FOMO—the fear of missing out—used to be a shorthand favorite of young people worried about not being at the right party on a Saturday night. Now, chief executives are increasingly having FOMO over applied AI. The financial bets are large enough for boards to wince at capital expenditure implications. The outcomes are shrouded in mystery, a particular irritant for leadership teams obsessed with data and clarity.
Step forward, Aiman Ezzat, the chief executive of technology and consultancy business Capgemini. The French Fortune 500 Europe giant has been in the news after it agreed to sell its U.S. subsidiary, Capgemini Government Solutions, which had been providing tracing and removal data for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in America. In line with the great tech selloff over AI spending fears, Capgemini’s share price has been laboring.
I spoke with Ezzat before the controversy over ICE blew up (Ezzat explained on LinkedIn that the American business acted autonomously to protect U.S. classified information). He told me that business leaders were treading a fine line with AI; there is a sweet spot somewhere between too far, too fast, and stuck on the starting blocks.
“You don’t want to be too ahead of the learning curve,” he said. “If [you are] you’re investing and building capabilities that nobody wants.”
