The new Signal & Noise episode with Rishad Tobaccowala is live now. Listen (or watch) now: Companies Don’t Transform, People Do with Rishad Tobaccowala.

Over a 37-year career at Publicis Groupe, Rishad helped pioneer its digital businesses, chaired Digitas and Razorfish, and ultimately served as Global Chief Strategist and Growth Officer. Today, he is an author, teacher, adviser, senior adviser to Publicis Groupe, co-founder of the Athena Project on Modern Leadership, and one of the industry’s most original thinkers on how people and organizations navigate change.

Rishad joins Brett House and Rio Longacre on the new Signal and Noise episode to challenge a core assumption about technological transformation: companies don't change because they buy new technology or deploy AI, they change when their people do.

Rishad argues AI isn't just another tool but a fundamentally new kind of "alien intelligence," which means the real question isn't whether an organization has an AI strategy, but whether it's willing to rethink how work gets done, how people are rewarded, where power sits, and what humans uniquely contribute.

The conversation covers why transformation comes down to power, politics, people, and partnering, and why chasing efficiency in the old model is like bolting a faster engine onto a car when what's actually needed is to design an airplane.

By Rio Longacre

AI doomerism has been shaped as much by decades of science fiction as by the technology itself. But how much separates today’s frontier AI from the dystopian machines we’ve spent generations imagining?

AI systems are becoming astonishingly capable, and are occasionally doing things their creators never intended. But there is an enormous distance between a rogue software agent and Skynet. The latest wave of AI doomerism is making a farce of the debate.