AI ASSISTANTS
extensive technical expertise. Crucially, Rich stresses, wider access should not come at the cost of oversight, arguing that governance and security must scale alongside adoption.
“ Businesses can empower more people to work with data while maintaining the controls, security and oversight needed to scale AI responsibly,” he continues.“ That’ s what true democratisation looks like.”
The future of agentic AI When it comes to agentic AI, Rich asserts that the industry is focused on the wrong problem.
“ There’ s still a tendency to focus on the AI itself, when the real challenge is everything underneath it,” he says.“ Agentic AI is only as effective as the data, systems and governance that support it.”
If agents cannot access live information or work across different parts of a business, Rich warns, they will struggle to deliver the value organisations expect from them.
He believes the next phase of AI adoption will depend less on smarter agents and more on modernising the data architecture that underpins them.
Rich concludes:“ Poor foundations and weak governance are at the heart of why so many businesses struggle to move their agentic AI experiments beyond the pilot phase.
“ Once organisations consistently recognise the importance of getting these foundations right, we’ ll see a surge in highperforming agentic deployments that deliver measurable, long-term ROI.”
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