AI hangover hits firms; cure isn't more GenAI use

The article traces a sharp swing in corporate sentiment. After a year in which leaders, driven by a fear of missing out, poured money into GenAI and gave employees access to tools such as Co-Pilot, Gemini, or Claude, many are now confronting the consequences. The author describes asking hundreds of leaders whether they felt their company was trailing on AI adoption, and their nearly unanimous yes confirmed the FOMO diagnosis.

The hangover, as the author frames it, is not a technology failure but a mental-model failure. Companies treated GenAI adoption as a technology rollout when it is closer to an overhaul of how people think. The result is a split workforce: a small share — around 5% — who use the tools to stretch their thinking, and everyone else, whose raw output rises but whose work quality and critical thinking do not. The people on the receiving end of that extra output end up overwhelmed, and some simply ignore it as average.

The proposed cure has three parts: reposition GenAI as a tool to improve thinking rather than replace it, reduce the sense of threat that drives resistance, and make hard thinking easier. The stakes hinge on whether leaders can slow down and lead by example. As one CHRO, Yan Hong Lee of DBS bank in Singapore, put it, her main message to leadership is simply: "Can you all please just calm down a little?"