The AI Disconnect No One’s Talking About

Leadership Optics

Leadership is over-indexing on AI’s impact. It’s about optics. They want to maintain the image of being innovative and forward-leaning. They need to show they’re ahead of the curve.

Workers Underreport

Workers are wary of job impact, so they underreport AI’s capabilities. “AI can’t do what I do” becomes the defensive position.

I’ve written more about this in Contrarian Thinking Capital.

I explore this further in Got Your Six Podcast.

Performative Innovation

Everyone’s caught in the middle doing performative innovation. Companies are building workflows to make menial tasks roughly 20% more efficient, forgetting the 40 to 100+ hours spent trying to build, test, and iterate.

The Real Gap

The disconnect between executives and workers comes down to three core problems:

Leaders over-index on AI’s impact to protect their image as innovators

Workers underreport AI’s capabilities to protect their jobs

Companies chase small efficiency gains while ignoring the true cost of getting there

Leaders over-index on AI’s impact to protect their image as innovators

Workers underreport AI’s capabilities to protect their jobs

Companies chase small efficiency gains while ignoring the true cost of getting there

This isn’t an AI problem. It’s a perception problem. Until leadership and workers are honest about what AI actually does and doesn’t do, the gap will keep growing. Start with the truth, not the optics.