AI at Work: Are We Getting Smarter or Losing Our Skills?

What happens when businesses invite AI into the very workflows that define how they operate? And if AI can organize your finances, research tax law, and prepare a return in minutes, what becomes the human job? In this episode of Inside Job, Matt and Aaron open with a conversation about AI agents moving deeper into the workplace, what businesses may gain from that transition, and what they risk when they hand over their data, intellectual property, and operational knowledge. Then, Matt talks with CPA, professor, and firm owner Lori Hauck about how accounting has evolved from shoeboxes full of receipts to cloud software and generative AI, why trust remains the profession’s greatest asset, and how accountants are becoming less like number crunchers and more like trusted advisors. As AI transforms one of the world’s oldest professions, this episode asks a bigger question: When technology handles more of the work, what becomes uniquely human?

Before Inside Job’s upcoming profile with Lori, a tax prep accountant working with high-net-worth clients, Aaron and Matt sit down to unpack the bigger question behind the story: what is AI really doing to the way we work? From entrepreneurs pushing AI tools to their limits, to employees constrained by company systems, to younger workers learning through models instead of mentors, this conversation explores the strange middle ground we are living in right now. AI can feel magical one minute and frustrating the next. It can save hours of work, but it can also make us wonder which skills we are quietly giving up.

What happens when the future of surgery starts to feel less like science fiction and more like a cockpit? In this Inside Job reaction episode, Matt and Aaron revisit their profile of Dr. Alex Fondaw, M.D., and bring in Dr. Alisa Coker, M.D., Director of Robotic Surgery and Education at Dell Medical School, to unpack how robotic surgery is changing the operating room. Dr. Coker explains why surgical robots are not exactly new, how the da Vinci system has evolved over more than two decades, and what it actually feels like for a surgeon to sit at the console and operate with robotic arms. She also gets into the tension between open, laparoscopic, and robotic surgery, the training challenges facing the next generation of surgeons, and why the human surgeon is still very much in control. It is a conversation about technology, trust, patient care, and professional identity at a moment when AI and robotics are reshaping the way people work. For surgeons, the question may not be whether the machines are coming. They are already here. The bigger question is how humans learn to work with them.

What happens when one of the world’s oldest professions begins learning entirely new tools? Today, Matt talks with robotic surgeon Dr. Alex Fondaw to explore how surgery is quietly transforming in the age of artificial intelligence. But this conversation is about more than medical technology. It’s about what happens when tools evolve faster than training, when human expertise becomes harder to teach, and why the future of work may depend less on replacement and more on how professionals adapt alongside increasingly intelligent machines. Contact us if you have a story to share, whether it’s your current role, your job search, feedback on a particular episode, or ideas for future conversations, we want to hear from you. You can contribute anonymously or join us as a featured guest. *Inside Job is a podcast about work told by the people who actually do it. Hosted by ⁠⁠Matt Sunbulli⁠⁠ Engineered & Edited by Joe Deshano Executive Produced by⁠⁠ Aaron Calafato ⁠⁠

Inside Jobs Reacts: Host ⁠Matt Sunbulli⁠ and Executive Producer⁠ Aaron Calafato⁠ unpack the emotional, ethical, and economic questions emerging from the worker stories behind today’s rapidly changing AI economy — and the headlines reshaping modern work in real time. This episode, after profiling two workers caught inside the new AI economy, Matt and Aaron come back together to unpack what the shows last two profile episodes reveal about work, automation, and the growing uncertainty surrounding the future of employment. One worker made nearly $70,000 a year training AI models while still in college. Another spent nearly two decades inside the hidden world of AI data annotation. Together, their stories expose the largely invisible human labor helping build today’s artificial intelligence systems — and the unsettling reality that many of those same workers may now be vulnerable to disruption themselves. In this episode: The hidden human workforce behind AI training Why general AI annotation work is disappearing Microsoft buyouts, layoffs, and the larger anxiety surrounding AI automation The growing fragility facing both young workers and seasoned professionals Whether AI is truly “assisting” workers or quietly replacing tasks altogether Why the modern economy feels productive and unstable at the same time

In this episode, Matt Sunbulli (Host) steps inside the hidden world of AI work through two different stories. First, we meet Krista, a longtime AI data worker who has spent more than a decade doing the invisible labor behind recommendation systems, chatbots, generative AI, facial recognition, and data labeling. From her living room in Michigan, Krista explains what it really means to chase tasks across platforms, weigh pay rates against ethics, and live with the instability of work that most people never see. Then we meet Isaiah, a Northwestern student who stumbled into a $50-an-hour job training AI. What began as a vague recruiter message turned into rent money, long hours, and a front-row seat to how quickly AI models learn. For Isaiah, AI wasn’t just a headline or a threat. It was a job. Together, their stories reveal the human workforce behind artificial intelligence: the data workers, AI trainers, taskers, reviewers, and invisible laborers teaching machines how to talk, reason, see, and respond. *Inside Job is a podcast about work told by the people who actually do it. The show is Hosted by Matt Sunbulli, Executive Produced by Aaron Calafato and is a proud member of the YAP Media Network.

Host Matt Sunbulli and Executive Producer Aaron Calafato introduce this new podcast series. Reach us at: https://www.insidejobpodcast.com/

Inside Jobs Reacts: Host Matt Sunbulli and Executive Producer Aaron Calafato unpack the emotional, ethical, and economic questions emerging from the worker stories behind today’s rapidly changing AI economy — and the headlines reshaping modern work in real time. This episode, after profiling two workers caught inside the new AI economy, Matt and Aaron come back together to unpack what the shows last two profile episodes reveal about work, automation, and the growing uncertainty surrounding the future of employment. One worker made nearly $70,000 a year training AI models while still in college. Another spent nearly two decades inside the hidden world of AI data annotation. Together, their stories expose the largely invisible human labor helping build today’s artificial intelligence systems — and the unsettling reality that many of those same workers may now be vulnerable to disruption themselves. In this episode: The hidden human workforce behind AI training Why general AI annotation work is disappearing Microsoft buyouts, layoffs, and the larger anxiety surrounding AI automation The growing fragility facing both young workers and seasoned professionals Whether AI is truly “assisting” workers or quietly replacing tasks altogether Why the modern economy feels productive and unstable at the same time

A college student takes a $50-an-hour job training artificial intelligence and ends up making $70,000 in a single year. But behind the money is a hidden world of digital labor, where real people shape how AI thinks, responds, and sounds—and where the work is already starting to disappear. In this episode of Inside Job, host Matt Sunbulli profiles Isaiah, a college-age AI trainer, and together they take listeners inside a hidden layer of the tech economy. What they uncover reveals the human force behind AI—and raises urgent questions about where this work is headed and what it means for all of us.

Inside Job host and creator Matt Sunbulli and executive producer Aaron Calafato set the stage for the new series, preview upcoming stories, and explain why starting with listening first and honoring the real experiences of job seekers and workers matters more than ever as AI reshapes the future of work. In doing so, they show what sets this podcast apart from others in the career space today. *If you have a story to share, an episode idea or want to join our community visit: insidejobpodcast.com