"I know the roof is leaking, but I think the smart move is to spend almost $1.2 billion buying our stock."

Between 2021-2023, while U.S. Steel's facilities crumbled, CEO David Burritt directed nearly $1.2 billion toward stock buybacks instead of crucial modernization. During this same period, Burritt collected $31 million in stock-based compensation.

The irony emerged when Nippon Steel's purchase proposal included $1.4 billion for the desperately needed facility improvements that leadership had bypassed.

When President Biden blocked the acquisition, he unknowingly sealed the fate of a national asset sacrificed by leadership that prioritized short-term gains over long-term sustainability.

AI is here to stay. Large language models are just the beginning. The more significant issue is how we, as humans, use this new tool. Many will use it as a soulless crutch to crank out emails and automate redundant tasks, as illustrated in Why agents are the next frontier of generative AI, in a recent McKinsey Quarterly, but the real winners will be the ones that use human thought passion, and emotions in conjunction with AI tools such as large language models to greatly enhance their creativity and their productivity.