The 30 Best AI Keynote Speakers in 2026

Last updated September 2026

Event organizers looking for an AI keynote speaker face an abundance of choices and remarkably little help in comparing them. This list is built for that decision. Each entry covers the speaker’s credentials, their distinct perspective, their speaking topics, who they are best for, recent engagements, and booking basics, so you can shortlist against your event’s needs rather than wade through promotional copy.

Selection criteria: every speaker here is actively delivering AI keynotes in 2025 and 2026, brings a distinct point of view rather than a generic AI overview, and has genuine stage credentials with major audiences. The list spans AI strategy, the future of work, ethics and governance, and industry applications, with speakers based across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East.

One disclosure: I compile this list and I appear on it, listed first, so you can judge my inclusion against the same criteria as everyone else. The other 29 run alphabetically by surname.

The speakers at a glance

The speakers

Ross Dawson (author of this list)

Credentials. Futurist, keynote speaker, and bestselling author of five books including Thriving on Overload, with keynotes delivered in over 30 countries for clients including BCG, Google, Microsoft, NASA, and Visa. He founded and leads AI ventures spanning strategy platforms, collective intelligence, and Humans + AI organizational design.

Distinct perspective. The practitioner-futurist position: he builds what he speaks about. His central frame is Humans + AI, that the organizations that thrive will be those that amplify human capability with AI rather than simply substituting for it.

Speaking topics. The AI Inflection Point, on why this moment changes the trajectory of business and society; Humans + AI: Infinite Potential, on metacognition and human capability in an AI-augmented era; AI and the future of work; Building Humans + AI Organizations.

Best for. Conferences, executive and leadership events, and board sessions across industries seeking a constructive, strategic frame on AI.

Recent engagements. 2025-26 keynotes include The AI Inflection Point for Business Sydney, Humans + AI: Infinite Potential at Human Tech Week in San Francisco and the Futurist Summit in Dubai, and AI and the Future of Work at the Asana Summit.

Booking and logistics. Based in Sydney, Australia; speaks worldwide in person and virtually; formats include keynotes, executive briefings, board sessions, and workshops. AI keynote speaker page

Ajay Agrawal

Credentials. Ajay Agrawal holds the Geoffrey Taber Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and founded the Creative Destruction Lab. He co-wrote Prediction Machines (2018) and Power and Prediction (2022) with Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb, and holds the Order of Canada.

Distinct perspective. Agrawal frames AI as a drop in the cost of prediction, arguing this reframes strategy and decision-making rather than simply automating tasks.

Speaking topics. The economics of AI and cheaper prediction; building AI-native organizations; lessons from the Creative Destruction Lab; applying AI to national moonshot problems.

Best for. Business school audiences and economics-focused conferences wanting rigor over spectacle; less suited to consumer-facing audiences.

Recent engagements. Co-authored the NBER paper A Research Agenda for the Economics of Transformative AI (September 2025) with Erik Brynjolfsson and Anton Korinek, and was interviewed by The Peak in 2026 on AI moonshots.

Booking and logistics. Based in Toronto, Canada. Keynote and lecture formats through bureaus including the Lavin Agency. Website

Nikolas Badminton

Credentials. Nikolas Badminton is Chief Futurist at the Futurist Think Tank and has advised more than 600 organizations, including NASA, Google, and the United Nations. He wrote Facing Our Futures and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

Distinct perspective. Badminton describes himself as a Hope Engineer, arguing foresight should counter fear-based AI narratives and build structured optimism through scenario planning.

Speaking topics. The AI Leader, on productivity and growth; Hopeful Futures, on scenario planning toward 2035; Geopolitical Technology Futures, on AI and power shifts.

Best for. Corporate innovation summits and government foresight programs wanting custom-researched keynotes; less suited to narrow technical audiences.

Recent engagements. Announced custom 2026 keynotes including The AI Leader and Geopolitical Technology Futures in late 2025, with trend analysis continuing through 2026.

Booking and logistics. Based in Canada. Keynote, virtual, and hybrid formats, each researched with client interviews. Website

Sinead Bovell

Credentials. Sinead Bovell is founder of WAYE, a tech education organization preparing young people for an AI-driven economy. She has addressed the United Nations eleven times and sits on the Bretton Woods Committee.

Distinct perspective. Bovell focuses on translating AI for non-technical audiences, prioritizing AI literacy and workforce readiness over deep technical analysis.

Speaking topics. AI and the future of work for entry-level careers; AI literacy for non-technical audiences; ethics and governance of emerging technology; preparing education systems for an AI-shaped economy.

Best for. HR and future-of-work conferences and education-sector events; less suited to deep technical AI or specialist investor audiences.

Recent engagements. Spoke on AI and the future of education at SXSW EDU 2025, and presented The AI Generation: Shaping the Future of Work at Indeed FutureWorks 2026.

Booking and logistics. Based in New York City. Keynote and virtual formats through bureaus including Speakers’ Spotlight. Website

Kate Darling

Credentials. Kate Darling leads the Ethics and Society research team at the RAI Institute after more than fifteen years as a research specialist at the MIT Media Lab. She wrote The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots and holds a Doctorate of Sciences from ETH Zurich.

Distinct perspective. Darling argues robots and AI are best understood through humanity’s history with domesticated animals rather than comparisons to humans, reframing debates about trust with machines.

Speaking topics. Human-robot relationships and what animal domestication teaches about trusting AI; robot ethics and policy gaps; AI and emotional attachment; rethinking automation as collaboration rather than replacement.

Best for. Robotics, policy, and legal-ethics conferences and academic events; less suited to sales-oriented product launches.

Recent engagements. Delivered the 2025 commencement keynote at Claremont Graduate University, where she received an honorary Doctorate of Science.

Booking and logistics. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Keynote formats through bureaus including Leading Authorities. Website

Peter Diamandis

Credentials. Peter Diamandis is Founder and Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation and Executive Founder of Singularity University. He is a New York Times bestselling author on exponential technology and hosts the annual Abundance Summit.

Distinct perspective. Diamandis argues exponential technologies, including AI, robotics, and biotech, are converging to create abundance faster than most institutions plan for, and that incentive prizes accelerate solutions to grand challenges.

Speaking topics. Exponential technologies and how AI, biotech, and robotics converge; abundance, on moving from scarcity thinking to exponential thinking; moonshot innovation through incentive prizes; longevity and human augmentation.

Best for. Large corporate summits and investor audiences wanting big-picture framing; less suited to policy-heavy or skeptic-focused forums.

Recent engagements. Opening keynote at GSX 2026 in Atlanta, and hosted the 2025 Abundance Summit.

Booking and logistics. Based in Santa Monica, California. Keynote and summit-hosting formats through bureaus including Leading Authorities. Website

Rana el Kaliouby

Credentials. Rana el Kaliouby is Co-Founder and General Partner of Blue Tulip Ventures, an AI-focused venture fund, and an executive fellow at Harvard Business School. She co-founded and led Affectiva, an MIT Media Lab spinout acquired by Smart Eye, and wrote Girl Decoded.

Distinct perspective. El Kaliouby argues AI systems need emotion AI, the capacity to perceive and respond to human affect, to be trustworthy rather than purely analytical.

Speaking topics. Emotion AI and technology that reads human affect; human-centered AI design that builds trust; lessons from founding, scaling, and exiting an MIT spinout.

Best for. Healthcare, automotive, and consumer-technology conferences; less suited to hardware-focused technical events.

Recent engagements. Named to PRWeek’s Dashboard 25: Class of 2025, with current engagements listed through Stern Strategy Group.

Booking and logistics. Based in Boston, Massachusetts. Keynote and advisory formats through Stern Strategy Group. Website

Sean Gallagher

Credentials. Sean Gallagher is founder of Humanova, a Sydney-based AI and workforce transformation advisory, after six years leading Swinburne University’s Centre for the New Workforce, where he partnered with Deloitte on Australia’s first research into generative AI’s impact on knowledge work.

Distinct perspective. Gallagher frames AI adoption as a talent strategy rather than a technology deployment, arguing organizations succeed or fail on workforce capability design, not tool selection.

Speaking topics. AI as talent strategy; building tomorrow’s AI workforce; the human edge, on where people add value alongside AI; board-level AI governance.

Best for. Australian corporate boards, executive teams, and HR conferences; less suited to purely technical AI development audiences.

Recent engagements. Published the 2025 report Breaking the Scale Barrier, surveying more than 1,000 Australian knowledge workers on AI adoption, and speaks regularly to ASX 200 clients including QBE and Westpac.

Booking and logistics. Based in Sydney, Australia. Keynote, executive briefing, board presentation, and all-staff formats. Website

Mo Gawdat

Credentials. Mo Gawdat is the former Chief Business Officer of Google X and founder of One Billion Happy. He wrote Solve for Happy, Scary Smart, and Unstressable, following a 27-year career across IBM, NCR, Microsoft, and Google.

Distinct perspective. Gawdat argues AI’s trajectory depends less on the technology than on the values humans encode into it now, urging personal responsibility ahead of AI’s arrival rather than fear.

Speaking topics. Scary Smart, on preparing humanity’s values before AI surpasses us; AI and happiness amid disruption; ethical AI and what businesses owe the systems they build; leadership culture in the age of AI.

Best for. Large general-audience conferences and corporate all-hands events; less suited to technical AI audiences seeking implementation detail.

Recent engagements. Delivered The Human Advantage keynote at SXSW Sydney 2025, and is announced as a keynote speaker for Info-Tech LIVE 2026 in Barcelona.

Booking and logistics. Based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In-person and virtual keynote formats. Website

Amanda Johnstone

Credentials. Amanda Johnstone is founding CEO of Transhuman, a Sydney-based AI and mental-health technology company, and creator of the Be A Looper mental health app. She was named a TIME Next Generation Leader and CEO Magazine’s Startup Executive of the Year.

Distinct perspective. Johnstone focuses on EmotionAI and the Internet of Bodies, arguing AI’s next frontier is reading human physiological and emotional states, and that intrapreneurship should function as core infrastructure inside organizations.

Speaking topics. How to See Around Corners, on reading emerging signals early; the agent economy and autonomous AI agents; EmotionAI and the Internet of Bodies; intrapreneurship as infrastructure.

Best for. Australian and Asia-Pacific corporate conferences and women-in-leadership programs; less suited to deep academic or purely technical AI audiences.

Recent engagements. Spoke at Spark New Zealand events in Auckland and Wellington and at TCS Summit Asia Pacific in 2025, with a Xero engagement scheduled for 2026.

Booking and logistics. Based in Sydney, Australia. Keynote formats for boards, executives, founders, and policymakers. Website

Zack Kass

Credentials. Zack Kass was Head of Go-to-Market at OpenAI, building the sales, solutions, and partnerships teams around ChatGPT’s launch. He wrote The Next Renaissance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential (Wiley, 2026) and serves as Executive-in-Residence at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce.

Distinct perspective. Kass argues AI expands human potential rather than simply automating it, using a distinction between productive and counterproductive friction to guide what organizations automate and what they preserve.

Speaking topics. The Next Renaissance, on how AI expands human potential; the automation boundary, on what to automate and what to protect; AI strategy drawn from advising Fortune 1000 companies.

Best for. Enterprise, finance, pharmaceutical, and technology conferences wanting a practitioner’s view; less suited to purely academic or policy-focused forums.

Recent engagements. Scheduled at the Gold Coast IT Symposium in Australia and Tricentis Transform 2026 in Singapore, both September 2026, plus AppDirect Thrive in Los Angeles.

Booking and logistics. Based in the United States. Keynote and advisory formats. Website

Ayesha Khanna

Credentials. Ayesha Khanna is CEO and co-founder of Addo AI, a Singapore- and San Francisco-based AI solutions firm, and founder of Amplify, a media platform for AI adoption. She holds a PhD in information systems from the London School of Economics and serves on the boards of Johnson Controls and HTX Singapore.

Distinct perspective. Khanna frames AI adoption around human agency, arguing that leaders remain the hero of the story rather than AI, and favors governance-first deployment over technology-first experimentation.

Speaking topics. Generative AI strategy for the enterprise; AI governance frameworks for boards and regulators; smart cities and urban technology; the future of work under automation.

Best for. Corporate boards, government summits, and financial-services conferences; less suited to developer-facing technical audiences.

Recent engagements. Named to Reuters’ Trailblazing Women in Enterprise AI and Flybridge’s 100 Women in AI for 2026, and to Edelman’s Top 50 AI Creators for 2025.

Booking and logistics. Based in Singapore. Keynotes, corporate advisory, and board briefings. Website

Brett King

Credentials. Brett King is a futurist, broadcaster, and founder of Moven, one of the first mobile-only banks, and hosts The Futurists podcast, which has drawn more than eleven million downloads across 180 countries. He is the author of the Bank 2.0/3.0/4.0 series, Augmented, and Technosocialism, and previously advised the Obama administration on fintech policy.

Distinct perspective. King argues technology adoption cycles in finance are compressing so fast that institutions must redesign around augmented, always-on digital experience rather than retrofit branches and legacy channels.

Speaking topics. Banking and finance in the age of AI; augmented humanity and human-machine collaboration; technosocialism and the future political economy; embedded finance and the decline of the physical branch.

Best for. Banking, fintech, insurance, and travel-industry conferences; less suited to audiences outside financial services given his sector focus.

Recent engagements. Booked for the DCUC Overseas Sub-Council Conference in Bangkok, iManage ConnectLive in London, and Arabian Travel Market in Dubai across 2026, and released the book Branch Tomorrow.

Booking and logistics. Based in New York, USA. Keynote and podcast-collaboration formats. Website

Cassie Kozyrkov

Credentials. Cassie Kozyrkov is CEO of Kozyr and was Google’s first Chief Decision Scientist, where she trained more than 20,000 employees in data-driven decision-making. She serves on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Innovation Advisory Council.

Distinct perspective. Kozyrkov coined decision intelligence as a discipline distinct from data science, arguing that AI’s value depends on the human judgment applied around it, not the model alone.

Speaking topics. Decision intelligence for AI-era leaders; why AI adoption efforts fail without a decision framework; digital trust and risk recognition; upgrading decision-making at scale.

Best for. Executive offsites, data and analytics conferences, and leadership summits; less suited to audiences wanting a purely technical machine-learning deep dive.

Recent engagements. Presented Human-Centric GenAI: Redefining Skills and Leadership at Transform 2025, and was interviewed for HumanX’s speaker series.

Booking and logistics. Based in the United States. Keynote, executive workshop, and virtual formats. Website

Kai-Fu Lee

Credentials. Kai-Fu Lee is founder and CEO of 01.AI and chairman of Sinovation Ventures, and previously led Google China and founded Microsoft Research Asia. He is the author of AI Superpowers and, with Chen Qiufan, AI 2041, and is an IEEE Fellow and two-time TIME 100 honoree.

Distinct perspective. Lee argues AI development is now a genuine US-China contest shaped by data, talent, and implementation speed, and that this competition can still produce shared global benefit.

Speaking topics. The US-China AI race; large language models and enterprise deployment in China; AI’s economic and labor disruption through 2041; venture investment in applied AI.

Best for. Global technology, policy, and China-market conferences; less suited to US-centric or purely technical events.

Recent engagements. Spoke at Stanford’s Center for East Asian Studies in December 2025 on AI in China and Asia, while 01.AI formed a joint large-language-model lab with Alibaba in 2025.

Booking and logistics. Based in Beijing, China. Keynote formats via bureaus. Speaker page

Charlene Li

Credentials. Charlene Li founded Altimeter Group, later acquired by Prophet, after serving as a principal analyst at Forrester Research. She is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including Groundswell, The Disruption Mindset, and Winning with AI: The 90-Day Blueprint for Success, co-written with Dr. Katia Walsh.

Distinct perspective. Li argues companies cannot simply innovate to stay competitive; they must transform their structures and leadership models, and AI raises the stakes on that distinction.

Speaking topics. Enterprise AI value creation; disruptive transformation and organizational change; customer experience strategy; leadership for the AI era.

Best for. Enterprise leadership offsites and digital-transformation conferences across industries; less suited to early-stage startup audiences.

Recent engagements. Published Winning with AI in 2025 and is announced to headline Unily’s Unite 26 conference.

Booking and logistics. Based in San Francisco, California. Formats from large conferences to executive workshops. Website

Gary Marcus

Credentials. Gary Marcus is professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University and founder of the AI companies Geometric Intelligence, acquired by Uber, and Robust.AI. He is the author of Rebooting AI, Taming Silicon Valley, and Kluge, and has testified before the US Senate on AI oversight.

Distinct perspective. Marcus is a prominent skeptic of large language models, arguing that statistical pattern-matching without common-sense reasoning produces unreliable systems, and that AI policy should prioritize verifiable trustworthiness over scale.

Speaking topics. The limits of generative AI and large language models; AI regulation and corporate accountability; building trustworthy, common-sense AI systems; risks of the current AI arms race.

Best for. Policy forums, technology-ethics conferences, and business audiences wanting a critical counterweight to AI hype; less suited to vendor showcases promoting a specific AI product.

Recent engagements. Spoke at Web Summit Vancouver in 2025 and publishes ongoing commentary on his Substack, The Road to AI We Can Trust.

Booking and logistics. Based in Vancouver, Canada. Keynote and panel formats via bureaus. Website

Bernard Marr

Credentials. Bernard Marr is a business author and adviser who writes a regular column for Forbes and has consulted for organizations including Amazon, Google, IBM, and HSBC. He has written more than 18 books, including AI Strategy (2025) and the updated third edition of Data Strategy (2025).

Distinct perspective. Marr centers on translating AI and data capability into practical business strategy, positioning organizational readiness and strategic clarity as bigger constraints on AI value than the technology itself.

Speaking topics. Building an enterprise AI strategy; data strategy and governance; generative AI in business practice; future skills for the AI workforce.

Best for. Corporate leadership conferences and cross-industry business events; less suited to research or academic AI audiences.

Recent engagements. Published AI Strategy and the third edition of Data Strategy in 2025, with an ongoing publishing schedule through 2026.

Booking and logistics. Based in the United Kingdom. In-person keynotes and virtual keynotes from a broadcast-quality studio. Website

Heather McGowan

Credentials. Heather McGowan is a future-of-work strategist who consults to Fortune 500 organizations and has been named a Forbes Top Futurist. She is the author of The Adaptation Advantage and The Empathy Advantage, both co-written with Chris Shipley, and has been cited by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times.

Distinct perspective. McGowan argues that thriving alongside AI depends less on having answers than on cultivating curiosity, empathy, and better questions across an organization.

Speaking topics. Leading through AI-driven workplace change; building organizational curiosity and adaptability; purpose as a performance driver; trust as team infrastructure.

Best for. HR, leadership development, and future-of-work conferences across industries; less suited to purely technical AI audiences.

Recent engagements. Confirmed as a keynote speaker for Enterprise Connect 2026 and the 2026 MISHRM State Conference.

Booking and logistics. Based in the United States. In-person and virtual keynotes. Website

Allie K. Miller

Credentials. Allie K. Miller is founder and CEO of Open Machine, an enterprise AI advisory firm, and previously built and led AWS’s global machine-learning team for startups and venture capital after launching IBM’s first multimodal AI team. She was named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI and Adweek’s inaugural AI Trailblazers Power 100.

Distinct perspective. Miller pairs creativity and human judgment with technical AI deployment inside large enterprises, in what she calls a renaissance approach.

Speaking topics. Building an AI-first business and mindset; AI’s path to enterprise value; preparing the C-suite for the AI era; scaling AI across people, process, and product.

Best for. Enterprise leadership and go-to-market conferences; less suited to deep academic or research-track AI audiences.

Recent engagements. Keynoted Activate Summit 2025 and advises companies including Salesforce, Google, and OpenAI through Open Machine.

Booking and logistics. Based in New York City. Keynote and advisory formats. Website

Vivienne Ming

Credentials. Vivienne Ming is founder and executive chair of Socos Labs and The Human Trust, holding a PhD from Carnegie Mellon with published research in Nature. She was named one of the BBC’s 100 Women.

Distinct perspective. Ming argues AI should be built toward hybrid human-machine collective intelligence, augmenting human capacity rather than replacing it, with attention to who gets left out of that gain.

Speaking topics. Building human potential in an AI economy; the economics of difference and inequality; trust, incentives, and organizational behavior; applied neuroscience for innovation.

Best for. Education, HR, and innovation-focused conferences; less suited to narrowly technical AI-engineering audiences.

Recent engagements. Published Robot-Proof: When Machines Have All the Answers, Build Better People in 2026, and gives the closing keynote at the ASTC 2026 Annual Conference.

Booking and logistics. Based in Santa Barbara, California. Keynote formats via bureaus including BigSpeak. Website

Ethan Mollick

Credentials. Ethan Mollick is an Associate Professor of Management at the Wharton School and co-director of Wharton’s Generative AI Labs. He wrote the New York Times bestseller Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI and was named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI.

Distinct perspective. His jagged frontier framework holds that AI capability varies unpredictably by task, so users must test each use case individually rather than assume a consistent skill level, treating AI as a collaborative partner to direct and check rather than a tool to trust outright.

Speaking topics. Co-intelligence, on working with AI as a thinking partner; the jagged frontier, on mapping where AI reliably helps versus where it fails; reinventing education and training for an AI-saturated classroom; closing the gap between individual AI experimentation and organizational adoption.

Best for. Corporate leadership offsites, higher-education audiences, and technology or consulting conferences wanting research-grounded guidance; less suited to events seeking geopolitical or AI-hardware analysis.

Recent engagements. Keynoted ClioCon 2026 and headlined Anthology Together 2025 on AI in education, with his One Useful Thing newsletter active through 2026.

Booking and logistics. Based in Philadelphia. Keynote and live-demonstration formats, represented by Washington Speakers Bureau. Website

Ramez Naam

Credentials. Ramez Naam spent 13 years as a computer scientist at Microsoft, leading teams on Outlook, Internet Explorer, and Bing, before moving into climate and energy investing. He is a general partner at Prime Movers Lab, co-chair for energy and environment at Singularity University, and author of The Infinite Resource and the Nexus trilogy.

Distinct perspective. Naam argues clean-energy costs are falling on an exponential learning curve comparable to computing, so decarbonization and AI’s rising power demand should be analyzed together as parallel technology trends rather than opposing forces.

Speaking topics. The AI-energy collision, on powering compute growth without abandoning climate goals; clean-energy cost curves and what they predict; contrarian views on the pace of AI progress; biological enhancement and human augmentation.

Best for. Energy, climate, and technology-investment conferences wanting a data-driven optimist; less suited to purely consumer-marketing audiences.

Recent engagements. Spoke at the 2026 Foresight Vision Weekend in Puerto Rico on contrarian AI views, the 2025 Human Rights Foundation AI Summit, and USC’s Information Sciences Institute in March 2026.

Booking and logistics. Based in Seattle, Washington. Keynote formats through multiple bureaus. Website

Sol Rashidi

Credentials. Sol Rashidi has held four C-suite technology roles at Fortune 500 companies, including Sony Music, Merck, and Estee Lauder, and was one of the first enterprise Chief AI Officers, appointed in 2016. She holds 10 patents and wrote Your AI Survival Guide.

Distinct perspective. Rashidi frames AI adoption as an organizational and human-behavior problem more than a technical one, developing tools like the Human Amplification Index to measure AI’s return on workforce capability rather than efficiency alone.

Speaking topics. Scaling AI beyond pilots, on governance and cybersecurity requirements; measuring AI ROI through workforce amplification, not headcount cuts; guarding against intellectual atrophy as teams offload thinking to AI; lessons from real-world enterprise AI deployments.

Best for. Enterprise leadership and technology-sector conferences seeking practitioner experience; less suited to academic or purely technical AI-research audiences.

Recent engagements. Keynoted ISE 2026 in Barcelona with The AI Reality Check: What It Takes to Scale and the Future of Leadership, and writes The Sol of AI newsletter.

Booking and logistics. Travels from Florida, USA. Keynote and virtual formats via Executive Speakers Bureau. Website

Neil Sahota

Credentials. Neil Sahota is an IBM Master Inventor and an artificial intelligence advisor to the United Nations, where he helped launch the AI for Good initiative. He is Chief Innovation Officer at UC Irvine’s Applied Innovation and co-authored Own the A.I. Revolution and the 2025 book AI Activation Code.

Distinct perspective. Sahota emphasizes speed of organizational decision-making over technical sophistication, arguing that AI moves faster than most companies can decide how to use it, and that leaders should target measurable value within 90-day windows rather than multi-year transformation programs.

Speaking topics. Capturing AI value in 90 days rather than long roadmaps; innovation lessons from IBM Watson and the UN’s AI for Good program; leadership decision-making at AI speed; practical governance frameworks for enterprise AI adoption.

Best for. Innovation and enterprise-leadership conferences wanting a practitioner-inventor perspective; less suited to deep technical or academic AI-research settings.

Recent engagements. Co-authored AI Activation Code (2025) and continues as a recurring speaker and judge at the UN’s AI for Good Global Summit.

Booking and logistics. Based in Irvine, California. Keynote and workshop formats offered worldwide. Website

Nina Schick

Credentials. Nina Schick is founder and CEO of Tamang Ventures and wrote DEEPFAKES: The Coming Infocalypse, an early book framing generative AI in geopolitical terms. She has advised the NATO Secretary General, briefed President Biden, and worked seven years as a strategic analyst for CNN, Bloomberg, and Sky.

Distinct perspective. Schick argues AI has become a form of hard power, contending that control of the industrial stack, spanning energy, semiconductors, and compute, will determine which nations and companies hold influence, shifting the conversation from software applications to physical infrastructure.

Speaking topics. AI as hard power, on the geopolitics of the intelligence race; the energy and compute contest behind AI infrastructure; deepfakes and synthetic media, on information integrity in an AI world; how AI reshapes economies and governance.

Best for. Government, defense, and financial-sector conferences focused on geopolitics; less suited to consumer-technology audiences.

Recent engagements. Spoke at the AI for Good Global Summit 2025 and advises institutions including the U.S. Department of State on AI strategy.

Booking and logistics. Based in the United States. Keynote formats via bureaus including WWSG. Website

Anders Sorman-Nilsson

Credentials. Anders Sorman-Nilsson is a Swedish-Australian futurist and founder of the strategy firm Thinque. He wrote Seamless and Digilogue: How to Win the Digital Minds and Analogue Hearts of Tomorrow’s Customers, and serves as Futurist-in-Residence to the Brisbane Broncos.

Distinct perspective. His Digilogue framework argues organizations must win both the digital minds and analogue hearts of customers and employees, pairing technological fluency with human-centered judgment rather than treating digital transformation as a purely technical exercise.

Speaking topics. Digilogue, on balancing digital efficiency with human connection; scenario planning for AI-driven disruption; building trust and culture through technological change; innovation strategy for legacy organizations facing digital competitors.

Best for. Financial services, retail, and corporate-strategy conferences wanting a change-management angle; less suited to deep technical AI or engineering audiences.

Recent engagements. Listed on multiple current bureau rosters into 2026, including Premiere Speakers, National Speakers Bureau, and Executive Speakers Bureau.

Booking and logistics. Based in Sydney, Australia. Keynote, workshop, and scenario-planning formats. Website

Daniel Susskind

Credentials. Daniel Susskind is Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College and a Research Professor at King’s College London. He wrote A World Without Work and Growth: A Reckoning, the latter selected by former President Obama as a favorite book of 2024.

Distinct perspective. Susskind argues AI raises the possibility of genuine structural technological unemployment, unlike past automation scares, and frames the resulting policy challenge as distributing prosperity and purpose when paid work is no longer the primary channel for either.

Speaking topics. Structural technological unemployment, on whether this wave of automation is different; growth without traditional employment; the future of the professions under AI; public policy responses to AI-driven labor disruption.

Best for. Economics, policy, and professional-services conferences wanting an academically grounded view; less suited to hands-on technical AI implementation audiences.

Recent engagements. Delivered the Gresham College public lecture A World Without Work in April 2026, part of a series tied to his research on AI and employment.

Booking and logistics. Based in London, UK. Keynote formats via Chartwell Speakers and Leigh Bureau. Website

Mike Walsh

Credentials. Mike Walsh is CEO of Tomorrow, an innovation research lab advising global companies on strategy in an algorithmic era, and author of The Algorithmic Leader: How to Be Smart When Machines Are Smarter Than You. He has advised organizations across more than 20 countries on AI-driven transformation.

Distinct perspective. Walsh argues AI has moved beyond tools and copilots to become the foundation of a new workforce of autonomous digital agents, so leaders’ central task is now orchestrating hybrid organizations of humans and machines rather than simply deploying software.

Speaking topics. Leading hybrid organizations of humans and AI agents; algorithmic decision-making and management for executives; building agile, data-driven organizational cultures; AI ethics and governance at the board level.

Best for. C-suite and board-level strategy events across industries; less suited to entry-level technical training or purely academic settings.

Recent engagements. Spoke at the ACEC 2025 Fall Conference and is completing a fourth book on AI agents, co-authored with Nitin Mittal, expected in 2026.

Booking and logistics. Based in New York, with roughly 300 travel days a year. Keynote formats via multiple bureaus including WWSG. Website

Amy Webb

Credentials. Amy Webb is founder and CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group, publisher of an annual Tech Trends Report she has authored since 2007. She wrote The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity and teaches as an adjunct professor at NYU Stern.

Distinct perspective. Webb argues organizations should stop chasing individual trends and instead track convergences, moments when multiple technological forces mature simultaneously, such as human augmentation, AI-driven labor shifts, and AI substituting for emotional support.

Speaking topics. Convergences, on how simultaneous technology shifts reshape business and labor at once; the new labor equation, on AI agents decoupling growth from employment; human augmentation and the future of the workforce; long-range strategic foresight methodology.

Best for. Large industry conferences and executive strategy audiences wanting a rigorous forecasting methodology; less suited to niche technical-implementation sessions.

Recent engagements. Presented the Future Today Strategy Group’s 2026 Tech Trends Report at SXSW 2026, introducing the convergences framework.

Booking and logistics. Based in New York, USA. Keynote formats via Leading Authorities and other bureaus. Website

Choosing among them

The right choice depends on your audience and what you need the keynote to do. Match the speaker’s distinct perspective and best-for to your event type, weigh their base location against your budget and timeline, and look for a point of view your audience has not heard before. Whoever you choose, brief them deeply on your context: the best AI keynotes are the ones shaped to the room.

In this overview document I provide details of 6 in-demand workshops, including key content, outcomes, and examples.

• The Power of Generative AI
• AI and the Future of Work
• Framing Your AI Strategy
• AI-Augmented Strategic Decision-Making
• Thriving on Overload: Information Mastery
• Future-Focused Leadership

Please get in touch if you have any questions.

In order to create that future, we must believe it is possible. In this mini-report I have distilled the major arguments that a prosperous future of jobs is possible.

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Please let me know any thoughts on how to refine or improve this, or counter-arguments I can respond to, so I can continue to make the arguments more solid. You can message me where I shared the report on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Creating a positive future of work

Many fear that AI disruption will lead to widespread job losses, the erosion of the quality of work, and increasing work inequity.

Despite these concerns there are a wide range of factors that point to the potential for a highly positive future of work. All of these factors will be amplified by being clear and deliberate in building a ‘Humans + AI’ future where AI is used to complement humans.

This mini-report presents a range of compelling arguments for why future job prosperity is possible, perhaps even likely.

Seeing the potential for a positive future is a necessary enabler to taking the action that will make it happen.

Key concepts

Automation vs. Augmentation: AI can be deployed with the intent of replacing human work, or of complementing it to enhancing human capabilities and increase their value.

Job Polarization: We have long observed an growing divide between high-skill, high-wage jobs and low-skill, low-wage jobs. AI use could aggravate that gap but could also close it.

Skill Premium: The pay premium for those with superior skills will be impacted by AI, by commoditizing an array of tasks and enhancing the marketable skills of workers who use AI well.

Adaptability and Learning: A faster pace of change requires even higher levels of adaptability and learning, with support needed for all or most to make required transitions.

1. The potential of Humans + AI

Rather than considering humans and AI as potential competitors in value-creation, we can and should focus entirely on a ‘Humans + AI’ framing, in which we seek to maximize the value of humans by being complemented by AI.

In almost all domains humans and AI collaborating will generate superior outcomes.

There is a rapidly growing movement of inspiring leaders, thinkers, and doers putting their energy into designing and implementing the structures that will generate the best outcomes from humans and AI working together.

2. AI enhances value-generating skills

AI can be used for “intelligence augmentation” and task support, substantially increasing the value created by human labor. Those who use AI to enhance their value contribution will be able to maintain or even grow their skill premia.

Many research studies across different industries have shown that AI usually gives a higher boost to work capabilities and outcomes to lower-skilled workers, narrowing the differential between the value of their work.

The unbounded scope of GenAI means this skill enhancement can be applied to any work from routine to complex, including even physical labor.

3. Creation of new jobs

As has happened as the economy has evolved through human history, new jobs are being created at an extraordinary pace. The faster the pace of change, the more new jobs are created.

Many rapidly growing roles, such as telehealth nurse, digital identity specialist, mobile money agent, augmented reality designer, and data-driven personal trainer, barely existed a few years ago.

Some of the many jobs being created include neural interface designer, AI auditor, cognitive enhancement coach, AI ethics officer, prompt engineer, and far more. We cannot readily predict what new jobs will emerge, but we can be sure they will plentiful.

4. Unique human capabilities at the fore

The increasing use of GenAI will lead people to define and refine their unique value contribution in both employment and freelance work.

In pre-GenAI work people’s skills were applied more diffusely and consistently to defined tasks and outputs. In collaborative work with AI, people will find different and more pointed ways to complement AI, focusing on their most distinctive human and individual capabilities.

The use of AI will draw out and refine people’s unique capabilities working collaboratively with AI, increasing the specificity of their value creation.

5. Specialization reduces substitutability

A key factor driving prices and wages is substitutability. If equivalent work outcomes can be achieved by substitutes, for examples by other people, outsourcing, or AI, the result will be downward pressure on wages.

As we shift to more distinctive and unique human capabilities, accelerated by AI education tools, it will be harder to substitute individual workers.

The most successful companies will be designing work to tap specialist skills, as commoditized work will create commoditized products and services with no competitive advantage.

6. Enhanced education and learning

One of the most powerful and valuable applications of AI is providing personalized education, assisting both those who already have access to quality education as well as the many around the world who do not.

This democratized availability of learning tools will assist people to improve their existing marketable skills, and swiftly develop new capabilities as these increase in value in a shifting job marketplace.

7. Comparative advantage

The economic theory of comparative advantage states that individuals, organizations, or nations should focus on tasks where they have the greatest efficiency differential over others.

Even if AI is better than humans at every task, it should be applied where its economic advantage is greatest. This will still leave ample jobs for humans where AI’s advantage is smaller.

Taken to an extreme, this is an argument around energy allocation. Humans are currently far more energy-efficient than AI. If this dynamic changes, regulation may be required to ensure humans have access to the resources they need to compete.

8. Attraction of talent

Companies can take two broad approaches to the role of AI in work: emphasizing substituting workers with AI, or complementing workers with AI.

The former will experience increasing difficulty in attracting talent.

The latter will attract the best talent.

In a world of AI, the ability to attract top talent, not least to implement the best AI systems, will be an even greater differentiator of performance than in the past. Companies will succeed based on their attitude to human labor relative to AI.

9. Work redesign

There are major risks in current prevailing work structures based on tightly defined job roles. These tend to favor automation over complementing skills.

By understanding the potential value of AI in enhancing value creation organizations can reconceive the future shape of the organization, the specific human roles that will support that, and how to deploy their talent the most effectively.

Those companies that engage pre-emptively in this task reorganization will be massively advantaged as value creation shifts to ‘Humans + AI’ models.

10. Humans’ extraordinary adaptability

Humans have proven to be exceptionally adaptable to a vast array of rapid changes in their environment, from the Ice Age to human-created transitions from gunpowder, steel, steam, and a multitude of other inventions. When we needed,we adapted extremely swiftly to Covid and adopted remote and flexible work.

In his 1970 book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler suggested that the pace of change would lead to a state of individual societal shock. In the decades since then and still today we have proven to be exceptionally resilient to accelerating change.

Humans are defined by our unlimited adaptability. We will continue to demonstrate that through shifts present and future.

11. Emotional intelligence and human connection

There are many roles where ‘humanity’ and emotional engagement is expected and strongly desired, including in personal services, health and aged care, and education. People want to be inspired by a human teacher or supported by a human carer than their AI counterparts.

Organizations can only be effective if their leaders and employees have strong social and emotional skills to engage, collaborate, ideate, and create an environment where people want to work.

Every business depends on their customer relationships. Trust and loyalty requires human connection and emotional engagement.

12. Preference for human work

Over and above humans’ unique human capabilities of emotional intelligence and connection, people will continue to want and prefer humans to do many kinds of work for them.

For many roles, even if machines equal or exceed human performance, we will still want and prefer humans. Customers will prefer to read books by human writiers, to work with a human financial advisor, and human waiters to robot waiters, however witty their repartee.

People are already demonstrating their willingness to pay a premium for human rather than automated services. In an increasingly automated world that premium will increase substantially.

13. Design for inclusive economic prosperity

Productivity increases have increasingly gone to corporations rather than workers over the last decades, with substantially higher wealth concentration. There are absolutely risks of increased concentration in economic power with the rise of AI.

One counterpoint is that the wealthiest corporations and individuals benefit from prosperity being more rather than less evenly distributed. A growing base of affluent consumers is required to fuel any business’s growth. Everyone loses in a world of massive social fragmentation.

Everyone will be aligned in designing for inclusive economic prosperity, however we achieve that.

Action for future job prosperity

The future of work is open for us to create. Nothing is inevitable

The first step is to acknowledge the challenges and also to explore and understand the forces and factors that could lead to future job prosperity.

Enormous positive possibilities are open to us. We can create a world in which people enjoy their work more, there are more opportunities for individuals, and human potential is uncovered and expressed more than ever.

How we act now, as corporate and government leaders, entrepreneurs, and individuals, will shape our future.

It was a highly stimulating, rich discussion. Below are slivers of the discussion organized around just two of the major themes of the conversation, focusing on my thoughts but also including insights from the other panelists (distorted through my memory and perception): 

Beyond productivity

Productivity should not be the goal; productivity is a flawed concept that only measures efficiency of tasks and output, not value created. Productivity metrics work well for machines and repetitive tasks but not for knowledge work where goals are less defined. Value often comes from not being busy, by wandering, doing things that seem to have no bearing on work, and coming across different ideas, having conversations. This is not usually achieved by sitting in front of computers at your desk. 

Productivity is based on metrics, so what should companies measure? The only truly useful measures are higher-order objectives such as customer satisfaction, customer happiness, employee personal growth, creativity, and so on. Any lower-level focus on tasks completed will be gamed and is close to meaningless in driving real value creation.

For knowledge workers productivity is only really meaningful over longer periods such as years or possibly months. This means that all exploration and learning along the way has time to flourish and bring unexpected benefits, people have the space they need to flourish, grow, reimagine, and find new pathways. Measuring productivity in short time frames necessarily quashes the ability to develop, grow, and create true value.

The organizations that will prosper in these increasingly wonderful, extraordinary, wild times are the ones that focused on the biggest possible picture of making people happier and better and more fulfilled. If they do, productive outcomes will flow richly.

Amplifying human potential

The starting point is believing in human potential. The question has to be: “who can we be?” Organizations need to move beyond the boxes of job roles and definitions to completely fluid work in which people can apply their talents – recognized and latent – in a multitude of ways. The organizations that enable people’s potential to emerge are the ones that will succeed in the years to come.

Growth has become for some a dirty word, but that’s only if you are focusing on growing revenue and profits to the exclusion of all else. We need to also frame it as the growth of humans and organizations to become who and what they can be. In a word, moving towards their positive potential.    

Growth is a mutual endeavor, an alliance between individuals and organizations. Companies need to shape work for employees to grow as a person in every possible dimension, emotionally, as well as in skills that they can sell in the talent marketplace. Employees should enable organizations to grow, to be more flexible and adaptable, maturing to engaging emotionally with the world and perceiving bigger, more important objectives for what the organization could be. 

Diversity is essential for creativity and learning, Organizations need to increase their “absorptive capacity” for different ideas and perspectives, and manage the “creative abrasion” that comes from this. Psychologically safe environments allow failure to lead to learning and growth, for both the individual and the organization. 

Photo: Amelia Loye

Sydney, Australia, October 19, 2023

Melbourne, Australia, August 24, 2023