20 hours ago
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When the COO of Nike, the chief of operations at an $84 billion food distributor, and the CEO of a major tech media company walked into the same room at the Fortune COO Summit, they came ready to talk about what AI was doing for them. Speed. Scale. Revenue unlocked. The future arriving ahead of schedule.
What they described instead, during a lunch roundtable hosted by Thomson Reuters, was something closer to organized chaos.
“The biggest challenge I could see is speed without clarity,” said Venkatesh Alagirisamy, EVP and COO of Nike. “I see a lot of hype around AI that drives a lot of energy within organizations in wanting to adopt AI, but without that clarity, without that sense of purpose, that speed could get us in the wrong direction.”
Welcome to what panelists called the “automation illusion” — the dangerous gap between what AI promises operations leaders and what it actually delivers.
The promise was simple
The way the COOs described it to Fortune Editorial Director Diane Brady the AI pitch was almost too good. Automate the routine. Free up the workforce. Let the machines handle forecasting, logistics, compliance, customer service. Let humans handle strategy.
Aayush Bhatnagar, global head of customer service at Sysco — which moves food t...
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