Featuring:
Brian Hopkins, VP of Emerging Technology and Principal Analyst and Ted Schadler, VP and Principal Analyst
Show Notes:
“This is the first interface change we’ve seen since 2008 … and when you change the interface, that pulls billions of people along with it, and that’s what changes business.”
That revelation set off a stream of research looking at the impact AI computing will have over the next two decades, according to VP of Emerging Technology and Principal Analyst Brian Hopkins. In this episode, Hopkins and VP and Principal Analyst Ted Schadler discuss some of the findings from that new research and share their own unique perspectives about our AI-powered future.
The discussion begins with a short analysis of the current state of AI, most notably the growing impatience for ROI after such substantial investments at all levels. Schadler says the current AI moment feels similar to the impatience felt in the early days of the internet, when early innovations and advances were mixed with some pretty big misses. The difference, he says, is that with AI, the natural language interface delivers the potential to truly redefine human-technology interactions and drive business transformation on an unprecedented scale.
From there, the conversation digs into one of the most compelling aspects of AI in the future: AI agents. Hopkins describes an AI agent as a unique type of AI model that sits behind the AI interface and understands the intent of a request or command and attempts to complete the tasks by interacting with other technologies on behalf of users. “When I think of agents and interfaces, I think of a new kind of architecture of applications where smart intuitive interfaces are communicating with us in natural language and coordinating with a set of agents to get that work done,” he says. One of the big questions, he says, is how these various AI agents will interact with each other to influence brand/consumer interactions.
Another question that will play out in the future is how much effort consumers will need to invest to benefit from these agents. For example, Schadler says today, consumers have to evaluate the level of trust to give the human agents that serve their needs (think of customer service reps, healthcare professionals, etc.). The same trust evaluation will be needed with AI agents as well.
From there, the conversation turns to what enterprise leaders can do now to ensure their teams are educated and ready to take advantage of AI computing in the future. At the company level, Schadler says ensuring you have proper AI alignment is an essential first step that could help balance the conflicts between BYOAI and top-down AI initiatives being pushed onto workers. “The two have to meet in the middle,” says Schadler.
Later in the episode, the conversation looks at how tech markets and vendors may be impacted by some of the discussed changes over the next two decades. “We see a lot of disruption coming to the enterprise software market,” says Hopkins, adding that the current battle for GPUs could play a role in the future of some of the major AI providers in the market today.
The episode closes with the analysts being asked to provide their own predictions (that don’t appear in the report) about the future of AI, so be sure to stick around for those unique insights.
