Ludic · 2026-07-18 · notable
Ludic — AI mania is eviscerating global decision-making
Consultant Ludic argues corporate AI adoption is in mass psychosis — executives push $2B AI strategies without ever opening ChatGPT, engineers game token leaderboards, and vendors stay quiet to keep contracts.
A consultant's front-row view of $2B-revenue orgs where the AI strategy comes from executives who have never opened ChatGPT.
What is it?
AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making is an essay by Ludic, the pseudonymous CEO of the data consultancy Hermit Tech. Ludic uses 18 months of anonymous conversations with executives, engineers, and buyers at Fortune-500-scale organizations to argue that most enterprise AI programs are failing while their sponsors say the opposite.
How does it work?
Ludic frames the dysfunction as three interlocking failures. Near-total AI project failure rates are hidden by inflated success claims. A coordination problem prevents anyone from admitting failure, because speaking truthfully risks being fired. And an AI-washing pressure forces even sensible projects to justify themselves through artificial AI framing rather than actual business value.
Why does it matter?
The essay hit the Hacker News front page within hours — 375 points and 217 comments — and was picked up the same day by Simon Willison. Its anecdotes (an executive writing a $2B-revenue AI strategy without having ever used ChatGPT, an engineer secretly rewriting a Go codebase in Zig to look busy on a token leaderboard) give engineering leaders and buyers a shared vocabulary for a pattern many are already seeing but had not named.
Who is it for?
engineering leaders, AI buyers, product managers, technology strategy execs