Look Beyond AI As ‘Prompt And Pray’ To Its More Transformative Effects

InnovationEnterprise TechLook Beyond AI As ‘Prompt And Pray’ To Its More Transformative EffectsByJoe McKendrick,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Joe McKendrick covers how technology moves markets and careersFollow AuthorJun 12, 2026, 06:39pm EDTPeople make technology go roundgettyArtificial intelligence is falling into the same trap that many technologies have fallen into over the decades: grab gobs of the latest shiny new technology, drop it on top of the organization, and wait for the overnight transformation to take shape – which never does. Just as handing someone a pile of expensive film-making gear won’t turn them into the next Steven Spielberg, all the AI tokens in the world won’t turn a workforce into a forward-looking force in the market. It takes a forward-looking culture, open to innovation from all its ranks, to make AI a success.That lesson is being learned anew in the AI era, and, as usual, after pouring in millions of dollars, euros, rupees, and pounds to acquire the latest technology. “There’s a reflex to solve every problem by buying more AI, adding more tools, or pushing people to use AI whether or not it helps,” state the authors of a recent report out of Glean’s Work AI Institute, a collaborative effort with AI experts at top universities such as Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard University.“High AI achievers don’t just prompt and pray,” the study’s authors state.The 6,000 workers involved in the study estimate that AI automation saved them at least 11 hours every week. At the same time, only 13% say their organizations are performing significantly better as a result. The study’s authors separated out the top performers in AI (people who report both productivity and quality gains from using AI) versus the rest. The data shows that the successful companies – 13% of the sample – aren’t “buying more AI tools, burning more tokens, or building adoption dashboa...