60 Percent Of CEOs Fear AI More Than War, Economic Turmoil, Or Cyber Threats

This article was originally published on Inc.com.

When a paradigm-shifting tech innovation arrives it typically triggers polarized reactions among its users and the public: it’s either the best thing ever, or a giant, world-threatening mistake. Artificial intelligence (AI) is perhaps the most revolutionary technology in a lifetime, evolving and improving daily, so its impact is still unknown. But new research gives us a worrying clue about its impact at work.

CEOs now, for the first time, feel that AI may be so powerful that it causes ripples and upsets that could represent a bigger risk to their businesses than geopolitical disturbances like war, economic and financial crashes, and cybersecurity incidents. The report comes from the non-profit business research organization The Conference Board, which has around 2,000 companies and organizations as members, including many in the Fortune 500 list. 

As part of a quarterly survey, the Board asked CEOs what their plans and feelings were, and found that 60 percent of them ranked AI as the top risk to their industry, HRDive reported. That figure is up seven percentage points over the result from Q4 2025—just three months ago. This is a dramatic rise, showing how worrying AI really is to company leaders. In the new survey AI ranked above the risk of geopolitical instability by one percentage point and cyberattacks by four. 

Company leaders’ worries about AI are based on two specific issues, HRDive noted. If they underinvest in the revolutionary new tech, they risk falling behind rivals who jump in more aggressively, assuming all the productivity-boosting promise of AI proves true. This puts financial and business planning pressure on investment decisions made by executives. But if this pressure leads to over-enthusiasm and over-investment in the tech, executives risk experiencing underwhelming results from AI. The capital invested is thus wasted, potentially angering investors, and diverting investment funds away from more productive targets.

Nevertheless, in the face of AI’s dramatic impact on the business world, the Board’s survey found that more CEOs are planning to increase capital spending this quarter than last quarter—35 percent said so now versus 22 percent last quarter. The allure, promise of AI, and worry about falling behind competitors clearly makes for a potent mix that’s shaping investment decisions in C-suites across the country.

Speaking about AI this week Lisa Cook, Fed governor, warned that the tech has “tremendous promise” but said she viewed its “general adoption with caution” because it threatens to be “the most significant reorganization of work in generations,” HRDive noted. She also said the tech may drive job displacement before job creation, spiking unemployment. It’s all going to play out “as the economy transitions.”

You may think it surprising that AI is ranked at the top of CEOs’ worries in the The Conference Board’s study, especially given geopolitical disturbances like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in Iran, and rapidly-shifting financial uncertainties driven by the Trump administration’s economic policies. Indeed, the Board quizzed CEOs on this latter point, and found 71 percent said tariffs had pushed up costs for their companies. Interesting, then, that CEOs point at AI as the biggest risk.

They may have a point, and it’s possible that the company leaders the Board talked to may have actually underestimated the threats associated with AI. As a recent report at CNBC notes, there are other business threats from AI than either under- or over-investing in the tech. AI experts told the news outlet that one big risk is that as companies hand over more systems and sensitive data, including financial info, to ever-smarter AI tools there’s a risk that the AI system’s complexity reaches “beyond human comprehension.” And then, if an AI fails or makes a mistake, it may happen silently and unpredictably. 

On March 11, Elon Musk reportedly warned people to “proceed with caution” in the aftermath of large outages at Amazon, after the sales and net tech giant experienced a “high blast radius” AI error, Fortune reported. In this case, the risks inherent in AI are demonstrated twofold. First, if companies rely on third party providers like Amazon to run key business processes, AI-linked errors could cripple their operations. Second, even tech experts can be tripped up by deploying AI tools that go wrong—something that could hit companies that deploy AI tools inside their own operation.