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Purpose is your organization’s antidote to AI skepticism
Business & Technology
Fast CompanyEN
September 28, 2026

Purpose is your organization’s antidote to AI skepticism

Rightfully, general trust in AI continues to fall. With AI models breaking rules and hacking companies, recent polling from Just Capital captures the broad consumer sentiment well: 78% of daily AI users think development should slow or pause so that AI companies can ensure safety and ethics. At the same time, companies are investing in AI technologies without seeing real ROI: 56% of CEOs surveyed by PwC report no revenue or cost benefit from AI investment. Just 12% say they’ve captured both. Companies are going to keep building, investing in, and using AI. The horse is out of the proverbial stable and organizations not embracing the AI reality will find themselves behind. But that does not mean organizations must go all-in on AI without guardrails and a strategy grounded in responsibility and ethics. This is where purpose comes in—authentically embedded in the organization as an operating system and lens for decision-making, not a statement posted on a breakroom wall. Organizations that operate in accordance with their purpose and values will find those governance tools valuable, helping them navigate AI transformation, implement it responsibly, and ensure employees are on board. That latter point is perhaps the most important. As global employee engagement reaches new lows (20% in Gallup’s latest reporting), now is certainly not the time to strip humanity from your organization. It’s worth noting the growing divide between leadership and employee views of AI at work. While 78% of employers view AI positively, only 51% of employees do. Bridging that gap—responsibly, ethically, and efficiently—will set apart companies strengthening their workforce from those seeing engagement, commitment, and loyalty continue falling. PURPOSE IS AI’S AMPLIFIER Like a guitar amp, AI amplifies your organization’s existing values and behaviors. Companies with a deeply embedded purpose that enables a vibrant culture, clear values, and consistent behaviors will find that AI can help scale these elements. Organizations without that clarity will amplify confusion and misalignment. That is the environment where skepticism and mistrust grow. Purpose needs to be a governing layer for AI adoption. As AI changes how organizations work, purpose will determine what and who that work ultimately serves. This isn’t easy, even with a clear purpose in place. AI’s rapid rise and its impact on almost every industry have become real leadership tests. AI tools are compressing the distance between intent and action, making it possible to scale both good and bad decisions at speed. At the same time, leaders are facing scrutiny from employees, customers, investors, and communities about their AI use. These stakeholders demand transparency and accountability about how AI is used, what data it draws on, and what values guide it. And rightfully so, as your employees and customers increasingly experience AI’s human impacts as their communities and water sources are taken over by data centers. A cute chatbot that answers customer questions may not seem worth those community-level impacts; it’s going to be challenging for leaders to make the case for that investment. But there are good, purpose-guided uses of AI, too. Take Bank of America’s The Academy, an initiative to upskill the bank’s 200,000+ employees while clearly and specifically mapping where human oversight is crucial. This program provides employees with the skills and tools they need to use AI effectively, and also reduces anxiety and uncertainty through human checks. Similarly, when Telus implemented a customer-facing AI tool in 2023, it did so methodically and transparently, ultimately becoming the world’s first AI tool certified to ISO 31700-1 Privacy by Design. Today, about 66,000 Telus employees actively use the platform, leading the company to realize more than $600 million in financial benefits. THE 4 C’S PLAYBOOK FOR LEADERS Whether or not your organization has a purpose, AI is probably being used, if not mandated. Where do you go from here? Our leadership team shared guidance that any organization can use to move AI closer to values and mission. Our 4C’s—Conduct, Check, Create, and Cultivate—help organizations evaluate the ethics of their AI use, select the right tools, build a responsible and values-aligned architecture, and center employees in transformation efforts. It’s worth exploring these exercises to see where your organization stands today and where you need to go. 1. Conduct an ethics audit. Gather employees who lead AI implementation and map your use case across six principles: transparency, human oversight, fairness and equity, safety and accountability, privacy and respect, and environmental responsibility. Together, your policies should provide the groundwork for a responsible use case and honest assessment of how ethically your company uses AI tools.  2. Check purpose alignment. Before implementing or trying any new AI tool or use case, ask: Does this use case reinforce who we are as an organization? Does it strengthen relationships with key stakeholders? Can it create value for the business and society? Is it culturally feasible? 3. Create a purpose stack. This is your roadmap for implementing new AI tools or methodologies. We use five-layer architecture to help embed purpose into AI systems. This includes data feeding AI systems, selected models and vendors, prompt architectures used, human oversight at each step, and ongoing monitoring as use cases evolve. 4. Cultivate employee champions. Employees use your AI tools daily, so they must be at the transformation’s center. Organizations should have a values-led narrative, early employee input, reassurance that AI augments rather than replaces people, and empathetic manager enablement. Many people compare AI to the Industrial Revolution. We might hate the data center impacts, cringe at the water a single prompt uses, and be horrified by AI models hacking companies. At the same time, we must prepare for a future where everyone owns a car and the horse and buggy are quaint memories. How we move forward is entirely up to us. I hope purpose-driven leaders will shape AI’s future. Over decades, I’ve seen purpose move from a fringe, feel-good action to “give back,” to the center of how companies operate. The same could be said for AI, if we commit to moving forward ethically, responsibly, and with humans at the center. Carol Cone is CEO of Carol Cone ON PURPOSE.

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