Author: openjargon

• Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released new images from Jeffrey Epstein's estate.
• Photos feature Bill Gates, President Donald Trump, Richard Branson, and other notable individuals.
• The images are part of 95,000 photos that the Democrats say were provided to the committee.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Friday released never-before-seen images from the estate of late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including some images featuring powerbrokers like Bill Gates and Larry Summers.

The photos — which also feature President Donald Trump, ex-Trump advisor Steve Bannon, former President Bill Clinton, writer-director Woody Allen, Richard Branson, and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew — are a selection of the over 95,000 photos that the Democrats say were provided to the House Oversight Committee pursuant to a subpoena.

Some of the photos also include Ghislaine Maxwell, a onetime partner of Epstein who was convicted of trafficking girls to him for sex. She's currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.

The committee previously released other records obtained from Epstein's estate, including images of his US Virgin Islands home and tens of thousands of emails and text messages between Epstein and other powerful people.

The images themselves aren't indications of wrongdoing.

In many cases, it isn't clear when the photos were taken. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting an underage girl for prostitution and agreed to register as a pedophile. In 2019, he killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on more severe sex-trafficking charges from federal prosecutors.

The House Oversight Committee's ranking member, Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California, said in a statement: "These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world."

Representatives for Gates, Summers, Bannon, Clinton, Allen, Branson, and Mountbatten-Windsor did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Business Insider.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Business Insider in a statement that House Democrats are once again "selectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative."

The latest release of images comes as the Department of Justice readies to release a trove of Epstein-related documents. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump, requires the Justice Department to make its files related to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell public by December 19.

"The Trump Administration has done more for Epstein's victims than Democrats ever have by repeatedly calling for transparency, releasing thousands of pages of documents, and calling for further investigations into Epstein's Democrat friends," Jackson said.

Below are some of the 19 images that Democrats on the House Oversight Committee published on Friday:

A smiling Richard Branson is seen here in a tropical setting with Jeffrey Epstein

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is seen on a private jet alongside Woody Allen

Bill Gates is pictured smiling next to one of Epstein's pilots, Larry Visoki

Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon is seen sitting across a desk from Epstein

Another image shows Gates alongside Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew

A photo of President Donald Trump surrounded by women with redacted faces was among the images released

Another image shows Epstein standing next to Woody Allen on what appears to be a movie set

A photo signed by Bill Clinton depicts the former president with Maxwell and Epstein.

• Relocating for work was exciting when my husband and I were newly married.
• Having children shifted our priorities, leading us to choose stability over new opportunities.
• We decided that giving our children roots was more important than living in new cities or countries.

By our fifth wedding anniversary, my husband and I had moved twice for his job. We were in our 20s and excited for new experiences. It was easy to embrace the chaos of moving then.

When a third opportunity to relocate was presented, the choice wasn't so easy anymore. Our family had grown; we now had a baby to consider. This move would take us from Houston to California, a place we'd barely visited. The whole idea felt exciting, but what would it be like to move halfway across the country with a baby in tow?

Having a baby made us think differently about moving

We asked ourselves what advice we'd give our child if she were an adult making this decision. We realized we'd encourage her to take the chance, so we decided we would, too.

My husband's employer provided us with a moving company to pack, load, and transport our belongings. Unfortunately, the truck had a blowout on I-10 and was delayed, so when we arrived in California, we were without many of the comforts that make life with a baby easier for longer than we'd planned.

The beginning was rough, but it worked out. We embraced having mountains and beaches close by, but what we couldn't embrace was the cost of living. To afford to live where we were, I'd need to go back to work. However, we'd created a little obstacle; I was pregnant. We didn't know if we could afford to live in California with our expanding family, but we knew of a place we could afford.

When our family changed, our reason to move changed

Two and a half years after we arrived in California, we were on the move again. This relocation took us back to Houston. Thankfully, my husband's company provided moving assistance once more.

Moving while pregnant and with a 3-year-old was exhausting, but we settled into our new house and our new life. Once we hit the milestone of two and a half years in our home, we celebrated.

A few months later, my husband was asked to consider applying for another opportunity. The position was outside the United States, and if he applied, it would mean we were OK with moving abroad. But were we?

For our move to California, we'd asked ourselves what advice we'd give our children. Now the question was: what life did we want to give our children?

We decided to give our children roots instead of adventures

Despite the benefits and experiences that come with living as expatriates, providing our children with stable and predictable childhoods was a bigger priority for us. We chose to have our adventures during school vacations instead of having an adventure-based life.

My husband did not apply for that overseas position and chose not to apply to any other jobs that would require us to relocate. We've now been in our second Houston house for 16 years. Moving was fun for a while, but we're thankful we were able to stay in one place after the fun wore off.

And if our children ever ask us for advice on moving, will we stick with our original, hypothetical answer? I think we would.

• The "OpenAI Supply Co." has 10 merchandise items available for purchase. Most sizes have already sold out.
• Merch items include Pokémon-style trading cards and t-shirts touting safe AGI.
• One baseball cap looks particularly similar to a viral Anthropic hat — but OpenAI's is archived to a year prior.

You can now wear ChatGPT on your sleeve — or head or shin.

As part of its 10-year anniversary celebration, OpenAI dropped a link on its X feed to a merchandise store. The "OpenAI Supply Co." seems suited for the company's engineers, with a space to log in with a company email. Indeed, most of the items listed are archives of old designs — but a few are available for purchase.

The "Supply Co." site was marked as "coming soon" in July 2024, according to the Internet Archive. But this appears to be the first time ChatGPT users who aren't employees can actually buy something from it.

OpenAI fans ate it up. The post garnered over 3,000 likes within 15 hours, and multiple sizes of the for-sale items were quickly sold out. If you're anything other than an extra small or a small, you're out of luck on sweatshirts and tees.

The items OpenAI listed give a glimpse inside the company — or at least its swag.

There are five Pokémon-style trading cards. Their subjects include Sora 2 ("shape-shifter"), GPT-5 ("two worlds, one model"), image generation (with a "huge" wow factor), Sora ("sci-fi"), and the OpenAI Blossom ("back and better").

Pokémon has recently been a point of contention for the company, after its Sora video generator began booting out unauthorized versions of Pikachu.

Much of the site is themed around AGI, or artificial general intelligence, a much debated breakthrough milestone that many AI companies are racing to hit. One shirt reads: "AGI that benefits all of humanity," a line from OpenAI's charter. On the employee log-in, the suggested email is agi@openai.com.

The assortment of hats also offers clues. There are Sora beanies and baseball caps with the word "research." One cap has the chatbot's phone number, 1-800-CHATGPT. (Yes, the number still works.)

Another cap has OpenAI in red letters on camo print, resembling the popular Harris/Walz hat, which nods to Chappell Roan.

The baseball caps kept coming. There's one with silver flames, a piece of early 2000s nostalgia. There's another with the letters "SF" on it, firmly planting OpenAI in the city of San Francisco.

All the way at the bottom of the page is a baseball cap with the words "Thinking deeply." The site says that it was released in September 2024 in honor of OpenAI's reasoning model. It also looks remarkably similar to Anthropic's "thinking" caps, which launched a year later at the company's Air Mail pop-up.

Anthropic's "thinking" caps quickly became a status symbol, signifying the wearer's closeness to the AI boom. Cursor's tab keys had a similar effect, as did OpenAI's DevDay token plaques.

It's possible that this merchandise drop will have the same effect. Your ChatGPT crew neck could give you caché.

The fans have clearly been hungry. Fan-created merchandise concepts have long floated around X. Some even turned their designs into unauthorized businesses.

Thirty minutes before its post about the tenth anniversary, OpenAI responded to a fan post. Developer Tibor Blaho posted some of the merch, saying that the company should make its store "public instead of keeping it employee-only." OpenAI responded with the link and an eye emoji.

Blaho's post was 10 months ago.

• Companies are rapidly increasing AI spending, with 90% planning higher budgets for 2026.
• An RBC survey shows most CIOs now prioritize generative AI investment over all other spending.
• AI adoption is driving IT budget growth, with use cases shifting from cost savings to revenue gains.

For much of the past year, Wall Street and Silicon Valley have wrestled with the same uncomfortable question: Will companies really spend money on AI, or is the hype just outpacing budgets?

A new CIO survey from RBC Capital suggests that question may finally have an answer, and it's a resounding yes.

RBC recently polled 117 IT professionals at companies with annual revenue ranging from below $250 million to more than $25 billion. 90% of the respondents said their organizations plan to spend more on AI in 2026.

"Overall, we came away increasingly optimistic of macro/budget stabilization taking shape in 2026 and encouraged by the pace of early GenAI adoption," the RBC analysts wrote in a research note summarizing the findings.

CIOs are not only moving rapidly into production with AI systems, but they are also setting aside dedicated budgets to fund that adoption.

A striking 90% of technology leaders said their organizations are creating new budgets specifically for generative AI and LLM projects, up from 85% the year before. That suggests AI is becoming additive rather than substitutive in enterprise tech spending.

Even more telling: 60% of respondents said they are already in production with AI initiatives, a jump from 39% the previous year. Another 32% expect to be in production within six months.

This shift comes after months of skepticism from investors who questioned whether businesses would convert pilot projects into real spending. The survey data suggests that moment is now arriving.

CIOs overwhelmingly cited AI as the top category for increased software spending next year, surpassing cybersecurity and IT service management. And in open-ended responses, executives repeatedly named AI as their biggest area of investment for 2026, often paired with infrastructure upgrades and automation initiatives, according to the RBC survey.

Use cases are expanding beyond experimentation. Seventy-six percent of CIOs said their AI strategies now target both cost savings and revenue generation, a shift that reinforces AI's transition from a novelty to a competitive mandate.

Concerns remain — data privacy tops the list — but those worries are no longer slowing adoption. Instead, AI is becoming the primary force expanding IT budgets heading into 2026.

Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• Business Insider asked four interior designers which bathroom trends are in and out for 2026.
• Tech features, statement tiles, and warm, earthy palettes are on the rise.
• However, all-white bathrooms, glossy finishes, and synthetic materials are becoming less popular.

Each year brings a new wave of design trends that continue to evolve home spaces, including bathrooms.

So, Business Insider asked four interior designers to share their thoughts on what will be popular in bathrooms this coming year, and which fads are starting to disappear.

Here's what they predict will be in and out for bathrooms in 2026.

Tech in bathrooms is on the rise.

Kara Thomas, interior designer and founder of Studio KT, believes there will be a "heavy trend" of incorporating tech into bathrooms next year.

"Regardless of the square footage, people need a space to decompress, and people are going to be wanting to spend more intentional time with themselves in their bathroom," she told BI.

For that reason, she believes an array of useful, high-tech features that aid self-care — like voice-activated shower controls, deodorizing smart toilets, and heated floors — will be taking over home bathrooms in 2026.

Medicine cabinets remain on trend.

Though medicine cabinets haven't exactly been a consistently popular home feature, they're not going anywhere this year, according to Molly Torres Portnof of DATE Interiors.

"Even for clients with bigger homes and multiple bathrooms, medicine cabinets are still incredibly useful," she said.

Whether they're custom or ready-made, recessed or mirrored, "space is very important, and having any type of hidden storage space is gold," the interior designer added.

In 2026, we can expect to see more personalized elements, like statement tiles.

Danielle Chiprut, interior designer and founder of Danielle Rose Design Co., believes that bathrooms with personal, expressive touches — such as statement tiles — are trending upward.

"Patterns like plaid, soft geometrics, or dimensional fluting bring a tactile richness that instantly gives the room character," she said. "People are craving spaces that feel crafted rather than 'standard issue,' and tile is a beautiful way to layer in artistry without overwhelming the room."

On a similar note, hand-painted tiles will also be making their way into bathrooms next year, said Torres Portnof.

Layered and intentional designs will be everywhere in 2026.

Most designers agree that there's a growing trend toward more layered designs, with cohesively blended colors, patterns, textures, and lighting taking priority over lifeless, cookie-cutter motifs.

Chiprut has noticed a decline in enthusiasm for "ultra-coordinated" packages with matching fixtures and cabinetry.

"Homeowners are moving away from that catalog feel and toward spaces with layered materials and lighting that tell a more personal story," she said.

According to Thomas, the trend won't involve clutter, but rather more intentional layouts and decor — this could look like an antique piece of art above the toilet, or an accent rug next to the tub.

Multiple lighting sources make spaces feel more relaxing and inviting.

Bathrooms can sometimes feel too stark, which is why it's essential to incorporate multiple lighting sources for balanced illumination and a cozy, welcoming feel, said Torres Portnof.

"Just like in any other room in the house, it's important to have overhead lighting and accent lighting like sconces," she told BI.

In 2026, we'll likely see more integrated LED lighting in bathrooms, with a particular shift toward backlit mirrors and under-vanity strips, according to Molly Miller, principal designer and founder of Molly Miller Interiors.

All-white bathrooms are becoming outdated.

"Bright-white, clinical bathrooms and stark-gray palettes are losing steam," Miller said.

Instead, she expects a shift toward earthier tones, like soft clays, muted greens, and warm taupes.

She also sees earthy palettes being paired with materials like honed natural stone, warm oak or walnut, and unlacquered metals, which she says will help make the space feel more grounded and restorative.

Man-made materials have fallen out of favor.

As earthy hues and natural materials dominate home spaces, Chiprut sees synthetic materials, such as plastics like acrylic, losing favor in bathrooms next year.

Instead, people might opt for dark-stained oak, wabi-sabi wood, or marble.

"Natural materials carry a quiet longevity that man-made surfaces rarely replicate," she said. "I think many homeowners are moving away from plastics and overly engineered finishes simply because they want a deeper connection to what surrounds them."

Materials like marble and wood can add a sense of warmth, she added.

Glossy, high-sheen finishes are losing momentum.

Ultra-glossy finishes may have been popular in 2025, but Chiprut believes that bathroom trend is on its way out.

"For a while, there was a push toward everything looking polished and reflective, but those surfaces can feel a bit cold and one-note," she said.

Instead, she's seeing her clients gravitate toward more tactile, matte textures that feel calming and authentic.

• Todd Combs, one of Warren Buffett's stockpickers at Berkshire Hathaway, is leaving to join JPMorgan.
• JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is a longtime admirer of Buffett and has spoken highly of Combs.
• Combs, the CEO of Berkshire-owned Geico since 2020, sat on JPMorgan's board for nine years.

Warren Buffett will soon be out of a job, but at age 95, he's probably not looking for a new one. Longtime admirer Jamie Dimon may have sprung for the next best thing by hiring his understudy.

The JPMorgan CEO has hired Todd Combs, one of Buffett's two investment managers at Berkshire Hathaway, to head up a new $10 billion group at the bank and be his special advisor.

Bringing Combs into the JPMorgan fold might be as near as Dimon can get to having Buffett himself on his team.

"Dimon may very well have viewed Combs as a close proxy for Buffett himself," David Kass, a finance professor and longtime Berkshire blogger, told Business Insider. "Although Dimon could not hire Buffett, he could hire one of his protégés."

The "main impetus" for Dimon hiring Combs was likely his observations of the investor as a JPMorgan board member over the past nine years, John Longo, a finance professor, fund manager, and the author of "Buffett's Tips," told Business Insider.

But "the fact that he ran a large financial business (Geico), is a successful fund manager, and is a protégé of Warren Buffett certainly enhance his credentials," Longo said.

He added that Combs has undoubtedly "learned a great deal" from Buffett, and JPMorgan now stands to benefit from that knowledge.

"Jamie deeply respects Warren Buffett and Todd Combs," JPMorgan said in a statement to Business Insider. Geico declined to comment.

Surprise exit

Combs ran a hedge fund before Buffett hired him in 2010. He helped set up Haven, a healthcare joint venture between Berkshire, JPMorgan, and Amazon, that launched in 2018 but closed three years later.

He was appointed CEO of Berkshire-owned Geico in 2020, and has reshaped the auto insurer to help increase profits in recent years. Buffett applauded Combs for Geico's "spectacular" improvement in his February letter to shareholders.

Combs' departure was unexpected, as Buffett had originally planned for him to take over Berkshire's vast portfolio once he and Charlie Munger were out of the picture.

But the legendary investor said during Berkshire's past two shareholder meetings that his successor as CEO, Greg Abel, would have final say over how Berkshire's capital is deployed. Berkshire announced a raft of leadership changes this week, ahead of Abel replacing Buffett on New Year's Day.

In a press release announcing the move, Dimon drew a clear line between the master and the student: "Todd Combs is one of the greatest investors and leaders I've known, having successfully managed investments alongside the most respected and successful long-term investor of our time, Warren Buffett."

The Buffett mark of approval

Dimon has frequently praised Buffett over the years.

After the Berkshire CEO announced in May that he would step down as CEO this year, Dimon said in a statement that Buffett "represents everything that is good about American capitalism and America itself."

He also lauded his "integrity, optimism, and common sense," and said he'd learned a great deal from him and was "honored to call him a friend."

Dimon told the Financial Times this week that he was quickly impressed by Combs when Buffett introduced them in 2014. The pair caught up last month and Combs said he was intrigued by the new role at JPMorgan, he told the outlet. Dimon responded that if Combs was "remotely interested in this, we're all in."

Buffett's seal of approval may have factored into Dimon's decision to hire Combs, but the billionaire banker also said in Monday's press release that he prized "Todd's experience, character and judgment" and felt "honored" to have him on board.

In his new role at JPMorgan, Combs will lead the Strategic Investment Group, part of the bank's Security and Resiliency Initiative, and focus on investing in sectors deemed important to national security, such as critical minerals and frontier technologies.

Do you work for Berkshire Hathaway and have a story to share? Get in touch with this reporter by emailing tmohamed@insider.com or messaging theron.36 on Signal.

• Over 140 bipartisan lawmakers wrote in opposition to Trump's proposed student-loan limits.
• The new limits would exclude advanced nursing programs from the higher professional degree borrowing cap.
• While most advanced nursing programs wouldn't be affected, lawmakers said it could exacerbate the healthcare shortage.

Opposition toward new student-loan limits in President Donald Trump's repayment overhaul is mounting.

On Friday, a bipartisan group of over 140 lawmakers sent a letter to Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent urging him to revise the Department of Education's proposal to place new student-loan limits on professional degree programs.

The department recently concluded its negotiations on the student-loan payment changes that Trump signed into law in his "big beautiful" spending legislation. The changes included borrowing caps for graduate and professional students: a $100,000 lifetime limit for graduate students, and a $200,000 lifetime limit for professional students.

The crux of the debate centered on which programs qualify as "professional," and the department identified 10 programs, including medicine, dentistry, and law, that would meet its new definition. Post-graduate nursing programs are not included within the professional definition, and the lawmakers wrote that the omission could exacerbate the ongoing nursing shortage.

"Classifying these programs as graduate programs would result in these students having to take out additional student loans to cover the remainder of their tuition, which will limit the ability for students to complete their advanced degree," the letter said.

The lawmakers used the example of the Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist program, which can cost over $200,000. They said that the proposed $100,000 cap is "restricting the pipeline of CRNAs and further limiting an anesthesia workforce that is suffering from shortages across all provider types."

Ellen Keast, the department's press secretary for education, said in a statement that "misinformation on TikTok has caused confusion" about the proposed student-loan limits. Keast cited data from the Department of Education showing that 95% of nursing students are borrowing within the student-loan limits.

"As for the most expensive outlying 5%, enrolled students are grandfathered into current lending limits to ensure there are no barriers to completion," Keast said. "We expect that institutions charging tuition rates well above market prices will consider lowering tuition thanks to these historic reforms."

Business Insider previously reported that, based on data from the College Scorecard, most advanced nursing programs would not be affected by the proposed caps. However, advocates still expressed concern about their implications. Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the American Nurses Association, told Business Insider that removing the professional designation for nurses could make it difficult to recruit and retain staff in the industry.

"It's going to be a really bad revolving issue where we don't have enough faculty to produce enough nurses to replace the nurses who are retiring," she said.

The Department of Education is planning to implement these changes beginning in July of 2026, and its proposal is still subject to change based on the comments it receives from the public early next year.

• I'm a health journalist who's tried many pasta-sauce recipes made entirely of whole ingredients.
• My favorite one uses only five ingredients and is surprisingly high in protein and fiber.
• A dietitian even described my Mediterranean diet-friendly sauce as "brilliantly balanced."

Pasta with sauce is, and always will be, one of my most beloved comfort meals.

It's also one of the simplest, speediest, and most satisfying combos in my cooking repertoire, serving as a reliable staple at the end of my busiest days.

Because I've been trying to reduce the amount of ultra-processed foods in my diet, I've experimented with homemade sauces that are relatively low-effort yet made with entirely whole ingredients.

After sampling a range of recipes over the past few months, one flavorful sauce based on a recipe shared by Caroline Hanna, a nutritionist and chef, has emerged as a clear winner.

Here's how to make my favorite creamy pasta sauce

• 2 red bell peppers, deseeded and chopped
• 200 grams cherry tomatoes
• 5 garlic cloves, peeled
• 200 grams butter beans, rinsed and drained (weigh them once drained)
• 150 grams ricotta

1. Preheat your oven to 390 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Add peppers, tomatoes, and garlic cloves to a baking tray and top with a drizzle of olive oil, salt, pepper, and dried herbs of your choice.
3. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until the ingredients are cooked through. Let the tray cool for a few minutes.
4. Add the baked vegetables to a blender with the beans and ricotta. You can also add some Parmesan and fresh basil at this step.
5. Blend until smooth. If you have a small blender, you may need to add the ingredients gradually between each blend.
6. Stir the sauce into cooked pasta to heat through, mix in more Parmesan, season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

The recipe yields four servings, with each containing about 12 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber. If you have leftover sauce, keep it in a sealed container in the fridge and use it within five days.

You can pair the sauce with any type of pasta you like. I typically go for a whole-wheat option for added fiber.

Before the bean-averse shy away from this sauce, let it be known that no one I've made it for has ever guessed they're even an ingredient in this recipe — you really can't taste them.

The blended beans just contribute to the sauce's smooth, creamy texture.

I'd never guess how nutritious the sauce is just by tasting it

I love this sauce because it's packed with vegetables, fiber, and protein, but it still tastes as good as (if not better than) any jarred option I've bought in a grocery store.

It also provides more protein and fiber per serving than most store-bought options I've found.

For more insights, I asked Nichola Ludlam-Raine, a dietitian and the author of "How Not to Eat Ultra-Processed," to review my recipe. She called the sauce "brilliantly balanced and nutrient-dense."

"It's rich in fiber, plant-based protein, and micronutrients," she said, adding that the fiber in the vegetables and butter beans can help support gut health and make the sauce more filling.

The dietitian also said this sauce "aligns with a Mediterranean-style pattern of eating," which focuses on fresh produce and plant-based proteins while limiting processed foods.

"It's packed with antioxidants, especially vitamin C and carotenoids, from the red peppers and tomatoes, and it contains healthy fats from the olive oil, which also helps the body absorb fat-soluble nutrients," Ludlam-Raine said.

Plus, it's easy to customize and dress up

If I have a little extra time and energy, I serve my saucy pasta with chicken, green vegetables, and pine nuts.

For those who want to pack in more fiber, Ludlam-Raine said, you can stir extra vegetables, such as spinach or roasted zucchini, into the sauce.

To add more protein to the sauce itself, you can swap the ricotta for cottage cheese. Personally, I prefer the taste of ricotta, but both are excellent options.

You can also use almost any variety of beans in the sauce, though I find butter beans work best. When I used red kidney beans (which you can see in the featured photos), the sauce came out beautifully.

"Overall, this is exactly the kind of nourishing recipe I encourage people to make," Ludlam-Raine said.

• AI is transforming the chief human resources officer role into an AI strategist position.
• HR leaders now bridge people, technology, and data to shape the future of work with AI.
• This article is part of "How AI is Changing Talent", a series exploring how AI is reshaping hiring, development, and retention.

AI is changing how companies hire, train, and lead, and in the process, the chief human resources officer's role is expanding.

Today's top HR leaders are becoming AI strategists, helping their organizations navigate the next wave of workplace transformation.

"The old model of HR was employees over here, technology over there," says Thomas Hutzschenreuter, a university professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). "But the new model of work is human-AI collaboration."

AI is a coworker now, he says, and that means that "HR has a bigger mandate. They need to understand not just people and culture, but go deeper into the strategy, the business, and the technology itself."

To understand how companies are navigating the shift, Business Insider spoke with people leaders at Citizens Bank, one of the largest banks in the Northeast; Boston Consulting Group, a global consultancy; and UiPath, an automation software testing company.

All interviews have been edited for brevity.

Susan LaMonica, chief human resources officer of Citizens Bank

CHROs are becoming the architects of the future of work, bridging people, technology, and data.

There are many questions we are in the middle of that are germane to how we as an organization move forward, such as: What's going to happen to entry-level roles? What roles are emerging? And how do we reskill people in a way that prepares them to make shifts thoughtfully?

We need people who can quickly learn, adapt, and change. Our technologists need to develop their business acumen, and our business folks need to develop their digital and technical fluency. The lines are blurring.

My HR team is developing a baseline of skills and capabilities. We're having conversations with consulting partners and clients. There's an openness to communal learning because everyone is trying to figure out the same things: what the AI-driven workforce will look like, how to break work into tasks for AI vs. humans, and what AI agents can handle versus humans.

We're subject to a lot of regulatory oversight in our industry. It's great that people can develop their own AI agents — there's a push to decentralize these capabilities — but we need to be mindful of risk and governance and how we do this in a safe, ethical way.

Alicia Pittman, chief people officer of Boston Consulting Group

AI is changing how work gets done and what work gets done. Business models are evolving, and the way companies serve clients is shifting. The CHRO role now requires adapting to both at once. It's a tall order.

In consulting, our ability to add value means constantly evolving our approach to human capital. The issues are constant; the pace is what's different. Today, a quarter of our business involves AI, which wasn't true even two years ago.

We need our people to be AI fluent. About 90% of our workforce uses AI regularly, and more than half use it daily. To get there, we've built a multi-layered support system: a 1,400-person enablement network acting as evangelists and coaches.

We've upskilled more than 100 team coaches to provide hands-on support. We deploy experts directly into teams to help them reimagine workflows and run innovation competitions to keep momentum going.

Our HR team has taken the lead. We started with recruiting — consolidating six IT systems into one and integrating AI throughout the platform and across performance management and development.

We're also experimenting with voice tools, chat interfaces, and AI avatars for real-time coaching. These tools give employees confidence, learning opportunities, and instant feedback. They don't replace managers — they free them up for higher-level thinking and relationship-building.

Agi Garaba, chief people officer of UiPath

Our business is automation, so that muscle is very strong for my team. But the next frontier of agentic AI is an adjustment.

We're using these AI agents — but we're also creating them. One agent, almost in production, helps with performance reviews, which is a time-consuming and sometimes dreaded task. Our agent helps employees write their self-assessment and collects feedback, bringing it together much quicker. It also helps managers by consolidating feedback from multiple resources.

It won't make rating decisions on the manager's behalf, but it makes the year-end much more seamless. Instead of spending time on admin, managers can focus on the feedback itself and my team on the right framework for career development.

There are a lot of unknowns at the moment, and fear is natural. But it should fuel curiosity and development. This is the time to think about career development seriously.

We have this idea that AI is only affecting entry-level or lower-level jobs. The truth is that technology is replacing skills that very highly skilled people have been doing.

If you look at the medical field and aviation — areas where we always thought technology wouldn't touch — that's no longer the case. It's not going to happen overnight. We have time to prepare. But it's relevant for everybody in any profession.