Rethinking the AI Apocolypse

My team recently filled a Director of Engineering, AI for our favorite consumer tech client.📱AI-focused roles are trending in 2025 across all functional areas, which is no surprise given the number of AI rants and freaky AI generated photos spamming our socials.

Among the chatter is fear: Will AI take my job? Dehumanize content creation? Turn all of my appliances against me?!

What I learned in interviewing AI leaders from the platforms we use every day- Spotify, Reddit, Google, Amazon, Meta- was fascinating. While all their roles are unique, they are all using AI for the same thing: to solve problems.💡 They aren’t sitting in a lab programming bots; they’re using the endless amounts of data that the world has access to for answering challenging business questions and filling in gaps in user experience. Most of these leaders have been doing this since before “AI” was even in the social consciousness; every single one brought up responsible AI. The individual we ended up hiring came from a company that was using AI to address climate change. 🌎

So will my toaster become smarter than me and take over Growth Mode? Maybe. But I’m also excited about what this search has taught me from the amazing people using AI to improve our daily lives.

P.S. If you’re hiring an AI leader on your team, let’s talk!