The Night the Mascot Became a Villain Halloween night in Hongdae—that restless, artistic district in Seoul’s Mapo-gu—was living up to its reputation. The streets were a river of costumes, laughter, and the cacophony of thousands of voices layered over thumping bass from pop-up parties. College students in makeshift angel wings posed for photos, groups of friends in matching onesies clutched cups of tteokbokki, and families with young children wandered through the throngs, marveling at the elaborate displays of creativity and chaos. The air smelled of fried food, caramel, and the faint, sweet perfume of cheap face paint. It was a…

There is a moment in every major technology cycle when the market’s imagination runs ahead of its understanding, and right now artificial intelligence has pushed us into exactly that kind of moment. Every week seems to bring another prediction that AI will hollow out entire categories of software, replace armies of knowledge workers, and rearrange the economic order of the enterprise. In the middle of this noise, ServiceNow President and CFO Gina Mastantuono is offering a calm but firm counterargument. The idea that AI is somehow “disrupting” enterprise software, she says, is simply false. That is not a small statement.…