A striking new insight from Deloitte’s Chief Technology Officer has sparked debate across the global business and technology community: companies pursuing artificial intelligence transformation are allocating 93 percent of their investment to technology while spending just 7 percent on people. The imbalance, experts warn, could severely limit the long-term success of AI adoption despite massive spending on tools, infrastructure, and software.
The statistic highlights a critical disconnect in how organizations approach AI. While businesses are racing to deploy advanced systems such as generative AI, automation platforms, and data infrastructure, far less attention is being paid to workforce training, organizational change, and ethical governance.
The Hidden Risk Behind AI Spending
According to Deloitte’s technology leadership, many companies believe AI transformation is primarily a technical challenge. As a result, budgets are overwhelmingly directed toward cloud platforms, algorithms, data centers, and software licenses. However, AI systems ultimately depend on people to design, manage, interpret, and apply them effectively.
Without sufficient investment in human skills, companies risk deploying tools that employees do not fully understand or trust. This can lead to low adoption rates, poor decision-making, and even costly errors. In some cases, AI projects stall entirely because organizations lack the internal expertise needed to scale them responsibly.
People, Not Just Platforms
The CTO emphasized that successful AI transformation requires far more than cutting-edge technology. It demands a workforce that is trained in data literacy, critical thinking, and ethical judgment. Employees must understand not only how to use AI tools, but also their limitations, biases, and potential consequences.
Change management is another overlooked area. AI often reshapes job roles, workflows, and decision-making structures. When workers are not prepared for these shifts, resistance grows, morale suffers, and productivity gains fail to materialize. Investing in reskilling and transparent communication is essential to ensuring AI enhances, rather than disrupts, the workplace.
Ethical and Governance Gaps
Underinvestment in people also creates risks around AI governance. Human oversight is essential to ensure compliance with regulations, protect data privacy, and prevent misuse. As governments worldwide introduce stricter AI rules, companies that focus solely on technology may find themselves exposed to legal and reputational damage.
Deloitte’s leadership warns that ethics teams, legal experts, and cross-functional oversight bodies are just as important as engineers and data scientists. Yet these roles are often underfunded or added as an afterthought.
Rethinking AI Strategy
The 93-to-7 spending split reflects a broader misconception that AI value comes primarily from machines. In reality, the greatest returns come when technology and human capability evolve together. Organizations that rebalance their investments toward training, leadership development, and cultural readiness are more likely to see sustainable gains from AI.
Business leaders are being urged to rethink AI budgets, ensuring that people are not treated as secondary to platforms. As the CTO noted, “AI doesn’t transform companies—people using AI do.”
A Wake-Up Call for Executives
The statistic serves as a wake-up call for executives racing to keep up with competitors in the AI arms race. Without meaningful investment in human capital, even the most advanced systems may fall short of expectations.
As AI becomes deeply embedded in business operations, companies that prioritize people alongside technology may ultimately gain the strongest competitive advantage.
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