Recent comments from technology executives show that companies must move faster on AI, and employees who resist may be left behind.
At the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference, Deloitte vice chair China Widener argued that most companies misdiagnose their AI problem. The real obstacle isn’t adoption, she said, but unlearning. Which is getting employees to abandon habits that have worked for years. She pointed to Deloitte research showing companies devote 93 percent of AI budgets to technology and only 7 percent to preparing their workforce.
Eric Vaughan, CEO of enterprise-software company IgniteTech, offered a more direct account. He said he laid off roughly 80 percent of his staff after a year of company-funded AI training failed to change their behavior. The company had dedicated one full day a week, equal to 20 percent of total payroll, for an entire quarter to the effort. Some employees still refused. “I would have started with that first,” Vaughan said.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a similar case from a different angle. Speaking to the Associated Press on Tuesday in Sherman, Texas, Huang said resistance to AI is really a resistance to change that society must work through, much as it adapted to the automobile.
His call to action was blunt: “I would advocate that everybody use AI. Just go engage it.”
Huang, whose company’s market value sits near $5 trillion, also addressed the politics surrounding the technology, expressing skepticism about proposals for the U.S. government to take ownership stakes in AI firms. He argued that national security concerns about AI need specific justification rather than broad export restrictions.
Not every company is framing AI the same way. In an interview with the podcast Mostly Human, Apple executives Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak distinguished their approach to Siri from competitors built around what Federighi called sycophancy and engagement.
Asked whether Siri could function as a romantic companion, Federighi said the assistant is designed to redirect such requests toward practical help instead. Joswiak summarized the company’s philosophy on AI and devices: “We like when technology disappears.”
The common theme among AI leaders is that outcomes depend less on the technology itself than on whether organizations and individuals are willing to change how they work. Where executives differ is on method.
Some, like Widener, say the challenge is one of training and patience. Vaughan treated it as a matter of accountability, removing employees unwilling to adapt. Huang’s framing compares AI adoption to past technological transitions that altered daily norms. Apple’s executives, by contrast, suggested that good AI design should minimize how much people notice the technology at all.
