Manu Agrawal

expert panel

Artificial intelligence remains one of the most consequential forces reshaping business, yet many organizations still struggle to distinguish meaningful breakthroughs from attention-grabbing headlines. While public discussion often centers on increasingly powerful models, digital assistants and speculation about artificial general intelligence, many enterprise leaders are discovering that the most transformative AI developments occur behind the scenes.Ask 10 AI experts what will matter most a year from now, and you might expect 10 different answers. Instead, members of the Senior Executive AI Think Tank—a curated group of experts specializing in machine learning, generative AI and enterprise AI applications—arrived at a strikingly similar conclusion: The biggest opportunities—and risks—aren't tied to the next model release. Across industries, they point to the infrastructure that makes AI useful in practice, from governance and security to evaluation, trust and workflow integration. At the same time, many are skeptical of some of today's loudest predictions, particularly around fully autonomous agents replacing human judgment at scale.As recent research from McKinsey suggests, organizations are increasingly finding that AI success depends less on access to cutting-edge models and more on the ability to operationalize them effectively. The experts featured here—those on the front lines of AI innovation—share the developments they believe leaders are underestimating, the trends they think are overhyped and where executives should be investing now to create lasting competitive advantage.