What the Sullivan & Cromwell AI Disaster Tells Us About B2B Adoption — and Why Trust, Not Technology, Is the Real Bottleneck

Sullivan & Cromwell advises OpenAI on the safe and ethical deployment of AI. Last week they filed a bankruptcy court brief containing more than 40 AI-generated errors — fabricated citations, misquoted authorities, non-existent sources. Their own safeguards failed to catch it. Opposing counsel did. If this can happen at one of the most resource-rich law firms on the planet, it can happen anywhere — and the data on B2B AI adoption suggests most organizations are not as protected as they think. Here's what the incident reveals about the real bottleneck in enterprise AI adoption: not the technology, but the trust infrastructure around it.