Introduction: Medieval Indulgences and Modern IT

The medieval indulgence trade was a brilliant business model: for a donation to the church, you could buy absolution from your sins—no repentance, no change in behavior, no genuine confrontation with your actions. The parallel to modern IT, and especially the current AI hype, is striking. For decades, what stakeholders have truly wanted is exactly this: a solution that makes their problems disappear without them having to engage with them at all.

The Eternal Search for the Silver Bullet

Back in the 1980s, Fred Brooks coined the term "silver bullet" in The Mythical Man-Month—the magical technology that would solve all software problems in one fell swoop. Back then it was CASE tools; later, object-oriented programming, Agile methodologies, or cloud computing. Today, it is AI. The belief remains the same: If we just buy the right tool, adopt the right method, or deploy the right algorithm, everything else will sort itself out. Reality tells a different story. Tools are only as good as the people using them. Agile fails in rigid hierarchies. And AI? It doesn’t solve problems that haven’t been precisely defined first. Yet stakeholders refuse to do exactly that. They don’t want to specify requirements, take responsibility, or make compromises. They want an indulgence—a technology that relieves them of the tedious duty of engaging with the real challenges.

AI as the Modern Indulgence

The current AI boom is the pinnacle of this attitude. "AI will take care of it" is now uttered in meetings as if it were a magic spell. But AI isn’t self-sustaining. It requires clear goals, clean data, ethical guardrails. Those who don’t bother to lay this groundwork are only buying an expensive illusion. Like the medieval indulgence buyer: they feel absolved, yet their sins—or in this case, their vague requirements, their unwillingness to change—remain. The IT industry has long enabled this. Consultants sell "digital transformation strategies" without anyone asking what, exactly, needs to be transformed. Software vendors tout "all-in-one solutions" that, in the end, only create new silos. And now there is AI—the ultimate excuse to shift responsibility. "The AI decided it"—as if the machine were to blame, not those who deploy it blindly.

The Danger of Disempowerment

The problem isn’t the technology. The problem is the mindset. Stakeholders who refuse to define requirements, assess risks, or question processes won’t suddenly become responsible decision-makers just because of AI. Instead, they become consumers of indulgences—people who believe that buying a tool or deploying an algorithm fulfills their duty. In the end, the equation holds: poor requirements lead to poor solutions—whether implemented by humans or machines. AI only amplifies what you put into it. Feed it chaos, and chaos comes out. And if you don’t bother to understand the chaos, AI is just an expensive mirror reflecting your own laziness back at you.

Conclusion: No Indulgence Without Penance

The IT industry must stop perpetuating this indulgence trade. Stakeholders must learn that there are no shortcuts. That technology is no substitute for critical thinking. That true innovation doesn’t lie in buying a tool, but in the willingness to confront your own problems. The medieval indulgence trade ended with the Reformation. Perhaps IT needs a similar revolution—one that stops chasing the next silver bullet and instead demands more responsibility, more clarity, and more courage to engage honestly with the challenges at hand. Because in the end: If you don’t care, no AI can help you.

PS: AI critics often fall into the same trap. Instead of genuinely engaging with AI, they criticize the very indulgence trade they accuse others of—most notably by dismissing AI over issues like hallucinations, rather than asking why they occur. More often than not, the root cause is the same: poor application, vague requirements. Bad inputs lead to bad outputs, whether in AI or anywhere else. Criticizing the symptom while ignoring the cause is just another form of the same indulgence.