Kevin Surace says 31% of employees actively sabotage AI rollouts because they fear job loss. That human resistance, not technical problems, drives the 80%+ failure rate of AI projects. Workers deliberately avoid or undermine the tools, then bosses blame the technology.
This AI pioneer reveals why 80% of AI projects fail, and it has nothing to do with the technology.
If people believe that this thing is replacing some of their work, and then they look around and they go, some of us aren't going to be here, they are not going to actively participate in the end of their job. Just not. We've got 3 years of history of trying to do that, and people just will sabotage the thing. There's a really great statistic in a survey late last year that showed 31% of workers are sabotaging their AI rollouts, leading to 80% or more failure just because of sabotage. Because the boss is going, darn thing doesn't work. Well, it would work if the worker were doing what they were supposed to do with it, but they don't want to.
