Over the past two years, AI has been framed as a productivity engine, a cost-cutting lever, an infrastructure race, and, on more dramatic days, as a civilizational rupture. Boards demand AI road maps. CEOs announce “AI-first” agendas. Entire divisions are reorganized around tools whose capabilities shift every quarter.
The next step in that logic is unavoidable: AI will not replace strategy. It will expose it.
The illusion of imported intelligence
There is a seductive assumption embedded in much of today’s AI discourse: that intelligence can be added to an organization the way you add software licenses.
Deploy a large language model. Integrate generative tools into workflows. Automated analysis. Augment employees. Intelligence increases.
