Here’s What CIOs Told Me They Need to Learn About AI

Over the past few weeks, I reached out to CIOs I know personally to ask what they believe are the most compelling and valuable aspects of enterprise AI that IT leaders need to learn about. The response was immediate and unexpected: Instead of just replying to my email, several CIOs proposed gathering over Zoom to explore the topic in depth.

Joining me for this discussion were CIOs from city government, retail, healthcare, and a foundation. They were candid about their needs, challenges, and where they see this fast-moving set of technologies heading.

Data Preparedness

The city CIO didn’t mince words about her AI imperative: “I need all of it — this is moving faster than normal, and I am needing to catch up as fast as we can.” Her team has rolled out Copilot and seen strong demand, but she stressed the need for grounding — clear answers to basic, yet critical questions.

She was clear that some serious data wrangling was needed. Without this foundation, she argued, adoption risks will outpace understanding.

Building on the topic of the need for data wrangling, I shed some research on data maturity from Dresner Advisory Service. Nobody was surprised that early adopters of AI have a common trait: 100% reported past success in business intelligence, 75% were early adopters of machine learning, and 62.5% had a designated data leader.

AI Literacy at all Levels

Our retail CIO then took the discussion in a different direction, emphasizing that the enterprise-wide challenge every CIO needs to solve is AI literacy. Training employees at every level is not optional. This includes training on regulations such as the EU’s AI Act for global organizations, which for his acts as the standard for AI compliance. Nor can U.S.-only organizations afford to lag behind: Legislation — whether from Washington or state capitals — will inevitably catch up. CIOs, therefore, must prepare their enterprises and build the skills and the governance required for trustworthy, scalable AI adoption.

Taking up the Mantle of AI Change Management

Without question, CIOs are uniquely positioned to lead the AI era – to not just define the right use cases, but also to drive the organizational change required for successful adoption. As with every major enterprise technology shift, IT sits at the center of change management, ensuring that tools don’t just get deployed but are embedded into the way people work. The mandate is clear: CIOs must be the ones to seek and assess opportunities to transform how their organizations operate, compete, and deliver value.

Our foundation CIO captured the pressure and opportunity perfectly: “My CEO wants us to be world-renowned for our use of AI.” To meet this vision, she lost no time identifying AI ambassadors on every team and running proofs of concept with a strong emphasis on structured change management.

Our group agreed that CIOs who are pulling ahead with AI are not the timid type — they’re scrappy, comfortable with ambiguity, and willing to take calculated risks. Their leadership is proving that success with AI isn’t about waiting for clarity; it’s about creating it.

As Vendors Race Ahead, Governance, Security Paramount

Without question, AI isn’t waiting for CIOs to catch up or build up their hard or soft skills. Major vendors such as Workday, Salesforce, and Snowflake are embedding AI directly into their platforms and accelerating adoption — even if IT leaders try to hit the brakes. This reality makes governance, policy, and security not just priorities but also imperatives.

CIOs must ensure that the AI deployed in their environments is done responsibly. They should have solid policies for data security and loss prevention, and clear enterprise-wide standards should guide usage. Without this, enthusiasm for AI will quickly be undercut by risk.

Our retail CIO put the risk bluntly: If organizations don’t move fast enough on AI, shadow IT will fill the gap. This urgency is compounded by tough choices — deciding which AI capabilities should remain in-house, versus be entrusted to third-party vendors. He also flagged that while agentic AI can accelerate DevOps and even DevSecOps, “How do you secure the code?”

The AI-fueled security challenges are already here — hackers have been early adopters. AI is making phishing harder to detect by rewriting malicious emails with flawless grammar and cloaking URLs to bypass human suspicion. The only viable response is two-pronged: IT must leverage AI to strengthen defenses, while also stepping up business-wide education on the risks. CIOs who can balance speed with control and innovation with security will be the ones who keep AI from becoming a double-edged sword.

Strategic AI Opportunities and Real Use Cases

It was clear that our CIOs aren’t just experimenting with AI — they’re thinking strategically, with a clear endgame and roadmap for how AI can create lasting value. They see the AI opportunity not as a set of tools to bolt on, but a foundation for transforming how their organizations operate, serve customers, and build resilience.

CEOs Diverge on AI

At the executive level, our CIOs said CEOs tend to fall into one of two camps: Some are eager to jump in, seeing AI as a chance to leapfrog competition and reinvent their business. Others are more cautious, focusing instead on AI efficiency gains and cost savings before making bigger bets. The CIO’s role is to bridge these perspectives — grounding AI strategy in realistic use cases, while keeping the long-term, big-picture potential in sight. For this reason alone, I believe this could be a golden era for CIOs.

AI’s Impact on IT Workforce Will be Profound

The CIOs on the call were clear-eyed about the workforce impact of AI, including the impact on the IT labor force. As one noted, within just a few years, our organizations will be managing not only human employees but also a growing non-human workforce. Agentic AI is already reducing task times in half, reshaping how work gets done, and putting pressure on labor models. Some roles are shrinking, while others are being fundamentally redefined.

The job market is feeling this shift. Even computer science graduates from top universities are struggling to land interviews, sending out hundreds of resumes with little response. The roles most at risk — call centers, IT support, coding, legal assistants, and paralegals — are precisely those built on repetitive or rules-driven tasks that AI can now handle at scale. As the foundation CIO put it, “We’re not going to need 85% of people coding.” Low-code and no-code tools have already reduced demand for pure coding; AI is set to accelerate this trend further.

Still, IT remains a bastion of opportunity — particularly for those who can work with agents, design governance frameworks, and connect AI capabilities to business value. All the CIOs on the call said they believe the workforce of the future won’t be defined by eliminating humans but by redefining human roles to partner with intelligent systems.

Risks, Rewards and Innovation

The CIOs are quickly realizing that AI is a platform for creating transformational business models. But as one of the CIOs observed, “Risk leads to both failure and success.” Playing it safe might avoid short-term missteps, but it will also limit the ability to capture the breakthroughs and long-term competitiveness.

The foundation CIO’s organization has embraced this philosophy, openly committing to taking on risk in order to innovate. For her, AI isn’t just about automating processes or squeezing efficiencies from existing systems. It’s about building the capacity to do things that couldn’t be done before — whether that means delivering world-class customer experiences, reimagining core business processes, or creating entirely new value propositions.

In Dresner’s research, when asked to rate the importance of AI’s potential benefits, respondents most often considered improving customer experience and personalization critical, followed closely by improved decision-making and gains in productivity and efficiency. Interestingly, respondents least often view market and business expansion as critical, suggesting that while Agentic AI holds transformational promise, most organizations will initially use it to enhance existing operations rather than drive new growth.

This is where CIO leadership is pivotal. CIOs, along with their CEOs, must guide their organizations in shifting the conversation from headcount reduction to true transformation. They are uniquely positioned to ensure that AI initiatives aren’t just about speeding up old processes but about designing new ways of working, serving, and competing.

Parting Words and the Articles to Follow

The conversation with the above CIOs made one thing clear: AI — and particularly agentic AI — is not a passing trend but a fundamental shift that demands CIO leadership. The challenges are immense, from governance and security to workforce disruption and executive alignment. Yet the opportunities are just as profound: transforming industries, reimagining customer experiences, and reshaping the very definition of work. Success depends upon CIOs’ ability to balance risk with vision, build trust through governance, and lead change with urgency and courage.

In the coming months, I will be sounding out CIOs about how to navigate this new era of digital innovation. Here is a guide to the articles to come.