AI Creates Chaos in Corporate Strategic Decisions

The enthusiasm for artificial intelligence is profoundly transforming the way large companies make their strategic decisions. Nik Suresh, in an entertaining analysis, highlights the sometimes absurd consequences of this trend, drawing on anecdotes gathered from anonymous sources.

In a striking example, a senior executive admitted to never having used ChatGPT or any other AI tool, despite having designed a technical strategy entirely centered around AI for a company generating over $2 billion in revenue. This revelation raises questions about the authenticity and depth of some companies' commitment to AI.

An engineer from another company shared a revealing experience: he was using AI to rewrite the code of their Go repository in Zig while working on other tasks, simply to secure his job. This anecdote illustrates the pressure employees feel to integrate AI into their processes, often without any real necessity.

A conversation with a skeptical executive from an overly enthusiastic company revealed another aspect of this frenzy. When asked why unrealistic promises about AI were repeated without opposition, he explained that it was partly due to exaggerated marketing strategies. However, the true reason was more complex: client executives were making extravagant claims about productivity gains supposedly 100 times higher. Contradicting these claims could harm the credibility of client executives, be perceived as an attack, and even lead to the cancellation of business contracts. For supplier executives, questioning these promises could jeopardize their jobs.