Deloitte CTO On The AI Investment Trap: CIO Advisory 2026
CxOTALK, Saturday, March 21st, 2026
On CXOTalk episode 912, Deloitte's Chief Technology Officer, Bill Briggs, reveals how the imbalance between AI technology spending and organizational investment is creating a compounding trap, where ungoverned agents, exploding inference costs, and rising failure rates are all consequences of the same misallocated budget. This discussion includes practical advice for CIOs.
Key topics include:
The 93/7 investment split and why pouring more money into technology without redesigning workflows and culture produces diminishing returns
Governing autonomous AI agents as a "silicon-based workforce" that requires its own version of HR, from onboarding and performance management to accountability when agents create other agents
The inference cost paradox, where per-token prices have dropped more than 280-fold in 18 months, yet enterprise AI bills continue to climb, forcing a rethinking of cloud, on-premises, and edge compute strategy
How to calibrate the pace of AI investment when the pressure to move fast may be producing more failures than breakthroughs