business leader who needs an enterprise AI governance strategy before the regulations have teeth.

May 28, 2026: Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.8, sharper reasoning, better agentic coding, and a fast mode that runs 2.5x faster at a third the cost, with Mythos-class models coming in weeks. A new EY-Parthenon survey of 1,200 CEOs shows 99% expect AI to reshape their workforce strategy but only 42% are doing anything about it and why the 57-point gap between awareness and action is the real story. And a deep look at grade inflation in American colleges: the average GPA is now above 3.5, yet 43% of students meet none of ACT's college readiness benchmarks, 12th-grade math and reading scores are at all-time lows, and recent college graduate unemployment sits at 5.7% with a job-finding rate now matching high school graduates. What's behind it, what it costs, and what it means for the future workforce.

May 27, 2026: The two CEOs most responsible for the AI jobs apocalypse narrative are walking it back — and the timing couldn't be more revealing. Sam Altman says he's "delighted to be wrong." Dario Amodei is softening. Both are heading toward trillion-dollar IPOs. In this episode, Jacob Morgan breaks down the financial logic behind the narrative shift, what a chart from Bianco Research reveals about software development jobs that contradicts the doom story, and why Uber just burned its entire 2026 AI budget in four months with nothing to show for it — and why 80% of enterprises are facing the exact same problem.

May 26, 2026: Today, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang went on Singapore's CNA and called the AI layoff narrative "lazy and irresponsible" — I'll break down the data and history behind why he's largely right. Then, the CEO of Bolt fired his entire HR team onstage at Fortune's Workplace Innovation Summit — I'll trace the full arc of the HR function and make the case for what the Chief Future of Work Officer needs to become. And U.S. MBA programs including Carnegie Mellon Tepper, Indiana Kelley, Georgetown McDonough, UCLA Anderson, and Emory Goizueta are losing ground fast — I'll walk through the cost trend, the job market deterioration, the AI mechanism dismantling the consulting pipeline, and the argument I've been making for years that companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Starbucks are becoming the new universities.

What happens when you stop focusing on human resources and start focusing on the human experience? Technology is advancing faster than human nature can keep up. If you want to stay relevant, you need a fundamental cultural reset, not just new software. 
In this interview, Laura Cushing, the Chief People Experience Officer at Pacific Life, discusses the evolving intersection of organizational culture, employee engagement, and artificial intelligence. She emphasizes a strategic shift toward accountability and transparency as the balance of power moves back toward employers in a post-pandemic landscape.
To prepare for an AI-driven future, Pacific Life has implemented a Gen AI Academy and Innovation Labs to demystify technology and help staff reimagine their workflows. Cushing highlights the rising importance of "power skills"—human-centric abilities like coaching and visionary leadership—which remain essential as technical tasks become automated.
Ultimately, she argues that HR leaders must cultivate deep business acumen and proactive trust-building to successfully guide their workforces through digital transformation.
Watch the full video on YouTube
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