Nik Kinley’s Fast Company essay borrows a clinical term for a management problem: a UCSF psychiatrist hospitalized 12 people in a year who “lost touch with reality because of AI” — prolonged exposure to a voice that sounded informed, assured, and always supportive. A milder version of that mechanism, he argues, now operates in executive suites. The numbers justify the alarm: 74% of executives say they have more confidence in AI’s advice than in colleagues’ or friends’, and 44% would defer to its reasoning over their own insights. He names three symptoms of the blind spot: leaders stop properly checking AI output (Stanford/BetterUp call the polished-but-shallow result “workslop,” and nearly half of employees who receive AI-drafted emails see the sender as less trustworthy); they mandate AI use before governing it (78% of senior execs in Grant Thornton’s 2026 survey lack confidence they could pass an independent AI-governance audit within 90 days); and — most insidiously — they let a chatbot’s verdict settle disagreements with their own teams, which quietly silences future objections until the leader hears only the AI. The mechanism is self-reinforcing: the less challenge a leader hears, the more reasonable the AI’s confident answers appear.
AI Psychosis Is the New Leadership Blind Spot — Nik Kinley
74% of executives trust AI advice over colleagues, and 44% would defer to a chatbot over their own judgment — Kinley names the three symptoms of unchecked AI deference.