The AI Wow Effect. And Then What?
You see the demo. You are blown away (you, not the AI). You think: "This is incredible, we need to deploy this." That is the Wow Effect.
Problem: it is addictive. And like any addiction, it masks reality. (And between us, I am the first to admit that the Wow Effect has often taken me from the free plan to the paid plan in less than 10 minutes. AI vendors thank me every month.)
Researchers call it "automation bias." The human tendency to over-trust automation. To delegate without monitoring. To accept without challenging. The concrete result? An 80% output. Correct. Fluent. Presentable. But with errors your brain no longer looks for. Because the Wow Effect has numbed your critical thinking.
When I help companies with their AI transformation, I always see the same sequence. Week 1: "This is incredible, we are going to change everything." Week 4: The tool is running. People are using it. Week 8: Nobody really reviews the outputs anymore. Nobody really challenges the results. The Wow has become routine. Routine has become dependency. Dependency has killed expertise.
We think the question is: "Have I adopted AI?" No. The real question is: "Am I still in the driver's seat?" Because between being swept up by the Wow and industrializing hastily, we lose what matters most: domain expertise, critical thinking, the ability to challenge what AI produces.
What I also often observe: the data blind spot. AI does not create value from nothing. It amplifies what you feed it. When the data is poor, biased, or poorly structured, AI hides it well... until it gets expensive.
The market screams: "You are falling behind!" Wrong. You are just in time. Those who rushed without a method are now managing the debt. Technical. Organizational. Human.
The right sequence, the one I deploy in the field: The individual: understand, experiment, calibrate your critical eye. The collective: co-build, align practices. Multiple collectives: scale with consistency. The organization: scale what actually works. Does it take time? Yes. That is exactly the point.
The Wow Effect is not the enemy. It is a starting signal. But if you stay in spectator mode, AI works for you without you. Switch to pilot mode. Challenge the outputs. Keep your expertise in the loop. Demand upstream data quality. AI empowers good pilots. It exposes passengers.