AI: Automating Dysfunction One Company At A Time
June 8, 2026
If your CEO team doesn’t agree only anything, an AI system with a hefty price tag isn’t going to fix there situation says Stephen Smith in his article, “Your AI Strategy Is Just Your Dysfunction At 700 Horsepower.” Chief operators believe that spending wads of cash on expensive AI will solve all their problems. According to Gartner, it’s another story:
“In October 2025, Gartner published a survey of 413 marketing technology leaders running AI agents in pilot or production. Forty-five percent reported that the vendor-supplied agents weren’t delivering the business results the vendor had promised. About half admitted their data and technical stacks weren’t ready to run the agents at all. Half also said they didn’t have the technical talent to operate them. Gartner’s separate prediction puts more than forty percent of agentic AI projects on track to be cancelled by the end of 2027.”
Smith uses a horsepower metaphor to describe AI: “AI is horsepower. RevOps is the chassis, steering, brakes, and instrumentation. More horsepower on a broken chassis doesn’t create speed. It creates instability.”
The robots are not amused.
These companies are using AI to replace humans for “efficiency.” But “the next big thing” makes mistakes. Humans have to figure out the screw up and fix it. What does Smith suggest business leaders do? He recommends that they block out a section of time, make decisions, audit, and make fixing the mistakes one’s real job.
But what if the human with the skill to remediate has been terminated? Yo, Big Dog, just rev your engine.
Whitney Grace, June 8, 2026
Comments
Got something to say?
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
