The Elephant in the Algorithm: The People Side of Enterprise AI
- When
- , 10:00 to 10:45am PT, online
- Hosts
- Matt Perry and Rob Cannon, PhD
The People Side of Enterprise AI is a 45-minute online conversation between Matt Perry and Rob Cannon, PhD, co-founders of Average Robot, on 8 October 2026. It is an official SF Tech Week session about what happens to people inside a company once AI tools arrive and the workload grows, and why some employee pushback is worth hearing.
What are the three kinds of resistance to AI?
The People Side of Enterprise AI, an SF Tech Week session on 8 October 2026, covered why people inside companies resist AI and what leaders can do with that resistance. Matt Perry and Rob Cannon, PhD, described three kinds: threat to self, read through David Rock's SCARF model; professional identity; and intelligent resistance, where experts flag output that falls short.
The full talk and Q&A from 8 October 2026. Captions are available from the CC button.
Download:Video (MP4, 151.8 MB)Slides (PDF, 14 pages, 462 KB)
Key takeaways
- Pushback on AI comes in different kinds, and each kind needs its own response, so name the kind before you act on it.
- AI can trigger all five threats in David Rock's SCARF model: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness.
- People's roles and skills can change with AI while their professional identity holds, so a copywriter working with AI models is still a copywriter.
- Some pushback is your experts warning you that the output is missing something, such as brand voice or the client brief.
- Leaders get more from resistance when they ask where it points and keep the friction that is protecting quality.
