The Only Constant

In this episode of The Only Constant, Lasse Rindom speaks with Mikkel Flyverbom, Professor of Communication and Digital Transformations, about why technology is never neutral and why the real challenge is not what technology is but what it does to us. Together, they explore how digital tools become infrastructure, how power and ideology get embedded in platforms, and why Europe now faces a defining moment for digital sovereignty.

Main topics they discuss include:

Why digital transformation is about alignment and misalignment rather than success or failure  

How AI, platforms, and social media both democratize access and create new gatekeepers  

Why digital infrastructure should be governed like roads, electricity, and public institutions  

What it takes to balance individual responsibility with political action, regulation, and European alternatives

 

Do you want to know more about Mikkel Flyverbom?

Mikkel Flyverbom is Professor of Communication and Digital Transformations at the Department of Management, Society and Communication,and the founding academic director of the BSc in Business Administration and Digital Management program, both at Copenhagen Business School.His research on digital transformations, data, tech governance and tech companies has been published in leading international journals, such as Business & Society, The Information Society, Telecommunications Policy, Organization Studies, Management Communication Quarterly, Organization, as well as a number of books. His most recent book, titled ‘The Digital Prism: Transparency and Managed Visibilities in a Datafied World’ has been published by Cambridge University Press. His research is cited widely, placing him among the top 2% of scholars worldwide according to the most recent Ioannidis/Stanford list.

Mikkel Flyverbom has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, University of California, Santa Barbara, LUISS University and Rutgers University. He is a member of the Danish government’s Data Ethics Council and Expert Group, Digital Task Foce for AI and former chairman of the Expert Group on Tech Giants, and a widely used media expert on digital transformations and the tech industry.

In this episode, Lasse Rindom speaks with Walter Quattrociocchi, complexity scientist and professor of computer science, about what really happens when language becomes automated and answers arrive without the effort of thinking.

Their conversation circles around:

Why large language models simulate judgment rather than possess it, and why benchmarks miss the point

The concept of "Epistemia" - when fluent wording replaces verification and we feel we know without having evaluated

How AI increases content production while quietly eroding trust in content itself

Reliability, error, and the danger of delegating decisions to systems that cannot recognise their own mistakes

Whether expertise becomes rarer - and more valuable - in a world full of convincing but ungrounded answers

It is less a debate about machines becoming intelligent, and more a question of what happens to human judgment when fluency becomes cheap and cognitive labour optional.

Do you want to know more about Walter Quattrociocchi?

Walter Quattrociocchi is Full Professor at Sapienza University of Rome, leading the Center of Data Science and Complexity for Society (CDCS). His research interests encompass data science, network science, cognitive science, and data-driven modeling of dynamic processes in complex networks. Professor Quattrociocchi has an extensive publication record in peer-reviewed conferences and journals, including Nature and PNAS. His research on misinformation spreading has informed the Global Risk Report 2016 and 2017 of the World Economic Forum. International media have extensively covered his work, including Scientific American, New Scientist, The Economist, The Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Fortune, Poynter, and The Atlantic.

 

In 2017, Professor Quattrociocchi coordinated the round table on Fake News and the role of Universities and Research in countering fake news, chaired by the President of Italy's Chamber of Deputies, Mrs. Laura Boldrini. In 2018, he served as the scientific advisor to the Italian Communication Authority (AGCOM), and in 2020, he was a member of the Task Force to Counter Hate Speech, appointed by the Minister of Innovation. He has recently been one of the Principal Investigators of the IRIS research coalition (UK/G7) focused on combating misinformation about vaccine hesitancy and climate change.

 

In 2023, the US State Department appointed him to the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) on the topic of Data-Driven Policies.

Professor Quattrociocchi is regularly invited to deliver keynote speeches and guest lectures at major academic institutions and other organizations.

In this episode, Lasse Rindom speaks with Kathy Pham, global AI leader at Workday and long-time voice in responsible technology. The conversation moves straight past surface-level “AI is cool” talk and into agency, purpose, governance, and what actually happens when autonomous systems meet real work and real people. 

4 sharp conversation topics from the episode

Agency vs purpose - how giving tools more autonomy can quietly remove meaning from the very tasks we thought we were optimizing

The balance between technology fading into the background and moments where its presence must be explicit.

How governance can be an accelerator, and why good rules and architecture do not slow innovation but actually make teams move faster without creating tech and social debt

The tension between flexible, composable systems and the need for clear structures so AI can navigate finance, HR, and planning without going off the rails

This episode is less about “what AI can do” and more about what we should let it do, and what happens to human purpose when efficiency becomes the default answer.

 

Do you want to know more about Kathy Pham?

Kathy Pham is vice president of artificial intelligence at Workday. She also serves as the first Workday AI ambassador, and hosts the AI Horizons video series.

A computer scientist and product leader, Kathy has experience across industry, academia, non-profits, venture capital, and government. In addition to her role at Workday, Kathy’s a senior advisor at Mozilla, where she co-founded the Mozilla Builders Incubator and Mozilla Responsible Computing, funding and enabling start-up founders and academics. And she’s on the faculty at Harvard University, where she created and teaches the Product Management and Society course and co-founded the Ethical Tech Working Group. She also serves on various technology and non-profit boards.

Previously, Kathy served as the inaugural executive director of the National AI Advisory Committee, was deputy chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, and was a founding engineering and product member of the U.S. Digital Service at the White House, where she helped build critical digital services in government across three presidential administrations. In addition, Kathy spent over a decade building large scale systems in industry and healthcare at Google (search, health, people operations), IBM, and Harris Healthcare. She also previously served as a fellow at the MIT Media Lab and at the Harvard Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative, where she co-founded ai-in-the-loop, exploring how AI fits into the human world.

Kathy completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and Supelec in Metz, France.

In this episode, Lasse Rindom speaks with Phil Lee, the Managing Director of Digiphile and a leading legal expert on data privacy, GDPR, and the evolving EU digital rulebook. It is a conversation that moves beyond the hype of the AI Act to explore the practical, often messy reality of compliance, investigating how organizations can navigate the "regulatory vicious circle" without stifling innovation.

4 sharp conversation topics from the episode:

- How excessive complexity in legislation causes companies to accidentally fall out of compliance, prompting regulators to create more rules, which only deepens the problem.
- Why the biggest governance headache isn't always new tools, but existing vendors quietly rolling out AI features - like a PDF reader suddenly sending data to servers in China via a software update.
- The legal reality that systems cannot be held accountable, meaning that regardless of how autonomous an AI agent becomes, a human must always remain in the loop to absorb the liability.
- Looking beyond personal data (GDPR) to the new Data Act, which essentially serves as competition law designed to break vendor lock-in and force cloud providers to make proprietary data portable.

This conversation sets the tone and the reality for the interplay of regulation and innovation and is not to be missed by practitioners in the field of AI and data.

 

Do you want to know more about Phil Lee?

Phil is a lawyer with over 20 years' experience, specialising in data protection and artificial intelligence. His practice focuses mainly on technology, cloud and digital media companies, and he has worked in both London and California.

Phil Lee runs UK challenger law firm, Digiphile, which specialises in data protection, AI, and digital regulation. Digiphile's mission is to provide its global clients across all sectors with simple, strategic and actionable legal advice.

He holds CIPP/E, CIPM, AIGP and FIP status with the IAPP, and a degree in Computer Science from Cambridge University.

In this episode, Lasse Rindom speaks with Katrine Bach - co-founder of Connected Women in AI - about why the real challenge in AI isn’t the tech itself, but how fast our systems entrench around whoever shows up first. Their conversation cuts through talk of values and hype, and asks what it really takes to build representative, inclusive, and effective AI adoption at scale.

Why AI isn’t a specialist tool anymore - and why that changes who should be in the room

The early adoption trap: how default practices quietly harden into systems, often without reflection

Representation as strategy - and how a more diverse talent pool improves both innovation and adoption

Why the gender gap in AI use and education is not about competence, but confidence - and how community changes that

How learning profiles, systemic structures, and invisible assumptions still shape who feels entitled to work with AI

This episode challenges the idea that “progress” is neutral - and insists we act now, before habit becomes excluding infrastructure.

Do you want to know more about Katrine Bach?

Katrine Bach is the CEO and founder of Expansion Partners, a consulting firm that helps leaders and entrepreneurs turn AI’s potential into tangible business growth and responsible innovation.

She is also the co-founder and CEO of Connected Women in AI, an organisation that in just one year has brought together more than 5,500 women with the aim of creating equal access to AI skills, career development, and professional networks. For Katrine, diversity is not only about innovation, but about unlocking the full talent pool and thereby strengthening Denmark’s competitiveness at a time when AI is reshaping both the labour market and value creation. Under her leadership, the network is now launching a new digital platform designed to make AI learning and community accessible to even more people, helping ensure that Denmark maintains a strong position in the global AI landscape.

With more than 25 years of international experience in the global pharma and technology industries, Katrine combines strategic insight, business acumen, and a passion for responsible technology. She is a prominent voice in the debate on how Denmark can maintain its competitive edge in the AI era through diversity, innovation, and bold leadership.