Everyone Is Investing in AI. Why are Leaders Disappointed?

Last week’s conversation with my friend, Sandeep, lingered long after we were done speaking. Our conversation about the ongoing impact of AI and the neighbor boy we’re suddenly all being compared to led us to the anchoring belief that I > AI. And to be honest, I have been sitting with that conversation all week.

While I was reflecting on it, a companion piece crossed my desk. KPMG’s Global AI Pulse, a survey of more than 2,000 senior executives distributed across 20 different countries, came across my desk. Remarkably, 1/3 of these leaders cite a limited understanding of AI costs and economics as a barrier to deploying it.

Nearly half say they have already scaled back AI agent deployments because the costs outweighed the benefits. And yet, roughly 75% indicate that AI will remain a top investment priority, even in a recession.

So, basically, AI expense is increasing. Commitment to the technology is unwavering. Yet, the results are underwhelming.

I know these people. Okay, so maybe not these exact executives, but over the years I’ve worked with countless just like them. I have sat with them in coaching sessions, talked with them on my podcast, and engaged with them at industry conferences. They are leaders in the thick of it.

What the Numbers Really Say

Here is what I have come to realize: this dynamic moment is not a story about machines or even technology. It’s a tale as old as time. A parable of minds and hearts.

Consider the conditions the survey describes. Leaders adopted AI before they understood it. They acted from a position of fear of being left behind rather than having a firm idea of where they were going. They believed that a tool could be dropped into an organization like a coin into a vending machine, and transformation would come tumbling out.

But this reactivity is not strategy, and reactivity is expensive. That is the part the survey makes visible in dollars, but the dollars are the least of it. In my conversations with leaders, the real costs of AI show up somewhere else: teams exhausted by shifting mandates and unclear focus, people wondering whether they are being stacked up against a computer and how they will measure up, leaders who confess that they cannot tell anymore whether they are leading the AI revolution or being dragged along by it.

These are examples of fear just below the surface of all the decision-making.

The Perspective We Are Missing

The AI debate has plenty of lenses from which to view it. It has the technical lens, the financial lens, the competitive lens, the doom loop lens, and even the utopia lens, all clamoring for perspective.

What it is missing from the debate is the mindfulness lens. The innately human perspective.

Mindfulness is not just something you tack on as an afterthought. It is a fundamental foundation in approach. It’s something you carry with you into every moment. Because what mindfulness actually helps with is the capacity to pause between stimulus and response. To recognize the fear driving the decision, even before the decision is made.

Mindfulness helps you ask the right questions. Even in the middle of the moment when there’s a risk of being swept away, mindfulness helps you regain control and consider: What is the objective? Who does this serve? What are we trying to accomplish?

A leader who can mindfully approach these questions is practicing discernment. In the yogic tradition, it’s called viveka, or the ability to distinguish what’s real from what’s merely dazzling.

In my talk with Dr. Sandeep Krishnamurthy last week, he gave us a sentence that centers this thought: intelligence is not consciousness. AI acts like it is intelligent. But acting isn’t real.

An organization can act as though it has a strategy. But as the KPMG survey suggests, very few are acting in alignment with that strategy.

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What I Hear in the Thick of It

Consider the engineering leader who told me her team had been handed five AI tools in one quarter plus a target for “adoption metrics” but there was no conversation, not a single one, about the objective of these tools.

I think of the executive who admitted the AI mandate came from the Board of Directors and that he was translating panic downward while calling it vision. I think of the mid-career professional who asked me, with real fear in his voice, aunty’s old question about the neighbor boy in its new form: why can’t I be more like AI?

Every one of these is a person experiencing reactivity. But here’s what I know from my training and research into mindfulness over the years: you cannot think your way out of reactivity. You’ve got to pause your way out.

The moment of pause is one where the plural intelligences Sandeep spoke of come into play. It’s the intuitive intelligence that senses something is off. It’s the relational intelligence that notices the team is scared, not just resistant. It’s the moral intelligence that asks not can we do it but should we. These are exactly the intelligent capacities that reactivity shuts down, and exactly the ones the moment requires.

Artificial intelligence is singular. The wisdom to deploy it well is plural. And this ability is something that only humans can offer.

It’s Both-And, As Always

I am taking courses to learn more about AI. To be honest, AI even helped with this essay, suggesting plenty of edits. But I kept my discernment close, taking only the suggestions that served the writing and releasing the rest. Ironically, that is the practice at its core. It is about embracing AI while remaining anchored in the humanity of who you are. Both, together.

The invitation is to stop choosing between rushing and resisting – the only two options the current conversation seems to offer, and to stubbornly stand in a third place while remaining engaged, curious, and awake. Stay present so that you can adopt AI with intention. Stay grounded enough to know when pausing is wisdom and discerning enough to remain focused on the goal of the tool and objective of its use.

The executives in that KPMG survey are no dummies. They are reporting on the outcome of moving fast without intention.

And that’s just one of the reasons that I > AI. Not because we compute faster. But because we can be more mindful. We can pause mid-momentum and choose differently. No system can do that.

And Sandeep, since I hope you will read this, consider this essay my half of a conversation that is clearly not finished. You gave us the concept of AI as the neighbor’s boy. The data is starting to roll in on AI effectiveness and implementation outcomes. There is more here for us to explore.

So here is my question for my audience this week: Where are you in your relationship with AI? Are you adopting it, resisting it, or learning about it? Are you reacting to it, or responding mindfully?

🎧 If you missed my conversation with Dr. Sandeep Krishnamurthy, this is the place where the conversation began — listen here.

Source: KPMG Global AI Pulse Survey — more than two thousand senior business leaders across twenty countries. Full quarterly reports at kpmg.com/aipulse.

Origiinally published on my Substack at mindfulleaders.info