Cassie Kozyrkov

AI isn’t just changing how leaders work. It’s changing what leadership is.

As AI moves from answering to acting, leaders face a new challenge: becoming capitalists of human attention, investing judgment where it matters most, and directing newfound capacity toward ambitions once considered impossible. Which means the leader’s work is simultaneously harder and more important than ever.

In this provocative, practical keynote, Cassie Kozyrkov, who served as Google’s first Chief Decision Scientist, reveals why AI investments fall short and what leaders can do differently. Through surprising examples, she shows you how to rethink your role, redesign systems, and ditch the pre-AI habits holding your organization back.

Leaders leave knowing where to focus, what to change first, and how to turn AI activity into real results across the organization. They’ll gain a way to navigate not just today’s AI breakthroughs, but the ones still to come, starting with one surprisingly powerful action they can take immediately.

Audiences will leave ready to:

1. Set an ambition worth leading toward: Identify a previously abandoned organizational goal, explore whether AI could now make it achievable, and add it to a living wishlist for leadership to revisit regularly.
2. Put every AI pilot to the leadership test: Identify the senior leader who wants the outcome, the business metric it should improve, and how success will be measured.
3. Redesign the business as if starting from scratch: Hunt for friction, then imagine building a digital-native competitor without legacy systems, then identify the processes and handoffs they’d eliminate.
4. Turn AI time savings into business results: Decide where employees should reinvest hours saved through AI, such as serving customers better, rather than simply expecting more output.
5. Get employees invested in AI transformation: Approach psychological safety as AI infrastructure and create incentives that reduce workslop and increase team motivation.

AI is moving so fast, it’s hard to keep up! New tools, new expectations, and a nagging question: Will what makes me valuable still matter? 

What if getting ahead isn’t about keeping up?

In this funny, inspiring keynote, Cassie Kozyrkov, Google’s first Chief Decision Scientist, turns the AI race on its head. Forget trying to master every new tool. The real advantage starts with knowing what you want to accomplish and discovering how AI can help you get there.

Through vivid storytelling and audience interaction, Cassie reveals why the most valuable AI skill isn’t technical expertise. It’s knowing what’s worth trying in the first place. The best place to start? Not with the latest AI tool, but with something you’ve always wished you could do better.

You’ll leave motivated by a renewed sense of agency and a powerful new approach to AI you’ll be eager to apply immediately.

Audiences will leave ready to:

1. Take another shot at something they thought was impossible: Revisit an abandoned work goal, explore new approaches with AI, check what’s realistic, and take one small step forward immediately.
2. Get unstuck: See why working with AI is much easier than most people think and learn a quick hack for diving in.
3. Align AI to their priorities: Do a fearless audit of how they’re using AI and use the results to unlock its potential.
4. Make one frustrating task easier: See why getting started is easier than ever… and to do this, spend 24 hours noticing what wastes your time, then use AI to free up your attention for what matters.
5. Make their AI wins a win for the team: Check that their AI shortcuts aren’t creating extra work for colleagues, then share one success and one mistake so everyone can learn.