Source: Aftermath
As enterprises push AI adoption through top-down directives, employees are developing practical workarounds—from refusing tools to gaming metrics to outright sabotage—that undermine implementation. This friction exposes a gap between how executives envision AI productivity gains and how workers experience these tools in their workflows: as time-sinks, quality degraders, or threats to autonomy that don't justify the switching costs. Companies betting on frictionless AI transformation will hit a workforce problem before a technology problem.