When will we achieve AGI? Recorded live in the podcast studio at MAICON 2026, this AI Answers episode has Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput answering questions submitted from our audience.

They dig into what AGI means for everyday work, whether Claude and ChatGPT get more expensive after the IPOs, how to drive adoption when you're not the CEO, what to use now that GPTs are going away, and who owns the AI work you build at your job.

00:00:00 — Intro

00:04:03 What MAICON insight has challenged your thinking about where AI is headed?

00:07:46 How do you keep up with AI without burning out?

00:12:09 How do you go from following a demo to using AI in your own work?

00:15:21 How do you get AI adopted in the messy middle of an organization?

00:17:41 How do you build an AI roadmap you can stick to as models change?

00:22:09 Will Claude and ChatGPT get more expensive after the IPOs?

00:26:23 What can AI do versus what should AI do?

00:30:35 What does AGI actually look like for a regular person?

00:35:25 Can AI solve the unemployment it creates?

00:39:42 Can you take your AI work with you from job to job?

00:41:19 Do you have to readjust when you switch AI models at a new job?

00:44:08 What should you use now that GPTs are going away?

00:46:42 Closing thoughts and a look ahead to MAICON 2027

This week’s episode is brought to you by MAICON, our 7th annual Marketing AI Conference, happening in Cleveland, Oct. 14-16.

For more information on MAICON and to register for this year’s conference, visit www.MAICON.ai.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

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Kuo Zhang, president of Alibaba.com, believes B2B commerce is becoming agent-to-agent. He joins Mike Kaput to explain Accio, Alibaba.com's agent platform, and how it collapses a 60-step sourcing process into hours. They cover the Model × Harness × Context formula, the Commerce Agent Bench benchmark, what had to change inside a 26-year-old company, and why the future of global trade runs on agents.

Part of the AI Transformations series.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:7:30 — Why Accio

00:8:49 — Inside Alibaba.com's AI transformation with Accio Work

00:15:12 — The pain points Accio was built to solve

00:19:32 — Real examples of entrepreneurs using Accio Work

00:24:15 — The technology powering the transformation

00:28:50 — How AI agents will reshape commerce at large

00:32:26 — What had to change inside the company

00:37:26 — The hardest parts of shipping agent-based products

00:40:47 — How Alibaba.com measures agent performance

This week’s episode is also brought to you by MAICON, our 6th annual Marketing AI Conference, happening in Cleveland, Oct. 13-15. The code POD100 saves $100 on all pass types.

For more information on MAICON and to register for this year’s conference, visit www.MAICON.ai.

Visit our website

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Join our community:

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One task at Baptist Health used to take about 10 hours a week. Now it takes roughly two minutes, and that's just one piece of a two-year AI transformation.

Christine Kotler, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer of Baptist Health South Florida, joins Mike Kaput to walk through how her marketing and communications team built an AI adoption model from the ground up: a structured learning curriculum, the peer-coaching "AI Sherpa" model, real use cases, and the honest friction of doing this inside a regulated healthcare organization.

Part of the AI Transformations series, presented by Google Cloud.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:06:00 — Why marketing & comms took the lead on generative AI

00:10:57 — How the transformation started to unfold

00:14:23 — The AI Sherpas

00:20:12 — The learning hub and building their own AI curriculum

00:22:14 — How AI is changing the marketing/comms team's work

00:28:28 — The people side of the transformation

00:33:02 — Where transformation got messier or harder than expected

00:36:27 — How AI will reshape roles, workflows, and team structure

00:40:08 — Advice for a leader stepping up to lead AI transformation

This episode is presented by Google Cloud:

Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.

Learn more about Google Cloud here: https://cloud.google.com/

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David's Bridal was built around one thing for 75 years: the dress. In this AI Transformations episode, Elina Vilk (President & Chief Business Officer) and Mike Ball (Head of Product) join Mike Kaput to explain how the company is reinventing itself around the whole wedding journey, the "aisle to algorithm" strategy.

We get into Pearl Planner, the free AI wedding-planning companion now used by hundreds of thousands of couples with no marketing spend; Pearl Connect, the new vendor-side platform built on Google Cloud; the vision quiz and dynamic budgeting that make it work; and how David's own teams are adopting AI internally. Presented by Gemini Enterprise.

Part of the AI Transformations series, presented by Google Cloud.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:05:01 — How the AI transformation at David's Bridal began

00:06:36 — The early phases and turning points

00:10:53 — Inside Pearl Planner, the customer-facing assistant

00:13:59 — Using AI for timelines, budget, and vendors

00:19:24 — The models, tools, and platforms behind it

00:21:00 — Pearl Connect and the Google Cloud stack

00:25:46 — Early results from Pearl Planner and Pearl Connect

00:27:32 — How internal teams at David's Bridal use AI

00:33:29 — What's next for David's Bridal

This episode is presented by Google Cloud:

Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.

Learn more about Google Cloud here: https://cloud.google.com/

Visit our website

Receive our weekly newsletter

Join our community:

Slack Community

LinkedIn

Twitter

Instagram

Facebook

YouTube

Looking for content and resources?

Register for a free webinar

Come to our next Marketing AI Conference

Enroll in our AI Academy