Amplified

What if the most important question about AI isn’t which tool I should use—but who am I when I use it?

In this wide-ranging conversation, Michelle Riconscente, learning scientist, tech CEO, and author of The AI Amplification Effect, will join anthropologist and educator Cari Borja for an evening that moves far beyond productivity hacks and platform hype.

Riconscente’s central insight in The AI Amplification Effect is deceptively simple and deeply disruptive: AI doesn’t change you, it amplifies you. The way you already work, decide, imagine, and collaborate shapes how AI shows up in your life and whether it becomes a source of clarity, friction, speed, or overwhelm. Riconscente introduces her "Four Styles framework," offering a clear, practical lens for understanding why one-size-fits-all AI strategies fail, how to recognize stress signals before adoption breaks down, and how individuals and organizations can turn style diversity into real capability.

Borja has brought this work into the classroom, teaching Design Ethnography at California College of the Arts, where students introduce AI into their research and presentations not as a shortcut but as a mirror. By placing their own voices beside the machine’s, they see what is amplified, what is bent, and what quietly disappears, learning not just how AI works, but who they are when they use it.

Together, they will explore:

• how to use AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and beyond) strategically rather than reflexively
• why different people (and teams) experience AI as liberating, threatening, intoxicating, or exhausting
• how to recognize the line between what is you and what is the machine, and why that boundary matters more than ever
• how education, creativity, and leadership must evolve when amplification (not automation) is the real force at work.

This is a thinking evening, designed to spark divergent insights, shared language, and real conversation across disciplines, generations, and work styles. Whether you’re an educator, creative, founder, technologist, or simply someone trying to stay human in an accelerated world, this conversation offers a powerful reframe: AI isn’t replacing you. It’s revealing you.

Michelle Riconscente, PhD, is the author of The AI Amplification Effect and CEO of Valutare.ai, an AI-native performance management platform. A former professor of Educational Psychology at USC, she has spent over two decades at the intersection of behavioral science, learning, and technology. Dr. Riconscente's career spans leadership roles across edtech and workforce development, from co-founding GameDesk to serving as CEO of Motimatic, where she drove 10x revenue growth by applying motivation science to product strategy. Her research on how individuals learn, adapt, and perform has been published in over 100 academic journals. In The AI Amplification Effect, Dr. Riconscente introduces the "People Styles framework," revealing how different behavioral styles respond to AI, and how HR leaders can leverage these insights to build thriving, AI-ready teams. Her practical approach bridges academic rigor with real-world application, giving organizations actionable strategies for the human side of AI transformation. Dr. Riconscente holds a PhD from the University of Maryland and a BA in Mathematics and Physics from Brown University.

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