Most AI ethics conversations sound the same: be fair, be transparent, be accountable. The values are right, but in practice they don't get teams out of bed in the morning. Executives nod along, employees take the compliance training, and meanwhile real risks like hallucinations, cascading failures, and autonomous agents acting at scale slip through. So what shifts when teams stop chasing an ethical ideal and start naming the specific disasters they want to avoid? Who needs to be in the room to spot them? And what kind of training actually changes how people use AI day to day?

Reid Blackman is the founder and CEO of Virtue, an AI ethical risk consultancy, and the author of The Ethical Nightmare Challenge: How to Avoid the Worst of AI (2026) and Ethical Machines (HBR Press, 2022). A former philosophy professor at Colgate with a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, he has designed responsible AI programs for organizations including Amazon, Etsy, Kraft Heinz, Merck, US Bank, and Nationwide, and has advised the FBI, NASA, the World Economic Forum, and the Canadian government on federal AI regulations. He also hosts the Ethical Machines podcast.

In the episode, Richie and Reid explore why responsible AI fails to motivate organizations, the biggest AI ethical nightmares facing companies today, the unique risks of agentic AI including cascading failures and emergent risks, the Ethical Nightmare Challenge framework, cross-functional ENC teams, training employees in plain language, scaling AI governance, measuring success by what you avoid, and much more.

Links Mentioned in the Show:

• The Ethical Nightmare Challenge by Reid Blackman

• Ethical Machines by Reid Blackman

• Ethical Machines podcast

• Claude Code

• Connect with Reid: LinkedIn

• AI-Native Course: Intro to AI for Work

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