In the latest episode of Lead with AI, Dr. Tamara Nall sits down with Lexi Reese, CEO and co-founder of Lanai Software. With an impressive background building essential infrastructure systems at Google, where she helped develop their real-time machine learning ads engine before ML was mainstream, and scaling payroll and health insurance solutions at Gusto, Lexi brings unique insight to one of the most pressing challenges in enterprise AI today: visibility. Lanai Software provides an observability and security platform that helps organizations see AI interactions as they happen, understand why they're occurring, and assess their risk levels. This blog explores the critical issues Lanai is addressing, the risks of invisible AI use across organizations, and how proper governance can transform apparent chaos into strategic opportunity.

The Invisible AI Problem: 80% of Usage Happens Off the Grid  

Organizations today face an unprecedented challenge: while leadership may issue mandates to increase AI usage, they have almost no visibility into how AI is actually being deployed across their companies. According to Lexi Reese, a staggering 80% of AI use happens completely off the grid, invisible to IT departments and leadership teams.

This invisibility creates significant risk, but interestingly, most of that risk doesn't come from malicious actors. Instead, it comes from well-intentioned employees making mistakes with good intentions. In one example Reese shared, a sales team at an insurance company was enthusiastically using AI to improve their upsell rates. On the surface, this seemed like a success story - until data compliance leadership discovered the team was uploading customer information including zip codes into an AI tool. In the insurance industry, zip codes can serve as proxies for race, and using them to determine who to sell to can be illegal. The team had the right idea but executed it incorrectly, creating potential legal liability.

What makes this problem particularly challenging is that many AI capabilities aren't implemented as standalone tools but are quietly added as new functions within existing systems. Companies typically don't need more AI tools - they need intelligence about their AI. Without this visibility, organizations can't manage what they can't see, creating blind spots where both risks and opportunities go undetected. This is what Lanai calls the era of "BAM" - Blind AI Mandates - where CEOs direct teams to use more AI without providing the infrastructure to do so safely and effectively.

Looking Under the Hood: How Lanai Creates AI Visibility  

When organizations deploy Lanai's platform, they gain what Reese describes as a "sixth sense" about their AI interactions. The system detects AI activity across the enterprise, classifies it to identify use cases, and labels potential risks - all using AI itself to perform these functions.

The platform works by detecting patterns rather than monitoring content directly. This approach preserves employee privacy while still providing organizational insights. One striking example of the platform's effectiveness was when Lanai detected employees at customer companies using DeepSeek (a Chinese AI company competitive to OpenAI) two weeks before most of the world even knew about it. This early detection capability turns information that might normally take weeks to surface into actionable intelligence in minutes.

Lanai's approach focuses on making this intelligence actionable through real-time dashboards without disrupting workflows or compromising privacy. This is a key differentiator from other tools in the observability and security space. As Reese explains, many other companies are essentially policing employees, while Lanai focuses on pattern detection rather than content monitoring - understanding the purpose and impact of AI interactions without reading individual prompts.

From Alarm to Opportunity: Transforming AI Chaos to Strategy  

When leaders first see Lanai's data about AI usage in their organizations, their initial reaction is often alarm. In one example Reese shared, a healthcare executive was shocked to discover clinicians using 18 different AI tools - 15 more than had been approved by the organization. However, this alarm quickly transformed into curiosity when Lanai showed how these unauthorized tools were actually improving patient care times and reducing documentation burdens.

This shift in perspective - from "shut this down" to "scale this" - represents the true value of visibility. It transforms what appears to be chaos into strategic opportunity. As Reese advises, "Just like with your kids, don't get furious, get curious." The speed at which humans and enterprises are experimenting with AI is outpacing what any single person or team can keep up with, which is why new infrastructure is needed for this new AI era.

Lanai provides this infrastructure by creating a map that shows:

• Where AI traffic is flowing across the organization

• Where there are "accidents" or risks

• Where there are clearer routes or opportunities to scale valuable use cases

The true "aha moment" for organizations isn't just discovering shadow AI usage, but seeing patterns they didn't know existed before. By identifying champion use cases - those needles in the haystack where AI creates exceptional value - companies can then spread that magic throughout the organization, democratizing access to AI tools with appropriate guardrails.

Balancing Visibility with Privacy: The Ethical Line  

When building a platform that observes AI interactions across an enterprise, ethical considerations become paramount. For Lanai, the key ethical line is balancing visibility with privacy - allowing organizations to understand their AI ecosystem without creating employee surveillance.

Lanai focuses on showing trends and opportunities through aggregation and anonymization. They deliberately avoid monitoring individual performance or creating AI productivity scores for each employee. As Reese puts it, they want to focus on patterns, not people. This principle of "don't be creepy" - a mantra from one of their advisors, the Chief Security Officer of Reddit - guides their approach to visibility.

This balance allows organizations to scale innovation and good workflows that drive safe adoption rather than policing employees. By focusing on trends rather than individuals, Lanai helps companies understand where AI is creating value while maintaining employee trust and privacy. This approach represents a significant shift from traditional security and monitoring tools, which often emphasize surveillance over empowerment.

Drawing the Line: Where AI Shouldn't Go  

While Reese is dedicated to expanding AI adoption in the enterprise, she also has strong convictions about where AI should not intervene. When asked about an area where she doesn't want to see AI introduced, Reese's answer was immediate and personal: her children's schoolwork.

The cognitive stretching that happens when her 15-year-old struggles through an analytical essay or when her 12-year-old puzzles over how to express an original idea is where actual learning lives. These moments of difficulty are precisely what AI circumvents with its "frictionless, effortless eloquence." Having AI write students' assignments teaches them nothing but dependence on digital crutches.

This personal boundary reflects a larger philosophical approach that informs Lanai's mission. Reese wants to help organizations identify where AI creates genuine value versus where it might undermine core elements of human capabilities. The goal isn't to choose between humans or AI, but to find the pragmatic balance where both work together to improve organizations and communities. This starts with ensuring that humans, especially children, develop the critical thinking skills needed to tackle big problems, because society needs them thinking about these challenges.

The Dual Workforce: AI and Humans in 2030  

Looking ahead to 2030, Reese envisions a future where AI fades into the background of our lives - not because it's less important, but because it's ubiquitous. Just as the distinction between "digital companies" and "brick and mortar companies" eventually disappeared as all businesses became digital, so too will the separation between AI and non-AI work disappear.

In this future, every organization will effectively operate with dual workforces: human employees and AI systems working in tandem. This isn't a distant vision - it's already happening among power users who describe having an "editor" and a "production assistant" on their team in the form of AI tools. The value will shift from AI itself to AI intelligence - understanding how this dual workforce creates value.

For everyday people, this means accomplishing more while applying effort in different ways. AI will take over routine, potentially draining workflows, allowing humans to focus on areas where they add unique value. Importantly, Reese doesn't sugar-coat the impact: AI will definitively change all jobs fundamentally and will eliminate some positions entirely. However, by democratizing access to AI tools with appropriate guardrails, organizations can help employees discover how AI can help them perform better while serving the people they support.

Taking Action: What Leaders Can Do Today  

While Lanai currently has a waiting list due to high demand, Reese offered a simple exercise that can give leaders immediate insight into their organization's AI usage: create a five-question anonymous survey asking teams which AI tools they're using day-to-day and for what tasks.

The anonymity is crucial because employees may fear negative consequences for honesty about unofficial tool usage. The results, according to Reese, will surprise most leaders - typically revealing that teams are using three to five times more AI tools than leadership realizes, often for use cases they never imagined.

This quick visibility exercise can reveal both hidden risks and breakthrough innovations, such as the engineering leader who discovered her team was using ChatGPT to debug code rather than the officially sanctioned AI tool - a practice that was actually driving significant productivity gains.

By starting with this simple assessment, leaders can begin to develop the kind of "always-on revelation" that Lanai's platform provides, setting the stage for more thoughtful AI governance that balances innovation with appropriate guardrails.

As AI continues to transform how we work, organizations that thrive won't necessarily be those with the most AI tools, but rather those with the best visibility into how their dual workforce of humans and machines creates value. By focusing on this visibility while respecting privacy and empowering employees, companies can navigate the AI revolution more effectively, turning potential chaos into strategic advantage.