What Happens When People Have to Clean Up AI's Mess?
Fast Company, Sunday, October 18th, 2026
A Drexel professor describes latent risk: people losing the skills they need to step in when reliable AI fails.
The author, academic director of Drexel University's Center for Applied AI & Business Analytics, describes an AI system that performs reliably for months until an unusual case requires human intervention.
He calls the danger latent risk: overseers become less practiced at independent judgment while the organization still depends on them.
The idea builds on automation bias research showing that people follow automated recommendations even against other evidence.
What is new is that AI is taking over larger parts of analysis and decision-making, which makes it important to preserve human capability deliberately.