Three AI adoption myths that are costing organizations the most and ways to debunk them. 

By Alana Brandes 

Seventy percent of leaders are now using AI tools daily, according to Guild’s monthly Workforce Signal data. It’s a significant milestone, and yet, a critical factor is constantly overlooked: workplace culture. 

As companies work to increase AI adoption, the human experience of working—what makes people feel valued, challenged, and engaged—is becoming an afterthought. 

The problem isn’t technology. It’s the question being asked. Most leaders are defaulting to: What workflows and processes can be automated? But that framing leads down the wrong path. The more powerful (and culturally generative) question is much more human at heart: Where does human critical thinking and judgment create the most value for the organization, and how can AI help drive that value? 

Reframing shifts the conversation around AI from a cost-cutting or efficiency mechanism to an enabler of human potential. And it puts culture back at the center of the conversation where it belongs. Leaders also must take action to debunk the following myths to be successful. 

Myth #1: Always Automate the Automatable 

When an organization invests in and distributes AI tools across its company, the instinct is often to scan for highly repetitive and time-consuming tasks and automate them. That instinct isn’t wrong, but it’s incomplete. 

CHROs who build their AI strategy around automation as a first principle tend to end up with efficient processes but highly disengaged employees. They’ve optimized the system at the expense of the people inside it. The better approach is to start with the human experiences that need to be created or protected, and then work backward to determine where AI can serve those goals. 

Take into consideration the answers to the following questions. What are the moments where human connection, creativity, or judgment are irreplaceable? What are the tasks that drain employees without adding meaning? Then design AI tools and implementation strategy around those answers, not the other way around. 

Myth #2: Culture Will Adapt on Its Own 

The age-old strategy of “roll out the tools, train the teams, and the culture will adapt” is a myth. 

Culture doesn’t follow tools. Culture must be built with intention and consistently maintained. Leaders who assume that employees will organically develop curiosity, comfort with uncertainty, and the willingness to experiment are setting themselves up for low adoption and high anxiety. 

HR leaders must actively cultivate a culture that: 

• prioritizes learning agility over static expertise; 

• rewards curiosity, not just results; 

• encourages risk-taking and celebrates productive failure; and 

• normalizes being a beginner again, at every level. 

That last point is especially important. When a VP of marketing fumbles with a prompt the same way a new hire does, it equalizes the playing field in a powerful way, but there needs to be a culture in place that allows for that vulnerability. Leadership modeling at the highest level instills trust amongst the entire team, knowing they’re all learning these lessons together. 

Myth #3: Low Adoption Is a Training Problem 

When AI tools don’t get traction inside an organization, the reflexive response is to throw more training at the problem. But in most cases, a lack of adoption stems from a clarity gap that enhanced training alone can’t fix. 

More often than not, employees resist AI because no one has told them what they’re actually supposed to optimize, what “good” work when collaborating with AI looks like, or how using AI will (or won’t) affect their roles and how they’re being evaluated. Without that clarity, the safest move is to do nothing—or worse, to use AI performatively without genuine integration. 

CHROs must make explicit decisions about what to optimize and communicate clear expectations for how leaders and their teams should engage with AI tools. That means moving beyond “explore AI” as a blanket action and getting specific. What decisions should involve AI input, what outputs should change, and how will success be measured? 

The Opportunity for CHROs 

AI is a human and cultural initiative as much as it is a technological one. That distinction puts CHROs at the center, not as support staff for post-implementation, but as architects of the entire workplace transformation. 

The organizations that will win with AI are not necessarily those with the most sophisticated tools. They’re the ones that have built cultures where people feel safe enough to experiment, clear enough about expectations to act, and valued enough as humans to bring their full judgment to work and let AI handle the rest. 

Alana Brandes is chief people officer of Guild.