#544 The Beginning and The End of AI Shaming: Why Serious Leaders Must Replace Suspicion with Standards | Article by Niels Brabandt

The Beginning and The End of AI Shaming: Why Serious Leaders Must Replace Suspicion with Standards

By Niels Brabandt

A new leadership problem in the age of artificial intelligence

The question sounds harmless: Did you use AI for this? In many organisations, however, it no longer functions as a genuine question. It has become an accusation. The moment it is asked in a meeting, people freeze, deny, retreat and learn a new organisational skill: hiding productive technology use from leadership.

This is the real beginning of AI shaming. It does not begin with artificial intelligence. It begins with a leadership culture that confuses visible effort with valuable output, and manual labour with professional integrity.

For decision-makers, the issue is not whether artificial intelligence is impressive, fashionable or controversial. The issue is whether an organisation can build a disciplined, transparent and commercially useful standard for AI-assisted work. Without such a standard, leaders create exactly the behaviour they claim to oppose: secrecy, defensive compliance and mediocre output.

Why AI shaming fails as a leadership response

AI shaming usually rests on a simple but flawed assumption: if leaders shame people for using AI, employees will stop using AI. They will not. They will simply become more careful about concealing it.

The transcript describes three recognisable workplace situations. In one, a leader hears that AI was used to optimise a piece of work and replies that it is no longer the employee's own work. In another, a leader describes such use as fraud against the employer and threatens to report it to HR. In a third, a leader responds differently and asks why AI was not used as a sparring partner. The difference between these reactions is not technological. It is managerial maturity.

A leader who humiliates people for using modern tools does not raise standards. That leader teaches people to disguise their process. They add a few typographical errors, rewrite a few sentences, make the formatting look less polished and present the result as purely human. The organisation has not become more ethical. It has become less transparent.

The construction analogy leaders should remember

Condemning all AI use is comparable to telling someone who built a house that it does not count because a machine was used to dig the foundations. No serious person would demand that a cellar be excavated by hand to prove authenticity. Modern tools do not remove responsibility from the builder. They change the standard of professional practice.

The same is true for leadership work, analysis, communication, proposals, market preparation and strategic thinking. The tool does not own the outcome. The person using the tool remains accountable for the judgement, accuracy, ethics, tone, confidentiality and final decision.

When AI should not be used

A serious position on AI cannot be reduced to enthusiasm. There are situations in which AI use is inappropriate, prohibited or professionally unacceptable. If someone is asked to write down their own feelings about a restructuring process, outsourcing that response to artificial intelligence misses the purpose of the task. If an assessment, examination or qualification explicitly requires unaided work, unauthorised AI use is misconduct.

This distinction matters. The alternative to AI shaming is not uncontrolled AI use. The alternative is a clear operating model: where AI is expected, where AI is permitted, where AI is restricted and where AI is not allowed.

The danger of AI slop

The opposite failure is equally damaging. Some employees and executives become over-reliant on artificial intelligence and deliver generic material that adds no judgement, no market knowledge and no personal expertise. This is often called AI slop: content that appears complete but contains little strategic value.

A go-to-market strategy created only through generic prompts will often produce balanced but obvious phrasing: on the one hand this, on the other hand that, the truth may lie somewhere in the middle. Such output may be linguistically fluent, but it is not leadership. It does not know the client context, internal politics, regulatory nuance, informal networks, stakeholder relationships, brand perception or commercial timing.

Business decision-makers should treat AI slop as a capability problem, not as proof that AI itself is useless. Poor prompting, poor judgement and weak review processes produce weak outcomes. The solution is not avoidance. The solution is competence.

Human expertise remains the differentiator

The most valuable work does not come from humans alone or AI alone. It comes from an intelligent sequence: human expertise, AI challenge, human judgement, AI refinement and final human accountability. This is the productive centre ground.

Artificial intelligence can accelerate research, compare options, identify gaps, challenge assumptions and improve structure. It cannot replace market access, credibility, experience, client trust, lived leadership judgement or the ability to understand organisational politics. The senior question is therefore not whether AI can think. The senior question is who remains accountable when AI contributes.

AI as a sparring partner, not a substitute

A practical example from the episode is the preparation of a client proposal. The human professional creates the proposal, defines the offer, understands the client context and protects confidentiality. AI is then used as a sparring partner: What might a company in this sector expect? What appears underdeveloped? What would a buyer find unclear? Which objections might arise?

This use of AI does not replace professional authorship. It strengthens it. The final proposal remains the responsibility of the consultant, speaker, trainer or leader who sends it. AI can suggest improvements, but the professional decides which suggestions match the brand, the client and the ethical boundaries of the work.

Why professional AI education is now a leadership requirement

The organisations most likely to fail with AI are not necessarily those that reject it openly. They are often the organisations that treat AI literacy as a minor technical add-on. A short online course taken during lunch will not build executive competence. Leaders need serious education on AI use, risk, prompting, verification, confidentiality, hallucinations, bias, governance and organisational implementation.

This is no longer a side issue for IT departments. It is a leadership issue. AI changes expectations of speed, quality, review and competitive responsiveness. Leaders who remain undertrained risk creating fear-based cultures while competitors build higher-quality workflows at lower opportunity cost.

Hallucinations require verification, not paralysis

The transcript addresses one of the most common objections: AI can hallucinate. That is true. Serious leaders should never deny the risk. They should design review processes around it.

However, the existence of error is not a reason to reject a tool. Human beings also make mistakes, misremember facts, overstate certainty and introduce bias into meetings. No organisation removes humans from meetings because humans can be wrong. The professional response is not paralysis. The professional response is verification.

If AI can produce a useful first version, map options or screen large amounts of information quickly, then a human review may still be far more efficient than starting from zero. The test is not whether AI is perfect. The test is whether the combined process produces better, faster and more reliable outcomes than the previous process.

AI in meetings: the extra chair at the table

One of the most underused leadership practices is bringing AI into meetings as an active support tool. Organisations can use AI to structure decisions, record assumptions, draft alternative options, test risks, compare scenarios and expose weak logic. This requires discipline. It also requires openness about the tool's limitations.

Teams should discuss which prompts worked, which outputs failed, which suggestions were rejected and why. This moves AI from private experimentation into shared organisational learning. It also reduces the fear that fuels AI shaming.

From artificial intelligence to assisted intelligence

The most useful leadership framing is not artificial intelligence as replacement, but assisted intelligence as professional leverage. AI should not remove human responsibility. It should raise the quality of human contribution.

When used well, AI helps leaders and teams ask better questions, improve first drafts, challenge blind spots and accelerate preparation. When used badly, it produces generic content, shallow strategy and false confidence. The distinction is leadership.

The executive standard: transparency, competence and accountability

Ending AI shaming does not mean accepting every AI-generated output. It means replacing suspicion with standards. Decision-makers should define clear rules for AI use across confidentiality, client data, internal documents, regulated decisions, recruitment, learning, assessment, intellectual property and external communication.

A mature organisation should be able to say: this work may use AI for structure and review; this work requires human judgement; this work requires disclosure; this work cannot use AI; this work must be verified before publication or decision-making. These standards should be trained, repeated and modelled by leadership.

The leadership conclusion

AI shaming begins where leadership competence ends. It ends when organisations build a culture in which people can speak honestly about how they work, what tools they use, what they have checked and where human judgement remains essential.

The future does not belong to leaders who ban modern tools out of discomfort. It also does not belong to leaders who delegate judgement to technology. It belongs to leaders who create alignment: AI where it improves the work, human expertise where it matters, and accountability across the entire process.

For business decision-makers, this is the central message of The Beginning and The End of AI Shaming by Niels Brabandt: the question is no longer whether AI is present in the organisation. It already is. The question is whether leaders are competent enough to use it openly, ethically and effectively.

Niels Brabandt

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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify

For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.

Is excellent leadership important to you?

Let's have a chat: NB@NB-Networks.com

Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn

Website: www.NB-Networks.biz

Podcast and Videocast Transcript

Niels Brabandt

Did you use AI for this? Maybe you know this question in a meeting when people ask you, "Did you use AI for this?" Or you're sitting in the meeting and someone else gets asked, "Did you use AI for that?" and immediately people say, "No!" with wide open eyes. "No!" "No, of course not!" "Of course not!" Why do they say that? Well, because they know when they say, "I used AI," they in best case get shamed, or in worst case someone is going to say, "I expected you to do the work," and you didn't do the work. We are in the age where AI shaming is a thing, and we have to talk about how problematic this can be. However, we also have to talk about when AI really cannot be used, because simply saying, "It's always okay to use AI," of course is also not the answer. But first things first.

Niels Brabandt

One thing I have to address first: this podcast, and I just got the news about an hour ago before I'm recording this at the moment. This podcast went top 200, exactly on Rank 200, which is the highest in the U.S. It went top 200 in the U.S. The United States of America in the management category. It is the most competitive podcast market in the world. It is the most competitive category in the world, and we went top 200. And by the way, as a non-native speaker—I'm a non-native speaker—I didn't buy any outrage. I didn't go to any private school, went to a public comprehensive school. Greetings to my former English teacher, Mrs. Freeby. You made this happen. You taught me English the hard way, but we made it somewhere as we see. Thank you very much to every single person supporting me here, because we see now that persistence actually beats anything else. This is a podcast which I'm doing basically from my desk, wherever I am in the world at the moment when I'm recording it, and it went top 200 in the United States. Thank you very much for following me. Thank you very much for reporting this. Share it far and wide, but now back to the topic of AI.

Niels Brabandt

We talk about AI shaming, and we have to talk about: is AI shaming okay? How do we deal with AI shaming? When should it end, and when actually is it sort of okay? So the beginning and the end of AI shaming. Talking about the situation in which we are. So why do people say, as soon as someone says, "Did you use AI?" and people immediately go into freeze? And immediately after the phrase, which is about 1 millisecond, it's an immediate "No." "No, I didn't." "No." "No." And now here are 3 situations which I witnessed firsthand when people talked about this.

Niels Brabandt

So when this happened in one meeting room, leader says, leader at the table says, "Did you use AI?" and the person said, "Yeah, I used it to optimize." "Oh, this is not your work." "So you're giving us work which is not from you." So the person gets massively shamed at the desk. Shaming people for using AI is the equivalent to one thing. Let's say you build a house, and someone said, "Oh, you build a house? Amazing, congratulations. How did you actually duck the hole for the seller?" And you say, "Well, I hired a company, and they have machinery for this." "Oh!" "Oh, no, that's not how you do it. You need to dig it with your own hands. Otherwise it's not really your house, is it?" And of course, no one would ever say that, because using modern means of technology in construction is absolutely normal. Yet we are still at the stage, as soon as something is new, someone shows up massively shaming people for using the most up-to-date technology. AI shaming is, in most cases, not okay.

Niels Brabandt

By the way, the other situation was where someone said, "Yes, they used AI to optimize their piece of work," and then the leader said, and I quote word by word, "I'm going to report you to HR. This is fraud to your employer. You get paid for your work, not to fill around with AI." And of course, massive shock at the table. And by the way, HR loved all day long about that report and said, "No, there's nothing wrong with that in this situation." Of course, there are certain situations where AI should not be used. I give you a very simple example here. When someone says, "Please write down your feelings. What do you think about the restructure?" and you use AI, that was not the task. When someone says, "Hey, look, we're going to have an exam, and the exam is going to be marked," and leads to some sort of degree, use of AI is not allowed, and you still use it. That is, of course, not allowed. No question about that.

Niels Brabandt

But when someone says, "I put effort into this piece of work," and then I simply got feedback, like a sparring partner from AI, and then you get shamed for it, the only thing that happens is—because what leaders really think is, when I shame them, they will stop using AI. And here are the news: they will not stop using AI. People will simply get smarter, or better to say, pseudo-smarter, on how to cover up their usage of AI. And the cover-ups are usually always the same. They take the result from AI, they copy-paste it, then they add a couple of words, they delete some words, they put in a couple of typos so it looks more human, and then they make it, from a formatting point of view, look slightly awkward. So anyone will say, "Yeah, not a computer would have done it that way." And that's how they cover it up.

Niels Brabandt

When you want to have a trooper or a whole brigade of cover-ups, then you can be the leader shaming people for using AI. And by the way, the AI shaming situation often happens because leaders have not been professionally trained on the usage of AI. And I cannot stress this often enough: the 20-minute online class, which you do during your lunch break, is not going to make the cut. You need professional education on AI. If you don't get professional education, you will fail. Full stop. No exception.

Niels Brabandt

I got my education from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton Business School, Vanderbilt University. Massive effort, however massive reward as well. I'm now being admitted to an MBA in AI, which I'm doing right now. So I invested heavily into this. If you need help, let me know. But simply telling people, "Oh, you have to figure out your way," no, that's not how anything goes.

Niels Brabandt

And of course, we have to talk about one thing: there is a slightly problematic aspect with AI when people are over-relying on it. I give you a very simple approach. Let's say I tell you, "Please make a go-to-market strategy. We want to enter the market X, Y, Z." And you only put a bunch of AI slop pieces on my table. I will say, "Look, I could have done that by myself."

Niels Brabandt

Because when is AI prevalent, and when should humans be? When there's something which is predetermined, when you say everything by science is actually research, we are, at least at the moment, at the frontier of developments. There's nothing new. Everything is known. And then you can simply ask AI how to do it. Perfect.

Niels Brabandt

However, when I say, "How do we get into a market?" I want to know, what are your networks? Which industry contacts do you have? Which people do you know? How do we get into the regulation thing? Do you know anyone in politics? Do we have anyone who actually represents our interests locally? Do we have connections to local markets? Do we have sales representatives? How does local marketing work? What is the culture like? How is our brand perceived there? All of this is something which AI can never, ever do, because that is something where humans will always prevail. The problem is when someone is becoming over-reliant.

Niels Brabandt

And by the way, when you become over-relying on AI, then probably people will reconsider if you are the best pick for the job. We need the perfect alignment. We need alignment where people say, "This is where we use AI," and "This is where we do not use AI," and "This is where we bring it all together."

Niels Brabandt

I give you a very simple example here. If you—and I used it just recently—when someone says, "Okay, we have a big training program," and I'm going to give you an anonymous example here. Let's say we are a noodle factory based in London in the U.K., reproduce noodles. "Could you please give us a quote for leadership training?" And of course, I create the quote and the whole proposal, the whole draft action plan. Then, after I've done this, I go to AI and say, "Let's imagine you're a noodle company in central London in the U.K. This is my proposal. Of course, there is no specific personalized data in there. Please give me feedback on this proposal." And I use this every single time. And every single time, the result becomes better and better. Every single time, the proposal gets better afterwards.

Niels Brabandt

And by the way, with this proposal, with the noodle company from London, I said, "Please rate my proposal and action plan on a scale from 1, which is extremely poor, to 10, which is outstanding." And it said 5.5. So 5.5 is not great. So I said, "What's lacking?" And they said, "This, this, this, this, this." And at the end of about an hour later, which probably in my own research would have taken me 3 days, which I didn't have, by the way, because the proposal needed to be out next day. So at the end, it was 9.1 out of 10.

Niels Brabandt

And when you now say, "Why not 10 out of 10?" Because AI suggested a couple of things which AI thinks is great, which I consider the typical ego story of speakers. So, "Oh, I'm the most amazing here." And then AI says, "Put this in there." "No, I won't. I won't. This is not my brand. This is not me. This is nothing I'm going to do." So I stay with a 9.1 because it's the best fit for my brand and the client as an alignment.

Niels Brabandt

So you see, you don't have to do absolutely everything AI tells you. However, when you simply shame people, or you become over-reliant and you have no alignment, then your results in comparison with the market next to you, with people who are also in the market—don't want to call them competitors, but people who also are in the market selling similar services to you—your results will go down. Not because your results get worse, but your, let's say, market companion results become way better. And you have to catch up with that the quicker the better.

Niels Brabandt

And of course, I know what people will now say. "Look, look, look, Nils, the whole AI thing. I'm not trusting it because you know AI has hallucinations. Let's look into science here." And first, you are right. AI has hallucinations. According to Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, 0.7% of the data you get are hallucinations. And by the way, humans have 7%. So that's 10 times as much. Let's just imagine if anyone would say, "Oh, you know, humans have hallucinations, so we can't have humans at the meeting table, right? Can't be?"

Niels Brabandt

"No, no, absolutely not." However, as soon as you say, "We should have humans at the table," and basically that's an extra chair at the table right now, which is AI, and you should use AI within meetings, there are companies. When I suggest you should use AI in meetings, they look at me like I'm the exorcist in person. So when you do not use AI in meetings, you lose a lot of benefits.

Niels Brabandt

Because what you can do is, of course, you can check results together. And by the way, checking results, as soon as people say, "Oh, when I have to check the results, then I don't need AI, because then I can do everything by myself." Okay, here are the news. If you want to look up something, and let's say you want to look up 100 hotels in 10 different cities, and you get a list and you background check it and 2 are wrong, if you find 100 hotels in 10 cities with 98 correct hotels, which are a match for your search, and you do it quicker than AI, meaning quicker than 60 seconds, I would give you a promotion and a salary raise. Hint: you won't.

Niels Brabandt

So check results. Use the prompts. Talk about great experiences, but also talk about the hallucinations, the bad pieces, or things that you saw where you thought, "That's an AI suggestion, and I still don't like it," which is why we're not going to put it in there. The result will always be better. The best result is never humans on their own. However, the best result also is never AI on their own.

Niels Brabandt

When a human produces something, and then you put AI on top of it, and then human, and then AI, and so on and so forth, you will get results you have never seen before in your life. Because when you do it this way, as I just described, you will have the massive advantage that you will not only have an assisted intelligence, you will have AI at the table, at your fingertips every single time, not as a replacement, but as an assistance. And that's what we're looking for.

Niels Brabandt

When you implement it that way, the results in your organization will get way better, and AI shaming will come to an end. I wish you all the best putting that in your organization. And when you now say, "Look, I actually have to, I actually need to talk about a couple of things," feel free to do so. I'm happy to talk to you.

Niels Brabandt

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Niels Brabandt

So, and of course, when you now say, "Hey, do you have something which is a bit more than weekly?" We do. We have leadership tips every single week. Not only me. You don't have to endure my voice every day. And we have interviews with external experts, hand-selected. I receive a couple of hundred pitches every month. Hand-selected experts, all the people who I invite, who I get in contact with. You get all of that on the YouTube Shorts, as the name says, only available on YouTube.

Niels Brabandt

So it pays off not only to subscribe to the channel, but also put the little bell in there, because as soon as you do that, you will get a tiny notification and see when something new is online. And that's actually where the magic happens. By the way, I promised you there's one leadership tip every single day. Kept the promise. We are already over the one tip per day. So you will get a constant level of expertise. We recently talked to the HR executive of NASA, so we really have massive experts on there. I just interviewed an AI expert on the matter of who is leading when AI is thinking. All of that is available on the channel right now, including YouTube Shorts. It really pays off to actually put the little bell in there so you always get the update.

Niels Brabandt

Of course, you can also follow me on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Feel free to do so. When you now say, "Hey, we need someone in our business, a trainer, a speaker, coach, consultant, mentor, project or interim manager," feel free to contact me. nb-networks.biz is my website. And when you want to drop me an email, nb@nb-networks.com. I'm always looking forward to hearing from you there.

Niels Brabandt

When you want live sessions, yes, we got them. When you go to expert.nb-networks.com, then you can put your email address there. And no worries, it's only one email every week. Wednesday morning, just one email, 100% content, ad-free guarantee. It's all content, no advertising. When you now say, "And by the way, only in the leadership letter, nowhere else do we communicate the live sessions." You do not find them anywhere else. It's an exclusive for our readers. And by the way, you get full access to all the articles, all the podcasts, videocasts, everything. More than 500 episodes online in the English and German language. Everything accessible just via the leadership letter and only via the leadership letter. So I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

Niels Brabandt

If you want to have a private session with me, feel free to do so as well. Just answer to the expert letter or drop me to the leadership letter or drop me an email, and then we take it from there. We have a couple of organizations who have very specific questions. Then we do privates. No problem at all. Looking forward to seeing you there.

Niels Brabandt

And of course, connect with me. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Do the proper connect. You can follow me on Instagram. You can leave a like on Facebook, or you can simply also subscribe to the channel on YouTube. Very important is when you get in touch, no worries. I answer every single message within 24 hours or less, so a quick answer is absolutely guaranteed.

Niels Brabandt

Of course, the most important aspect is always the last point that I say. Apply, apply, apply what you heard in this podcast, on this podcast or videocast, because only when you apply what you heard, you will see the positive aspects that you obviously want to see in your organization. I wish you all the best doing so. And at the end of this podcast, as well as at the end of this videocast, there's only one thing left for me to say. Thank you very much for your time.