What happens when the career you spent decades building disappears and you’re forced to answer the question most of us avoid: who am I without my job title? In this episode, Karen Maria Alston shares how 2025 unraveled the plan she thought she had, and how that disruption pushed her into an unexpected new world: AI. What started as curiosity turned into full immersion, with Karen earning AI certifications, stepping into fellowships, and focusing on AI safety and governance, a space she didn’t even know existed a year earlier. Together, we dig into what’s coming fast (and quietly): teens turning to AI for social guidance, the lack of guardrails around adult content and synthetic relationships, deepfakes and misinformation at scale, and the bigger race toward AGI and what it could cost society along the way. We also talk about the hopeful side for business owners, how AI can become a true business partner for marketing and operations, why in-person community is about to matter more than ever, and why Karen’s challenge for 2026 is simple and powerful: have 100 coffee conversations, because the human factor is about to become the real differentiator.

Website: https://www.karenalston.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenmariaalston/
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