Digitally Curious

In this episode, Andrew Grill sits down with Simone Carroll, one of the most distinctive executive voices on the future of work, to explore what really changes when AI arrives in your organisation.Simone has led people, technology, digital and brand functions through multiple waves of disruption, from print to digital, in‑store to omni‑channel, and fossil fuels to renewables. Together, we unpack her central provocation. Work has moved upstream. If you are not redesigning work around AI, you are already behind. You will hear why the real differentiator is not AI deployment speed, but how you redeploy human judgement to customers, operations, risk and cash, why boards must give explicit permission to innovate, and why HR is suddenly front‑and‑centre in strategy rather than stuck in the back office.This is a practical, candid conversation for CEOs, board members and HR leaders who want to move beyond the hype and start doing the real work of redesigning work in the age of AI.In this episode, you will learnWhat Simone means when she says “work has moved upstream” and why that should change your org design.Why the biggest commercial risk is letting your IP walk out the door, not “AI job losses”.How AI exposes massively inefficient processes – and what to do instead of just “digitising” broken workflows.The new, strategic role HR must play in leading AI literacy, policy and workforce redesign.Why boards need to give explicit permission to innovate and become AI‑literate themselves.How AI “demands better humans” and what that means for skills, careers and leadership.Resources Connect with Simone Carroll on LinkedInSimone’s Substack on the future of workThanks for listening to Digitally Curious. You can buy the book that showcases these episodes at curious.click/orderYour Host is Actionable Futurist® Andrew GrillFor more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com Andrew's Social ChannelsAndrew on LinkedInAndrew on YouTube @Andrew.Grill on InstagramKeynote speeches hereOrder Digitally Curious

What happens to a generation growing up with AI always on hand to do the thinking for them?That question sits at the heart of this episode, and few people are better placed to answer it than Tim Cook, an elementary school teacher in Amman, Jordan, who has spent over a decade in international classrooms across five countries.Tim writes the Algorithmic Mind column for Psychology Today, and his research on cognitive offloading and child development has been making waves well beyond the education sector.In Andrew's book Digitally Curious, he argues that curiosity and critical thinking are the most important skills in an AI-powered world.Tim's work takes that further, asking a harder and more urgent question: what if the generation now entering school never develops those skills in the first place?In this episodeThe classroom as laboratory. Tim has been noticing a shift in children's relationship with struggle for most of a decade. well before AI arrived.Cognitive atrophy versus cognitive foreclosure. An adult who offloads tasks to AI is atrophying a muscle they already built — it can be rebuilt. A child who offloads a task they have never learned is foreclosing a developmental pathway that may never form. The homogenisation problem. When a health teacher set a creative writing task designed to be AI-proof, 80% of students submitted the same Mission Impossible-style hero's journey narrative.The AI audit problem. To check AI output, you need domain expertise. But a child is still supposed to be building that expertise. You cannot audit what you do not yet understand — and so the substitution becomes foreclosure.AI as provocateur, not thinking partner. The goal is to use AI to surface your own expertise, not to let it generate the thesis.Cognitive Privacy. Tim introduces his Cognitive Privacy Project: AI is the first tool in human history to collect our cognitive behavioural data.ResourcesTim Cook's Psychology Today column — The Algorithmic MindAdults Lose Skills to AI. Children Never Build Them — Tim Cook, Psychology Today, March 2026Thanks for listening to Digitally Curious. You can buy the book that showcases these episodes at curious.click/orderYour Host is Actionable Futurist® Andrew GrillFor more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com Andrew's Social ChannelsAndrew on LinkedInAndrew on YouTube @Andrew.Grill on InstagramKeynote speeches hereOrder Digitally Curious