If you’ve been following fraud on LinkedIn for any real stretch of time, you are probably familiar with Brian Davis and have been reading his posts. He has been the first fraud hire at many companies across physical goods, e-commerce, marketplaces, and fintech. Today he sits at the center of it all running deep dive retreats through Safeguard.

I have talked with Brian before about AI adoption for fraud and risk teams, and he said something that stuck with me. There’s a real difference between AI activation and AI enablement. Most organizations think they’ve done the second when really they’ve only done the first. I wanted to bring our conversation to all of you, because I think fraud teams may underestimate or overestimate where they sit on this journey.

• Why AI activation vs AI enablement is the distinction most companies get wrong, and what it actually looks like when you throw a tool over the fence with no guidance.
• Brian's four pillars for real AI enablement are clear policies, actual training, dedicated incentives and time, and a feedback loop that doesn't die after three weeks.
• Why change management for fraud teams is really a people management problem wearing a technology costume.
• Brian's full five-stage framework, covering AI blocked, AI aware, AI enabled, AI first, and AI native, and how to honestly assess where your own team sits.
• Why AI enablement leadership buy-in has to start at the top, and how executives showing their own AI usage removes the imposter syndrome holding everyone else back.
• Why so many fraud teams try to go big on day one, transaction monitoring, KYC, and end up frustrated, when the smarter path is workflow design for AI adoption that starts small.
• Concrete, non-technical AI use cases for fraud, including pattern analysis, internal reporting, and OKR alignment with sales and marketing.
• How reducing engineering dependency with AI is changing what fraud analyst upskilling with AI actually looks like day to day.
• Brian's personal framework for fraud practitioner AI use cases, including his own daily habits and how he thinks about build versus buy AI fraud tools.

• Are a fraud or risk leader trying to figure out whether your team is actually AI enabled or just AI activated
• Are responsible for fraud team AI training or building out fraud team AI governance policies from scratch
• Are a fraud analyst wondering how to build AI literacy without waiting for your company to hand you a roadmap
• Are trying to motivate a team through fraud team change management without losing the people who are cautious about the change
• Are comparing AI first fraud organizations against the fully rebuilt AI native fraud teams and wondering which one is actually the realistic goal