After the Model
The next stage of AI will not be defined by what the tools can do, but by companies’ ability to turn those capabilities into real processes.
Over the past few years, much of the conversation around artificial intelligence has revolved around models: which one was more powerful, which reasoned better, which wrote with greater precision, or which tasks it could solve.
That stage was necessary. It helped us understand the technology’s reach and opened a period of experimentation that is still unfolding. But the center of gravity is beginning to shift.
The decisive question will no longer be what an AI system can do in a demonstration, but how it is incorporated into the everyday operations of an organization. This is where the most difficult challenges emerge: responsibilities, sequences, controls, exceptions, integration with other systems, and the criteria for deciding when a person should step in.
Technology opens possibilities. Process determines which of them become value.
This week, MAN/MACHINE explores this new territory: the engineering required to build the processes that AI makes possible.