Is AI the Best Path Forward for Businesses?
AI is not the problem. Over-reliance is.
That is the most honest answer I can give when asked why so many business owners experiment with AI, get excited, roll out tools across their organization—and then quietly stop using them, scale them back, or grow frustrated with the results.
As a Chief Operating Officer overseeing multiple departments, dozens of managers, and thousands of frontline staff in the events industry, I believe AI is one of the most powerful operational accelerators we’ve seen in decades. When deployed correctly, it increases speed, improves efficiency, reduces friction, and unlocks scale that was previously inaccessible without massive overhead.
But the wall we keep hitting as business owners isn’t that AI over-promised. And it isn’t that the learning curve was too steep.
The wall we’re hitting is that as work becomes easier, thinking becomes optional which is dangerous.
The Real Issue: When Tools Replace Judgment
In theory, AI is meant to support human decision-making. In practice, I’m seeing it increasingly replace it.
We’ve given our teams tools that can write emails in seconds, generate schedules instantly, analyze data, summarize conversations, draft proposals, and even recommend next steps. These tools are impressive. They are efficient. They are fast.
But speed without scrutiny is not progress.
What I’m seeing across departments, experience levels and roles, is a subtle but growing pattern:
Staff are trusting AI more than their own judgment
Outputs are being accepted without review
Context is being ignored
Tone is being delegated
Accuracy is being assumed
Accountability is becoming blurry
The unspoken belief is: “If AI produced it, it must be right.” And that belief is where things start to break down.
The Events Industry Magnifies This Risk
The events industry is a pressure cooker. It is fast-moving, people-heavy, logistics-intensive, and reputation-driven. We manage live environments where mistakes don’t just live in an inbox—they play out in real time, in front of clients, partners, guests, and staff.
There is no “undo” button at a live event.
When AI is used without human oversight in this environment, the consequences aren’t theoretical. They are operational.
A missed detail becomes a staffing failure.
A wrong assumption becomes a client escalation.
A poorly worded message becomes a credibility issue.
AI doesn’t understand nuance the way humans do. It doesn’t feel urgency. It doesn’t read a room. It doesn’t know when a “technically correct” response is still the wrong response.
And yet, I’ve watched capable, intelligent, digitally native professionals defer to AI instead of themselves simply because it feels safer, faster, and more authoritative.
Digitally Native ≠ Critically Engaged
One of the ironies of this moment is that many of our teams are digitally native. They are comfortable with technology. They adapt quickly. They onboard to tools with ease. They move fast.
From a marketing standpoint, that’s powerful. We proudly position our company as modern, agile, tech-enabled, and forward-thinking. Our teams are fluent in digital workflows, automation, and AI-assisted processes. That’s part of our value proposition.
But digital fluency does not automatically translate to critical engagement. In fact, in some cases, it does the opposite. Because when tools are intuitive, outputs are polished, and answers arrive instantly, the instinct to pause, question, and validate gets weaker, not stronger.
The friction that once forced people to think has been removed. And friction, as inconvenient as it can be, is often where judgment is formed.
When Convenience Becomes Complacency
The wall I keep hitting as an operator is not resistance to AI. It’s complacency because of AI.
I see it when:
Emails are sent without being read
Feedback responses lack empathy because tone was outsourced
Reports are forwarded without understanding the data
Decisions are justified with “that’s what the tool said”
This isn’t laziness. It’s conditioning.
We are training people—often unintentionally—to believe that:
Thinking is optional
Context is secondary
Human intuition is less reliable than an algorithm
Responsibility ends once the prompt is written
That mindset erodes ownership which is the backbone of any scalable operation.
AI Is Confident—Even When It’s Wrong
One of the most dangerous characteristics of AI is not that it makes mistakes - it’s that it makes them confidently.
AI outputs are often:
Well-structured
Professionally worded
Grammatically clean
Logically presented
Which means errors don’t feel like errors, they feel authoritative. I’m less concerned about obvious mistakes than I am about subtle ones, the kind that slip through because no one thought to question them.
AI might:
Misinterpret a the context of a feedback report
Assume a ratio that doesn’t apply
Miss an emotional undertone in a team exchange
Apply generic logic to a highly specific situation
When humans stop scanning for those gaps, AI doesn’t just assist, it misleads.
The Human Touch Is Not a “Nice to Have”
There’s a narrative emerging in some business circles that human involvement is inefficient—that automation is always better, cleaner, and more scalable.
I fundamentally disagree. In service-driven industries like events, the human touch is not decorative. It is operationally essential.
Clients don’t just remember what happened. They remember how it felt.
AI cannot replicate:
Emotional intelligence
Situational awareness
Cultural sensitivity
Relationship history
Intuition built from experience
Those are human assets. And when we stop exercising them, they weaken.
What worries me most isn’t that AI is replacing tasks, it’s that it’s replacing muscle memory for thinking.
The Illusion of Efficiency
From the outside, heavy AI adoption looks like efficiency.
Faster turnaround. More output. Lower friction.
But efficiency without discernment creates downstream costs.
You save time upfront and lose it later:
Fixing misunderstandings
Repairing relationships
Re-explaining decisions
Managing escalations
Rebuilding trust
True operational excellence isn’t about how fast something gets done. It’s about how well it gets done the first time. AI can accelerate execution, but only humans can ensure alignment.
Leadership in an AI-Enabled Organization
As leaders, we have to take responsibility for how AI is framed inside our companies.
If AI is positioned as:
The answer
The authority
The final word
People will stop thinking.
But if AI is positioned as:
A draft partner
A thought starter
A support tool
A second set of eyes
People stay engaged.
In our organization, the wall we hit forced us to re-educate, not on how to use AI, but on how not to abdicate responsibility to it.
We had to reinforce a simple but powerful principle:
AI can assist your work. It cannot replace your judgment.
Why Some Business Owners Pull Back
When business owners stop using AI, it’s rarely because the tools failed.
It’s because:
Quality dipped
Voice became inconsistent
Teams disengaged
Errors increased
Accountability blurred
AI didn’t break the system. It exposed weaknesses in training, culture, and leadership expectations.
The Path Forward: Human-First, AI-Powered
I don’t believe the solution is less AI.
I believe the solution is better boundaries.
AI should:
Speed up drafts, not finalize them
Surface insights, not replace interpretation
Support teams, not substitute thinking
Enhance creativity, not homogenize it
In our company, we’re intentional about reinforcing that AI is a tool, not a crutch.
We hire smart, capable, digitally fluent people because we value their judgment, not because we want them to outsource it to software.
Final Thought
The wall we’re hitting as business owners isn’t technological. It’s philosophical.
We’re at a moment where we have to decide what kind of organizations we want to build:
Ones that are automated but disengaged
Or ones that are augmented but thoughtful
AI is here to stay. It’s a good thing, but the companies that win won’t be the ones that use AI the most.
They’ll be the ones that use it with intention, accountability, and humanity intact.
