AI-Smart, Not AI-First
CIO, Thursday, September 17th, 2026
AI-first mandates repeat the cloud-first mistake; organizations must be AI-enabled before they can responsibly be AI-first.
The author draws a direct parallel to cloud-first a decade ago: fast adoption, thin governance, and years spent unwinding security and cost problems, until OMB formally pivoted federal policy to cloud-smart in 2019, not to slow adoption but to make it sustainable.
The urgency around AI is real and sitting it out loses ground that will not come back, so AI-first as an instinct is correct.
The problem is sequence. Before going AI-first an organization has to be AI-enabled: sanctioned tools available, data structured for AI consumption, basic guardrails in place. Most ungoverned adoption today is organizations attempting AI-first while still only AI-enabled at best.