What is the impact of AI? It’s a paradigm shift. Up until now software has been about process: What process do I need to execute and what tools (applications) do I need to stitch together to get a result. In this old paradigm speed matters. The objective is to improve (accelerate) the process.
AI changes the paradigm:
AI makes the objective outcomes. For example: Consider a Google search, which provides a list of sources, from which I (the user) distills an answer. This is all process: a faster search gives me more result to sift through to produce my answer. AI flips the script. It produces the answer. And we judge AI on how good the answer is (how thorough, complete and nuanced it is). AI is about outcomes.
That means “Speed” is the wrong point of emphasis. Results need to be fast enough, but the true test is the quality of the results. Differentiation is based on the things we can do no one else can – why should customers expect us to consistently produce better AI solutions than anyone else?
The future of software is AI agents orchestrating a set of other agents executing specific tasks in service of a customer outcome. While gaps in execution can be coded on the fly, a large cohort of pre-built agents allow you to go further and do better (they’ve been tensioned by the experience of the past).
Workflows (process) get crafted transparently in response the outcome demanded. Each step is articulated. Each assumption explained. If a user has a perspective on the approach, workflow, step or assumption, adjustments can be made on the fly.