Alison Beard

speaker

446 appearances 12 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 5d ago

Alison Beard’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 5.

Appearances

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HBR IdeaCast · How AI Is Changing Communication: Weighing Efficiency with Efficacy · 24 Sep 2026 podcast

Our producer, Mary, has this theory that as AI commoditizes creativity, content creation, communication, that it's going to be really important to know how to persuade and charm people because everyone has the same tools at their disposal, so you have to make them like you better.

What are your reactions to that?

Okay, I have never done this before, but given the topic of our conversation, I did ask ChatGPT what it thought I could ask you.

He, for me, he's a he, asks, what aspects of human communication should we, the LLMs, explicitly not optimize?

Should I sometimes deliberately not give you the best answer because the process of struggling to find the answer yourself is valuable?

Okay.

So I want each of you to give me the one human skill that we need to keep honing that AI will never help us with.

And then the one thing that you think every executive should use AI for when it comes to communication.

Terrific.

Well, thank you both.

I've really enjoyed this conversation.

Thanks for having me.

That was Wade Foster, the CEO of Zapier, and Matt Abraham, Stanford professor, author of Think Fast, Talk Smarter, and host of the podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart.

We'll be back on Tuesday with a conversation between Adi and Apple store creator Ron Johnson, plus another AI series episode on Thursday.

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Thanks to our team, senior producer Mary Du and senior production editor Kristen Murphy Romano.

And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast.

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