This is nothing new though. For decades, managers have fallen for “solution in a box” sales pitches even though front line workers know it’s doomed to fail as soon as they set eyes on it. This time the solution just happens to be “AI.”
It’s worse now than ever though, many managers have been steeped in tech optimism their whole working careers. The failures of “revolutionary new systems” have been forgotten about while the success of other things are lauded.
They’ve been primed to jump on any new “innovation” and at the same time B2B marketing has started adopting some of the most manipulative practices that used to be only used on consumers. They’ve crafted a narrative that shapes discourse so the main objections that appear are irrelevant to the actual issues managers might run in to.
Stuff like “but what if it is TOO good?!” and “what if the wrong people get their hands on this AMAZINGLY POWERFUL new tech?!”
Instead of “but does this actually understand anything or is it just giving output that looks correct?” or “ Wait, so, how was this training data obtained? Will there be legal issues from deliverables made with this?”
The average manager has been primed by the zeitgeist to ask the sales rep the kinds of questions they want to answer.
Seems to me that a lot of the world’s problems start with “well, the managers think…” They all seem extremely bad at the whole managing thing, good thing we don’t overpay them or anything like that.
This is nothing new though. For decades, managers have fallen for “solution in a box” sales pitches even though front line workers know it’s doomed to fail as soon as they set eyes on it. This time the solution just happens to be “AI.”
It’s worse now than ever though, many managers have been steeped in tech optimism their whole working careers. The failures of “revolutionary new systems” have been forgotten about while the success of other things are lauded.
They’ve been primed to jump on any new “innovation” and at the same time B2B marketing has started adopting some of the most manipulative practices that used to be only used on consumers. They’ve crafted a narrative that shapes discourse so the main objections that appear are irrelevant to the actual issues managers might run in to.
Stuff like “but what if it is TOO good?!” and “what if the wrong people get their hands on this AMAZINGLY POWERFUL new tech?!”
Instead of “but does this actually understand anything or is it just giving output that looks correct?” or “ Wait, so, how was this training data obtained? Will there be legal issues from deliverables made with this?”
The average manager has been primed by the zeitgeist to ask the sales rep the kinds of questions they want to answer.
Seems to me that a lot of the world’s problems start with “well, the managers think…” They all seem extremely bad at the whole managing thing, good thing we don’t overpay them or anything like that.