AI obsession turns the tool into the destination

AI is a tractor. Point it at a field, it plows the field. Don't have a field, it just sits there burning fuel. This sounds obvious, but organizational behavior around AI right now suggests people have forgotten it.

The love potion metaphor captures what actually happens: AI acts like a self-perpetuating obsession. You adopt it because you want to solve problems faster, cut costs, do more. But the adoption itself becomes the goal. You are now measuring AI adoption, reporting on it, presenting on it, building a roadmap for it. The original problem - the thing that made AI attractive in the first place - has been subordinated to the project of having AI.

This is self-sealing. The organization is now invested in proving the AI initiative is succeeding, which means selecting metrics where success is visible, which means the original problem (even if unsolved) fades from view.

Source claim: Organizations that treat AI as a destination rather than a tool create a self-perpetuating obsession that crowds out the original problem they were trying to solve.