Written by Jeff Raikes – April 15, 2026

The race to supplant human workers with AI is an urgent threat to long-term business success. AI is here to stay. But the days are numbered for any company that doesn’t develop a human talent pipeline with the judgment to direct it.

I spent twenty-seven years at Microsoft building tools that captured data and organized information: spreadsheets, word processors, databases that made life easier at work and at home. Each generation of software made it easier to record, retrieve, and share knowledge. But the thinking itself, analysis, judgment, creative leap, always remained human. 

What I didn’t see coming was a technology that captures cognition itself. That is AI. And companies are moving too fast to fully exploit its potential without considering what they’ll lose when humans are taking a backseat to technology in the workplace.