Box CEO Aaron Levie has diagnosed a condition afflicting tech executives: AI psychosis.

"CEOs are uniquely prone to AI psychosis because they're sufficiently distant from the last mile of work that still has to happen to generate most value with AI," Levie wrote on X.

The cloud storage company founder argues that executives "play with AI," build prototypes, or generate contracts, then leap to believing AI agents can handle complex workflows. But these same CEOs don't review code for bugs, train models on company-specific contract terms, or spend days parsing legal documents for hidden clauses.

The disconnect between vision and reality

Levie's theory suggests executives lack deep process knowledge to distinguish what AI can and cannot automate. This knowledge gap doesn't prevent them from making decisions based on inflated expectations.

The Box CEO isn't an AI skeptic. He regularly posts AI-positive content to his 2.7 million X followers and actively invests in AI startups as an angel investor. He recently wrote about "headless software" designed for AI agents as the future of enterprise tools.

His critique comes amid a tech industry marked by contradictions: record revenues alongside mass layoffs, and runaway AI spending reminiscent of early cloud computing adoption.

Levie's prescription for CEO AI psychosis is hands-on experience. He advises executives to "use AI a ton" to understand both capabilities and limitations, emerging "with an appreciation for both the upside and the real work."

The comments reflect broader industry tensions as companies navigate AI implementation while managing investor expectations and operational realities.