On the AI hysteria - what smart women are actually saying.

by Chloe Field.

I've been talking to A LOT of smart women lately about AI. Female founders, corporates, creative and marketing weapons. Sharp, experienced, capable women. Real, on-the-ground, "how are you using Chatty-G or Claude?" conversations.

I'm fascinated by this topic, so here are the themes I keep hearing and want to share with you 👇

We're all becoming review merchants

This is the one I hear the most. AI was supposed to free us up to think. Instead, most of us are stuck in a loop of review, fix, review, fix. We're not creating. We're not sitting with problems long enough to actually solve them. We're editing the output of a sassy 7-year-old (that's Chad - my 7 year old ChatGPT. He says "no worries" a lot and never gives me what I actually asked for. Urghhhh.)

What I love most about work is collaborating, brainstorming and the "aha" moments. It feels like deep thinking is quietly being replaced by output management.

The speed trap is real

Yep, I get it - AI is sold on faster output, productivity, optimisation, efficiency (all the corporate words). But honestly, I don't think we need to move faster. I think we all need to slow the hell down so we can think better!

One example I heard from a corporate girlie was that her manager asks the team to use AI, then assumes that means they have more bandwidth and piles on more work. So the time AI "freed up" gets immediately gobbled up. And now, to keep up, she has to keep using AI like a never ending treadmill 🤪

The promise was that AI handles the grunt work so humans could think creatively. What I'm hearing is that teams just get more grunt work.

Volume is not value

A friend in legal told me there's been a huge rise in self-represented litigants, which I guess is a good thing (yay for justice). Except they're turning up with 50 page statements of claim written by Chad that are absolute AI chaff. Someone still has to review all of it, or they probably get AI to do it. There's no discernment. We're just bouncing information back and forth between our Chads.

We might as well just let the Chads talk to each other…🙃

Don't eat your seed corn

What worries me is that larger corporates are cutting entry-level roles in research, content and analysis, etc., because AI can technically do those tasks.

On paper, sure, the savings are probably real. But there's an old farming rule: don't eat your seed corn. It's a metaphor for not consuming the resources that feed your future.

We millennials were all juniors once. We've been working since we were 15 years old. That's how expertise gets built. Cut the juniors now and in five years you won't have any seniors! You won't need to pay $250k for a Head of Marketing - you'll just have a team who knows how to prompt, but nobody who knows how to actually think...

Some leaders will look at the AI output and say, "Yep, good enough."

But good enough doesn't cut it for me. People do.

You still need a junior teacher, a tradie and a nurse. Those roles can't be flattened into an AI version. And the work that's getting cut first is the "automatable" work, which often builds the people who will become our future leaders.

So where does this leave us?

Obviously, I don't have a crystal ball. I have no idea how this plays out long term - for jobs, for how work gets designed, for our kids and the younger generations coming up behind us.

AI is scarily powerful. It's accessible to everyone, but most of us haven't been equipped to use it in a way that genuinely redesigns work, not just speeds it up.

In startup land, there's more appetite for that rethink. In corporate? A lot of teams aren't being asked the question. They're just being told to "use AI" with no conversation about what that should actually look like, what it should protect, or what it should never touch.

Until we figure out what we want AI to do - not just what it can do - it'll keep being a distraction. A temptation to produce faster work and close gaps.

My two cents

Don't get me wrong, there is a place for AI in the workplace. But people matter most, especially as the world of work is redefined in the age of AI. We want to keep human creation, connection and decision-making in everything we do.

The teams that will win are the ones that ignore what AI can do and focus entirely on what they want it to do - starting with identifying the core business problems, and then deciding whether AI belongs in the answer.

This is a leadership responsibility, and it requires real conversations - not just policies.

We want environments that enable us to learn, test, and experiment through curiosity and application (soft skills are so important because they're ultimately performance skills).

Ask your teams the questions. Do we actually care about this? Do you feel safe, happy and engaged when using it? What are we willing to trade, and what aren't we?

Because leadership is still what moves a business forward. And culture will ALWAYS be what sets companies apart. Maybe the most important question right now is - how do we stay human on the edge of AI?

And remember...don't eat the seed corn. It feeds all of us down the line 🌽

What's your take on the AI hysteria?