Those who’ve worked in software will immediate recognize the phenomenon of “messes that look like successes.”

One of my old Paulisms is that the real purpose of a whole lot of software processes is to make large-scale failure look like a string of small successes.

The crisp “even an executive can understand it” version of the OP is:

⚠️ AI increases labor costs ⚠️

(“Why?” “Because it’s labor-intensive to clean up its messes.”)

I said “the purpose of a whole lot of software processes is to make large-scale failure look like a string of small successes.”

Huh? What does that look like??

It looks like this:

✅ Meetings held
✅ Plan signed off
✅ Tests passed
✅ Iterations iterated
✅ Velocity increased
✅ Thing implemented
✅ Checkpoints checked
✅ Thing released
✅ Blinkenlights blink
✅ Line goes up
✅ Thing updated
❌ Software never •really• solves the problem it was supposed to solve in the first place, creates more problems

or ❌ Problem the project was supposed to solve in the first place was the wrong problem

or ❌ Nobody actually wanted it

or ❌ We totally failed to understand the real effect of implementing this

or ❌ The goal was designed to benefit some individual / faction within the company, not the mission

or ❌ The goal was designed to benefit the bottom line / investors / some horrid systemic evil, and is net harmful to humanity / the world

(Yes, I consider that last one a failure too.)