Mickey Drexler redefined retail by radically remaking Gap and J.Crew, and working alongside Steve Jobs to guide the creation of the Apple Store. Now Drexler assesses some of the biggest stories in the retail industry today, from the weight of crippling tariffs and U.S. manufacturing skepticism to the controversial American Eagle campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney. Feisty as ever, Drexler shares his unvarnished view on in-office work, AI 's limitations, and why leaders need to follow their gut or get out of the way.
"You can never give enough reminders and enough instruction to people about the fact that you cannot use AI to replace human judgment, human research, human writing skills, and a human's job to verify whether something is actually true or not," said William Hubbard, deputy dean of University of Chicago Law School.
AI isn't ready to replace human coders for debugging, researchers say. Even when given access to tools, AI agents can't reliably debug software. AI models are a far cry from what an experienced human developer can do, producing code laden with bugs and security vulnerabilities, and unable to fix those problems. They serve best as assistants rather than replacements, saving substantial time for developers while still requiring human oversight.