Automating judgment, not just tasks | Michelle Huff on building AI trust the way you'd onboard a new hire

Every B2B vendor now has an AI story. Michelle Huff, Chief Marketing Officer at Alteryx, argues that's exactly the problem: when everyone makes the same promise, positioning around AI stops being a differentiator and becomes table stakes. Michelle brings more than 25 years leading marketing and go-to-market strategy at Oracle, Salesforce and UserTesting to the question of how a 25-year-old analytics brand earns its place in the AI era without sliding into hype.

Joel and Michelle talk through how Alteryx replaces claims with proof – a 760,000-member user community, customer stories, and a framework (Visible, Understandable, Repeatable, Auditable) for what makes an automated decision trustworthy. Michelle also unpacks a strikingly simple way to think about handing judgment to AI: treat it like onboarding a new hire, earning autonomy step by step rather than switching it on and walking away.

What you'll learn

Why positioning around AI is now table stakes rather than a differentiator – and what to do about itHow to move a brand beyond me-too claims to demonstrable, genuine valueWhat proof of substance actually looks like to a buyer who's heard every AI promise beforeWhy the real AI story is about automating judgment, not just tasksA practical framework for deciding what's ready to automate and what still needs a human in the loop

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: why AI positioning is now table stakes

02:02 Meet Michelle Huff and Alteryx's 25-year evolution

04:54 25 years across tech shifts: the instinct that carries through

08:49 Beyond the AI me-too: proving value, not just claiming it

10:36 Community and advocacy at scale

12:21 Building movements, not monuments: the Salesforce influence

14:00 Where AI genuinely changes the product vs. just the language