AI at Work

We all know the pitch: AI can cover the grunt work, freeing humans to innovate and strategise while boosting productivity, efficiency, and the bottom line. This utopian vision rings plausible, but omits something central to our humanity.

As formerly exclusively human territories are rapidly colonised by AI, what humans can or cannot do becomes in many ways less salient. What matters more, what has always mattered more, is what humans need. Motivation to work requires something almost entirely absent from the AI-adoption narrative: desire. For each of us, the desire profile is different. We might crave passion, mastery, recognition, connection, involvement, stimulation, or job security. We feel driven to fulfil core psychological needs like attachment, freedom, and play.

As AI's dominance increases, we risk the death of desire at work. Like chess grandmasters, as we pursue and capture the prizes of efficiency, productivity, profit, and optimisation, we may end up in an endgame we didn't intend, or worse, a stalemate. With the death of desire, no one wins. How do leaders avoid that fate?

Drawing on developmental psychology, her contribution to the Agentic Organizations report launched at Davos 2026, and her expertise on the mutual influence of technology and human psychology, Elaine explores:

• The death of desire: How unreflective AI adoption can erode the intrinsic motivations that make people want to work, and how careening into the post-desire era could undermine your brand, your longevity, and your bottom line

• The omission: How the dominant AI-adoption narrative focuses on what humans can do while overlooking what humans need

• The psychology frame: Irreducible, core human needs like attachment, autonomy, mastery, and play, and what happens when they're forgotten

• A cyberpsychologist's blueprint: How and why leaders should safeguard and champion the elements AI can never replace

Why this talk?

Many AI keynotes sell either enthusiasm or dread. Elaine starts from what's most human: our needs, our motivations, and what makes us want to show up. This talk explores the essential things your business can lose when technology unintentionally erodes the human factors that continue to matter. Drawing on the Agentic Organizations work launched at Davos 2026 and two decades of work in cyberpsychology, Elaine looks at AI adoption through a cyberpsychological lens, changing not just how we understand it but how we strategise around it.

Who is this for?

C-suite leaders, CHROs, and transformation teams navigating AI integration. Future-of-work conferences, strategy events, and corporate retreats. Organisations wondering what the human side of rapid AI adoption might mean for their people, their culture, and their business. Available as a keynote, executive briefing, or leadership workshop.