Companies are investing heavily in AI tools but neglecting the human side of transformation—and experts warn that true business value requires fundamentally rewiring how employees work, not just layering expensive technology onto outdated processes.

What happened

At Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Aspen, industry leaders including Deloitte's China Widener and ServiceNow's Chris Bedi highlighted a structural mismatch in corporate AI spending. For every dollar invested, only about seven cents goes to human enablement while 93 cents flows to technology. Amazon's dismantling of an internal AI leaderboard exposed how employees were gaming systems to inflate productivity scores rather than driving real business outcomes.

Why it matters

Roughly 90% of enterprise AI use cases focus on internal cost-cutting rather than revenue growth, leaving most companies playing defense. A recent PwC study found that just 20% of companies are capturing nearly three-quarters of AI's total economic value—suggesting the majority are falling behind because they are not rethinking their actual business functions. The real barrier to success, experts argued, is psychological: professionals must 'unlearn' workflows that have worked for twenty years, which requires building trust and communicating how AI augments human capability rather than replacing it.

What to watch

Leaders need to move beyond shallow metrics that track minutes and hours saved and instead focus on true organizational key results. Phil Wiser, former EVP and CTO at Paramount, advocated for creating centralized engineering teams embedded within corporate divisions to help reimagine specific business functions from the ground up. Without this cultural shift, executives risk triggering widespread resistance.