Governing AI transformation: Why workforce visibility matters

But Megan, let's talk a little bit about AI.

Because I think one of the things we've been hearing so much about over the last several months are companies that are doing... kind of major layoffs, major haircuts and saying we can use AI to replace these roles.

Any indication how that's going?

Yeah, it's really interesting.

There has been a real drumbeat of news stories confirming something that I think a lot of us in the trenches suspected for a while now.

And that's, you know, AI related layoffs from the last year or two are kind of starting to quietly unwind.

There's a great new report out from Forrester where they're now predicting that half of all AI attributive layoffs will be quietly reversed.

And in that similar survey, 55% of business leaders actually admitted their AI driven layoffs were a mistake.

That's fascinating.

It's fascinating, Megan, and a great reminder and maybe not a wake-up call, but just a reminder to directors and to those in leadership positions.

AI is not magic.

Despite what vendors may tell you, AI is just data plus math.

It cannot come in and figure out your universe for you and do all the things that you want it to do with no oversight, no

direction, and no human involvement.

Megan, it really reminds me of the conversation we had maybe a couple episodes ago about the article we saw in CFO Daily where CFOs were sort of raising the flag of, hey, this is actually costing us more, not less.

And one of the reasons it was costing more, of course, is the cost of tokens.

Every time you do an AI prompt or an AI search, it costs money.

It's not free.

But I think there's...

The more, and I put that in quotes, also has to do with digital transformation is never free, it's never cheap, and it's never fast.

And AI implementation, it's digital transformation again.

You know, I think somehow we all got a little bit swayed into this idea that AI was going to be different, right? Implementation of AI, somehow, magically, it was just going to weave its way seamlessly into our lives and not require much effort or staff or time or money.

What were we thinking?

Well, that's really what jumped out to me too, that this is not going to be a one-for-one exercise.

Because it's not that technology didn't work at all.