What happens when executives trust AI more than their own engineers?

A company spent $5 million on an AI platform that was 91 times more expensive and 4x slower than the open-source alternative an engineer proposed — before firing him.

An AI testing tool reported 97.3% test coverage. A client's lead engineer asked one question and discovered over 70% of the tests were duplicates — and the critical core flows had zero coverage.

A $660K AI platform replaced an entire team. At 2:58 AM, it "fixed" everything — then silently rolled back the wrong patch.

AI, Ego & Regret collects 15 true-to-life failure modes from the AI era — each one a warning sign that was seen, documented, and ignored. From a $2.8 billion AI gateway with a hidden 8-month vulnerability, to a VP's AI that wrote 3,000 tests in 3 days — all of which had to be deleted at a cost of $700,000.

These are stories about what happens when blind faith meets uncontrolled authority. They span three parts:

• Part I — The Price of Blind Faith: When executives trust vendor promises over engineering data.

• Part II — Uncontrolled Authority: When AI systems gain the power to block human decisions — including the fixes to their own failures.

• Part III — What Machines Can't Replace: The skills, judgment, and institutional knowledge that AI can't replicate — until someone tries anyway, and pays the price.

Every failure had a warning sign. None of them blew up overnight.

This book is a field guide for engineers, managers, and anyone who works alongside AI — a map of where the landmines are buried, drawn from the moments when someone stepped on one.