I recently wrote a guest blogpost (“Five Misconceptions about AI That Are Slowing Down Your Business”) on the wonderful Stephen Shapiro’s Innovation Insights website. It was motivated by two experiences. The first was an indirect encounter with a CEO who declared that AI is a kind of luxury, as if to say that different technologies fall into different “accounting budgets”, not unlike the mental accounting claim made by behavioral economists, if their data is to be believed.

The second was an impression via a consulting engagement wherein the CEO of large corporation seemed to feel that AI had some special status, also assigned to “nice to have” buckets of activity.

There is a third observation, which is the tendency of many CxOs to believe that AI is somehow exotic that it’s completely outside the reach of direct innovation. This only leaves indirect innovation, namely the ticking of AI boxes via the use of vendors with AI-supercharged products. This can tick the box: “We are investing in AI.”

I will leave you to read the post, if so inclined, but the thrust is that AI is a technology to be taken more seriously during a downturn than many other technologies or transformation initiatives. Hopefully the article explains why.