AI fluency in the enterprise: Still a 'horseless carriage'

"Panelists at this month's Microsoft Ignite event talked about their efforts to roll out agentic AI at their companies, including what works - and what still needs work. Companies are tossing AI agents onto existing processes, but a transformative change - where AI is the boss - is still far away. That was the view of IT leaders at this year's Microsoft Ignite conference who've been putting AI agents to work, mostly with legacy processes. The IT leaders discussed their efforts during a conference panel at the event earlier this month."

""We're probably living in some version of the horseless carriage - we haven't got to the car yet," said John Whittaker, director of AI platform and products at accounting and consulting firm EY. Execs from EY, Pfizer and Lumen who sat on the panel said they have mostly used AI agents for knowledge management, content creation and research. That aligns with findings in an AI study released last month by McKinsey, which found heavy use of AI tools in those areas."

"EY, the global tax and advisory firm, has 30 million documented processes internally and 41,000 agents in production. "Moving those processes faster through agentic assistance like Copilot are kind of the low-hanging fruit to get to an improved outcome," Whittaker said. The early benefits of AI agents are now visible at EY; the endgame is to abstract processes and applications where data sits, Whittaker said. "We're beginning to see line of travel that really will allow us to completely transform the experiences," he said."

Companies are integrating AI agents primarily into existing legacy processes rather than redesigning workflows. Deployments focus on knowledge management, content creation and research, where early productivity and cost-saving benefits appear. EY reports vast process inventories and tens of thousands of agents in production, using agentic assistance such as Copilot to accelerate routine tasks. Early results include faster research and up-to-date access to changing tax rules through a tax assistant agent. Executives acknowledge that fully agent-led operations, where AI orchestrates and 'is the boss', remain distant, requiring abstraction of processes and applications and deeper architectural transformation.

Read at Computerworld