Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve talked about AI from a few different angles. Alan focused on curiosity. Tiffany focused on asking better questions. This week, I kept coming back to one thought:
AI is making people more important, not less.
That may sound backwards, especially with how much attention AI is getting. But the more capable technology becomes, the more important judgment becomes.
AI can summarize. AI can automate. AI can recommend. But someone still has to decide what matters.
This week’s headlines made that clear. Amazon Q had to be patched after researchers showed how prompt injection could expose cloud credentials. Critical vulnerabilities continue surfacing in enterprise technologies. Infostealer infrastructure was disrupted after stealing credentials and browser data from hundreds of thousands of systems. A major insurance regulatory body was targeted through a trusted business platform.
The tools keep changing. The responsibility doesn’t.
Someone still has to ask whether an output makes sense. Someone still has to understand the business impact. Someone still has to decide who owns the risk. Someone still has to communicate clearly when technology creates exposure.
That’s not a technology problem. That’s a people problem. And I don’t mean that negatively. I think it’s actually the opportunity.
The organizations that succeed with AI won’t be the ones that simply adopt it the fastest. They’ll be the ones that pair it with people who understand context, ownership, governance, and risk.
AI may change how we work. It does not remove the need for people who know what good looks like.
