The middleman is gone. The manager who mentored the new hire, the salesperson with the Rolodex, the person who connected the question to the right answer. That role has been cut from business, from retail, and now from the conversation about AI.

The problem is not that AI gives wrong answers. The problem is that the answer is only as good as the question, and nobody is teaching people how to ask. At work, managers are telling staff to figure it out. At home, parents are expected to guide kids through tools the parents have never been trained on. The government is spending heavily on AI adoption with no policing infrastructure and no teaching layer behind it.

Shadow AI is already happening in workplaces. People using it when they are not supposed to, because the gap exists and humans fill gaps. That is what happens when oversight is absent and nobody is minding the answer.

Topics: AI middleman, AI workplace, shadow AI, Canada AI spending, AI parenting

Originally aired on 2026-06-05