Big companies are busy hiring chief AI officers and setting up tiger teams to pilot agentic products.
However, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman says this overlooks where automation actually pays off — in the “unglamorous layer” of day-to-day work.
Speaking with AI engineer Parth Patil on his “Possible” podcast, Hoffman said a company’s AI transformation involves employees “being able to talk to each other about it and do collective learning.”
“If people feel they’ll get punished or judged for using AI, they become what Ethan Mollick calls ‘secret cyborgs,’ who quietly speed up their own work while the organization learns nothing,” Hoffman wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Mollick, an associate professor at Wharton, researches the effects of AI on work, entrepreneurship, and education.
Companies have been ramping up investments in AI to boost efficiency and keep up with the AI race.
Goldman Sachs, for example, said it spent roughly $6 billion on tech last year — a figure CEO David Solomon said he wished was higher.
A CIO survey from RBC Capital in December found 90% of respondents said their organizations plan to spend more on AI in 2026.
Many big companies are trying to integrate new technology by running pilot schemes with a small, specialist group.
Hoffman wrote on LinkedIn that they then expect “transformation to magically spread”.
“Unfortunately for that strategy, AI lives at the workflow level, and the people closest to the work know where the friction actually is,” he said.
Hoffman said automation should start at the coordination layer. Think meetings, note-taking, and tools that source company knowledge.
“The winners will be companies that build the muscle of day-to-day use early enough for the gains to compound,” said Hoffman in an X post.
“Start learning now, or watch the advantage slip away,” he added.
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