AI is supposed to free people up for “higher-value work.” Fine. But what, exactly, is that work? In this episode, David Rice talks with cyberpsychology researcher and psychotherapist Dr. Rachel Wood about the part of AI adoption most organizations keep skimming past: the human cost of automating too much, too quickly, without a real philosophy for what should remain deeply, stubbornly human.

Their conversation cuts through the usual AI optimism and gets to the more uncomfortable truth. Some friction should absolutely go away. Nobody needs to spend an hour copying and pasting spreadsheet data. But some friction is the job: disagreement, discernment, hard conversations, learning by getting things wrong, and figuring out who you are when your expertise is suddenly easier to imitate. This episode is really about that distinction, and why leaders need to stop treating AI as a software rollout and start treating it as a human development challenge.

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