Eye On A.I.

Most companies think they're transforming with AI. They're not, and the gap between what they believe and what's actually happening on the ground is costing them far more than they realize.
In this episode, Craig Smith sits down with Chris Blackburn, founder and CEO of Liatrio, a consultancy that has spent a decade embedding directly inside large enterprises to help them actually change how they work, not just what tools they use.
The conversation opens with a striking data point: the average enterprise Blackburn works with operates at just 5 to 6% efficiency, meaning employees spend only three to three-and-a-half hours per week on work that genuinely creates value, compared to Toyota's benchmark of 70%. The core argument is that AI is being applied to the wrong part of the problem: individual productivity gains don't flow through to the bottom line if the organizational system around the individual - the approvals, handoffs, bureaucracy, and middle management layers - stays exactly the same.
Blackburn introduces a concept he calls "strangling the enterprise": rather than trying to transform a 5,500-person organization all at once, build a small, low-bureaucracy unit inside it that operates with radical autonomy, proves the model works, and expands outward. 
The episode closes with a frank conversation about what real transformation actually costs: roughly half of total compensation spend across the organization, sustained for two years, a number Blackburn describes as "absolutely insane" and one he believes most CFOs aren't yet prepared to confront.
Key Topics Covered:
●     Why the average enterprise operates at 5-6% efficiency, and what Toyota's 70% benchmark reveals about the scale of the opportunity AI could unlock
●     The critical distinction between individual productivity gains and system-level improvement, and why saving an hour doesn't automatically improve the bottom line
●     "Strangle the enterprise": how to build a small, autonomous AI-native unit inside a large organization rather than trying to transform the whole thing at once
●     Why most CEOs are dangerously disconnected from the actual work being done, and what McKinsey says about how much time they should be spending on transformation
●     What AI transformation actually costs: roughly half of total compensation spend, sustained over two years, and why most CFOs aren't ready for that number
●     Why AI isn't just changing jobs but changing life - from shorter work weeks to longer health spans - and what the farming analogy reveals about how slowly societies absorb new productivity
As enterprises pour money into AI tools while reporting little bottom-line impact, this conversation offers the most operationally honest account available of why that gap exists, and what organizations that actually want to close it need to be willing to do differently.
Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.
Craig Smith on X: https://x.com/craigss
EYE On A.I. on X: https://x.com/EyeOn_AI
 
Connect with Chris Blackburn
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisblackburn

Nobody has ever built a cell from scratch - assembled entirely from purified molecules on a shelf - that can feed itself, grow, and split into daughter cells through its own genetic activity. Until now. Dr. Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist and a professor of genetics at the University of Minnesota, whose lab just published a landmark paper on what she calls "spud cells," joins Craig Smith to explain what her team built, why it matters, and what it will take to go from proof of concept to a platform that could eventually replace every molecule civilization currently extracts from petrochemicals. The conversation is as philosophically rich as it is technically specific: Adamala argues that life has no magic ingredient, and that the universe itself is predisposed to give rise to it. She describes the spud cell not as a mic drop but as biology's Sputnik moment: proof that you can escape the gravity well of evolution and build lifelike systems from the ground up.
The episode also covers the most alarming biosecurity question in synthetic biology right now: mirror life - cells built from mirror-image molecules that would be invisible to every immune system on earth and potentially capable of replicating uncontrollably in the environment. Adamala led the global call to pause all mirror life research in 2024, and she explains both why that research was so dangerous and why the spud cell doesn't move the field any closer to that red line. Craig also asks the question nobody else thought to ask: could AI now simulate the billions of years of molecular evolution that a primordial sea would need millions of years to complete - running a few trillion iterations computationally to find what emerges? Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Every company is creating content that nobody reads, nobody watches, and nobody remembers, and the CEO of the AI platform that 90% of Fortune 100 companies use to fix that just explained what comes next.
In this episode, Craig Smith sits down with Victor Riparbelli, co-founder and CEO of Synthesia, to discuss the $4 billion company that is now redefining what video communication means for the enterprise.
The conversation opens with the founding insight that still drives the company: AI is going to drive the marginal cost of creating video to zero, which changes not just how content is produced but who can produce it and for whom. Victor describes how Synthesia found its first real market not in Hollywood - which rejected the technology as too low quality - but in corporate trainers and educators who were comparing it not to a film but to a 10-page PDF no one was reading. The most forward-looking section of the conversation covers Synthesia's next product: moving video from a one-way broadcast into a two-way interactive conversation, where an AI avatar can conduct a real-time sales demo, simulate a customer for sales training, draw graphs on screen to explain pricing, and score whether the person on the other side actually understood the content. Victor also makes a sharp prediction about where AI entertainment will actually emerge, not in cinemas or on Netflix, but from film students with laptops posting 17-minute short films on Instagram, the same way synthesizers didn't replace pianos but created entirely new genres of music.
Key Topics Covered:
●     How Synthesia found its first real market: corporate trainers creating content nobody was reading, who compared AI video not to Hollywood but to a PDF, and found it vastly superior
●     The transition from one-way video broadcast to two-way interactive avatar conversations, and what that means for sales demos, corporate training, and education
●     Why Hollywood will be the last industry to adopt AI video, and why the first AI-generated entertainment will come from broke film students on Instagram, not studios
●     Why AI content won't replace real video, it will become its own genre, the same way synthesizers didn't replace guitars but created electronic music
●     How the CEO uses Claude daily for strategic thinking, playing devil's advocate, and replacing the long memo with a voice note
As AI video tools proliferate, this conversation offers one of the clearest frameworks for understanding where the technology is actually headed, not toward Hollywood, but toward transforming the way every company communicates internally and externally, with interactive AI avatars replacing the static website as the primary interface between a business and its customers.
Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.
Craig Smith on X: https://x.com/craigss
EYE On A.I. on X: https://x.com/EyeOn_AI
 
Connect with Victor Riparbelli
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/victorriparbelli

Nobody has ever built a cell from scratch - assembled entirely from purified molecules on a shelf - that can feed itself, grow, and split into daughter cells through its own genetic activity. Until now. Dr. Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist and a professor of genetics at the University of Minnesota, whose lab just published a landmark paper on what she calls "spud cells," joins Craig Smith to explain what her team built, why it matters, and what it will take to go from proof of concept to a platform that could eventually replace every molecule civilization currently extracts from petrochemicals. The conversation is as philosophically rich as it is technically specific: Adamala argues that life has no magic ingredient, and that the universe itself is predisposed to give rise to it. She describes the spud cell not as a mic drop but as biology's Sputnik moment: proof that you can escape the gravity well of evolution and build lifelike systems from the ground up.
The episode also covers the most alarming biosecurity question in synthetic biology right now: mirror life - cells built from mirror-image molecules that would be invisible to every immune system on earth and potentially capable of replicating uncontrollably in the environment. Adamala led the global call to pause all mirror life research in 2024, and she explains both why that research was so dangerous and why the spud cell doesn't move the field any closer to that red line. Craig also asks the question nobody else thought to ask: could AI now simulate the billions of years of molecular evolution that a primordial sea would need millions of years to complete - running a few trillion iterations computationally to find what emerges? Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Nobody has ever built a cell from scratch - assembled entirely from purified molecules on a shelf - that can feed itself, grow, and split into daughter cells through its own genetic activity. Until now. Dr. Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist and a professor of genetics at the University of Minnesota, whose lab just published a landmark paper on what she calls "spud cells," joins Craig Smith to explain what her team built, why it matters, and what it will take to go from proof of concept to a platform that could eventually replace every molecule civilization currently extracts from petrochemicals. The conversation is as philosophically rich as it is technically specific: Adamala argues that life has no magic ingredient, and that the universe itself is predisposed to give rise to it. She describes the spud cell not as a mic drop but as biology's Sputnik moment: proof that you can escape the gravity well of evolution and build lifelike systems from the ground up.
The episode also covers the most alarming biosecurity question in synthetic biology right now: mirror life - cells built from mirror-image molecules that would be invisible to every immune system on earth and potentially capable of replicating uncontrollably in the environment. Adamala led the global call to pause all mirror life research in 2024, and she explains both why that research was so dangerous and why the spud cell doesn't move the field any closer to that red line. Craig also asks the question nobody else thought to ask: could AI now simulate the billions of years of molecular evolution that a primordial sea would need millions of years to complete - running a few trillion iterations computationally to find what emerges? Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.