Companies are making sweeping AI implementation decisions without understanding the actual work their employees perform, a phenomenon Box founder Aaron Levie termed "AI psychosis." ClickUp's 22% workforce reduction for AI agents, accelerating tech layoffs that are already matching 2025's annual total, and the surge in DuckDuckGo adoption as users reject Google's forced AI integration all point to a pattern: leadership is deploying AI at scale based on capability rather than necessity. This disconnect between decision-makers and operational reality creates a particular vulnerability for CX teams, where the gap between what AI can theoretically do and what customers actually need is widest. The question becomes acute for teams already running Agentforce or similar agent-first platforms: are you optimising for genuine customer outcomes, or are you optimising for the ability to say you've deployed AI?
The implications for CX professionals are twofold. First, there's immediate pressure to justify AI investments through headcount reduction rather than customer experience improvement—a metric mismatch that typically surfaces when bad AI rollouts break customer trust. Second, there's a credibility problem emerging in the market itself. Users are actively rejecting AI-first experiences when alternatives exist, suggesting that the assumption underpinning most CX AI strategies—that customers want more automation—may be fundamentally flawed. For support team leads and consultants, this creates an opening: organisations that resist the psychosis and instead use AI to augment human judgment rather than replace it are likely to differentiate on experience precisely when competitors are cutting corners through aggressive automation.
The broader risk is that CX platforms themselves become collateral damage in this cycle. If vendors compete primarily on agent capability and cost reduction rather than on measurable customer satisfaction gains, the entire category risks commoditisation around a feature set that users increasingly distrust. Teams should be asking whether their AI roadmap is driven by customer feedback and business outcomes, or by the need to match competitor announcements. That distinction will determine whether AI becomes a genuine competitive advantage or another cost-cutting exercise that erodes the trust CX teams have spent years building.
The people deciding that AI can replace your job are also the ones least likely to understand what your job truly involves, according to Box founder Aaron Levie, who pointed to this as an example of “AI psychosis.” Indeed, ClickUp recently cut 22% of its workforce for AI agents, tech layoffs i