In this email I reflect on my recent interview with another fellow "Director of AI", Courtney Kingsbury, and we talk about common problems, fears and challenges that adoption of AI brings in two different companies.

You might be the only person at your company who gets AI, then you already know the quiet weight that comes with it. Nobody above you understands what you actually do, nobody beside you can check your work, and every call you make, you make alone. What nobody warns you about is that there's no rule book for this job.

Then I met Courtney, and it shifted something for me. She has the same job that I do, except she's doing it at a company about 30 times the size of mine, in an industry so regulated that one wrong move is a real problem. We got on a call and just talked for an hour, the way you can only talk with someone who does the same strange job you do, and the relief was almost funny. It's the same everywhere.

The hard part was never the technology. It's the people, and it's carrying all of it with no one around to tell you you're on the right track.

So we said the quiet things out loud. We talked about the AI your team is already using that you can't see, and why that should scare you a little. She told me why she says no to tools people practically beg her for, and why "approved" never means "safe forever." And we got into the part nobody mentions, which is that this role, precisely because nobody has defined it yet, lets you basically invent your own job.

If you're thinking about becoming the AI person where you work, this is the conversation I wish someone had handed me three years ago. And if you already are that person, and some days it feels lonely, the one thing I want you to hear is this: you're not doing it wrong. There's just no map yet, so we're sitting down and drawing one, out loud.

I'd love for you to watch the whole thing: