Are We Building Speed and Forgetting the Brakes?
By Jamie Jacobs & Devin Hughes
Recently, at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, a Chinese humanoid robot ran 100 meters in 9.39 seconds, faster than Usain Bolt's human world record of 9.58. A year earlier, the winning robot needed 21.5 seconds to cover the same distance. In twelve months, engineers cut the time by more than half. That kind of technological leap is difficult to comprehend, but what caught my attention was not simply how fast the robot ran. It was what happened when it reached the finish line. The machine could sprint at superhuman speed, but it could not reliably slow down. It crashed into the side of the course while another robot collapsed after finishing. Later in the competition, an even faster run ended with a collision and a small fire. In other words, the robot had adopted the strategic plan of many modern organizations: move fast, look impressive and hope there are enough cushions near the wall.
The Metaphor We Cannot Shake
This image was hard to shake because it felt like more than a robotics story. It felt like a perfect metaphor for how many organizations are approaching artificial intelligence. We are investing enormous amounts of money, energy and executive attention into making work faster. Faster decisions, faster analysis, faster hiring, faster customer service, faster everything. We are asking AI to eliminate friction, compress timelines, reduce costs and increase output. Every week brings another executive announcement promising that a new tool will "transform the way we work," which is corporate language for, "We bought something expensive, the contract is already signed, and everyone needs to look enthusiastic." Yet amid all this excitement about acceleration, I hear far less discussion about the brakes. Who decides when an AI-generated answer is not good enough? Who slows down a flawed automated decision? Who protects employees from becoming human shock absorbers for poorly implemented technology? Who takes responsibility when the machine does exactly what it was instructed to do, which turns out to be the problem?
The uncomfortable truth is that speed gets funded because speed is visible. Leaders can put it on a dashboard, wrap it in a colorful chart and place a large green arrow beside it. We can measure how many hours were saved, how many tasks were automated, how many customer inquiries were resolved and how much labor was reduced. The brakes are harder to quantify. How do you calculate the value of a question that prevented a bad decision? How do you report the return on investment of an employee who raised a concern before a flawed algorithm affected thousands of people? Nobody gets a standing ovation for the crisis that didn't happen. Restraint rarely makes the quarterly earnings call, and "We thoughtfully decided not to do something" is apparently not the kind of bold innovation investors want to hear. Much like the robot race, the system naturally pours resources into acceleration while treating reflection, oversight, ethics and human judgment as accessories to add in version 2.0.
The Pull of Busyness
Busyness can be seductive because it gives us the sensation of progress without forcing us to ask where we are going. Apparently, I have spent parts of my life building my own 9.39-second robot, impressive in motion, slightly questionable near a wall. AI did not create this tendency in us. It simply gave us better equipment, fewer excuses and the ability to exhaust ourselves at a speed previous generations could only dream of.
That is what concerns me most. It is being placed in the hands of managers who may not have been trained to lead people through ordinary change, much less a technological shift that touches identity, status, security and the meaning of work itself. Some leaders are still trying to figure out how to run a meeting without making it an hour longer than necessary. Now we are asking them to manage the ethical implications of machine intelligence. This should give all of us at least a brief pause.
AI is not entering calm, thoughtful, perfectly designed workplaces. It is entering cultures that are already struggling with burnout, disconnection, distrust and relentless pressure to do more with less. If an organization already prizes urgency over wisdom, AI will not correct that imbalance. It will accelerate it. A fearful culture will use AI to monitor people more efficiently. A cost-cutting culture will use it to eliminate jobs before redesigning work. A culture that dismisses dissent will silence warnings at machine speed. A workplace addicted to meetings may even use AI to summarize the meetings so nobody has to admit that the meeting should never have happened. Technology tends to amplify the values already embedded in an organization. It does not magically supply the values that are missing.
Leadership Before Technology
This is why executive leaders cannot treat AI as another software rollout delegated entirely to IT, with HR invited to explain it after everyone starts panicking. AI adoption is a leadership and culture challenge before it is a technical one. Employees are not simply wondering how to use the new tools. They are wondering what these tools mean for their careers, their value and their future, and watching closely to see whether leaders will use AI to increase human capacity or merely reduce human cost. They notice whether the people making the decisions understand the work being automated, and they listen for honesty, especially when leaders do not have all the answers. A polished announcement about "embracing the future" will not create trust if employees believe the real future is being discussed somewhere behind a closed door with a consultant and a spreadsheet.
What Responsible Innovation Looks Like
The executives who navigate this moment well will not necessarily be the ones who move the fastest. They will be the ones who know how to match acceleration with discernment. They will establish clear boundaries around where AI should and should not make decisions. They will preserve human review where the consequences are significant. They will invite employees closest to the work into the design process instead of surprising them after the contract is signed and calling the surprise "change management." They will reward people who identify risks, even when those concerns slow implementation. Most importantly, they will resist the temptation to mistake technical capability for organizational readiness. A tool may be ready to deploy long before the culture is prepared to absorb it.
Executive teams should therefore ask harder questions than, "How quickly can we implement this?" They should ask: What problem are we trying to solve? What human capability do we want AI to strengthen rather than replace? Who benefits from this decision, and who carries the risk? What could go wrong at scale? Can employees challenge the system without being labeled resistant to change? If technology produces a harmful recommendation, who has the authority and the courage to override it? Those are not anti-innovation questions. They are what responsible innovation sounds like. Brakes do not prevent a vehicle from moving forward. They make it possible to travel at speed without turning every journey into an insurance claim and a very uncomfortable board meeting.
The Real Race
The future will belong to organizations that can move quickly without abandoning thoughtfulness, humanity and trust. That balance will not happen automatically. It must be designed, modeled and protected by leaders who understand that their job is not simply to maximize what technology can do. Their job is to decide what it should do, where it should stop and how human beings will be treated along the way.
We will keep building faster things. That part feels inevitable. The question that matters is whether our wisdom, courage and humanity can keep pace, because speed alone will not decide who wins the race.
Leadership is what keeps us from hitting the wall and scheduling a task force afterward to investigate why nobody installed brakes.
If your executive team needs a thought partner to navigate this moment, we are ready to be in that conversation. If you already sees a need for specific expertise in culture change management or work design, we have the Gig Talent Certified Executive Entrepreneur™ you need, ready to go to work.