AI tools are becoming part of daily work for more professionals than ever before, yet adoption rates vary significantly across functions and company sizes. What separates organizations that successfully integrate AI from those that struggle? How do psychological factors like identity and autonomy shape how workers respond to AI implementation? And what role does corporate culture play in determining whether AI becomes a source of innovation or a point of resistance?

Stefano Puntoni is the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School. Prior to joining Penn, Stefano was a professor of marketing and head of department at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, in the Netherlands. He holds a PhD in marketing from London Business School and a degree in Statistics and Economics from the University of Padova, in his native Italy.

His research has appeared in several leading journals, including Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Nature Human Behavior, and Management Science. He also writes regularly for managerial outlets such as Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. Most of his ongoing research investigates how new technology is changing consumption and society, including how humans are adopting and evolving with AI.

He is a former MSI Young Scholar and MSI Scholar, and the winner of several grants and awards. He is currently an Associate Editor at the Journal of Consumer Research and at the Journal of Marketing. Stefano teaches in the areas of marketing strategy, new technologies, brand management, and decision making.

In the episode, Richie and Stefano explore the challenges of AI adoption in businesses, the psychological impacts on workers, the balance between human expertise and AI, the potential mental health effects of AI chatbots, and much more.

Links Mentioned in the Show:

1. Wharton School
2. Connect with Stefano
3. MIT Report—The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025
4. Wharton Report—Gen AI Fast-Tracks Into the Enterprise
5. AI-Native Course: Intro to AI for Work
6. Related Episode: How to Build AI Your Users Can Trust with David Colwell, VP of AI & ML at Tricentis
7. Explore AI-Native Learning on DataCamp

New to DataCamp?

1. Learn on the go using the DataCamp mobile app
2. Empower your business with world-class data and AI skills with DataCamp for business

2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for data, AI, and how we work. From step-change improvements in foundation models to AI-native workflows reshaping careers, commerce, and education, the pace of change shows no signs of slowing. After revisiting and scoring their previous predictions, Richie, Jo, and Martijn turn their focus to what’s coming next in 2026.

Building on last year’s discussion, we explore how AI will transform hiring and career progression, why personal AI tutors could become the default learning experience, how AI agents may begin executing real economic activity, and whether we’re on the brink of another “GPT-3 moment” driven by new hardware and scaling.

Links Mentioned in the Show:

1. Blog: The Junior Hiring Crisis
2. Blog: The agentic commerce opportunity: How AI agents are ushering in a new era for consumers and merchants
3. Alex Banks on the ChatGPT era ending
4. Spec & Evals Driven Agent Development (SEDAD) Template
5. AI-Native Course: Intro to AI for Work
6. Related Episode: Reviewing Our Data Trends & Predictions of 2025 with DataCamp's CEO & COO, Jonathan Cornelissen & Martijn Theuwissen
7. Explore AI-Native Learning on DataCamp

New to DataCamp?

1. Learn on the go using the DataCamp mobile app
2. Empower your business with world-class data and AI skills with DataCamp for business

2025 was another huge year for data and AI. Generative AI continued to reshape how we work and interact with technology, with organizations moving beyond experimentation and pushing AI firmly into production. We saw major progress in foundation models, the rise of long-running AI agents, production-ready generative video, and wider adoption of synthetic data. At the same time, AI literacy, adoption, and ROI became central concerns for boards and executives, not just technical teams.

This time last year, DataCamp Co-Founders Jonathan and Martijn made a series of predictions about data and AI for 2025. Today, they join Richie to reflect on how those predictions played out—and to share their vision for where data and AI are headed next.

In the episode, Richie, Jonathan, and Martijn review the real-world adoption of generative AI, the shift from hype to production, the growing importance of AI literacy and usage at the executive level, the rise of longer-running AI agents, the near-mainstreaming of generative video, Europe’s position in the global AI race, why educators may be among the biggest AI adopters, and why AI hype continues to thrive—plus what they got right, what they got wrong, and what comes next.

Links Mentioned in the Show:

1. The DataCamp Data & AI Literacy Report 2025
2. AI-Native Course: Intro to AI for Work
3. Related Episode: Data Trends & Predictions 2025 with DataCamp's CEO & COO, Jonathan Cornelissen & Martijn Theuwissen
4. Explore AI-Native Learning on DataCamp

New to DataCamp?

1. Learn on the go using the DataCamp mobile app
2. Empower your business with world-class data and AI skills with DataCamp for business