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At the 2026 Gartner Finance Symposium/Xpo, VP analyst Clement Christensen described executives’ prevailing sentiment toward AI as “hopeful disappointment.” During a keynote session, he said “It sounds like this: ‘Yeah, we’ve seen some cool stuff, but it hasn’t translated into any ROI yet.’”

“We’re in the trough of disillusionment,” his colleague and co-presenter, VP analyst Tamara Shipley, said, pointing to Gartner research that shows only one in three AI initiatives increases productivity, while just one in five leads to measurable ROI.

Still, AI’s capabilities as well as companies’ willingness to embrace the technology have increased dramatically over the past year. “The maturity of the models and the tools that are available have exponentially increased,” Rajiv Ramachandran, SVP and CPO of invoice to pay at Coupa, told CFO Brew. He’s getting more granular questions from customers, he said, that suggest “they’re thinking about putting something into production, not thinking about ‘Hey, can I play around with this for another couple of weeks?’”

But as companies move past the pilot stage, problems crop up. CFOs, consultants, and vendors who spoke with CFO Brew at Gartner described many AI growing pains.

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To get employees interested in AI, some companies have encouraged workers to “play” with the technology just as they would in a sandbox.

One drawback is that playtime is getting expensive, as workers rack up serious bills for their AI usage.

Uber is the latest company to put a cap on AI, limiting monthly spending to no more than $1,500 per worker for certain coding tools.

Meanwhile, Pope Leo XIV weighed into the debate about AI in the workplace in his first encyclical released last week. He had some stern warnings about the rapid expansion of AI in the world of work and the risks it poses to humanity.

“Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed,” the pope said in his address. “The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences, and indicating paths forward for humanity. Artificial intelligence now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion, and death.”

His concerns mirror many of the moral and ethical debates already happening in workplaces all across the US, as employers and their HR teams navigate how employees experience and produce work with AI.

Job postings requiring AI skills have proliferated at the Big Four over the past year, according to the Financial Times.

Staff at the newspaper examined 50,000 job listings at Big Four firms in English-speaking countries between January 2020 and January 2026. In 2025, they found, there were more than twice as many job postings where AI skills were a core requirement (nearly 7%) as there were listings for audit jobs (almost 3%).

Many of the job postings that mentioned AI as a requirement appeared to be for non-accounting roles, such as “generative AI engineers and machine learning experts in data science,” the FT observed. But others were accounting-related.

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Total mortgage applications fell 2.3% last week to a five-week low, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Rates are rising amid inflation concerns tied to the war in Iran, which has pushed oil prices higher.

Some borrowers are choosing adjustable-rate mortgages, which now account for 10% of applications — the highest share since October 2025.

Borrowers are growing more cautious as war-driven inflation fears continue to put upward pressure on mortgage rates.

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