What I heard from the opening panel at MidwestCon, and what it means for the people you lead
The opening panel at MidwestCon started with one question. What are people underestimating most about AI?
I was in the room for the answers. Ben Ko, CEO of Kaleidoscope Innovation, went first. Change management. Failure should be expected, he said, and AI amplifies whatever your organization already is. If your systems are broken, AI makes them broken faster.
Bharath Prabhakaran, Chief Digital Officer at the University of Cincinnati, said reach. Everyone is watching software engineers. The real wave is coming for every other field and career, and most people have not looked up yet.
Andrew Burchwell, EVP at CyberIntel, said distance. These tools are going much further than most people are planning for.
I sat with those three answers for the rest of the hour. Every one of them is about people. Who is ready. Who is paying attention. Who is planning ahead.
The gap everyone on the stage described
The technology is moving fast. The systems built to hold it are slow. Universities, the power grid, three layers of government. Every panelist described the same gap, and every one of them described the same way through it.
Somebody has to ask. A university has to ask private partners to help move research into the market faster. A region has to ask the state for a plan. A city has to ask what its people get back when public money goes into a data center. Nobody on that stage was waiting for the answer to arrive on its own.
That is the work I talk about everywhere I go. The ask is how people who feel left out of a decision get a seat at the table where it is made.
Train before you adopt
Andrew put it plainly. You cannot implement a technology your people have never been trained on. And the training Ohio needs goes far beyond coding. He named nuclear facilities and chip fabrication with Intel as jobs that need real people, trained and ready, before the buildings open.
Bharath showed what that looks like at UC. Every faculty member, staff member, and student has private access to OpenAI and Claude through Bearcat GPT, and personalized tutoring is already running on it. He was honest about the cost of moving slowly. Committees for everything, an enrollment cliff, and federal research cuts all landing at once.
Keep the human work human
Rob Richardson, who moderated, named the three things people will still own no matter how good the tools get. The decision. The relationships, including the conflict. The judgment about what fits the moment. Then he added a warning. AI can make people feel certain they are right because it agreed with them, and AI is wrong a lot.
Ben added the piece I have watched play out in classrooms for thirty years. Schools teach topics. Work needs teamwork. An engineer, a designer, and a machinist solving one problem together is a skill, and it has to be practiced. As robots move out from behind the factory cage and into homes and workplaces, Ben wants ethics, anthropology, and the humanities at the design table. Leave them out and you build something people reject.
Who owns the power decides everything
Andrew was direct. Nothing in AI happens without electricity, and we are running on a 100 year old grid built for one percent growth a year, buried under state, regional, and federal rules that contradict each other. His one word answer was sovereignty. Who owns the infrastructure, who controls it, and who can stop you. He sees a real opportunity for neighborhoods, cities, and counties to make their own energy decisions and to use the demand for computing power as leverage.
Bharath pointed to the Ohio Supercomputer Center as a shared model that already works. Ben said what I believe about every public investment: when public dollars go in, the public is owed something back. Rob closed with two asks of his own. Community benefits agreements before a big project breaks ground, and transparency after.
Take the question to your team
Take the opening question to your team this week. What are we underestimating most about AI in our work? One sentence from each person. Write the answers down and read them together. The answers will show you where the next training hour belongs, and they will show you which conversation your team has been avoiding.
Work together
If your organization is sorting out what AI means for your people and your community, this is the ground I cover in The Art of the Ask. Getting the right people to the table. Asking clearly for what the work needs. Making sure the people affected by a decision have a voice in it. Reach me at Leila@LeilaKubesch.com or visit https://LeilaKubesch.com
Your turn
If someone asked you today what you are underestimating most about AI in your own work, what would you say? Share your one sentence in the comments.
About the Author
Leila Kubesch is a professional speaker and photographer who aims to give her clients both voice and visibility, whether she is on the stage or behind the lens. Through her speaking and photography, she helps people tell their stories, make meaningful connections and be seen.
Learn more at https://LeilaKubesch.com
Connect with Leila at https://www.linkedin.com/in/leila-kubesch/
