Nearly ten years on from his visionary TEDx Talk “Robot Rules”, Rob McCargow, Technology Impact Leader at PwC, sat down with Michelle Dawkins to discuss how artificial intelligence can be a force for good that transforms businesses, leadership roles, and the nature of careers.
Patrick Evenden
Head of Thought Leadership, EMEA
Workday
You can also listen to the audio version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
At a recent Workday event, Workday’s Michelle Dawkins caught up with Rob McCargow, PwC's Technology Impact Leader, to discuss the fast-moving landscape of generative and agentic AI. Working alongside many organisations he sees firsthand how AI is reshaping the way businesses operate, how work gets done and how employees envision their futures.
Reflecting on his own unconventional career and the famous Robot Rules he laid out in a TEDx talk nearly a decade ago, McCargow shared his thoughts on what it takes to build an organisation ready for the future of work. From consequence scanning to the rise of the portfolio career, the conversation highlighted how organisations can navigate this technological shift without sacrificing their values.
Here are five things that we learned from the conversation:
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Rob McCargow's journey to becoming PwC's technology impact leader was anything but linear. Over his career, he’s worked as a microbiologist, an executive recruiter, an entrepreneur, and an emergency humanitarian aid worker.
McCargow views this diverse background as a microcosm of how modern professionals are changing and adapting. As AI accelerates automation, the concept of linear careers is coming to an end. Instead, the future belongs to the “portfolio career”, where employees must constantly adapt, pivot, and reinvent their professional skillsets, sometimes even on a yearly basis.
Inspired by chats with his young children, McCargow’s TEDx talk introduced his “Robot Rules”, a set of ethical guidelines for deploying AI safely. Today, in an environment saturated with deepfakes and lifelike synthetic AI, these rules remain remarkably prescient.
McCargow emphasised that AI requires a reliable off switch, that robots shouldn’t look like people to preserve trust in media, and that "bad people should not build robots". Because technology isn't inherently malevolent, the values of the humans who build, train, and deploy it dictate the social outcomes. This underscores the critical need for responsible AI governance and "consequence scanning" to weigh the downstream impacts.
The conversation around enterprise AI has evolved rapidly over the past decade. What was once treated as a niche technical consideration or the exclusive playground of the CIO function now cuts across every department.
McCargow argues that to successfully scale trusted AI, leaders across the C-suite, including the CFO, CHRO, and COO, must step up as technology leaders. This level of widespread accountability helps organisations move past minor, incremental productivity gains and focus on transforming the business as a whole.
Trying to predict precisely which technical competencies will be needed in five years is an exercise in futility. McCargow pointed out that workforce forecasts frequently miss the mark; for instance, a half-decade ago, experts urged everyone to pivot into programming, yet the emergence of "vibe coding" has completely flipped that script.
Rather than obsessing over rigid curriculum paths or specific course selections, McCargow stresses that the real priority should be cultivating a genuine, lifelong love of learning and personal adaptability.
When asked about top corporate priorities, McCargow offered a pragmatic warning: companies can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines and wait out the AI curve.
To navigate this shift successfully, leaders must lead from the front, modeling AI usage for their employees while being open and honest about what it’s being used for. By being pragmatic about what AI can and can’t do, while actively upskilling the workforce, businesses can find a balance where human and digital workers bring out the best in each other.
Find out how Workday develops AI features responsibly by design, empowering our customers with the tools and capabilities they need to deploy, configure and use AI confidently.
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