What’s the difference between AI literacy and AI fluency - and why does it matter for leaders right now?

Recorded live at MIT during the AI Powered Women Conference, this episode of AI: Voice or Victim breaks down why understanding AI tools is no longer enough. Erica Rooney was joined by Elena Alikhachkina, a global technology and data leader with over 25 years of experience across companies like Dow Jones and Johnson & Johnson.

Together, they explore how AI has been influencing decisions in hiring, healthcare, finance, and content personalization for years - long before ChatGPT entered the spotlight. The real risk today isn’t AI itself, but passive leadership that fails to question, guide, or challenge automated systems.

This conversation is designed for executives, HR leaders, founders, and non-technical decision-makers who need practical clarity on AI without hype or jargon.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The key difference between AI literacy and true AI fluency
• Why AI fluency is a leadership and behavioral skill, not a technical one
• How AI already impacts hiring, recruiting, healthcare, and financial decisions
• Where leaders unknowingly become “victims” of AI systems
• Why curiosity, critical thinking, and asking better questions are future-proof skills
• What it means to manage both human employees and AI-driven systems

If you’re responsible for people, strategy, or organizational decisions, this episode will help you move from reacting to AI - to shaping it with intention.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome to AI: Voice or Victim
01:05 Live at MIT: AI-Powered Women Conference
02:10 Meet Elena Alikhachkina
03:40 AI Literacy vs AI Fluency
06:15 AI Before ChatGPT
08:40 AI in Hiring and Recruiting
11:10 When Leaders Become the Victim
13:55 The Three AI Opportunity Zones
17:45 Why Digital Transformations Fail
20:30 Leadership Mindset in the AI Era
24:10 Managing Digital Employees
27:45 Trust, Bias, and Overconfidence
31:10 Curiosity as a Leadership Skill
34:20 Teaching Better Questions
38:00 Human-to-AI Trust
41:15 The Future of AI Leadership
44:10 Elena’s AI Fluency Framework
47:30 Choose Your Role: Voice or Victim
49:00 Closing Thoughts

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone navigating the AI revolution.

Subscribe to AI: Voice or Victim for more conversations that move you from AI anxious to AI curious. Hosted by Erica Rooney and Greg Boone aka AISerious™, we help people and organizations embrace AI ethically, strategically, and with humanity at the center.

Follow us and join the movement to shape the future — before it shapes us.

🔗 Follow us and dive deeper:

On the web: https://voiceorvictim.com/Greg Boone on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregboone
Erica Rooney on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericarooney/© 2025 Walk West Production

Molly Mae Potter has lived more careers than most of us could squeeze into a lifetime: Air Force flight test engineer in the back of an F-16, tech executive fixing organizational chaos, and now a security and compliance leader helping companies survive the wild west of AI. And she’ll be the first to tell you—none of us are fully prepared for what’s coming.

Recorded live at the AI Powered Women Conference at MIT, this conversation cuts through the hype and gets real about the new cybersecurity landscape. Molly reveals her own “oh shit” moment when she realized even Fortune 100 leaders aren’t asking the right AI questions, why traditional security frameworks are already outdated, and how attackers are using AI to scale social engineering at levels we’ve never seen before.

She also shares practical strategies individuals and families can use today—from AI inventories to household passphrases—to stay ahead of DeepFakes and digital manipulation. And for leaders? Molly lays out the mindset shift required to protect your people, your data, and your business when the rules are being rewritten in real time.

If you want a clearer view of the risks, the opportunities, and the future of AI-powered security, this is the episode you need.

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone navigating the AI revolution.

Subscribe to AI: Voice or Victim for more conversations that move you from AI anxious to AI curious. Hosted by Erica Rooney and Greg Boone aka AISerious™, we're helping people and organizations embrace AI ethically, strategically, and with humanity at the center.
Follow us and join the movement to shape the future — before it shapes us.

🔗 Follow us and dive deeper:
On the web: https://voiceorvictim.com/
Greg Boone on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregboone
Erica Rooney on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericarooney/
Molly Mae Potter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/molly-mae-potter/
© 2025 Walk West Production

Marketing is in freefall. Search traffic is tanking. Cold email is useless. Paid media costs keep climbing. The playbook everyone relied on no longer works. Today’s guest, Marc Sirkin, Founder and Principal of Marc Sirkin Consulting and former CEO of Third Door Media (Semrush), breaks down what’s really happening.

Marc joins Greg Boone for a straight talk conversation about how AI has already reshaped marketing, sales, and go-to-market strategy. They dig into why 2022 was the real turning point, why leaders are still clinging to outdated metrics, and how activity is being confused for actual progress.

They get into:

• Why organic search has fallen off a cliff
• How AI-driven personalization rewrites SEO
• Why performance marketing math no longer holds up
• The return of brand and personality-led growth
• Why “just add GEO” is not a strategy
• How mid-market companies can win when big brands dominate every model

If you want a clear, unfiltered breakdown of what is changing and what leaders should actually focus on, this episode is it.

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone navigating the AI revolution.

Subscribe to AI: Voice or Victim for more conversations that move you from AI anxious to AI curious. Hosted by Erica Rooney and Greg Boone aka AISerious™, we help people and organizations embrace AI ethically, strategically, and with humanity at the center.
Follow us and join the movement to shape the future before it shapes us.

🔗 Follow us and dive deeper:
On the web: https://voiceorvictim.com/

Greg Boone on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregboone
Erica Rooney on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericarooney/© 2025 Walk West Production