Here’s How to Know If You’re Getting the Most Out of AI – with Bryan McCann, CTO of You.com
Here’s How to Know If You’re Getting the Most Out of AI – with Bryan McCann, CTO of You.com  
Podcast: Beyond The Prompt - How to use AI in your company
Published On: Wed Feb 04 2026
Description: In this episode, Bryan McCann joins Henrik and Jeremy to explore how search is evolving from simple queries into more conversational and agent-driven systems, and why prompting is likely a temporary skill. Bryan shares how his definition of productivity changed as an AI researcher, moving away from doing the work himself and toward designing plans and experiments that machines could run continuously.The conversation expands to leadership and organizational design. Bryan explains why helping others learn how to work with AI became his highest-leverage activity, and offers a simple rule of thumb: try to get AI to do the task first, and treat anything it can’t do as an interesting research problem. Henrik and Jeremy connect this to Bryan’s view that organizations may increasingly resemble neural networks, with information flowing more freely and decisions less tied to rigid hierarchies.Key Takeaways:Productivity can be measured by machine output, not human effortBryan explains how “keeping the GPUs full” became his primary measure of productivity.Prompting is useful, but likely temporaryThe episode discusses why future systems may rely less on explicit prompts and more on inferred context.Try AI first, then learn from what it can’t doTasks AI struggles with can reveal meaningful research opportunities.Leadership is about scaling othersBryan shares how his focus shifted from scaling himself to helping his team increase impact.Organizations may benefit from neural-network-like designBetter information flow and fewer bottlenecks can improve decision-making.YOU: You.comBryan's website: bryanmccann.orgLinkedIn: linkedin/company/youdotcom/00:00 Intro: Keeping the GPUs Full00:22 Meet Bryan McCann: CTO & co-founder of You.com00:43 Why Search Is Breaking - and Why It Becomes a Skill01:41 From Search to Agents03:18 The Case for Proactive, Context-Aware AI04:30 We Don’t Need New Hardware - We Need Trust05:43 The Trust Problem of Always-On Listening07:57 Trust as the Real Bottleneck (Not AI Capability)09:52 Delivering Immediate Value to Earn Trust12:13 Business Models and Escaping the Attention Economy17:27 What “Agents” Really Mean - and Why the Term Will Fade20:37 Productivity, Parkinson’s Law, and Keeping the Machines Running23:52 Scaling Yourself vs. Scaling Your Team29:57 Building Culture: Automate, Throw Away, Rebuild35:46 Designing Organizations Like Neural Networks45:02 Recruiting for Initiative in an AI-Native Organization49:18 The debrief 📜 Read the transcript for this episode: podcast.beyondtheprompt.ai/heres-how-to-know-if-youre-getting-the-most-out-of-ai-with-bryan-mccann-cto-of-youcom/transcript  For more prompts, tips, and AI tools. Check out our website: https://www.beyondtheprompt.ai/ or follow Jeremy or Henrik on Linkedin:Henrik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/werdelinJeremy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyutley Show edited by Emma Cecilie Jensen.