Everything Under the Model: What 7 Leaders Learned the Hard Way About Making AI Work

The hard part of AI isn't the model — it's everything underneath it and around it.

In this season 4 roundup episode of AI Radicals, host Satyen Sangani revisits seven conversations from the season to distill what it actually takes to make AI work inside a real company. The guests span the field: Charlene Li, co-author of Winning with AI; Brian Solis and Dave Wright, ServiceNow's innovation leaders; Erin McIntosh, who runs global data operations at CNA Insurance; Nathalie Berdat, data leader at the BBC; Anant Jhingran, CTO of IBM Software; Eugene Wu, Columbia professor and co-director of the Data Agents and Processes Lab; Francois Ajenstat, Founder and CEO of Golden Analytics; Mark Nelson, Venture Partner at Madrona; Julie De Moyer, who leads data and AI across fifteen beauty brands at LVMH; and Ben Taylor, Former Chief AI Strategist of Dataiku, who predicted most of this three years ago.

Across the season, three things held. First, stop calling it a pilot — if it isn't strategic enough to go into production, it isn't strategic enough to do. Second, trust is earned one reconciled metric at a time, starting not with a problem but with a single number that two teams disagreed about. Third, the rules belong in the system, not in the prompt — a stop sign goes at the intersection, not in the head of the user. And underneath all three, something none of these leaders set out to say: the work is coupled, permeable, and never quite finished. Closer to biology than physics.

"The risk of doing something is better than not doing anything in this space. And I really hate saying that, but that's really where we're at."

Listen to this episode to learn:

• Why executives green-light AI pilots precisely because they haven't decided anything yet — and what changes when you frame AI as a strategic initiative instead
• How IKEA turned a customer service agent into a billion-euro interior design business by retraining 8,200 people instead of cutting them
• Where governance actually belongs in an agent-driven world, why the BBC and a nationwide insurer land on opposite sides of the autonomy question

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Time Stamps

[00:00] Season 4 roundup: What does it take to make AI work inside a real company?

[01:19] Why do enterprise AI pilots never reach production?

[03:06] Where do companies waste time and money on AI?

[06:06] Should you automate a workflow or reinvent it with AI?

[10:12] When AI automation backfires: The Ford cautionary tale

[13:17] What are the signs that people don’t trust your data?

[18:40] Is data governance really slow and bureaucratic?

[21:25] Should agent rules live in the prompt or the system?

[28:16] If code isn't the bottleneck anymore, what are people for?

[32:48] What does it take to make AI work in a company?

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Sponsor

This podcast is presented by Alation.

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* Satyen’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssangani/

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Links

Connect with Charlene Li on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleneli/

Connect with Erin McIntosh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-n-mcintosh/

Connect with Nathalie Berdat on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathalie-berdat-b716b56/

Connect with Brian Solis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansolis/

Connect with Dave Wright on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davewright2/

Connect with Anant Jhingran on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anantjhingran/

Connect with Eugene Wu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eugene-wu-b23417290/

Connect with Francois Ajenstat on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francoisajenstat/

Connect with Mark Nelson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markthomasnelson/

Connect with Julie De Moyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliedemoyer/

Connect with Ben Taylor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jepsontaylor

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