For good reason, in our store we have a t-shirt that says, “There is no ‘AI’ in team.” That’s not to say teams shouldn’t use AI, but that AI is not the team.
LinkedIn is chock full of AI promoters who prophesy a future where humans are replaced by energy-thirsty thinking robots. There’s even someone in Washington D.C. advocating for replacing government departments with AI. The problem with all of this? AI is still not ready for prime time.
On a podcast interview, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently stated that AI is generating “basically no value.” In the interview, he stated, “The biggest mistake that we could make in this era of AI is to think that it’s already delivering on its full potential. We are just scratching the surface.”
[Nadella] argued that we should be looking at whether AI is generating real-world value instead of mindlessly running after fantastical ideas like AGI (artificial general intell. To Nadella, the proof is in the pudding. If AI actually has economic potential, he argued, it'll be clear when it starts generating measurable value.
"So, the first thing that we all have to do is, when we say this is like the Industrial Revolution, let's have that Industrial Revolution type of growth," he said. "The real benchmark is: the world growing at 10 percent," he added. "Suddenly productivity goes up and the economy is growing at a faster rate. When that happens, we'll be fine as an industry."
Did you read what I did? He said AI has yet to generate “measurable value.” That’s a refreshingly honest take from the company investing tens of billions into AI development. While AI has undeniable potential, the idea that it can simply replace human decision-making, leadership, and collaboration is premature at best, and laughable at worst.
Consider for a minute that the promises and prophecies made about AI today have been around for at least a decade, maybe more. Here’s a story I recently shared from my time working at IBM.
I remember talking to an IBM Distinguished Engineer who worked on Watson. I asked if Watson could really do all of the things being pitched in television ads. He lowered his head a bit and shook it to indicate no. He shared that his team was so fed up with the marketing people because they pitched Watson as being this incredible machine that could do everything with all kinds of data. The marketing worked, and clients poured in expecting capabilities that weren’t possible or ready to ship, leaving engineers to deliver the bad news to excited customers.
That story took place ten years ago and if IBM had really made a breakthrough you can bet good money we’d all be hearing about it today. My point if I’m not making myself clear is that what makes us human is not so easily replicated. Sure, there are tasks that AI can do very well, like write a blog post, but even then it takes more work than one prompt and done to get anything of real value. And that’s just a blog post or an email.
AI’s real limitations—why your job is safe, for now
AI is good at a lot of things: summarizing text, generating images, making autocomplete suggestions. But it still struggles with judgment, creativity, emotional intelligence, and context—all of which are essential to effective teamwork.
Take Google’s AI-powered chatbot Gemini, which recently claimed that Gouda cheese accounts for “50 to 60 percent of global cheese consumption.” Not only is that wildly incorrect, but it highlights a fundamental problem: AI doesn’t actually know anything. It regurgitates information based on patterns in its training data, which can (and often does) lead to nonsense.
Now, apply that to team dynamics. Imagine an AI managing your team, making hiring decisions, or mediating conflicts. Can it recognize when a team member is disengaged? Can it read the room during a tense meeting? Can it foster trust, navigate ambiguity, or innovate based on gut instinct? The answer is a resounding, no! And until AI can replicate the nuances of human interaction, the idea that it will replace team leaders and members remains fiction—LinkedIn clickbait.
AI as a tool, not a teammate
The real opportunity isn’t in AI replacing humans—it’s using AI to augment human capability. Successful leaders and teams will learn how to use AI to automate mundane tasks, analyze large datasets, inform strategy and tactics, and enhance productivity, while keeping humans at the core of decision-making and creative work. Try using AI for a task more complicated than re-writing your bro-text into a professional business email. Notice how many times you have to reupload information, check for mistakes, remind it what you are trying to achieve—repeat. It is becoming an amazing tool but there is a long way to go before we’re getting to making big achievements with AI integration.
AI isn’t coming for your job—but a human who knows how to use AI effectively might. The teams that thrive will be the ones that learn how to integrate AI as a tool, not as a substitute for human leadership, collaboration, and problem-solving. So, while AI evangelists continue to predict the dawn of machine dominance, take a breath. Your job is safe, but it’s the right time to learn about this new technology. Your leadership is irreplaceable. And if you need a reminder, we’ve got a t-shirt for that.
