ServiceNow unpacks the Fortune AIQ list, where the widest gap between AI leaders and laggards is training for humans

At Fortune’s AIQ Summit, ServiceNow director of futures Diana David argued that the biggest divide in corporate AI isn’t about model choice or software stacks. It’s about whether companies are willing to train people, hire the right talent, and build the discipline to make AI stick.

Her company’s Enterprise AI Maturity Index puts numbers on that split. Among the “pacesetters” — about 21% of surveyed organizations, the ones scoring above 60 on a 100-point index — 57% invest in ongoing AI upskilling. Among everyone else, that figure is 4%. The gap is even wider on talent: 68% versus 10% for attracting, hiring and retaining AI talent.

David framed that as an operations problem as much as a technology one. Pacesetters also look better on the plumbing: 64% are on a path to unified data, compared with 14% of other organizations, and 57% say they have a clear, strong AI vision, versus 21%. On average, pacesetters scored 74, while the rest came in at 45.

And then there’s the part that keeps getting sold as the future while still barely showing up in the numbers: autonomous work. About 59% of companies surveyed are past the pilot phase, David said, but only 9% are doing agentic, autonomous, multi-step workflows that aren’t checked by humans at every step. Among pacesetters, that rises to 36%, compared with 2% of others.

That’s why David pushed back on the popular idea of AI adoption as a companywide free-for-all. Handing out tools and hoping for productivity gains is not the same thing as maturity, she argued, especially when the training never follows. She said the real starting point is leadership, a growth mindset, a vision for change, and then specific training tied to specific functions.

The report also shows how uneven the human side still is. It says 59% of organizations lack long-term HR plans for AI, and 42% of employees say they aren’t getting enough AI training. Even with that drag, the pacesetters report an average ROI of 160%. ServiceNow plans to add agentic AI to the index next year, shifting the focus toward what companies are actually deploying and whether it creates commercial value.