Inside Learning | Unlocking human potential

Fiona Passantino — Why HR Must Lead AI Integration: AI Literacy, Training & the Human-Led Roadmap

I isn't a tool. It's a new kind of employee. And that's exactly why it belongs to HR, not IT.

Aidan welcomes Fiona Passantino, award-winning author of comic books for executives on AI and her new book AI-Powered Leader, to discuss why AI integration should be a human-led experience owned by HR rather than delegated to IT. Fiona argues AI is more like a new kind of employee than a classic tool, and failed adoption often comes from lack of training, governance, and leadership support rather than "resistance." She outlines HR's role in measuring an organisation's adoption curve, delivering baseline AI literacy (including EU AI Act requirements), supporting early adopters as a coaching centre of excellence, and bringing analog "hell no" employees over the line without creating a split organisation. The conversation covers phased L&D approaches by department and for desk-less workers, using AI earlier in workflows for bigger impact, and her five-step roadmap from "ostrich" to "eagle," emphasising joyful learning through comics and humour.

In this conversation, Fiona reveals:

• Why AI behaves more like a new employee than a tool — and what that changes about who owns it
• The "kidneys of the organisation" metaphor for what HR actually does all day
• Why most AI roll-outs stall as "resistance" — and why that's a leadership failure, not a people problem
• How the EU AI Act already makes AI literacy and governance a legal requirement
• The two groups worth extra training: the 1% enthusiasts and the "hell no" analog holdouts
• Why you must never let your company split into "AI people" and "analog people"
• The five-stage bird roadmap — ostrich, sandpiper, pelican, sparrowhawk, eagle
• Why most teams use barely 10% of a tool like Copilot
• The "desk-less" training built for the 80% of workers who never log into a desktop
• Why the comics in her book are a deliberate strategy: "if you're laughing, you can't resist"

Chapters:
00:00 Podcast Intro
00:15 Meet Fiona Passantino
01:03 Why HR Owns AI
04:16 Leadership And Change
07:05 AI Literacy And Governance
09:04 Early Adopters And Resistors
11:58 L&D Training Phases
16:58 Beyond Tools Mindset
19:36 Roadmap Ostrich To Eagle
21:50 Comics And Joyful AI
24:18 Where To Find Fiona
25:18 Closing Credits

 

Find Fiona:
Book — AI-Powered Leader (available wherever books are sold)
https://fionapassantino.com
https://www.working-humans.com
https://aihumanschool.com

 

About Inside Learning
Inside Learning dives into learning science and the future of work, featuring learning experts from around the world each month. Topics span AI, neurodiversity, creativity, unlearning, leadership, ethics, VR, blended learning, performance, and skills. The podcast is designed to make you think, question and learn. Hosted by author, consultant and coach Aidan McCullen, Inside Learning is produced by Learnovate, the future-of-work and learning research centre based at Trinity College Dublin and funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland.

 

Subscribe to Inside Learning wherever you listen.
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Rahim Hirji — Super Skills: The 7 Human Skills for the Age of AI

"Decision-making is what you do with information. Judgment is what you do with your values when the information runs out."

Rahim Hirji has spent 20 years inside learning technology — at HarperCollins, running one of the UK's first online tutoring businesses, co-founding EtonX out of Eton College, and leading Quizlet's growth across 60 countries. His new book, Super Skills: The Seven Human Skills for the Age of AI (Kogan Page, out 3 July 2026), was the most requested title at this year's London Book Fair and is endorsed by Harvard's Karim Lakhani. Most AI books start with the technology. This one starts with a boat.

In this conversation, Rahim reveals:

• Why most people are "sleepwalking" into an AI-shaped life without realising it
• The boat that carried his family from India to East Africa — and why it frames the whole age of AI
• How five generations of skills stack up: survival, street, specialist, soft, and now super
• The difference between algorithmic drift and intentional design — and which one you're living in
• Why a manager started receiving 12-page AI documents nobody had actually read
• "Human at the start" (HATS) — the centaur/Iron Man approach that beats "human in the loop"
• The one super skill Rahim believes AI will never have
• Why losing busy work is good news, not a threat

The seven super skills: curiosity, change readiness, big picture thinking, principled innovation, empathy, global adaptability, and the augmented mindset.

Chapters:

00:00 Podcast Intro and Guest

01:16 Boat Story and Skills Ladder

04:27 AI Change Hope and Risks

07:53 Drift Versus Design

11:02 Augmented Mindset HATS

13:59 Judgment When Data Ends

15:27 Seven Super Skills Overview

17:54 Who the Book Is For

22:09 Website Extras and Wrap Up

23:08 Closing Credits

 

About the guest: Rahim Hirji is an edtech leader and author. His book Super Skills: The Seven Human Skills for the Age of AI (Kogan Page) publishes on 3 July 2026. Find the diagnostic, bonus chapters and extras at https://superskillsbook.com.

About Inside Learning: Inside Learning dives into learning science and the future of work, featuring learning experts from around the world each month — covering AI, neurodiversity, creativity, unlearning, leadership, ethics, VR, blended learning, performance, skills and more. Designed to make you think, question and learn. Produced by Learnovate, the future-of-work and learning research centre at Trinity College Dublin, funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland.

About the host: Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, a keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley).

Learn more about Aidan at https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen 

Listen and follow:

Website: https://learnovatecentre.org

Podcast: https://learnovatecentre.org/insights/podcasts/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/learnovate-centre YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@learnovatecentre

Future Work World with Barry Winkless

In this episode of the Inside Learning Podcast from the Learnovate Centre, Aidan McCullen speaks with Barry Winkless, Chief Strategy Officer at Cpl, Head of the Future of Work Institute, and author of Future Work World: How Leaders Can Create Destinations for Talent that Excite, Entice, and Engage.

 

Barry argues that future-of-work conversations must begin with mindset. Before leaders redesign work, talent, teams or technology, they need a new language and a new way of seeing. He introduces three leadership roles from the book: the Destination Designer, the Societal Whisperer, and the Systems Architect.

 

The conversation explores the structure of Future Work World, including Barry’s four-part journey through mindset, “meta waves”, the “mixing desk” of 16 areas for work innovation, and the use of immersive storytelling to move people emotionally. Barry also shares how music, science fiction, and fictional near-future stories shaped the book’s distinctive style.

 

Aidan and Barry discuss the idea of “work type salads”, where organisations blend permanent employees, contractors, consultants, gig workers, temporary talent, and specialist networks to create strategic advantage. They also explore the concept of organisational “wisdom worlds”, using AI inference, immersive learning, and tacit knowledge capture to build deeper capability over time.

 

The episode closes with a reflection on the shift from mono careers to poly careers, where individuals increasingly become the hero of their own working lives and organisations become part of their journey rather than the whole journey.

 

Episode Timeline

 

00:00 Podcast intro and guest
01:10 Why this book now
01:58 Music and storytelling
04:47 Mindset comes first
11:25 Mixing desk equalizers
14:46 Meta waves and work type salad
18:39 Building a wisdom world
22:37 The new hero journey at work
27:06 Where to find Barry
27:57 Closing credits

Bankable Foresight: The New Skill Leaders Need in the AI Era

In a world where technology is accelerating faster than ever, how do leaders make the right decisions—without losing sight of what makes us human?

In this episode of Inside Learning, Aidan McCullen is joined by Kate O’Neill, tech humanist, author of What Matters Next, and advisor to organizations like Google, Netflix, and the United Nations.

Kate shares a powerful framework for navigating uncertainty, making smarter decisions, and shaping a better future—while keeping human experience at the centre.

You’ll discover:

• Why not making a decision is still a decision
• The critical difference between harms of action vs. inaction
• How to move from questions → insights → “bankable foresight”
• Why the future isn’t singular—but made up of multiple “futures”
• How leaders can align purpose, values, and strategy in a fast-changing world
• The emerging skill of “prompting” as a leadership capability
• Why AI should support human meaning—not replace it

Kate also explores a crucial idea:
We must not leave meaning-making to machines.

This episode is essential listening for leaders, educators, and anyone trying to stay relevant—and human—in the age of AI.

Inside Learning is brought to you by Learnovate, the global experts in the future of work and learning. Based at Trinity College Dublin and funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, Learnovate is a research centre with a mission to enhance the competitive advantage of the learning technology industry and help organisations maximise the impact of learning technology.

Learnovate’s vision is to play a significant role in transforming the lives of learners in the workplace, schools, universities, and the home. We are proud to be part of the Technology Centre programme funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, enabling Irish companies and multinationals to collaborate on market-focused strategic R&D with research institutions.

To find out more about Learnovate, visit the Learnovate Centre website.

https://learnovatecentre.org/

Find Kate here: 

https://www.koinsights.com/

Design Cognition, Cognitive Diversity & AI Teammates with Kathryn Jablokow

Kathryn Jablokow. Dean of Manhattan University’s School of Engineering, former NSF deputy division director, and co-author of the NSF Artificial Intelligence Roadmap joins Aidan McCullen to explore design cognition: how people think while solving design problems. 

They unpack why high-performance teams don’t just match skills to problems, but also match thinking styles to the type of challenge, plus how great facilitators make space for different contributors (including introverts who need time to reflect). 

The conversation then turns to AI as a teammate: how to avoid “sycophant” answers, how to prompt AI to generate genuinely different perspectives, and what it could look like to train LLMs to emulate cognitive diversity for better decisions and more creative outcomes.

 

Find Kathryn's papers:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marybethgasman/2025/12/30/what-ai-cant-replace-and-why-that-matters/

https://www.techradar.com/pro/how-applying-cognitive-diversity-to-llms-could-transform-the-user-experience

Unveiling Creative AI: Insights with Maya Ackerman

In this episode of The Inside Learning Podcast, hosted by the Learnovate Centre, Aidan McCullen speaks with world-renowned AI researcher and Creative Machines author Maya Ackerman about the rise of generative AI and its impact on human creativity.

 

The conversation explores the hidden history of AI-generated creativity, from early computational creativity pioneers to modern large language models. Maya explains how scientists define creativity — novelty, value, and surprise — and how machines are beginning to operate inside that same creative space.

 

The episode also examines the capabilities and limitations of generative AI, the ethical challenges of treating AI as an “all-knowing oracle,” and why the future of creativity lies in human-AI collaboration rather than replacement.

 

Listeners will gain practical insight into how tools like Lyric Studio enhance human expression, how AI reflects human culture and bias, and what leaders must understand as creative AI reshapes work, learning, and society.

00:00 Introduction to the Inside Learning Podcast

00:15 Meet Maya Ackerman: AI Researcher and Author

01:08 The Unknown History of AI-Generated Creativity

02:50 Defining Creativity: Human and Machine Perspectives

03:58 The Ethics and Risks of AI in Creativity

05:35 Collaborative Creativity: Humans and AI Working Together

10:23 The Evolution of AI: From Expert Systems to Neural Networks

16:36 AI's Reflection of Human Society

22:07 The Future of AI and Human Creativity

29:18 Conclusion and Where to Find More

 

Find Maya: https://maya-ackerman.com/

 

Integrating AI and Gamification for Engaging Education: Insights from Kahoot!'s Sean D'Arcy

In this episode of Inside Learning, brought to you by the Learnovate Centre, host Aidan McCullen is joined by Sean D'Arcy, Chief Solutions Officer at Kahoot!—Europe’s largest EdTech platform.

They explore the post-pandemic challenges in education, including dwindling student attention and motivation, and how tools like Kahoot! are helping teachers reimagine engagement through gamification, interactivity, and now AI.

Sean shares how Kahoot! supports both K-12 and higher education through AI-powered quiz creation, student-led learning, and real-time feedback. The conversation also dives into the role of AI in personalized education, how workplace learning is evolving with Gen Z, and how organizations can rebuild culture and performance post-layoffs.

Key Takeaways:

• How AI is enhancing teacher productivity and learner engagement

• Shifts in learner psychology and classroom expectations

• Practical strategies for using Kahoot in classrooms and corporate training

• Insights into upskilling, microlearning, and future-ready skills

• The role of gamified learning in improving retention and morale post-layoffs

Perfect for educators, L&D professionals, and anyone passionate about the future of learning.

Find the articles mentioned here:

https://kahoot.com/blog/2025/10/06/training-after-layoffs-3-strategies-to-rebuild-engagement-and-performance/

Do More in Four: The Case for a Four-Day Workweek

In this episode of The Inside Learning Podcast, brought to you by the Learnovate Centre, we explore the concept of a four-day workweek with experts Joe O'Connor and Jared Lindzon. They discuss the historical roots of the five-day workweek, the productivity and well-being benefits of a shorter workweek, and how AI could reshape our approach to work. Learn how both individuals and organizations can adopt this innovative work model to improve productivity, foster a better work-life balance, and retain talent. Tune in to find out why a four-day workweek isn't just possible, but necessary in today's evolving work environment.

00:00 Introduction to the Inside Learning Podcast

00:15 The Case for a Four-Day Work Week

01:07 Meet the Authors: Joe O'Connor and Jared Lindzon

01:35 Questioning the Five-Day Work Week

03:41 Technological Advancements and Productivity Gains

05:22 The Role of AI in Modern Work

07:28 Historical Context of Work and Human Skills

10:09 Overcoming Resistance to Change

12:07 Benefits of a Four-Day Work Week

18:37 Advocating for a Four-Day Work Week

22:19 Implementing a Four-Day Work Week in Organizations

24:13 Individual Strategies for Efficiency

27:03 Conclusion and Where to Find More Information

 

🔗 Links Mentioned in This Episode

 

• Learnovate Centre: https://www.learnovatecentre.org

• Do More in Four (Book Website): https://www.domoreinfour.com

• Joe O’Connor – Work Time Revolution: https://www.worktimerevolution.com

• Jared Lindzon (Official Website): https://www.jaredlindzon.com

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Inside Learning is brought to you by the Learnovate Centre at Trinity College Dublin, funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland. Learnovate’s research explores the science of learning and the future of work.

Debunking AI Myths: Insights from Sangeet Paul Choudary on the Future of Work

Welcome to another episode of The Inside Learning Podcast brought to you by the Learnovate Centre, where we explore the impact of AI on the future of work. In this episode, we are joined by Sangeet Paul Choudary, the author of 'Reshuffle,' to debunk common fallacies about AI, such as 'AI won't take your job, but somebody using AI will.' 

Sangeet dives deep into understanding how AI restructuring workflows, altering organizational logic, and redistributing power. Using real-life examples from various industries, he explains how we should refocus from task-level to system-level thinking to truly understand the changes AI brings. Sangeet discusses the importance of skills like curiosity and curation and provides actionable insights on how to stay valuable in an AI-driven world. Tune in to learn more about the fallacies of automation and augmentation, productivity gains, and the new value industry coordination layers bring.

 

00:00 Introduction to the Inside Learning Podcast

00:15 Debunking the AI Job Replacement Myth

01:02 Understanding the Systemic Impact of AI

02:06 Introducing the Guest: Sangeet Paul Choudary

02:23 Unpacking the AI Job Replacement Fallacy

02:53 The Automation vs. Augmentation Debate

04:25 The Typist Example: A Case Study

06:42 Skills for the Future: Curiosity and Curation

10:58 The Productivity Gains Fallacy

11:13 Coordination vs. Creation: Capturing Value

15:54 The Workflow Continuity Fallacy

17:18 The Neutral Tools Fallacy

21:30 The Stable Salary Fallacy

24:16 The Stable Firm Fallacy

25:22 Practical Takeaways for the Future of Work

29:49 Conclusion and Resources

 

Find Sangeet on Substack:

https://open.substack.com/pub/platforms/p/the-many-fallacies-of-ai-wont-take?r=jzz68&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Find Reshuffle:

https://amzn.to/46NGtvv

 

Productive Failure: A New Paradigm for Learning with Manu Kapur

Productive Failure: A New Paradigm for Learning with Manu Kapur

What if the best way to learn isn’t to get it right the first time—but to fail first?

In this episode of Inside Learning, we’re joined by Manu Kapur, author of Productive Failure. Kapur introduces a radical shift in how we think about education and training: instead of shielding learners from mistakes, we should intentionally design for failure as the gateway to deep understanding.

We explore:

1. Why traditional Direct Instructionoften fails even when delivered by excellent teachers.
2. How novices “can’t see what they don’t yet know” — and why the first job of teaching is to prepare them to see with an expert’s eyes.
3. The science behind Productive Failure — from Activationto Awareness, Affect, and Assembly.
4. Evidence showing that Productive Failure can produce learning gains three times greaterthan conventional methods.
5. Practical ways educators, trainers, and leaders can create safe, curated failure experiences that build resilience, creativity, and deeper transfer of knowledge.

As Kapur puts it: “Fail first, learn later.”

Join us for a conversation that challenges the way we teach, train, and even think about learning itself.

Find out more here: https://www.productivefailure.com