# Costco's CEO Says AI Won't Touch Workers, Corporate America Is Drowning in AI Bills, & OpenAI Just Mapped Its Own Risks

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/future-ready-leadership-with-jacob-morgan-891576/costco-s-ceo-says-ai-won-t-touch-workers-corporate-america-is-drowning-in-ai-bills-openai-just-mapped-its-own-risks
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/future-ready-leadership-with-jacob-morgan-891576/costco-s-ceo-says-ai-won-t-touch-workers-corporate-america-is-drowning-in-ai-bills-openai-just-mapped-its-own-risks.md
Podcast: [Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan](https://stenobird.com/podcast/future-ready-leadership-with-jacob-morgan-891576)
Published: 2026-05-29T18:25:00+00:00
Episode link: https://futureofworkpodcast.libsyn.com/costcos-ceo-says-ai-wont-touch-workers-corporate-america-is-drowning-in-ai-bills-openai-just-mapped-its-own-risks
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/futureofworkpodcast/future-ready-jacob-morgan-costco-ai-human-bet-tokenmaxxing-openai-governance-may-29-2026.mp3?dest-id=209072
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Duration seconds: 1713

## Resource

May 29, 2026: Costco's CEO Ron Vachris said it plainly this week: "I don't see AI making choices for Costco" — and with $440 billion in market cap and 17% stock gains this year, the companies doubling down on human judgment are quietly outperforming the ones cutting workers for AI. On today's episode, Jacob Morgan breaks down three stories that together reveal the gap between what companies say about AI and what they're actually doing: why Costco, IBM, and Delta are winning by betting on humans; why corporate America is getting the bill for "tokenmaxxing" — the practice of deploying AI everywhere without measuring whether it works — and what disciplined AI investment actually looks like; and what OpenAI's newly published Frontier Governance Framework, which formally maps its own risk categories including "loss of control," means for every business leader who needs an enterprise AI governance strategy before the regulations have teeth.

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