Podcast Star Outsources Entire Job to AI, Now Awards Robots $20,000
KEY POINTS
- •In 2025, Steven Bartlett challenged FlightStory’s 100 employees to deploy AI agents in creative, operational tasks.
- •The pre-production team won $20,000 and saved the company an estimated $1.18 million with AI process improvements.
- •FlightStory now produces an AI-animated kids series, translates content into 14 languages, but still prefers humans for heartfelt LinkedIn posts.
Steven Bartlett, Qatar-posed podcast impresario, didn’t merely talk AI on 'The Diary of a CEO'—he handed his 100-employee company FlightStory a two-month AI challenge in 2025. The pre-production team earned a $20,000 prize for replacing nearly every process, magically saving $1.18 million along the way. Their crowning achievement? An AI-animated kids show called 'Steven's World' starring a young AI Bartlett adventuring with Neil deGrasse Tyson bots, negotiating with major streamers in probably-land. FlightStory also pumped out 14-language podcast translations, notably scoring $200,000 from Spanish listeners' love of AI-voiced Steve’s mumblings (spelling errors intact). Meanwhile, they ditched LinkedIn AI posts for human typos, claiming emotional resonance beats robot perfection—because nothing says connection like a deliberate ‘misspelling by design.’
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(1 of 3)Nothing says 'future of entertainment' like an AI kid’s show starring a digital Steven Bartlett arguing with a Neil deGrasse Tyson bot while humans keep manually typo-ing LinkedIn posts to stay 'emotionally real.'
Outsourcing your job to AI saves millions, gets you a kids' show, yet you still need humans to fumble Twitter posts perfectly. Progress!
FlightStory’s AI replaced so many humans it even learned how to spell mistakes perfectly for that 'authentic CEO on LinkedIn' vibe.
Source: Businessinsider | Published: 3/9/2026 | Author: Lucia Moses
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