When AI Is Everywhere, The Advantage Is Human.
For more than two decades, Rebecca Maklad has worked alongside futurists, scientists, entrepreneurs, authors and thought leaders exploring the forces reshaping business, technology and society.
A long-standing member of Future Crunch, she previously served as CEO and Director and today continues as a Strategic Advisor, focused on what technological change means for leadership, work and human capability.
Rebecca has advised founders and experts on influence and authority, spoken for organisations including Telstra, Nine Entertainment, ANZ, EY, Australia Post, Smartsheet, World Vision and Cuscal, and hosted more than 125 conversations through The DNA of Purpose, her globally ranked podcast exploring purpose, leadership and human potential.
She is also Co-Founder of Humanity Schools, helping principals, educators and parents understand and develop the human capabilities young people will need to thrive in a rapidly changing world.
Talking Points
Full Stack Human: The smarter the machines get, the more valuable humans become.
Is this the age of artificial intelligence, or artificial insanity?Full Stack Human: The smarter the machines get, the more valuable humans become.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping every industry and every profession. So why did MIT's Project NANDA study more than 300 enterprise AI initiatives and find that 95 per cent delivered no measurable return? Not because the technology failed, but because nobody prepared the humans around it to work in new ways. Our brains haven't changed much in 50,000 years. They're still built for spotting predators on the savannah, not a world that ships updates daily. The technology keeps accelerating. Human adaptation is struggling to keep up.
Organisations have poured millions into technology, systems and processes, and next to nothing into the people standing beside them. The tools keep arriving. The capacity to use them well doesn't. Your people call it overload.
Artificial intelligence breaks the equation. Machines are already better than us at many tasks, and they will be better at many more. You cannot out-machine the machines.
Which leaves one variable deciding who wins the AI decade: whether your people can learn, unlearn and think clearly at the speed the technology demands. We call them full stack humans. As intelligence becomes abundant, the capabilities that matter most become profoundly human. AI supplies the data. Your people supply the context.
This keynote explores five trainable human capabilities that decide who thrives when the rules keep moving: catching your own cognitive biases before they cost you, learning faster than the rate of change, updating your mind when the evidence does, treating curiosity as a competitive advantage, and knowing what matters when everything is shouting for attention.
Audience Learns:
* Why the biggest barrier to AI adoption is human capability, almost never the technology.
* Practical ways to catch the cognitive biases that misfire under pressure and cost organisations millions.
* A way to build learning agility, so your people adapt faster than the rate of change.
* The confidence to act on incomplete information without gripping it so hard you can't update when the facts move.
* A deeper feel for why curiosity, context and intellectual humility are the human edge when intelligence is abundant.
Ctrl + Alt + Adapt: Adaptive intelligence: the AI no one's selling you.
For decades, success ran on a simple premise: the better your prediction, the better your outcome. Anticipate change, build the strategy, execute with discipline. That operating system built some of the world's most successful companies. It no longer works.Ctrl + Alt + Adapt: Adaptive intelligence: the AI no one's selling you.
The future is arriving too fast to predict with any confidence. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report expects 170 million new jobs by 2030, with almost six in ten workers needing retraining to get there. When employers were asked which skills will matter most over the next five years, technology topped the list. What sat right beside it was the tell: resilience, flexibility and agility.
The organisations that thrive over the next decade won't be the ones that predict better. They'll be the ones that adapt faster.
Everyone is talking about the first AI. This keynote is about the other one: adaptive intelligence. How your teams behave in the gap between old rules dying and new ones arriving, and whether your organisation adapts or fractures when uncertainty stops being the exception and becomes the whole operating environment.
Drawing on neuroscience, behavioural psychology and over a decade of Future Crunch research, Ctrl + Alt + Adapt shows how to build teams that stay curious under pressure, collaborative in complexity and steady in uncertainty. Your people arrived in the world curious, experimental and unafraid of unfinished things. Somewhere along the way, that got trained out of them. This keynote is about getting it back.
Audience Learns:
* Why adaptive intelligence may be the defining organisational capability of the next decade.
* How to read the patterns that show whether a team will bend or break under pressure, often before the team can see it.
* Why cooperation beats individual genius the moment conditions turn volatile.
* How to build the habits that keep people moving while the picture is still incomplete.
Ground Truth: A field report from the next economy.
You're not imagining it. Since 2020 the ground has moved under all of us. Climate shocks, economic whiplash, supply chains snapping, a geopolitical order rearranging itself in real time. People can feel it in their bones, that this is bigger than a bad news cycle. It's a handover from one economic era to the next, and the old one is not coming back.Ground Truth: A field report from the next economy.
But breakdown is only half the story. In the same decade the old model is cracking, the foundations of the next economy are being poured. Solar is now the cheapest electricity our species has ever generated, artificial intelligence has collapsed the cost of cognition a thousandfold in three years. Gene editing has walked out of the lab and into functional cures. Robotics, new materials, a privatised space economy: the same pattern, everywhere the feed isn't looking. It's a capital-allocation story, and the smart money has already voted.
Audience Learns:
*A clear view of where capital is actually moving, and why the energy transition is the clearest sign of one era handing over to the next.
* The ability to separate signal from noise when every headline claims collapse and every vendor claims salvation.
* Why purpose and profit have converged, and what that means for strategy, talent and returns.
* The confidence to move while the picture is still incomplete, and to act before the shift becomes obvious.
Building Tomorrow’s Talent: Connecting education and work in the age of AI
If AI does the entry-level work, how does anyone become experienced?Building Tomorrow’s Talent: Connecting education and work in the age of AI
For generations, junior work served two purposes. It produced an output and developed a person. Writing the first draft, researching a problem and learning from someone more experienced helped people build confidence, context and professional judgement.
As AI takes on more of these tasks, it can also remove the practice through which people develop expertise. The Thomson Reuters Institute highlights this as the professional judgement gap: we still need people who can make sound decisions, but risk taking away the experiences that teach them how.
The challenge is to redesign how people learn to climb the career ladder as its lower rungs change.
Drawing on Humanity Schools research, this keynote explores how schools, universities and employers can respond together, connecting education with the experience, mentoring and responsibility that build professional expertise.
The central question is practical: what are young people learning through the tasks we are automating, and how will we create those learning opportunities as work changes?
Understanding where capability develops helps us make those experiences more deliberate, from the classroom to the workplace.
The future of work and the future of education are the same conversation at different points in a person’s life. Connecting them is how we build tomorrow’s talent with intention.
Audiences Learn:
* An understanding of the professional judgement gap and its implications for education and employment.
* Insight into how tasks being automated also help people develop confidence, context and judgement.
* A clearer distinction between improving immediate performance and building lasting expertise.
* Practical starting points for strengthening learning through experience, mentoring and supported responsibility.
* A clearer understanding of the roles schools, universities and employers play in developing tomorrow’s talent.
Learning To Be Human: What young people need to thrive in an AI-shaped world
Giving young people AI is like handing them the keys to a Ferrari. Learning to accelerate is one thing. Knowing when to brake, question the navigation or choose a different destination takes judgement, perspective and responsibility.Learning To Be Human: What young people need to thrive in an AI-shaped world
We are preparing young people for a future we cannot fully predict, a job market being reshaped by AI and a world where knowledge is increasingly abundant. Knowledge remains essential. But knowledge alone will not be their advantage.
PwC’s 2026 AI Jobs Barometer found that new tasks in the most AI-exposed occupations were, on average, 2.5 times more human-intensive than those in the least exposed. The future of work and the future of education belong in the same conversation.
Young people need judgement to decide what matters, agency to shape their direction, and the ability to collaborate and adapt. These capabilities take time and experience to develop. Their foundations are being built in classrooms and homes today.
This keynote introduces Humanity Schools’ human capability framework, Self, Society and Future: how young people understand and manage themselves, work with others and navigate change. Educators and parents gain shared language to recognise and strengthen human capabilities through the lessons, relationships and everyday experiences they already create.
The goal is to build lived experience with intention. We cannot give young people certainty about the future, but we can help them develop the capability to navigate it and the confidence to shape it.
Audiences Learn:
* A clearer understanding of how AI is reshaping work and what this means for preparing young people today.
* Insight into where human value is moving, and why knowledge alone will not be enough.
* A practical framework and shared language for recognising the capabilities young people need to thrive.
* The ability to identify opportunities for capability development within lessons, relationships and experiences they already create.
* Ways to make those experiences intentional, helping young people reflect on what they have learned and apply it in new situations.
Video
Rebecca Maklad | Showreel | Saxton Speakers
For generations, the deal was simple: learn more, know more, become more valuable. For generations, machines transformed what our bodies could do, so human value moved further into our heads. Knowledge became the advantage. Now AI is transforming what our minds can do too. When knowledge, analysis and output become abundant, value doesn't disappear. It moves. That shift sits at the heart of both work and education: what do organisations need from their people, and what do young people need to develop as machines become more capable? Judgement. Curiosity. Adaptability. Context. The ability to question, keep looking, change course and know what matters. Because the future will not be shaped by technology alone, but by the humans deciding how to use it.Compelling stage presence and a powerful brand of intelligent optimism, challenging conventional thinking throughout. ... keep reading World Vision
Rebecca held the room from start to finish. Our people left with a renewed sense of clarity and motivation about the role they play in shaping what comes next.
Rebecca delivered an energetic and polished keynote at LAST Conference Sydney 2024. She engaged the audience from the outset, leaving many rethinking where human leadership and judgement matter most as technology accelerates.
Thought-provoking and enjoyable. It struck the perfect note for the conference, helping us rise above the daily grind, see the opportunity ahead, and have some fun.
Rebecca’s guidance was transformative. Our leaders didn’t just learn, they experienced real growth in how they think, decide and lead through change.
Forward thinking, informative and entertaining. Highly motivating, uplifting, and went above and beyond for our guests.
Engaging presence and sharp insight that captivated the room from start to finish.
Rebecca is an expert in her field and highly skilled at interviewing and asking insightful questions. An enthusiastic and professional contributor.
