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The New Corporate Obsession is Artificial Intelligence and the Illusion of Progress

Life is now full of AI avatars, AI charts, AI presentations. Perfect. Polished… Inhuman.

3 min readAug 15, 2025

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AI is in your inbox. In your meetings. On stage at every conference where someone shouts, “The future of work is here.”

Every company I know is scrambling. Universities are rolling out new degrees. Business schools are selling new leadership programs. Crash courses promise to teach you how to work “with” AI.

For sure, these are strange times.

On paper, it looks like progress.

But the reality tells a different story.

Most people aren’t adapting. They’re pretending to.

They nod through presentations. They use AI to polish their LinkedIn headshots. They “like” posts about “embracing change.” They sign up for webinars about “surviving disruption.”

But when the screens go dark, they still feel the same thing they felt before: uncertainty.

And here’s the part no one says out loud. When the fear hits, they turn to the very thing they’re afraid of.

They ask AI:

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Erik P.M. Vermeulen, PhD
Erik P.M. Vermeulen, PhD

Written by Erik P.M. Vermeulen, PhD

Stories about where our choices can take us and how to choose a better path.

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