A major computer vendor releases a new version of its operating system for its hardware and the OS crashes. The culprit: a single software module within the OS that someone forgot to compile. Would AI have drilled deeply enough and gathered enough conclusive information to see that a small module of software had not been compiled, and that it would bring the OS down? Possibly — if the vendor had skipped a QA of the module, the AI could check the project management checklist and catch that the module had not been quality-checked, for example — but we don’t really know.

A back-office order-entry manager jumps the gun and purchases a new order-entry system without consulting his staff. IT is asked to integrate and implement the system. The project drags on for over a year, with no clear cutover date in sight. Project tasks are getting checked off, but still the project doesn’t seem close. There seems to be an endless number of enhancement requests coming in from users, and many say the system will “never work.” The real culprit? Order-entry staff wasn’t included upfront in the system decision process. Is this a case of “soft” sabotage? Hard to tell — and even harder for AI to know — but an astute and experienced human project manager likely would know.

A stock brokerage system project is more than a year overdue and millions of dollars over budget. The real head-scratcher is that the project seems close to being finished because tasks have been checked off the list. The CIO gets a gut feeling that things aren’t really as they should be. He starts walking around and asking questions — not of his project manager, but of project staff members. They tell him they are still working on many of the tasks that have been represented as being complete. He confronts the project manager and discovers that the manager has been falsifying project progress because he was over his head and afraid he would lose his job. Could AI have uncovered this deception? Possibly — but AI can only operate on the data it is fed. It would likely take a real human (in this case, the CIO) to understand the project manager’s fear of failure and sense the project was having undocumented problems.