Artificial intelligence? It’s no mere tool, but a capability. And just like a superhero discovering their powers for the first time, you can’t expect an employee or organization to master that newfound capability without rethinking everything—and making a bit of a mess along the way.
At the annual Fortune Brainstorm Tech dinner during CES in Las Vegas, a panel of senior technology executives deliberated the nuances of AI-driven change management—and in particular, where humans must remain “in the loop” as agentic AI sweeps across the corporate world.
Sure, impact and value have been demonstrated in more “bounded” places within organizations, Briggs added. But “we can’t use how we’ve always thought about the world” to define the approach, he said. “We’ve gotta really fundamentally challenge what the outcomes are that we’re seeking and work backwards from there.”
“How do you make sure you have kill switches? How do you make sure you have audit-ability?” he asked. “How do you do it in an automated way while infusing AI through the reasoning and orchestration layer?”
And you certainly don’t want to make an even bigger mess than the one you’re trying to clean up. Several executives on the panel, which was moderated by Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle, agreed that there is a fine line to walk between embracing a revolutionary vision for future change and critically evaluating the efficiency of a present operation.
“An AI-first mindset is firstly about simplification,” she said. “If you’re just automating what you have, you might just be industrializing waste across what you’re trying to do.”
“‘Industrializing waste’ or ‘weaponizing inefficiency,’” Briggs interjected with a grin. “Both things are terrible.”
So what’s the solution?
Get a bold leadership team, for starters. “There’s something to be said to having strong leadership at the top that says, ‘Just go,’” said Palmieri of Salesforce.
Then get your data sorted. “The data is the fuel and the foundation,” Disney’s Doniz said. “If you don’t have well orchestrated, integrated, safe, secure data, you’re not going to have anything to ingest that will actually [make] your process better.”
