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When the founder is absent, the soul is extinguished.
I've seen something disturbing happening in companies adopting Artificial Intelligence. Many leaders, founders, and visionaries—those who once dreamed up a business from scratch, who put their ideas, their sweat, and their heart into it—are handing over the future of your creation to soulless systems.
The danger of absence: the corporate unconscious being rewritten by machines
In psychoanalysis, Freud said that the unconscious is the part of the mind that guides behavior without the subject realizing it. In business, the unconscious is the founder, the original purpose, the history that gave rise to culture.
But when the company starts adopting AI without the presence of the founder—without his eye, without his desire, without his voice—it starts to train machines without essenceThese machines begin to repeat generic data, neutral responses, statistical patterns — and the company, little by little, loses what made it unique.
AI begins to reproduce the world — not your world.
The Human Unconscious and the “AI Unconscious”
The human unconscious is made of stories, pain, passions, and symbols. The AI unconscious is made of data, patterns, and probabilities.
But there is one thing in common: both are invisible and shape behaviorJust as the human unconscious can betray the subject, AI can betray the company—if fed with soulless, directionless content, without the “founding desire” behind it.
When the leader is absent, the machine loses its bearings. And the culture, silently, fades away.
Desire and prediction: who teaches whom?
Lacan said that desire is what moves human beings—the lack that drives us to create. AI, on the other hand, does not desire. It predicts.
But if the one who teaches AI is not the dreamer, then who does it learn to imitate?
Companies are letting algorithms, trained with market material, “learn” what they should say, do, and decide. And so, without realizing it, they are reprogramming the unconscious of your own organization with generic data from competitors, suppliers and external consultants.
The result? A statistical copy—polished, efficient, but soulless.
The return of the repressed: culture replaced by automation
In psychoanalysis, the repressed always returns. In business, what is repressed—purpose, values, intuition—also returns… but in the form of misalignment, demotivation and loss of identity.
When AI takes over processes without the symbolic oversight of a leader, it begins to reflect the collective unconscious of the market—not the singular unconscious of the company.
Without the leader, the algorithm becomes the new boss. But a boss without purpose is the beginning of the end.
The role of the founder: infusing human DNA into the machine
Training an AI is not just a technical task. It's a symbolic and creative act. It is transferring the “founding desire” to the machine — the vision that gave rise to the business.
Therefore, the founder needs to actively participate:
- choose the words,
- set the tone,
- guide the answers,
- and teach what it means “to be” that company.
Because if AI is not trained with the soul of the leader, it will be trained with the noise of the market.
AI as a mirror of the corporate unconscious
Artificial Intelligence is the mirror of the organizational unconsciousIt shows what was said, what was forgotten, and what was suppressed. It reveals how much the company still retains—or has already lost—of its founder's original vision.
What is your AI saying about you? Does it sound like your brand… or any other?
Conclusion: the soul of the company lives in the founder's desire
Artificial Intelligence can accelerate processes, automate tasks, and optimize results. But if the founding desire is not present, it transforms what was singular into generic. Genius into efficiency. Passion into algorithm.
A company without the unconscious of its creator is a company condemned to be just another copy of the market.
Final reflection
AI thinks like us — but only when we think along with her.
The role of the leader is not to delegate thinking to the machine, but teach the machine to think like your dream.
If the founder withdraws from the process of training his own AI, his company will cease to be a reflection of his desire… and will become just another piece of data in the competitors' statistics.
CEO | Leading the AgenticAI Revolution for Enterprise
October 13, 2025
