Babysitting the Machine: Glean's Rebecca Hinds on the Hidden Human Labor of AI at Work

Hello, and welcome back to the Cognitive Revolution. Today, my guest is Rebecca Hines, author of the bestseller, Your Best Meeting Ever, and head of the Work AI Institute at Glean, which has just published the new Work AI Index 2026 report, which draws on a survey of 6,000 digital workers to describe the state of AI as it's used and experienced by employees at companies that are operating well outside of the AI bubbl

It goes beyond the title with direct discussion of think, it's, like, including: Today, my guest is Rebecca Hines, author of the bestseller, Your Best Meeting Ever, and head of the Work AI Institute at Glean, which has just published the new Work AI Index 2026.

1. 01And on average, they report saving 13 hours per week, a third of a full work week
2. 02Bot sitting is all the unglamorous, untracked labor required to make AI useful, feeding it context, debugging its outputs, and cleaning up its messes, which the report finds consum
3. 03For those who are being asked to automate parts of their work that they'd rather do themselves, such as, for example, a customer service representative who enjoys talking to people