{"id":113709,"date":"2025-10-10T16:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T16:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/113709\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T16:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T16:18:10","slug":"from-fear-factor-to-cognitive-fatigue-kpmg-principal-on-the-quarter-when-everyone-started-thinking-about-ai-differently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/113709\/","title":{"rendered":"From \u2018fear factor\u2019 to \u2018cognitive fatigue\u2019: KPMG principal on the quarter when everyone started thinking about AI differently"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI agent deployment at major U.S. organizations has entered a period of hyper-growth, with workplace culture and management strategies evolving just as rapidly, according to the latest KPMG<\/a> Q3 2025 AI Quarterly Pulse Survey<\/a>. In just six months, the share of organizations with deployed artificial intelligence agents quadrupled from 11% to 42%, according to the survey of 130 U.S.-based C-suite and business leaders representing organizations with annual revenue of $1 billion or more.<\/p>\n

At the same time, according to Rahsaan Shears<\/a>, principal and aIQ program lead at KPMG U.S., the third quarter is when people\u2019s approach to the technology fundamentally shifted. The \u201cfear factor\u201d was gone as more people actually worked with these tools, she said, and in its place a \u201ccognitive fatigue\u201d emerged. Echoing this sentiment, the KPMG report highlights a dramatic drop in employee resistance\u2014from 47% last quarter to just 21% now. Over half of the workforce now either accepts or actively embraces AI agents. Technology departments lead the charge, with 95% reporting agent usage for productivity gains, followed closely by operations and risk management.<\/p>\n

The \u2018human in the loop\u2019 is reassuring\u2014and exhausting<\/p>\n

Shears said C-suite leaders are telling her that as more and more workers have engaged with the technology, either through enterprise tools or participating in a proof of concept by their organization, \u201cthey can see where it\u2019s an enabler.\u201d But based on its maturity, it hasn\u2019t reached the point where it can entirely replace human workers. There needs to be \u201ca human in the loop or a human on the loop.\u201d<\/p>\n

A defining insight from Shears is the changing relationship between humans and AI at work. Shears describes the technology as \u201ca toddler\u201d\u2014capable of impressive feats yet still immature and requiring context, guidance, and oversight. \u201cIt\u2019s not a toddler in all fields\u2014software development, for instance, it\u2019s much more advanced. But for most enterprise uses, it still needs human intervention, she observed.<\/p>\n

This ongoing need for human skills, Shears believes, has made employees more comfortable with AI, seeing it as a tool that enables rather than replaces them. \u201cThat persistent need for human engagement\u2014I think people have found that comforting,\u201d Shears said, emphasizing the unique skills now required: critical thinking, questioning, and adaptability. She said she believes \u201cRenaissance skills\u201d will be increasingly important, but clarified that it doesn\u2019t mean the workforce will be full of poetry majors. Still, \u201cthe art of thinking, the art of questioning\u201d will be crucial for being the human in the loop.<\/p>\n

When asked if people have found that AI tools are bad or don\u2019t produce a return on investment, Shears said people went from having an expectation that AI would be just as good at work as someone with lots of experience to understanding that, while it can go much faster than humans at many things, like a toddler, it can cause a lot of damage without close supervision.<\/p>\n

Rethinking success and ROI in the AI era<\/p>\n

Both KPMG and Shears argue that traditional business metrics are insufficient to capture AI\u2019s transformative impact. According to the survey, 78% of leaders say conventional KPIs miss much of AI\u2019s value. Shears said the same is true of ROI and the much-publicized failure<\/a> of many AI pilots to achieve it. \u201cI believe that the traditional measures that we\u2019ve looked for are not going to tell us the full story, because we\u2019re never going to go to a very lengthy analysis, because we don\u2019t know how to measure necessarily all the right indicators. I\u2019m very interested and intrigued about how this is going to come to fruition,\u201d she said, adding that KPMG was looking at a broad array of signals to evaluate AI results.<\/p>\n

KPMG\u2019s data reflects this shift\u2014organizational leaders are now tracking productivity (97%), profitability (94%), and quality improvements (91%) as evidence of AI\u2019s business impact, even as broader enterprise outcomes continue to evolve.<\/p>\n

Toward a new kind of workforce<\/p>\n

Workforce transformation is now firmly underway, with Shears seeing hope especially for entry-level workers who are \u201cdigital first,\u201d yet now face higher expectations for skepticism, critical thinking, and adaptable reasoning.<\/p>\n

When asked if this will reshape how entry-level work feels and looks, Shears said it\u2019s nuanced, because she\u2019s observed a propensity among younger workers, raised on social media and constant iPhone access, to \u201ctrust\u201d their devices and technology. In the case of AI, because it\u2019s \u201cmore early in its maturity, they need to be more skeptical, which is a different kind of relationship than they historically had from a digital interaction perspective.\u201d This coincides with KPMG\u2019s finding that 56% of leaders expect to reshape entry-level recruiting within the year. When asked if employers need to rethink entry-level work to be less menial and more critically oriented, Shears replied that it\u2019s already happening: \u201cWe\u2019re seeing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortune Global Forum<\/strong> returns Oct. 26\u201327, 2025 in Riyadh. CEOs and global leaders will gather for a dynamic, invitation-only event shaping the future of business. Apply for an invitation.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI agent deployment at major U.S. organizations has entered a period of hyper-growth, with workplace culture and management…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[289,79,2788,18,300,19,17,1126],"class_list":{"0":"post-113709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-careers","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-gen-z","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-kpmg"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}