#ai-readiness

#ai-readiness

Pennsylvania is a state of many firsts: It was the nation's first capital, the " birthplace of oil production," home to " America's first superhighway," and the state that monopolized the production of steel in the 20th century. More recently, it has been positioned as one of the leading states in "AI readiness," a term that loosely refers to how equipped companies and governments are to adopt and integrate AI into their systems and daily operations.

Programmatic marketers may not understand AI but they're even more unsure of themselves. That was the undercurrent at this week's Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit in New Orleans. Onstage discussions, offstage pow wows and the usually candid town halls all pointed to the same tension: everyone talking about AI, yet few felt equipped to shape what comes next. The dynamic landed with real force. This moment isn't about automation muscling out humans.

It's cohabitation. I think you start with a degree, there's a foundation that comes with a degree, but you need the skills to be relevant in the workplace,

Along with a focus on delivering business growth, Gartner sees an opportunity for CIOs to get out of back office IT. Almost two-thirds of CIOs (65%) are not happy with being constrained to the four walls of the IT department. According to analyst firm Gartner, CIOs want to be customer-facing, where they are involved in the same conversations that people in the business have with their customers and customer prospects.

Cisco's recent AI Readiness Index shows that in EMEA, only 11% of companies are completely ready for AI compared to 13% worldwide. This is a number that hasn't changed much in three years. While 82% of organizations intend to use AI, and 44% anticipate a significant increase in AI workloads within a year, only 30% believe their current IT infrastructure can support today's AI technologies.

Most haven't even defined what they want their AI agents to do. The networking hardware manufacturer found in its 2025 AI Readiness Index that most companies are planning to deploy additional AI agents in the next few years, and 86 percent expect it to improve employee productivity within three years, but those expectations don't necessarily match the reality of what it takes for such an initiative to succeed.

Regarding AI agents, the survey found ambition was outpacing readiness. Overall, 83% of organisations planned to deploy AI agents, and nearly 40% expected them to work alongside employees within a year. But the study discovered that, for majority of these companies, AI agents were exposing weak foundations - that is, systems that can barely handle reactive, task-based AI, let alone AI systems that act autonomously and learn continuously.

A new survey reveals a striking "AI readiness gap" in the modern workplace: those using AI tools the most-including top executives and Gen Z employees-are often the least likely to receive meaningful guidance, training, or even company approval for their use. The findings come from WalkMe, an SAP company, which surveyed over 1,000 U.S. workers for the 2025 edition of its " AI in the Workplace " survey.