AI Job Fears & Future Skills - Matt Dunn


"I don't think anyone's job is going away." - Matt Dunn


Everyone wants a straight answer on whether AI is coming for their job. Matt Dunn doesn't give one - because there isn't one. What he gives instead is sharper: the people who get replaced won't be replaced by AI, they'll be replaced by colleagues who learned to use it first.


In this bonus episode, Dr Luella Forbes sits down with AI expert Matt Dunn to cut through the noise around AI adoption, job security, and what's actually worth worrying about.


Matt and Luella speak about the challenges with AI adoption, whether entire job categories are really at risk, to the specific skills - curiosity, critical thinking, human judgement - that will matter most as AI capability keeps climbing.


Timestamps


00:01:39 - Why most AI projects stall: It's rarely a technology problem — it's a passion project from middle management that leadership never understood or used themselves.


00:03:20 - Play first, optimise later: Matt's case for handing teams half a day a month to tinker with AI and deliberately try to break it.


00:06:47 - You don't need perfect systems to benefit from AI: How one person who knows how to use AI can outrun a legacy tech stack everyone already hates.


00:08:41 - Will AI actually take your job: The filing-cabinet analogy for why roles change but rarely disappear — and the real risk of refusing to engage at all.


00:11:44 - A real example: how one sales team used AI to sharpen tenders and proposals without cutting a single person from the team.


00:15:02 - When AI writing backfires: A beautifully written, entirely AI-generated proposal that fell apart the moment a human actually read it end to end.


00:17:05 - The skills worth building now: Why curiosity and adaptability matter more than any specific technical skill in a world this uncertain.


00:23:26 - Guarding against hallucinations and bias: Fabricated citations, unchecked assumptions, and the same "think about what the answer should be" test we used to apply to calculators.


New episodes on a Wednesday, with interviews with leaders or experts every week and a monthly discussion episode at the end of the month.


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Creators and Guests

Dr Luella Forbes
Host
Dr Luella Forbes
Dr Luella Forbes is a consultant specialising in Organisational Change and founder of The Career Library and it's podcast, Career Stories.
AI Job Fears & Future Skills - Matt Dunn
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