Leadership is TIRED of AI
AI fatigue is real. Here's what's actually causing it.
Leadership is getting tired of AI. Not tired of AI itself, but tired of what they're seeing from their teams.
They can spot it almost instantly. The slightly-too-polished tone. The way every paragraph follows the same rhythm. The recommendations that sound comprehensive but somehow say nothing. They're sniffing out AI faster than a bloodhound finds... honestly, I don't know what bloodhounds find. But they find it fast.
I had this exact conversation with a client recently. He kept saying “AI, they wrote that with AI”. And intially I thought, so what? He uses AI all the time… so what's the problem?
The problem is that his employee’s had been leaning on AI to draft reports, summarize findings, and write internal recommendations. On the surface, the output looked fine. But leadership kept feeling like they were being fooled. They couldn’t trust that the person they pay 6-figures a year was actually thinking or, were they just using AI?
Here's what I believe is happening: we've confused "AI supports me" with "AI thinks for me." And those are very different things.
There is a key distinction worth naming
AI is an exceptional thought partner. I use it constantly. But there is a difference between using it to sharpen your thinking and outsourcing your thinking to it entirely.
I create high-level emails drafts myself. Then I ask AI to review them for grammar and flow (I was my high school English teacher's favourite student, and not for good reasons.). Or I'll talk through a situation out loud, give AI the full context, the tone I want, the outcome I'm after, and ask it to write a first draft. But I have rarely, if ever, hit send on that draft unchanged. It does a good job. It doesn't do my job.
The same goes for reports and recommendations. If you hand AI a problem and ship whatever comes back, your leader will know. Not always consciously. But they will know.
What happens when we go to AI too early
I caught myself doing this recently. I was working through some ideas for my business. Pen and paper, just thinking. The ideas were flowing. And then, out of habit, before those ideas were fully formed, I reached for AI to help me brainstorm.
I've done this more times than I'd like to admit. And I've started to notice what it does. Two things, specifically.
First, it creates dependence. When you go to AI before your own thinking is done, you stop trusting your instincts. You start wondering if your idea is good before you've even finished having it.
Second, it narrows your thinking. AI is trained on what has already been said. When you use it too early, you risk fitting your ideas into familiar shapes rather than finding your own. You lose the weird, specific, completely-you angle that makes your work worth reading.
My value isn't that I know things. It's that I think a certain way, see things a certain way, and have built real judgment through real experience. AI cannot replicate that. But I can certainly dilute it if I'm not careful.
What your team needs to hear
If you're an HR leader or a manager watching your team reach for AI for everything, I'd gently suggest this isn't a technology problem. It's a confidence problem. People are outsourcing their thinking because they're not sure their thinking is good enough.
That's worth a conversation. And probably not the one that starts with "stop using AI."
The goal isn't less AI. The goal is better judgment about when and how to use it. AI that supports your thinking makes your work stronger. AI that replaces your thinking makes you easier to replace.
Jody Bomhof is the founder of Resolve HR Solutions & Mediation. She works with growing businesses to build the HR structure, leadership, and people culture.
