Podcast · The Leadership Podcast · 10 November 2026
On The Leadership Podcast, Ritu Raj talks with host Niels Brabandt about why he wrote The Unalgorithmic Self, whether there is any escape from a world run by algorithms, and what is left of a leader’s job when a machine can analyze, predict and draft faster than any team.
From the conversation
“AI will multiply intelligence. Only humans can multiply meaning.”
“The real risk is not machines becoming more human, but that we quietly become more like them: optimizing instead of deciding.”
“What is left of the leader is exactly what the machine cannot carry.”
The interview
The Leadership Podcast, NB Networks, 10 November 2026. Edited for reading from the episode: false starts, repetitions and asides removed.
There are two parts to it. During COVID I was shut in a room with nowhere to go, and somebody asked why I didn't paint; I used to as a kid. So I started, and suddenly my loft in San Francisco was full of paintings: two feet by two at first, then four by four. My sweet spot turned out to be six feet by six, and those take up a lot of room. It was just me and my little cat. I paint abstract paintings, and most of it comes from my childhood. Wherever I travel I go to museums, always looking for the image that makes me stand in front of it and asks me more questions than it answers. I wanted to paint like Jackson Pollock, on the floor, and for that I needed space. In Phoenix you can find big spaces, so I found a house with a studio attached. As for the book: I have a curious mind, and you cannot paint all the time. Painting is not eight hours at the post office. You paint when you paint, and you don't when you don't, and I needed something to do beyond watching shows. And then I got fed up with the world of algorithms we live in. Even your toothbrush was probably sold to you by an algorithm. The shows you watch string you along however they want. You are trapped in a world of algorithms. As a kid I could multiply four-digit numbers in my head. Then I got a calculator. I can still multiply 54 by 63, but why would I, when I can pull out my phone?
I don't think it is about escape. Escape is the harder road. It is acceptance, the way you accept that you have a calculator and live by it. The technology is amazing; it brings real efficiency. The line the whole book is built on is this: AI will multiply intelligence. Only humans can multiply meaning.
There is no escape from it, so those are my questions for today's generation. My message comes down to this. Every leader now has a machine that can analyze, predict and draft faster than any team. That is a gift, and it changes the job. What is left of the leader is exactly what the machine cannot carry: judgment when the data runs out, responsibility for the person in front of you, and the attention to notice what no dashboard measures. In The Unalgorithmic Self I argue that the real risk is not machines becoming more human, but that we quietly become more like them: optimizing instead of deciding.
My practice as a painter keeps me honest. There is no algorithm: it is hand, canvas and paint. The paint and the brush do things no algorithm can, and I don't have control over a brush laden with oil paint, only a slight control. But the painting is mine. So I don't want readers to come away with golden rules. It is a return to self: take hold of yourself as a human being. There are things machines cannot do, period. Use AI, use it completely, but remember that you are in control, not the machine. And the most important thing, the one I wrote a whole book around: who signs it? Who is accountable for the end product? You cannot say the machine did it. You are the signatory of the work, as I am of a painting. That is the one big takeaway. The book also explores the self, love and spirituality, every dimension of being human beyond work. It is an exploration, not a set of answers.
Change is the hardest thing there is to manage. Without change management, there is no change, and that is one reason we resist it. That way of thinking never leaves me. And for my own sanity, I take on abstract painting. It feeds my soul in a way nothing else can.
The books
Art, AI, and the Future of Human Thinking
The part of human life that refuses reduction. Not a book against AI. A book about remembering ourselves.
The Genesis of Abstraction
Painting, perception, silence and attention, and the length of string that became the Organic Movement paintings.
More
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Art that listens.