The Expertise Lag

The chart runs two lines across time as a company takes up AI. The red line, the felt need for human expertise, starts high, sinks to its lowest point right when confidence in AI peaks, then climbs back up and ends higher than it started. The green line, confidence in what AI alone can do, rises to a peak and then droops to a lower, steady level as the cracks show. The gap where the red line bottoms out is the "rescue project" window: the expertise a company cuts at the top is the expertise it pays extra to hire back.