AI Vertigo: Why Truth Resists Simplicity in the Age of Agents
There is a specific feeling that comes up frequently in our early conversations with clients and colleagues. It’s called “AI vertigo.”
It’s that slightly dizzying sensation you get when you look at the pace of change and realize the ground is shifting beneath your feet. We are moving from the first wave of Generative AI into the new frontier of agentic AI, and the implications are massive.
When we talk about agents, systems that don’t just chat, but act, plan, and execute workflows, it naturally triggers a strong emotional reaction. There is a lot of genuine anxiety about automation.
Avoiding the Binary Trap
It’s critical that we do not hand-wave that anxiety away. As leaders, we have to be clear-eyed about the risks. But we must be equally clear-eyed about the opportunities.
The discourse often falls into a trap of "Boomer" (blind optimism) vs. "Doomer" (total catastrophe). But, as author John Green is fond of saying, “the truth resists simplicity.”
The reality of this technology sits somewhere in the messy, complicated middle. It isn’t about a magical utopia or a robot apocalypse; it’s about the hard work of integrating a powerful new capability into our daily work. It’s about figuring out how to be “co-developers” with these systems rather than just passive users.
The Pace of Disappointment vs. Reality
One of the drivers of this vertigo is the sheer velocity of improvement.
I talk to exasperated users who experimented with AI two years ago, found it hallucinated or failed at basic tasks, and wrote it off. If that is your baseline, the current hype seems overblown.
But the technology that exists today is fundamentally different from the technology of six months ago. The jump from a chatbot that summarizes text to an agent that can orchestrate complex workflows is not a linear step; it is a level-up. If you aren't paying attention to the last few months, you are making decisions based on obsolete data.
The Indisputable Future
Here’s where I land, and why we are pushing forward so thoughtfully: Regardless of how you feel about AI, it is the indisputable future of every vertical.
This is not just about our industry. This transformation is coming for legal, healthcare, finance, and beyond. The "drum beat" of AI is getting louder. We can try to plug our ears, or we can learn the rhythm.
The goal right now isn’t to try to fix everything at once. The goal is to move from experimentation to adoption, to find the use cases that drive revenue, build trust, and actually help us work better.
Stabilizing the Shift with Innovid Orchestrator
This need for stability amidst the chaos is exactly why we built Innovid Orchestrator.
We’ve seen that clients generally fall into two cohorts right now: those building their own massive, complicated systems who need a partner to plug in and interoperate, and those who need a partner to come in with a whole system ready to go.
Innovid Orchestrator solves for both. It is the bridge between the chaos of the "new frontier" and the stability of enterprise execution.
It works because it isn't just a workflow tool; it sits on a massive pool of data and trust that Innovid has built over trillions of data points across 20+ years. That history allows us to be the “co-developers” our clients need. We can provide the infrastructure that turns AI vertigo into a clear, executed strategy.
We need to respect the anxiety of the moment. It’s a sign that things are changing. But we can't let it paralyze us. We have to move fast, and we have to move thoughtfully. AI vertigo is real, but so are the opportunities on the other side of it.
