The AI divide in events is getting worse, not better

When I started this newsletter, I'd spoken with about 100 event professionals. That number is now past 150 — corporate planners, freelancers, production company leads, agency owners, tech providers, DMC operators, AV/tradeshow people, and more.

After a year of these conversations, I expected the industry to be converging — everyone gradually catching up, the gap between early adopters and beginners slowly closing.

That's not what's happening.

What I'm seeing is a widening divide. The event professionals who started experimenting with AI early are now operating at a completely different speed than those who are just getting started. And the distance between them is growing every month.

This is my honest assessment of where we stand — and why the divide is bigger than most people realize.

Two different industries, same job title

Let me give you two scenarios I encountered in the same week.

Scenario one: A project manager asks ChatGPT to research five potential venues in Denver, compare their capacity, catering restrictions, and AV capabilities, and draft a summary email to their client with a recommendation. Twenty minutes. A task that used to take half a day of Googling, calling, and formatting.

Scenario two: A senior planner at a banking institution just got access to AI tools — in 2025. Her company spent over a year building an internal solution, and by the time it launched, the model it was based on was already a generation behind. She's essentially starting from scratch while her peers are months ahead.

Same industry and job level, but completely different realities.

And here's the uncomfortable part is both are evaluated against the same expectations.

The numbers confirm what I'm seeing in the room

ChatGPT has 900 million weekly active users. That sounds like everyone's on board. But according to research from Epoch AI, only about 5% of those users are paying subscribers. The other 95% are on free-tier models — rate-limited, running older capabilities, missing the features that make AI genuinely useful for professional work.

Only 7% of Americans report using ChatGPT frequently. Most people tried it, found it interesting, and went back to their normal workflow.

Meanwhile, a Wiley study of 2,400+ researchers found something telling: while AI usage surged from 57% to 84% in one year, expectations of what AI can actually do dropped significantly. People who used it more recalibrated their expectations downward — not because the tools got worse, but because real experience replaced hype with nuance.

This creates two distinct groups in our industry. Group one understands AI's limitations intimately because they've hit them. They know what works (research, drafting, data analysis) and what doesn't (venue layouts, creative design, relationship building). They've built that judgment through months of daily use.

Group two is still wondering where to start, or has gotten frustrated and quit. And the gap between these groups isn't just about productivity — it's about professional value.

The pressure is accelerating the divide

Every dinner, every interview, every DM — this comes up. "Do more with less" stopped being a slogan. It's just the job now.

Budgets still haven't recovered from COVID. Headcount is thin. Corporate expectations keep rising while resources keep shrinking. And now there's an additional layer that's making the divide worse: AI is increasingly being used to justify not hiring rather than to augment existing teams.

With plenty of Fortune 500 CEOs talking about automating away jobs on their LinkedIn (without the awareness to know they’re speaking directly to their employees), it’s hard to know whether AI will augment or replace people

However, planners who've already integrated AI into their workflow can take on additional responsibilities because they've automated the repetitive tasks. The ones who haven't are drowning under the same increased workload with no relief valve.

And the industry isn't slowing down to let people catch up. If anything, the expectation that you should be using AI — even if no one's teaching you how — is creating a pressure cooker. The people moving fast feel empowered, the people standing still feel paralyzed, and the middle ground is disappearing.

A lot of talented professionals are out of work right now, meaning intense competition for every open role. Long hours have become the norm. The only coping strategy I've seen work consistently is community — finding other people who understand what you're dealing with. That's why I created a WhatsApp group, virtual roundtables, and in-person dinners, and why I'll keep doing them.

The corporate access gap is making it worse

At our first AI & Events gathering in New York, someone mentioned that their company had just given employees access to AI tools. A banking institution. In 2025.

This is one of the biggest drivers of the divide, and it's completely outside individual control.

Companies are — understandably — cautious about security. So they restrict tool access, spin up internal AI initiatives, and start building proprietary solutions. But by the time those internal tools ship, the models are outdated. Meanwhile, employees at smaller, more agile companies or freelancers who choose their own tools have been building AI skills for months.

What workaround do most restricted professionals use? They pull out their personal ChatGPT account behind closed doors to try and help with work. A lack of proper training leads to misuse, potential safety risks, and inefficient use, which is a slow path when your competitors are sprinting.

That Wiley study found that 70% of professionals use free tools, even though nearly half have access to paid solutions through their organizations. People are cobbling together whatever they can get.

The insight I keep coming back to: the specific tool matters less than the habits you build. Focus on learning how to think with AI — how to break problems down, how to prompt effectively, how to verify outputs. Tools change every six months, while thinking skills compound forever.

If you're stuck behind a corporate firewall, that's the move. Build the thinking habits now so when access opens up, you're not starting from zero.

The junior professional problem is creating a third gap

This came up at every dinner last year.

Early-career professionals are using AI to draft emails, write proposals, and create content. But they're not fact-checking the output. AI invents the wrong date for an event. They send it. The client catches the error.

We’re seeing it on the coding front as well, with Amazon’s own AI coding tool Kiro, causing at least two AWS production outages in 2025, including a 13-hour disruption. That was because engineers let Kiro make changes without requiring a second person’s approval (bypassing their normal protocol)

One senior planner told me they're actively discouraging their junior team members from using AI — not because the tool is bad, but because they need to build the reps first. They need to learn what a good contract looks like before they can evaluate AI's review of one. They need to write enough speaker bios by hand to know when AI's version sounds generic.

So now we have three groups diverging:

Experienced professionals who adopted AI early — they have the judgment and the tools. They're operating at a level that's hard to compete with.

Experienced professionals who haven't adopted AI — they have the judgment but are losing time to peers who've automated the grunt work.

Junior professionals who adopted AI without the fundamentals — they have speed but not accuracy, and they're building on a shaky foundation.

A line that stuck with me: "AI is a force multiplier, but only if you know what you're multiplying. If you don't know what good looks like, AI can't teach you."

The professionals thriving right now are the ones who built 5, 10, 15 years of craft before ChatGPT existed — and then layered AI on top. That combination is becoming the new competitive advantage.

The cutting edge is moving fast — and it's getting riskier

While most event professionals are still figuring out ChatGPT prompts, the frontier has moved to something entirely different: AI agents that don't just write things — they do things.

The most talked-about example right now is OpenClaw, an open-source personal AI assistant that runs on your own devices. It's exploded in popularity — over 161,000 GitHub stars — and the tech world is obsessed. The idea: instead of chatting with AI, you give it the ability to act on your behalf. Check your email. Research vendors. Execute multi-step tasks while you sleep.

For event professionals, the vision is powerful. "Research five caterers in Austin, compile their menus and pricing, and build a comparison spreadsheet." The AI doesn't just find information — it takes action.

But yesterday — literally yesterday — a Meta AI security researcher named Summer Yu let her OpenClaw agent manage her email inbox. The agent started deleting all her emails while ignoring her commands to stop. She had to physically run to her Mac Mini to kill it.

An AI security researcher got burned. Someone whose entire job is understanding these risks.

This is the bleeding edge of the divide. The people pushing into agent territory are gaining capabilities that feel like science fiction — but they're also encountering risks that most people aren't prepared for.

My take: you don't need to be on the cutting edge right now, especially if you’re not technical. But you need to know it exists, because the professionals who figure out AI agents in the next 12-18 months will have another massive advantage over those who don't. The gap will widen again.

Be curious about tools like OpenClaw, but don't hand over the keys to anything you can't afford to lose.

So what do you actually do about this?

After 150+ conversations, I don't think the answer is "panic and try to catch up overnight." The people who rush in without a plan end up in the same place as the people who don't start at all — frustrated and no further ahead.

But I also don't think "wait and see" is a viable strategy anymore. The gap is real, and it's compounding.

Here's what's working for the people I've talked to who crossed from "curious" to "competent":

They picked one task they hated — something involving writing, research, or data — and tried using AI for it three times. The first attempt is always clunky. By the third, you know if it's worth continuing.

They stopped worrying about finding the latest “tool,” since they change so quickly. The person who uses ChatGPT effectively every day will outperform the person who has subscriptions to five AI platforms they never open.

They verified everything. The professionals who trust AI blindly get burned. The ones who treat it as a first draft that needs human review get the speed benefits without the risk.

And they found other people doing the same thing, beyond the LinkedIn influencers promising “the AI cold-outbound tool that will revolutionize your workflow.” Check in with peers working through the same challenges, because this stuff is genuinely hard to figure out alone.

The technology will keep getting better, agents will get safer, and at some point in the future, the corporate access gaps will eventually close. But the skills gap? That only closes if you start building now.

The race isn’t over, but the pace is moving faster than ever.

Till next time,

Noah Cheyer

Do More With Less Using AI

PS: Where are YOU on this divide? Reply to this email — I read every response, and it helps me understand what to write about next.