AI ‘Poseurs’: A Hidden Risk

Three months after the CEO mandated that AI be incorporated more into workflows, internal surveys showed that 80% of employees were signing on to AI tools daily. Dashboards and tracking software showed usage was up significantly as well. So why weren’t things changing? 

By most measures, firms should be capitalizing on AI. About 20% of all workers report using internal AI tools regularly, and an even larger percentage claim to use ChatGPT or Claude. Online and certificate-course enrollment for general AI is up by nearly 200%, and mentions of AI skills in LinkedIn profiles have increased by more than 140%.  

But experts say a new trend may be holding firms back. Call it the rise of the AI poseurs. Feeling pressured to adopt the technology, some workers who struggle to use it find themselves faking or exaggerating their skills. Many of these poseurs, experts say, are afraid of losing their jobs in a tough hiring market. But the disconnect may help explain why only a fifth of AI pilots are scaling to enterprise level. The pricey tech’s lack of a return is dismaying leaders. 

“You can understand it,” says Moses Zonana, a senior client partner in the Technology practice at Korn Ferry. “It’s like when everyone used to say they were experts in Excel or PowerPoint. Most were faking it.”

Some experts say the posing is not unlike other workplace trends such as “coffee-badging” or “bare-minimum Mondays.” AI poseurs are logging in to tools, signing up for training courses here and there, and engaging in other performative actions, but aren’t really embracing AI adoption or changing how they work. On the hiring side, candidates—if they are in fact real people and not AI agents—are getting meaningless certificates to exaggerate their skills or claiming expertise in specific tools needed for a job without having used them before. Few are tested before being hired. 

To be sure, firms, by expecting such quick adoption of a new technology, may have only themselves to blame for all the faking. Tanyth Lloyd, global vice president of technology and transformation for Korn Ferry’s RPO practice, says screaming headlines over AI-related jobs aren’t helping. Indeed, one study found that 75% of employees felt pressure to use AI or risk repercussions. Even more telling, one in six admitted to “pretending to use AI or appear up-to-date" to satisfy bosses. “They are feeling pressure to show they are AI ready and fluent,” says Lloyd, even when they aren’t.  

That’s not only a risk for the employee—who likely would be let go if exposed—but also a major liability for firms as they look to integrate AI into operations. Some experts say AI poseurs are responsible for the rise in several related issues: so-called AI workslop (low-quality content that slows down rather than speeds up productivity); increased vulnerability to cyberattacks (one in six cyberattacks so far this year used AI); and the high failure rate of many AI pilots. Twisting the famous phrase, Korn Ferry senior client partner James Stark says one of biggest problems leaders face with AI integration and transformation is that “they don’t know if their emperors are wearing clothes or not.” 

Few people are experts in AI, of course. Most are learning as they go, and indeed experts encourage firms to create a culture of experimentation to increase engagement and hasten adoption. At the same time, however, better guardrails are needed to screen for poseurs and to ensure they are measuring and tracking the right data, says Paul Fogel, sector leader for software in Korn Ferry's Professional Search practice. For instance, he says, a lot of recruiting still doesn’t include simple remedies like integrating live prompting or posing questions about how candidates would leverage AI tools to solve a problem.  

Instead of just looking at dashboard data, managers could set up weekly or monthly “AI learning sessions” for employees to discuss specific ways they used AI tools for a project, how they measured the impact, and what they would change or do differently next time. “At some point, the level of proficiency, if there is any, has to start showing up in turnaround times, completion rates, and other deadlines,” says Andrea Wolf, a senior client partner in the Consumer and Consumer Health practices at Korn Ferry.  

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