--- title: How Leaders Can 'Eat Risk' With AI description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-leaders-can-eat-risk-with-ai/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-10-18T10:30:00.332Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-16T21:29:55.873Z article:section: Charter og:title: How Leaders Can 'Eat Risk' With AI og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. 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Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd979c198e7c2ca43/6ad2972a96b6a53dcf836fce/Charter-Ethan-Mollick-2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- The information presented here is created by Charter, independently from the TIME editorial staff.  Time charter * [ai](/partner-content/charter/tag/ai/) ## ai # How Leaders Can 'Eat Risk' With AI > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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Its journalism is reported and edited by a professional newsroom led by Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs, with named correspondents on politics, climate, health, technology and culture. It reaches 1 million US print subscribers and 1.15 million globally, plus more than 1.1 million newsletter readers. #### How do I subscribe to TIME magazine? Subscriptions are at time.com/subscribe-agent. Choose digital only at $20 a year, or print and digital from $29 a year or $49 for two years. TIME also publishes seven free email newsletters at time.com/newsletters, which do not require a subscription. #### Can I cancel a TIME subscription? Yes. TIME states that subscriptions can be cancelled at any time. #### Does TIME have free newsletters? Yes. TIME publishes seven free email newsletters reaching more than 1.1 million readers, covering daily news, Washington politics, health, AI, climate and energy, culture, and the newsroom itself. They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=b63c34ef-be6e-4af7-a2fb-832ed546912c&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=b63c34ef-be6e-4af7-a2fb-832ed546912c&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) by [Kevin J. Delaney](https://time.com/author/kevin-delaney/) Oct 18, 2026 10:30 AM UTC  Art: Charter Art: Charter by [Kevin J. Delaney](https://time.com/author/kevin-delaney/) Oct 18, 2026 10:30 AM UTC While many workers who use AI now finish tasks faster, few companies can yet point to an improvement to the bottom line. That gap between individual gains and organization-wide impact is one of the challenges of implementing AI, and some companies are [limiting or scaling back](https://www.404media.co/accenture-tells-employees-they-can-now-spend-only-29-on-claude-per-month/) AI use as a result. [Ethan Mollick](https://www.linkedin.com/in/emollick/), a Wharton associate professor and author of [the “One Useful Thing” newsletter](https://www.oneusefulthing.org/), writes in his new book [_Co-Existence_](https://bookshop.org/a/664/9798217181391)(out on Oct. 20) that organizations ultimately have to be rebuilt to address the problem. We spoke with Mollick about what that actually involves, why leaders need to “eat risk,” and the skills that matter as AI improves. Here is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for space and clarity: Sign up for Charter's newsletter to get the handbook for the future of work delivered to your inbox. Email Address You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our [Terms of Service](https://www.charterworks.com/terms-of-service/) and [Privacy Policy](https://www.charterworks.com/privacy-policy/). **What does reimagining the organization look like, both in terms of how you do it and what the organization becomes?** It's a really complicated question. Organizations are built around the span of human control, human ability, human outcomes, human KPIs, and every one of those is kind of collapsing in on itself. We need to rethink what it means to build an organization for these things. \[What\] is the role of people? How do we integrate AI without replacing them? You can't just slap AI on top of your company and expect to get gains. We're not seeing that kind of thing happen. I have this model—leadership, lab, and crowd—that I talk about in the book about the three angles you need. You need a leadership team that’s actually engaged with this and thinking about how to reshape the company. You need people in the company to figure out how to use it \[the crowd\]. And then you need a lab. You need a group of people doing research 24-7 on how to transform your organization. There's no playbook here. We don't have a model that we can easily follow. We can go back to the Industrial Revolution stuff, but it's early days. **You've said one of the roles of the leader is to authorize the organization to take risk…** It's one of the roles. You could think about the real problem in AI right now as being that it's single player, not multiplayer. Using a chatbot doesn't help you that much to transform your work. It provides an individual productivity boost, but not a boost to the group. Part of what you need to do is think about \[how we\] get to a multiplayer level. Some of that is leaders taking direct control. Their span of control increases again. As a leader, you can actually ask questions about what's happening in your company in a way you couldn't before using AI models. Eating risk is really important. That’s the idea that they say, 'This is risky, we have to do it anyway, and I'm willing to bear the risk of our experimentation.' But \[leaders\] actually have to make active choices as well and play an active role in shaping things. **The two other things you talked about are the crowd and the lab. The crowd is the workers who are figuring out how AI can be put to use within organizations, and you need some percentage of your workforce acting as a lab to find the best way to apply it. Is that right?** Yes. You will have to do a discovery process, and the lab has three functions. The first function is to take ideas from the crowd and implement them. It also benchmarks. You can't trust any public benchmark. You need to be benchmarking models on your own to learn what's good or bad. Then they are acting almost as a skunk works, building stuff that doesn't work yet, or advanced approaches. You want to make sure that your lab is not 100% technical. It's partially a business team. In fact, a trap in AI use is treating it like IT. **Are there specific skills or attributes that companies should be hiring for, teaching, encouraging, or promoting given the introduction of AI in workplaces?** There's a few things that are useful for people: deep knowledge, wide knowledge, taste, and agency. Deep knowledge is the fact that you know more about a topic than other people, that you have expertise. Expertise pays in lots of different ways. It lets you check AI work, it lets you know what the AI is doing. Wide knowledge includes broad-based humanities education, but also the wide knowledge of actually knowing a lot about your industry or your field so you can step into other things and know when you need to bring in other experts. Taste is because AI can produce many things. The differentiator between slop and non-slop is taste—picking among options. And then finally, there's agency, doing things without clear instructions or permission at a time where clear instructions or permissions are not very available to people. **If I'm a manager or a leader of an organization, what are a few things I should be focused on or avoiding?** First of all, recognize that imposter syndrome is the right place to be. This is a very heavy burden on you, and there are no easy answers you can buy. We're no longer in normal time. We're in war time in a figurative sense, and revolutionary periods are times where change happens very quickly, where you have to make bets and take risks that may or may not pay off, but you have to make them. Not making bets is no longer an option. What I would urge you to do is become the expert in AI use in your area. Don't try to become an expert overall. Don't expect to be saved by a vendor. Don't expect that this will ultimately be a normal technology that acts normal. It may be adopted and diffused normally, but this is a really weird technology. **Read a** [**full transcript of our conversation with Mollick**](http://www.charterworks.com/ethan-mollick-ai-wharton-co-existence/)**, including more on the leaders who are most successful, how AI agents impact workplaces, and how university education and entry-level jobs will evolve.** **Pre-order** **_Co-Existence_** **on** [**Amazon**](https://www.amazon.com/Co-Existence-Next-Phase-Ethan-Mollick/dp/B0H2GJJVDW/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?crid=CO2V1J0FFFDO&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qV-RsBE-k1RIUCZhOjQzOoPS27OIfAVctB2nU058iUOteojQwIpua5wdMjwe7OHh5io7ooj9tT7fduqv4V7OT%5FJkYm0mPHGkAoMBRhK9EwtPe3G0ilwCOg%5FPmXf53IzD.q7NmxD2GZ56hYaKHrwV-QZAPc7UOYpHjeMGLuPKM6xc&dib%5Ftag=se&keywords=co-existence+ethan+mollick&qid=1792163474&sprefix=co-exis%2Caps%2C194&sr=8-1) **or** [**Bookshop**](https://bookshop.org/a/664/9798217181391)**.** **Download “**[**Redesigning work for the AI era**](https://www.charterworks.com/download-redesigning-work-for-the-ai-era/)**,” our playbook on how companies are revamping jobs, teams, and the shape of their organizations in the age of AI.** --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: How to Recruit, Hire, and Develop Entry-Level Talent](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-recruit-hire-and-develop-entry-level-talent/)  ### How to Recruit, Hire, and Develop Entry-Level Talent [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-recruit-hire-and-develop-entry-level-talent/) [Open article: How to Maintain the ‘Heartbeat of Work’ in the Age of Ai](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-maintain-the-heartbeat-of-work-in-the-age-of-ai/)  ### How to Maintain the ‘Heartbeat of Work’ in the Age of Ai [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-maintain-the-heartbeat-of-work-in-the-age-of-ai/) [Open article: Workers Worry AI Will Take Jobs—Just Not Theirs](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/workers-worry-ai-will-take-jobs-just-not-theirs/)  ### Workers Worry AI Will Take Jobs—Just Not Theirs [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/workers-worry-ai-will-take-jobs-just-not-theirs/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-leaders-can-eat-risk-with-ai/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-leaders-can-eat-risk-with-ai/"},"headline":"How Leaders Can 'Eat Risk' With AI","datePublished":"2026-10-18T10:30:00.332Z","dateModified":"2026-10-16T21:29:55.873Z","description":"Wharton’s Ethan Mollick on what we know about how to improve businesses and empower workers with AI.","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-leaders-can-eat-risk-with-ai/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd979c198e7c2ca43/6ad2972a96b6a53dcf836fce/Charter-Ethan-Mollick-2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Kevin J. 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