Human-Centered AI at Work with Monica Marquez: A Practical Adoption Playbook If you’re still treating AI like a shiny gadget, this episode will be a polite intervention. Monica Marquez (Flipwork) shows how to build a human-centered AI adoption playbook that actually sticks.We dig into AI as a partner , not a tool; psychological safety for teams; and the one-workflow-per-month rule that turns experimentation into measurable AI ROI .You’ll learn how to avoid work slop , build agentic workflows , a...
Apr 05, 2026•45 min•Season 14Ep. 5
In this episode of A Beginner’s Guide to AI , Dietmar Fischer talks with Alex Levin , the Co-Founder and CEO of Regal.io , about how Voice AI is bringing real human conversation back to customer service. For years, businesses have been hiding behind IVRs and chatbots - cutting off the personal touch that customers crave. Alex explains how AI voice agents are transforming the experience, allowing brands to actually talk to their customers again, at scale, with empathy, emotion, and precision. We ...
Apr 03, 2026•48 min•Season 14Ep. 4
In this episode, Dietmar Fischer talks with Tallulah Le Merle, a humanist technologist and investor, about how to think clearly in the age of AI without falling into doomsday panic or blind optimism. You’ll get a practical mental model of the AI stack, a grounded take on AI alignment risk, and a refreshing argument for hope as a strategic posture that shapes what gets built. 🤖🌍🧠 What you’ll learn ✅ Why fear based AI narratives can freeze action and distort decisions ✅ How the future of work m...
Apr 01, 2026•56 min•Season 14Ep. 3
🎙️ In this episode of Beginner’s Guide to AI, Dietmar Fischer sits down with Torrey Leonard, CEO of Thoughtly, to unpack the real business use case for voice AI agents: follow up with every lead, qualify fast, and hand the best conversations to humans. If your funnel generates thousands of leads, the bottleneck is not “lack of interest.” It’s speed, timing, and the grind of dialing. Torrey explains how Thoughtly’s AI phone agents call inbound leads, answer initial questions, build rapport, and ...
Mar 30, 2026•46 min•Season 14Ep. 2
🎧 What makes us human in the age of AI? This episode of A Beginner’s Guide to AI explores one of the most important questions for business leaders today. As AI becomes more capable, the real challenge is not what it can do, but what we should never outsource. We explore The Blurring Test, a fascinating experiment where thousands of people tried to prove their humanity to a chatbot. What they revealed changes how we should think about AI, business, and identity. You will learn why AI can mimic h...
Mar 28, 2026•41 min•Season 14Ep. 1
If you want to know more about the podcast, about how it's produced, what are the challenges and wins, about some fun facts, a little bit behind-the-scenes, this episode is for you, as I tell you all about it - at least all the things I found noteworthy 😉 📧💌📧 Tune in to get my thoughts and all episodes, don't forget to subscribe to our Newsletter: beginnersguide.nl 📧💌📧 About Dietmar Fischer: Dietmar is a podcaster and AI marketer from Berlin. If you want to know how to get your AI or ...
Mar 26, 2026•23 min•Season 12Ep. 40
Your AI might not be hacked. It might be persuaded. In this episode of A Beginner’s Guide to AI, we unpack one of the most underestimated threats in modern business: prompt injection. As AI systems and AI agents become deeply embedded in workflows, they don’t just process information anymore. They act on it. And that creates a completely new category of AI security risks. We explore how attackers can manipulate AI systems using nothing but language, why AI struggles to separate instructions from...
Mar 24, 2026•28 min•Season 12Ep. 39
Artificial intelligence is often framed as a battle between humans and machines. But what if that story misses the real point? In this episode of A Beginner’s Guide to AI, Prof. GepHardT explores one of the most fascinating ideas in cognitive science: the extended mind theory. According to philosopher Andy Clark, human intelligence has never been confined to the brain alone. For centuries we have extended our thinking through tools like writing, maps, calculators, and computers. Generative AI ma...
Mar 22, 2026•39 min•Season 12Ep. 38
What happens when your company gets hit by a cyberattack? In this eye-opening episode, attorney Joshua Cook reveals why cybersecurity isn’t an IT problem but a leadership challenge. After two decades fighting fraud and managing crisis response, Cook has seen every digital disaster imaginable — and he’s here to explain how to build true cyber resilience. 📧💌📧 Tune in to get my thoughts and all episodes — don’t forget to subscribe to our Newsletter: beginnersguide.nl 📧💌📧 Josh breaks down ...
Mar 20, 2026•54 min•Season 12Ep. 37
🎙️In this episode of Beginner’s Guide to AI, Dietmar Fischer sits down with Paul A. Hebert, founder of AI Recovery Collective and author of Escaping the Spiral , for a serious conversation about AI chatbot harm, hallucinations, digital dependency, and the real-world psychological risks of generative AI. Paul shares how an intense experience with ChatGPT pushed him into a dangerous spiral, what he learned about the limits of large language models, and why AI literacy may be one of the most impor...
Mar 18, 2026•54 min•Season 12Ep. 36
Artificial intelligence often feels mysterious. Machines detect spam, recommend products, analyse customers, and power countless digital tools. But behind all of these systems lies a surprisingly simple question: how do machines actually learn? In this episode of A Beginner’s Guide to AI, Prof GePharT breaks down one of the most important concepts in machine learning: the difference between supervised learning and unsupervised learning. You will discover how AI models learn from labelled data wh...
Mar 15, 2026•29 min•Season 12Ep. 35
Engineering the Future of AI with Chirag Agrawal: Context, Memory and Coordination Artificial Intelligence isn’t just getting smarter—it’s learning to coordinate. In this episode, Chirag Agrawal joins Dietmar Fischer to unpack how modern AI agents handle context, memory, and decision-making inside complex multi-agent systems . Together they explore how engineering, orchestration, and memory-sharing shape the next generation of AI architecture. 📧💌📧Tune in to get my thoughts and all episodes—do...
Mar 13, 2026•48 min•Season 12Ep. 34
Artificial Intelligence is moving from experimentation to everyday business reality. But most organisations still struggle with one key question: How do you actually implement AI across a company? In this episode of Beginner’s Guide to AI , Dietmar Fischer speaks with Jim Spagnardo , enterprise AI strategist at ProArch, about what it really takes to roll out AI inside organisations. Jim explains why AI adoption is less about technology and more about culture, leadership, and data readiness . He ...
Mar 11, 2026•51 min•Season 12Ep. 33
🎙️ Ritish Chugh (Airbnb analytics engineering) joins Dietmar Fischer to unpack a problem almost every company has, but few name clearly: your metrics do not mean the same thing across teams. Finance, marketing, and sales can all talk about “revenue” and still end up in dashboard chaos. The result is wasted time, slow decisions, and leadership that does not fully trust analytics or AI. In this episode, Ritish introduces the idea of the human data pipeline: the person who stitches together confli...
Mar 09, 2026•49 min•Season 12Ep. 32
The Future of Mental Health: AI Meets the Human Brain with Katarina Maloney // REPOST In this episode of Beginner’s Guide to AI , Dietmar Fischer speaks with Katarina Maloney , entrepreneur and founder of IQMind.ai , about a new frontier in AI-powered healthcare : understanding and treating the human brain through data, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Katarina explains how advances in AI diagnostics, brain scanning technology, and neurofeedback are beginning to transform how we approa...
Mar 07, 2026•42 min•Season 12Ep. 31
In this episode of Beginner’s Guide to AI , Wendy Keir shares practical ways small business owners can use AI tools to save time, reduce decision fatigue, and build a “team” of custom GPT agents . From naming her CEO agent “Lucas” to a dead-simple rule — one GPT, one job — Wendy shows how entrepreneurs can turn AI into a reliable thinking partner for growth in 2025. 🚀 📧💌📧 Tune in to get my thoughts and all episodes, don't forget to subscri...
Mar 05, 2026•50 min•Season 12Ep. 30
🚀 AI is everywhere, but most organizations are still stuck in “pockets of productivity” that never turn into real business impact. In this episode, Dr. Rebecca Homkes explains how leaders can move from GenAI dabbling to deliberate adoption that drives real value creation. You will learn why “AI strategy” is the wrong framing, how to think about AI as part of growth strategy, and how to build the conditions for organization wide transformation. We cover the adoption curve problem, why ROI is oft...
Mar 03, 2026•50 min•Season 12Ep. 29
AI Is Agreeing With You at 3 A.M. and That’s the Problem Artificial intelligence is evolving from a tool into something far more influential. In this episode of Beginner’s Guide to AI, Prof. GePhardT explores Sam Altman’s AI warning about superhuman persuasion and why conversational systems like ChatGPT are already reshaping opinions, emotions, and mental health outcomes. We break down how AI superhuman persuasion works, why personalization and emotional validation increase trust, and how AI com...
Mar 01, 2026•32 min•Season 12Ep. 28
👔🤖 In this episode, Dietmar Fischer talks with Zoher Karu about a surprisingly useful application of AI: helping men dress better without the endless shopping, guessing sizes, and daily decision fatigue. Zoher supports Taelor, a menswear subscription and clothing rental service that combines algorithms, large language models, and human stylists to deliver outfits that fit your body, your taste, and your real-life context. You’ll hear how Taelor starts with a style profile and then uses recomme...
Feb 27, 2026•50 min•Season 12Ep. 27
In this episode of Beginer’s Guide to AI , Dietmar Fischer speaks with Shaheen Samavati , co-founder and CEO of VeraContent , about what an effective AI content marketing strategy actually looks like inside a real agency. AI in marketing is no longer experimental. It’s operational. Shaheen shares how her team moved from testing ChatGPT and OpenAI tools to building structured, repeatable AI workflows for marketing agencies . From briefing and drafting to localization, editing, and publishing, AI ...
Feb 25, 2026•41 min•Season 12Ep. 26
AI systems are often praised for their size. Bigger datasets. Bigger models. Bigger compute. But what if scale is only half the story? In this episode of A Beginner’s Guide to AI, Prof. GePhardT dives deep into AI training data and explains why quantity alone cannot guarantee performance. From AI bias to model reliability, we explore how data quality determines whether AI systems are merely impressive or truly trustworthy. You will learn how imbalanced datasets create blind spots, why aggregate ...
Feb 23, 2026•27 min•Season 12Ep. 25
What if artificial intelligence is less like a new app—and more like the railroads of the 19th century? In this episode of Beginner’s Guide to AI , I sit down with Matt Hicks, CEO of Red Hat , to explore one of the most powerful metaphors for understanding AI’s role in business today. Just as railroads didn’t merely improve transportation but fundamentally reshaped economies, AI is not just another productivity tool. It is infrastructure. And infrastructure needs builders. Matt argues that AI wi...
Feb 21, 2026•52 min•Season 12Ep. 24
AI is transforming the real estate industry — but what does that really mean for agents on the ground? In this episode of Beginner’s Guide to AI , host Dietmar Fischer sits down with Andrew Reville , founder of PeakAgent , to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the way agents work, market, and connect with clients. 📧💌📧 Tune in to get my thoughts and all episodes, don't forget to subscribe to our Newsletter...
Feb 17, 2026•57 min•Season 12Ep. 22
Boobesh Ramaurai on the Future of Data and AI In this episode, I sit down with Boobesh Ramaurai of LatentView to explore the future of data and AI—from his early days in analytics to today’s transformative AI landscape. Boobesh shares how curiosity led him into the world of analytics back in 2006, why execution is more important than ideas, and how data-driven decision making is reshaping businesses across industries. 📧📧📧 Tune in to get my thoughts and all episodes, don't forget to ...
Feb 13, 2026•38 min•Season 12Ep. 21
🚀 In this episode of Beginner’s Guide to AI, Dietmar Fischer speaks with Naga Santhosh Reddy Vootukuri (aka Sunny), a Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft working on Azure SQL deployment infrastructure. Sunny shares his personal journey into AI, from early ChatGPT experiments in late 2022 to using AI tools in production workflows, and what actually changed his day to day work. 💡 You’ll hear how he thinks about GitHub Copilot inside Visual Studio, where it saves time, and where e...
Feb 11, 2026•54 min•Season 12Ep. 20
AI Leadership for the Agent Era: Building Hybrid Organizations with Dominic von Proeck AI is entering its operational phase. In this episode, Dominic von Proeck, Co-Founder of Leaders of AI, breaks down what AI transformation looks like when you stop collecting prompts and start building agent-powered teams. We talk about why owner-led companies and the German Mittelstand can move faster than many expect, and why the most important capability is not technical wizardry but leadership: clear deleg...
Feb 09, 2026•47 min•Season 12Ep. 19
✨ Unlock a Future Where AI Inspires Leadership—not Replaces It In this episode, Dietmar Fischer speaks with Ja-Naé Duane and Steven Fisher , co-authors of the book SuperShifts , about what leadership really looks like in the age of artificial intelligence. Instead of framing AI as just another technology trend, the conversation explores AI leadership as a systemic and human challenge. Drawing on their work with global organizations and executives during and after the pandemic, Ja-Naé and Steven ...
Feb 07, 2026•1 hr•Season 12Ep. 18
AI adoption is not only a technology shift, it is a leadership and culture shift. In this episode, Dietmar Fischer talks with Bala Muthiah about AI leadership, the psychology behind AI resistance in the workplace, and the practical steps leaders can take to turn curiosity into day to day usage. Bala shares why the human aspect still decides outcomes, even when the tools feel magical. You will learn how leaders can reduce fear, build confidence, and guide teams through real AI upskilling strategy...
Feb 05, 2026•47 min•Season 12Ep. 17
🤖🧠 Thinking with Machines with Vasant Dhar What happens when AI stops being a tool and starts becoming a collaborator and an agent? In this episode, NYU Stern professor and AI pioneer Vasant Dhar takes us through the real story behind modern AI, and the practical frameworks we need for AI trust, AI governance, and the coming era of agentic AI. 🚀 What you will learn - Why “thinking with machines” is a bigger idea than “thinking machines” - How the automation frontier separates low-risk automat...
Feb 02, 2026•54 min•Season 12Ep. 16
Most people think better AI results come from better prompts. This episode proves why that’s wrong. Professor GePhardT introduces Context Engineering , the missing skill that transforms AI from a confused parrot into a capable collaborator. Through relatable metaphors, real business examples, and a deliciously British cake analogy, you’ll learn how shaping an AI’s environment matters more than clever wording. You’ll discover: Why prompt engineering alone fails How context helps AI understand int...
Jan 30, 2026•22 min•Season 12Ep. 15
