Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making.

A dark cloud can teach us how to lead AI. We unpack the link between everyday intuition and model design—when probabilistic signals are “good enough,” when deterministic rules must take over, and how a hybrid approach powers safer, more useful agentic systems. Joshua Linard, a former senior geospatial and data leader at the Department of Energy, joins me to trace a path from environmental physics and national-scale modeling to practical enterprise AI, where community and governance make or break outcomes.
We dig into the real work of governance inside flat, federated organizations: building communities of interest that surface experiments, evolving into communities of practice that standardize methods, and guiding executive boards that set policy and unlock funding. You’ll hear why lean rituals—weekly accomplishments, risks, and issues—create more clarity with less burden, and how time-boxed best practices keep pace with fast-moving tech. We also explore enterprise risk beyond cyber, pulling in IP, compliance, operations, finance, and public trust to shape smarter priorities.
On the technical side, we break down agentic AI as a modular, hybrid architecture. Deterministic guardrails handle sensitive boundaries like PII and export controls, while probabilistic components accelerate discovery, summarization, and pattern detection. The key is domain-aware metadata and explicit error tolerances so models stay grounded. We compare precision needs across contexts—from programs counting pennies to portfolios rounding to the nearest half-million—and map process templates to tool selection so AI fits the job, not the other way around.
The leadership thread across it all is humility, curiosity, and courage: admitting none of us knows it all, asking hard questions about why processes exist, and starting small so we can learn quickly and iterate. If you’re navigating responsible AI, digital transformation, or the leap to agentic systems, this conversation offers a clear, field-tested playbook. If it resonates, subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review telling us the one guardrail you’ll implement next.