What AI Is Doing to Your Time, Worth and Other Things Women Mid-Career Need to Hear with Carolina Barreiro

Carolina Barreiro doesn't do hype. She sends you the 80-page report and then calls you to unpack it for an hour.As Global Director of Display and Rich Media at ShowHeroes Group — working across Europe, LATAM, and APAC from her base in Madrid — Carolina has a front-row seat to how AI is actually landing inside advertising and media. The picture she paints is more nuanced than the headlines suggest, and a lot more honest.Carolina and host, Nadia Koski, get into what the AI-productivity promise really looks like day-to-day. For Carolina, it's not glamorous. It's the first draft of a deck, the email she'd rewrite anyway, the meeting summary she couldn't face. It clears the runway. It doesn't do the actual thinking. And the real payoff isn't the minutes saved at work — it's the gym at lunch she now actually goes to, and the school pickup she's actually present for. But there's a catch she's noticed: if you haven't decided what the freed-up time is for, it doesn't turn into living. It turns back into work. The plate doesn't empty. It just moves faster.They also get into where AI crosses a line. Carolina's take on emotional AI is one of the most precise and grounded in this conversation: using it as a mirror can genuinely help. Working out what you think, putting something into words at 2am when there's no one to call. The problem is when it stops being a mirror and becomes the relationship. When it quietly fills the spot of the friend, the therapist, or the conversation you've been putting off. She's careful not to point a single villain — responsibility sits across how these tools are built, how they're sold, and the fact that everyone is still learning. But she doesn't let anyone off the hook either.On layoffs, Carolina cuts through the noise. A lot of what's being called AI transformation is actually a correction — companies that over-hired when money was cheap, baked in growth that never came, and now need a cleaner story. Klarna is the clearest case: 700 customer service roles replaced by AI, quality dropped, people rehired. On the record. Carolina's read: the further a job is from routine, repeatable work, the more "AI" is probably cover for something else. But she holds that loosely, because everyone is guessing in real time.And for women who are mid-career right now? Drop the doom. Don't wait until you feel ready. Get hands on these tools badly, before feeling qualified. And lean into everything that doesn't automate — the judgment, the relationships, the read on a room. The skills many women were quietly taught to undervalue in themselves. As it turns out, those are the hardest things to replace. Stop waiting for permission.Connect with Carolina Barreiro LinkedInCarolina's SubstackPod episode, Diary of a CEO, with Steven Barlett and Karen Hao"AI Whistleblower: We are Being Gaslit by the AI Companies"Still Human is available wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes out every two weeks. Please follow, subscribe and leave a review if this one landed.Sound engineer: Morgan BoscCover art: Adam RicharsonNadia Headshot: Alessandro Fibbi