In this episode of the Beyond Technology Podcast, Shawn Freeman sits down with Christa Hill, CEO of Tacit Edge, to talk about what happens when everyday people start building with AI instead of just talking about it. From sales teams in Alberta's industrial companies to chamber of commerce leaders, Christa is watching non-technical people build real automations every week, and she has strong opinions about what keeps everyone else on the sidelines.

Christa shares the story of a student who built a system that scrapes competitor pricing overnight and delivers a punchy voice memo to the whole sales team every morning. She breaks down the most chronic mistake she sees in startups: spending $150,000 to learn what $15,000 could have taught you. And she explains why AI adoption has to start with leadership literacy, why safety right now is a moral compass and not a policy, and why our relationship to time has to change when a 20-day quote becomes a 20-second one.

As Christa puts it: your idea brought you into the arena, but your customers grow the arena for you. And it is way more fun to be rich than it is to be right.

What You'll Learn:

- Why "the try is the skill," and the skill-before-the-skill myth keeping people out of the game

- The overbuilding trap: why fear of looking unprepared craters more capital than anything else

- How to test whether a problem is a "jugular gusher" or a paper cut before you spend a dollar

- Why non-technical people can build real AI automations after a two-week vocabulary on-ramp

- How technical language has been used to gatekeep, and why that power is slipping away

- Why leaders need to become builders before they can set AI expectations for their teams

- Why AI safety today lives in your moral compass, not in policy or frameworks

- The daily tool stack Christa runs a global education company with as one person

In This Episode:

00:00 Welcome and what Tacit Edge does

01:05 Building a lifestyle, not an empire

02:09 The sales team that wakes up to AI voice memos

05:15 The $150K mistake: overbuilding before the market speaks

07:30 "I'd rather be rich than right"

08:11 Jugular gusher or paper cut: testing problems for free

11:48 The RV office, voice tools, and leaning into your gifts

15:23 The skill before the skill is a myth

16:58 How technical language gatekeeps the business

18:40 Why a chat beats fancy UX

20:09 From 20-day quotes to 20 seconds

21:58 Breaking up with our relationship to time

24:13 Why AI adoption starts with leadership literacy

26:50 Safety is a moral compass, not a policy

28:18 Is leadership getting harder?

29:24 Christa's daily tool stack

32:37 Transformation is not a point in time

35:03 Where to find Christa

About Christa Hill:

Christa Hill is the CEO of Tacit Edge, where she drives AI literacy across Canada by authoring curriculum and creating courses for every Canadian, whether they are in elementary school, the trades, professional roles, or organizations. Her work sits at the intersection of technology, people, and process, teaching leaders and teams to become builders, not just users, so they can reduce risk, build stronger guardrails, and lean into the human gifts that technology amplifies.

Connect with Christa:

Website: https://tacit-edge.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christajhill/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christa.hill.ai/

In this episode of The Learn-It-All™ Podcast, Damon Lembi sits down with Christa Hill, Co-Founder of Tacit Edge and Learnit's Chief AI Learning Officer, to unpack why so many leaders, teams, and organizations are still using artificial intelligence at what Christa calls "brochure-level." Playing around with ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, or Gemini might feel like progress, but real AI literacy starts when you stop treating AI like a shortcut and start using it to rethink strategy, decision-making, team workflows, and business value.

Christa explains why most people are still operating at a grade three or four level of AI literacy, why productivity wins eventually cap out, and why leaders cannot keep approving AI tools they do not understand. She also breaks down one of the biggest mistakes companies are making right now: banning AI and accidentally pushing employees into risky "shadow AI" behavior. As Christa puts it, organizations do not have AI problems. They have very human problems surrounding the technology.

Because AI may have more IQ points than us, but it does not have our judgment, empathy, lived experience, or what Christa calls "your proprietary data set."

What You'll Learn:
What "brochure-level" AI use is, and why surface-level productivity hacks are not enough
Why Christa calls ChatGPT "Captain Confidence," and the final 30% only you can add
How to avoid wasting money on AI adoption by solving one or two business problems first
Why productivity wins cap out without connection to team goals and business strategy
How meeting transcripts and AI can surface trends, risks, and new opportunities
Why banning AI tools may be one of the riskiest moves a company can make
The true human advantage: your judgment, empathy, context, and proprietary data set

In This Episode:
00:00 Episode preview and introduction
01:22 Why Copilot doesn't make you AI literate
03:03 The mistake self-taught AI users keep making
08:16 The "Captain Confidence" problem with ChatGPT
10:30 Why most people are still at a grade three AI level
14:12 Productivity wins are not an AI strategy
16:52 How one team bought back time with AI literacy
19:09 Why your team needs "game one days"
23:15 Why AI literacy makes people less afraid of being replaced
24:25 Technical debt explained for non-technical leaders
27:01 Why every meeting should become usable data
28:52 The "yes, and" exercise that kills bad brainstorming
31:45 Why people don't have their best ideas on command
33:41 How leaders can capture ideas before they disappear
38:21 AI is a mirror, so what is it exposing?
39:37 Why Christa doesn't buy the AI replacement panic
42:18 The question every leader should ask AI but probably won't
45:13 Why banning AI might be your riskiest move
54:09 The executive AI questions leaders are afraid to ask
57:18 Smash or pass: the AI tools Christa actually recommends
01:01:41 The human advantage AI can't copy
01:03:21 How to know when you need real AI education

About Christa Hill: Christa Hill is the Co-Founder of Tacit Edge and Chief AI Learning Officer at Learnit. With more than 20 years in technology, product management, and business transformation.

Connect: Christa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christajhill/
Tacit Edge: https://tacit-edge.com/
Learnit: https://www.learnit.com
Follow Learnit on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/learn-it/

What if the biggest bug in AI isn't in the algorithm? What if it's in us?

In this episode, I sit down with Christian Ortiz, Afro-Indigenous decolonial social scientist, technologist, and creator of Justice A.I. GPT, the first AI system built on a decolonial framework. We go deep on what decolonization actually means (explained like you're five), why AI is essentially a mirror of our inherited biases, and how tools like Justice AI are turning that mirror into a feedback loop that helps us do better.

Christian's story is wild. From growing up in LA and New Jersey, to walking out of a corporate discrimination case, to beta testing ChatGPT in 2022 and immediately spotting the bias problem, to building his own AI that doesn't just flag what's wrong but walks you through how to fix it with empathy and emotional intelligence.

We talk about what bias is actually costing organizations (hint: it's millions), why HR teams need tools like this more than ever, and why "ethical AI" and "decolonized AI" might just be the same conversation.

Plus, we play Smash or Pass with AI tools. Christian has opinions. Strong ones.

This one is heavy, hopeful, and deeply human. If your last episode was "We Built This Mess," this one is about what we do about it.

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction to Christian Ortiz
• 16:52 Decolonization and Its Impact
• 28:00 The Role of Bias in AI
• 33:30 Ethical AI and Its Impact
• 49:35 AI Tools and Their Impact
• 54:50 Accessing and Working with AI

LINKS:

Justice AI Website: justiceaigpt.ca

Christian Ortiz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/modatlasmedia/

Mod Atlas Media: https://justiceaigpt.ca/modatlasmedia

ABOUT YOUR HOST:

Christa Hill is the founder of Tacit Edge Inc. and creator of Product for Humans. She teaches product management as a leadership discipline and helps organizations adopt AI with confidence, not fear. Learn more at tacit-edge.com.

CONNECT:

Website: tacit-edge.com

Email: info@tacit-edge.ca

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christahill