Jacob Ward

AI wants to make every decision faster, cheaper, and lonelier. But the skills that matter most—critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, emotional intelligence—are precisely the ones that require friction, difficulty, and other people, says Jacob Ward.

Jacob is a veteran technology journalist who predicted our current AI moment in his 2022 book The Loop—nearly a year before ChatGPT arrived. He has spent a decade reporting on AI, human behavior, and corporate power for NBC News, PBS, and The New York Times, and advises Fortune 500 companies on AI deployment.

Drawing on a decade of global reporting and the research behind The Loop, Jacob explores why the most important question about AI isn’t “how do we use it?” but “what do we protect from it?” Audiences walk away with a greater understanding of the possibilities and pitfalls of AI, and practical frameworks for protecting the human capacities that no algorithm can replace.

Most AI conversations happen in boardrooms and on stages. The consequences land somewhere else entirely.

Jacob Ward has spent more than a decade reporting on AI from the inside—as technology correspondent for NBC News, author of The Loop, and a strategic advisor to Fortune 500 companies. He has sat at dinner tables where addiction scientists offered their expertise to app makers looking to hook users. He has been with families whose housing and food were cut off by automated systems no one could explain or override. He has interviewed the CEOs who compare the harm their products cause to a bad muffin in a batch of ten thousand, and the bakers who know even one mistake is unacceptable.

In this rapid-fire, story-driven keynote, audiences gain a ground-level understanding of AI’s real human stakes—and leave with the clarity and context to make better decisions about where this technology belongs in their organizations, and where it doesn’t.

If AI’s central message to kids is “you don’t have to think for yourself,” then the educators teaching critical thinking, creativity, and social-emotional skills are doing the most important work in the country.

Jacob Ward is a technology journalist, Stanford lecturer, and author of The Loop, which predicted our current AI moment nearly a year before ChatGPT arrived. He has spent more than a decade reporting on what AI actually does to human behavior, and he speaks on this topic as a reporter, a parent, and someone who believes that the kids, who are already using words like “clanker” to describe the emptiness of AI, are going to figure this out.

In this personal, honest, high-energy keynote, Jacob argues that this moment isn’t a crisis to manage but a generational opportunity to seize. Audiences leave with a renewed sense of purpose and a practical framework for protecting the skills that AI cannot replicate and students cannot afford to lose.

The pressure to replace junior employees with AI is enormous. The cost of doing it won’t show up on any spreadsheet—until two or three years from now, when you look around and realize no one in your organization has the institutional knowledge, the relationship skills, the ability to close a complex deal or navigate an ambiguous situation.

Jacob Ward has spent more than a decade reporting on AI, human behavior, and corporate power for NBC News, PBS, and The New York Times, and advises Fortune 500 companies on AI deployment. His 2022 book The Loop predicted the AI mania now reshaping how organizations hire, manage, and grow.

Drawing on reporting across industries, Jacob shows why the companies that resist the temptation to eliminate human roles will be the ones who develop real institutional knowledge, relationship depth, and leadership capacity when it matters. Audiences walk away with a practical new framework for making AI deployment decisions they won’t regret.