Uhlík vs Křemík · Czech podcast about artificial intelligence

Daniel Franc: One of the biggest fears about AI is losing one's own relevance

Episode 8 · 29 April 2026 · 1:09:48 · Guest: Daniel Franc

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Companies often treat rolling out artificial intelligence as a technical project. Daniel Franc, who helps large companies introduce change and gained his experience at Google, argues in episode 8 of the Uhlík vs Křemík podcast that the main problem is people. With hosts David Salomon and Adam Hanka he talked about the lack of time, informal networks inside companies and what employees are really afraid of when it comes to AI.

A Czech speciality: we have no time

David Salomon opened the conversation with figures showing that 78% of companies in Czechia use or test AI, while 72% of projects got stuck in the pilot phase. Franc sees one of the causes in companies lacking a translation into plain language: what AI will bring to specific people. In his view, we in Czechia look at adoption mainly as a technological, algorithmic and process problem.

He refers to two surveys, one of them carried out by the Czech Association of Artificial Intelligence. Both, he says, show that Czechs would like to use AI but have no time to learn it, play with it and follow what is new. He does not see this in global data, it is our speciality. At workshops, he says, someone always says at some point that they will not have time for it.

Learning belongs in everyday work

That is why Franc rephrases the question. "How to find time may not be the right question. Perhaps the right question is how I bring my learning about AI into the work I do anyway." In his view, a reserved hour on Friday afternoon does not work, because tasks win. A one-day training will not save real adoption, which happens on the job: when you know where to look for a solution, you have a colleague who can advise you, and nobody blames you for half an hour of trying things out.

According to him, guilds play a big role, something between a team and a community. People across roles often meet in them voluntarily around a shared interest, learn from each other and share experience. For AI adoption they are, according to Franc, one of the very strong tools. But they run into how companies are set up. One programmer feared his manager would have a problem seeing him spend half an hour away from his tasks. The manager, however, said he would have no problem with it.

The fear of losing relevance

Resistance to AI, according to Franc, does not come only from the fear that it will take people's jobs. According to a survey by the Czechitas organisation on a sample of about 1,500 women, as well as global data, one of the biggest fears is losing one's own relevance. Someone who loses a UX researcher job because of AI does not know whether another company will hire them. "Part of our identity is that we need to feel useful somewhere. And AI takes both of these things away from us."

He also speaks from his own experience. After many years he returned to software engineering, but with agents he became more of a product manager who writes specifications instead of writing code. Another risk is cognitive overload. AI first, in his view, does not mean AI everywhere all the time, but using it effectively, and that includes AI zero.

Companies stuck with the chatbot

Against the FOMO from LinkedIn, Franc sets a simple fact: according to him, only about 800 million people in the world use AI, and being at the beginning is fine. Adam Hanka described how he spent a long time lecturing about AI but did not use it for anything himself. Only after months of writing down every activity did he find out where it would help him.

According to Franc, people often have both motivation and knowledge, but the company gives them only a chatbot. Real adoption will come with tools that do the work directly, for example edit an Excel file every Friday. At the same time, he says, rapid development seriously complicates strategic planning: an orchestration system for agents that one large company bought last year is no longer needed this year. That is why he expects leaders to know when to really start the transformation.

The full conversation is available in the Uhlík vs Křemík podcast.

The episode is in Czech. Czech page with chapters, quotes and the full transcript