Trust is the Currency of AI Adoption [Newsletter #70]

Hello, AI enthusiasts from around the world.

Welcome to this week's newsletter for the AI and the Future of Work podcast.

As the early age of AI accelerates, companies of all sizes face a major challenge: motivating employees to embrace it.

The fear of job loss has become widespread, but that doesn’t mean motivation is out of reach.

This week’s conversation explores how one of the world’s leading financial institutions transformed uncertainty into trust, motivation, and stronger security.

Let’s dive into this week’s highlights! 🚀

🎙️New podcast episode with George Maddaloni, EVP and CTO at Mastercard.

We’re living in a moment when many employees feel uneasy about embracing AI. The fear of job loss is real, and it’s becoming increasingly common.

Adding to that anxiety is the speed at which AI is reshaping processes, faster than most could have predicted. Motivating teams to learn about, trust, and adopt new tools can be a challenge.

That’s why Mastercard’s story stands out. In a company of its size, getting employees not only to accept but to embrace AI is remarkable. The numbers speak for themselves: in just one year, employee confidence in using AI increased by 17% (one of the largest gains reported across the industry). Most surveys show single-digit growth, if any at all.

How did they achieve it? As George Maddaloni explains, Mastercard didn’t widen the gap between AI and its workforce. It closed it.

George Maddaloni is  the EVP and CTO for Operations at Mastercard, where he leads the performance and modernization of the company’s technology and platforms. He sat down with PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin to share how Mastercard has successfully bridged the gap between AI and its workforce.

One of his key initiatives is the AI Guild; a space where Mastercard’s data scientists and engineers connect, train, and collaborate on current and future AI projects. It’s just one example of how the company is embedding AI learning into employee development to build a sustainable future.

This conversation explores this and much more:

• Mastercard has been using AI for more than a decade, particularly in fraud prevention, where it reduced false positives by 80% and increased accuracy by 25%.

• The company’s mission is to empower people and help economies grow, which makes trust a critical part of every AI deployment.

• For George, trust isn’t just an abstract concept. It’s the currency that defines how we build, use, and sustain AI systems.

• Looking ahead, he envisions a future where payments are instant, seamless, and friction-free (powered by innovation, trust, and AI adoption).

🎧 This week’s episode of AI and the Future of Work, featuring George Maddaloni, EVP and CTO at Mastercard, inspired this issue.

Listen to the full episode to hear George and Dan explore what trust means in the age of AI and why any future currency (digital or otherwise) must have it built into its core.

📖 AI Fun Fact

Stablecoins may still have a modest market cap compared to the US monetary supply, but they’re on track to redefine global payments. AI is accelerating their adoption as payment instruments, and the US Congress has now given them a major boost.

Shan Aggarwal, Coinbase’s Chief Business Officer, explains in CoinDesk that Congress passed the GENIUS Act, officially recognizing stablecoins as payment instruments. This allows them to operate within the mainstream financial system, unlocking advantages over traditional banking such as lower costs, instant settlement, and programmability. These features make AI-native commerce and machine-to-machine transactions possible, enabling Fintech, governments, and AI agents to benefit from a programmable global financial system

Currently, stablecoins have a cap of $280 billion (far below the $20 trillion US dollar supply) so there’s still significant room for growth.

PeopleReign CEO Dan Turchin discussed this topic with Tether founder and CEO Paolo Ardoino, and you can listen to that conversation here. Frictionless, trustworthy, and instant financial transactions represent the future of global payments.

With stablecoin deregulation, it's hard to know if incumbent, legacy financial institutions will also be the ones to own decentralized banking on blockchains. That might seem like an oxymoron but don't count out the possibility of Big Finance disrupting itself given the existential stakes.

What’s clear is that AI transactions (especially those requiring transactions in microseconds) aren't a fit for legacy payment processing infrastructure or economics.

Listener Spotlight

Worth A Read📚

Coming Thursday: The AGI Debate

📣We Dit It!

Until next time, stay curious! 🤔

That's a Wrap for This Week!

This week’s conversation explored some uncomfortable but necessary topics. Many still find it difficult to embrace AI learning, and that’s a reality we must face.

It also showed us how to drive cultural change by making AI education the foundation for progress. With the right mindset, organizations of any size (whether 10 or 35,000 employees) can transform how their teams learn and grow.

We hope this conversation inspires you to use AI as a catalyst for growth, team development, and, most importantly, trust between employees and customers.

Until next time, keep questioning, keep innovating, and we’ll see you in the future of work 🎙️✨

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