A practitioner article published in the SMS Explorer, “AI Will Help Formulate Strategy, But Should Never Finish It,” by Michael Olenick, challenges a growing assumption in the business world: that generative AI can take strategy off executives’ plates. As AI tools grow more capable, the debate has shifted from whether AI can contribute to strategy to whether it should lead it. Olenick, drawing on more than two decades of AI-aided strategy research, argues it should not—and explains precisely where the line must be drawn.

The article examines the role generative AI can—and cannot—play in the strategy process, drawing on Olenick’s development of VSTRAT, an AI-aided strategy system he first built in 2002 and later advanced as a research fellow at INSEAD. The piece references published findings that large language models can generate and evaluate strategies at levels comparable to entrepreneurs and investors, while insisting that the ability to produce strategic outputs is not the same as the authority to commit to them.