Charles Yeomans

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For all the talk about AI making customer service faster and more personal, there is still a harder question to answer: Does the customer actually feel better served? An instant answer or perfectly timed recommendation may be useful, but usefulness is not the same as feeling understood. When a customer has a complicated problem, is frustrated or simply wants to talk to someone, efficiency can quickly become the problem.That tension is becoming more important as companies bring AI into more customer interactions. Customers are increasingly comfortable with AI when it saves time or effort, but many still expect a human option when the stakes are higher. The challenge then is figuring out how technology can remove friction without taking away the judgment, reassurance and connection that make good service feel like good service.In this article, members of the Senior Executive AI Think Tank—a curated community of leaders specializing in machine learning, generative AI and enterprise AI applications—explore that challenge from different angles. They discuss personalization and customer memory, where human involvement matters most, how AI can give employees more room for empathy, and how customer signals can shape better products. They also examine what it really means for AI to remember—and how leaders can tell whether an interaction leaves customers feeling understood, rather than simply processed.

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In AI, success is no longer determined solely by selecting the largest language model or achieving the highest benchmark score. Increasingly, organizations are deploying AI systems composed of multiple foundation models, retrieval systems, APIs, business applications and autonomous agents working together to complete complex tasks.As these systems become more autonomous, reliability becomes a systems engineering challenge rather than simply a model evaluation problem. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology's AI Risk Management Framework, trustworthy AI requires organizations to continuously monitor, govern and manage risks throughout the lifecycle—not simply evaluate a model before deployment. Those principles become even more important as organizations adopt agentic AI capable of making decisions and invoking external tools.Members of the Senior Executive AI Think Tank, with expertise in machine learning, generative AI, and enterprise AI applications, believe orchestration is rapidly becoming the operational foundation that makes this possible. Rather than simply routing requests between models, orchestration determines how systems select models, validate outputs, monitor execution, recover from failures and balance competing priorities including latency, quality, security and cost.In the following sections, they explore the critical decisions leaders must make as AI systems become more autonomous—from improving routing and evaluation to strengthening observability, managing complexity and creating safeguards that allow organizations to scale AI with confidence.

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The race to deploy artificial intelligence is accelerating—and so is the pressure on leaders to act. From boardrooms to product teams, executives are being asked the same question: How fast can we get AI into production? But as organizations rush to capitalize on generative AI, the risks—hallucinations, data leaks and brand damage—are becoming harder to ignore. A National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report on AI risk management emphasizes that without proper governance, AI systems can introduce significant reliability, security and accountability risks into enterprise environments. Insights from the Senior Executive AI Think Tank suggest that this is not a simple trade-off between speed and safety. Instead, it’s a leadership challenge that requires rethinking how organizations define competitive advantage. Below, Think Tank members discuss whether being first with AI is truly the advantage leaders think it is—or if the real differentiator is trust built through disciplined execution, strong governance and a clear understanding of where AI delivers value.

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The launch of Google’s new AI shopping tools—including conversational search, agentic checkout and the ability for an AI to call stores for you—marks a turning point. These innovations raise a fundamental question for retailers and brands: What happens when the “customer” is no longer a human browsing or clicking, but an algorithm executing on behalf of a human?  Google expects this new model to simplify shopping at scale, using its Shopping Graph—with more than 50 billion product listings—and its Gemini AI models to power agentic checkout and store-calling. Yet the transition toward “agentic commerce” is fraught with risk and opportunity. Drawing on their expertise in machine learning, generative AI and enterprise AI applications, the members of Senior Executive AI Think Tank explore this new form of commerce, how this shift could upend traditional consumer relationships and what merchants must do now to stay visible—and profitable.

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As artificial intelligence continues its rapid advance—from foundational models to enterprise-scale deployments—questions about sustainability are taking on new urgency. While much of the discourse has centered on the carbon footprint of data centers and model training, sustainable AI must also address long-term economic, labor and societal impacts: How will value from AI be shared? Who bears the downstream risks? Well-designed systems matter not only for performance, but also for fairness, trust and longevity. The Senior Executive AI Think Tank brings together seasoned experts in machine learning, generative AI and enterprise AI applications who offer deep insight into these challenges and opportunities. Below, they explore what truly sustainable AI looks like—beyond energy metrics—and who should be accountable.

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As enterprise AI adoption accelerates, so too does the complexity of choosing the right foundation. Should companies invest in proprietary platforms like GPT-4 or Claude, or build on open-source models such as Meta’s Llama or Mistral? The answer increasingly lies not in technical specs alone, but in how each option aligns with an organization’s cost structure, data governance needs and long-term innovation strategy. Recent research from McKinsey & Company underscores the growing momentum behind open systems: Over 50% of enterprises already report using open-source AI tools across their technology stack, and 76% expect to increase usage in the coming years. At the same time, proprietary platforms offer speed, reliability and white-glove scalability—often the shortest path to business impact. The trade-offs are real and consequential. To help executive decision-makers navigate these choices, we turned to members of the Senior Executive AI Think Tank—a group of enterprise AI, machine learning and innovation leaders who are shaping the way organizations operationalize artificial intelligence. In the sections below, they break down the pros and cons of each approach and offer actionable guidance on when to build, when to buy and how to orchestrate the right AI model strategy for your organization’s evolving needs.