Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping nearly every industry. Ticketing and live events are no exception. As organizations push to adopt new tools and systems, one question remains front and center: how can leaders balance the efficiency AI offers with the empathy and support their teams still need? That question anchors “AI Meets Humanity: Leading People, Not Just Processes, in a Tech-Driven World,” a session led by Kay Burnham, CEO of Perceiving Possibilities, at the 47th Annual INTIX Conference & Exhibition in Las Vegas.
Kay Burnham
Burnham believes the conversation is both urgent and overdue. “There is a lot of fear right now around AI. There is a lot of misunderstanding. There is a lot of confusion,” she says. “And none of those things lead to good leadership outcomes.” In an industry that continues to become more technology-driven, she adds, leaders don’t need to become technical experts, but they do need clarity. “Non-tech leaders need to at least understand where the ball is and where it’s going so that they can help their staff come along in a way that is empowering instead of fear-based.”
Rather than diving straight into tools, Burnham’s session focuses on grounding leaders in understanding. “They are going to get a crash course in what AI is and what it isn’t,” she says. Attendees will also benefit from Burnham’s behind-the-scenes experience. “I spent three or four months as an AI trainer a couple of years ago,” she explains. “They will get that perspective and leave feeling more grounded and secure in their knowledge, and where they need to be going to lead their staff.”
She is also careful to set expectations around tools. Burnham is not there to make recommendations or promote specific platforms, but to help leaders understand how different types of AI function so they can make informed decisions. “There are so many tools out there. It would be absolutely impossible for me to make recommendations, but I will use certain platforms as examples of the different ways that AI works,” she says. “[I will touch on] some of the more well-known platforms, like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, in particular, because they are very distinct AI models that are very good at distinct things, and that is important when you are learning to evaluate where to place AI in your business.”
Burnham’s path into AI began long before it became a headline topic. “I have always been a tech nerd,” she says, while reminiscing about programming computers at age 11 on a Commodore 64. When ChatGPT launched in 2022, curiosity quickly turned into hands-on exploration. “I just jumped in. I was trying to get my coaching business going … I was the only person in my company, and so I wanted help. I wanted help to be more efficient, to speed up things that were challenging for me personally.” Burnham’s exploration eventually led to remote gig work as an AI trainer for a company building AI for other organizations. “They were looking for people with advanced degrees in psychology and working in fields like mindfulness and those kinds of hot-button topics,” she says. “I thought, ‘Oh, that sounds like me.’ And they accepted me right away.”
That experience informs one of the session’s core themes — that leaders don’t need deep technical knowledge of AI, but they do require a thoughtful approach to using it while supporting their teams. “That is the crux of this entire session,” Burnham says. “The framework I'll talk about is really just simple, critical questions that get to the heart of where the fear lies, where the efficiency is. And how to talk about it in a way that has some historical context to it, because that historical context is what can really [reduce] the fear.”
At the heart of that framework is a deceptively simple question: “Is it standard? Straightforward? Or is it nuanced and complex? And that’s the distinction,” Burnham says. While these questions may sound simple, she emphasizes that deciding where work falls is exactly why leadership matters. “Because what is nuanced, and what is complex, and what is standard, and straightforward, right? Those are the decisions that are the reason leaders are in the position they’re in, because they have to explore those difficult questions.”
A significant part of the session also focuses on communication, particularly when AI creates anxiety among staff. Burnham encourages leaders to lean into history. “Look back, even just within our own industry, at the historical context of these kinds of changes, what the fear was at that time, and then what the reality turned out to be,” she says. She points to the arrival of the internet as a parallel moment, recalling how the industry panicked. “Oh my God, frontline workers are gone. We will never have a ticket office again. Oh my God, this is horrible. That wasn’t the reality at all.”
Her message to teams today is clear. “We don't understand everything about AI. We have to learn. We are going to learn together. And let's all remember, this industry didn't collapse, and all of our jobs didn't go away because the internet came around. They are not all going to go away because AI came around.”
For leaders concerned about cost, Burnham says the barrier to entry is lower than many expect. “Almost every AI platform out there has a free level. There is no reason that you have to pay for this if you can't afford it as an organization,” she notes. “You just have to get creative and strategic about how many platforms you are using and what their free limitations are. You also don't have to understand tech at all to use AI. It is a technology that just requires good question asking. So, learning to ask the right questions with enough concrete detail, and then to understand where to question the answer you get back, is really all you need.”
Leading “like a human,” Burnham says, means knowing where AI stops. “It is not turning over your critical thought to a computer,” she explains. “AI will never have your lived experience. And that's how you lead like a human. AI can provide knowledge and scaffolding, but it is your lived experience as a worker … [and] leader in this industry that keeps you connected to the human side of it. So, leaning into that while using AI to scaffold some extra knowledge or structure, that's all you need.”
Her invitation to INTIX 2026 attendees is especially aimed at those who feel uneasy. “If you think that AI is a tool that doesn’t need to be in your job — if you think there is no way you are going to find a simple solution through AI to make your day-to-day life easier — you need to be at this session,” Burnham says. And she hopes the skeptics leave feeling steadier. “I really want the people who are scared of it, think it doesn't belong in their ticket office, don't see how this is going to be good, who are really worried about it [to join me], because I want them to leave feeling a little safer in this world.” She adds, “The people who know it can work and are curious about this, great, I want them there too.”
As ticketing professionals get ready to pack their bags for Las Vegas, Burnham leaves attendees with a perspective that makes this session all the more important. “There is a common saying out there and it’s fairly accurate. Your job is probably not going to be replaced by AI,” she says. “But you may be replaced by someone who understands AI.”
Editor’s Note: Join us at INTIX 2026 to explore what leadership looks like in an AI-driven world. Register today and join the conversations driving the future of ticketing and live events.
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