Hachette chief executive David Shelley has warned that business leaders who rely too heavily on AI to read, write and communicate risk creating a “worse C-suite”, as shortcuts threaten to weaken judgement, curiosity and empathy.
Shelley said he believes senior executives should retain a direct hand in their own emails, even if communications teams or software could make their messages more polished. “Being able to write a good email yourself as a CEO is incredibly important,” he said.
His warning comes as AI becomes increasingly embedded in executive working practices. A survey by General Assembly and coaching firm EZRA found that 68% of leaders in the US and UK use AI to summarise documents, while 58% use it to draft emails.
LinkedIn chief executive Ryan Roslansky has said he uses AI to help write almost every “high-stakes” email he sends. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella uses AI agents to digest his inbox and prepare him for meetings, while Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly developing an AI clone trained on his tone and mannerisms to answer staff questions.
For executives dealing with constant demands from employees, investors and the public, the technology can offer welcome assistance. David Meadvin, a former Senate speechwriter who now runs an executive advisory firm, said summaries could be useful, although he described AI as “reliably average” and warned that it could “dilute brilliance”.
AI shortcuts and the executive communication gap
Shelley said excessive reliance on automated communication could create a gap between a leader’s public voice and their real personality. “I predict a growing dissonance between how someone appears in their written statements and how they are in real life,” he said.
Employees may quickly recognise when a message does not sound as though it came from their boss, according to Natalie Sutton, a communications consultant and executive coach. “Fluency is becoming cheap. Sincerity is becoming scarce,” she said.
“A slightly imperfect message that clearly came from the CEO will outperform a flawless one that could have come from anyone,” Sutton added.
The concern is particularly significant as employees expect leaders to build trust and bring divided workplaces together. Edelman’s 2026 Trust Barometer found that 73% of employees believed chief executives had an obligation to build trust and bridge divides, but only 44% said their leaders were doing this well.
Shelley also believes outsourcing communication can affect how leaders form opinions. “Being a leader, you often have to think on your feet,” he said, adding that relying on AI and other people to communicate “dulls the brain”.
Research has linked heavy dependence on AI with weaker critical thinking, a process known as cognitive offloading. In a 2025 MIT Media Lab study, people who wrote essays with ChatGPT displayed the weakest brain engagement of the groups tested, and most could not quote from essays they had just produced.
The reading gap among business leaders
As the head of a major book publisher, Shelley is also concerned that AI is accelerating a decline in sustained reading and encouraging people to seek information in condensed form.
Almost half of UK adults said distractions made it difficult to concentrate on reading, while 19% said their ability to focus had worsened over the previous three years, according to 2025 polling by the Reading Agency.
“I think we’re all being trained to just want shortcuts,” Shelley said. He argued that this could put at risk the ability to follow complex arguments, weigh competing views and develop a coherent point of view.
Sutton said: “If AI does the first draft, leaders skip the part where they work out what they actually think. When information arrives pre-digested, you lose the habit of sitting with something messy long enough to understand it. I worry we’ll have a generation of executives who can approve a message but can’t build one.”
Shelley said intellectual curiosity and empathy were among the defining attributes of strong leaders, warning that losing them would produce a “worse C-suite”. Research by psychologists David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano has found that reading literary fiction can improve people’s ability to recognise the emotions of others.
Some executives believe AI could instead make human qualities such as emotional intelligence, communication and curiosity more valuable, as technology takes over routine work. Meadvin said reading helped him broaden his perspective and protect his mental health, adding that lifelong learning and self-awareness were increasingly important in a period of constant disruption.
