Conference Presentation, Panel
You and AI: Breaking Boundaries Everywhere | Asia Summit 2025
Milken InstituteJohn B. Quinn, Hans A.T. Dekkers, Rodrigo Kede Lima, Panos Madamopoulos-Moraris, Grace Park, Rodrigo Lima, Pavel
- AI is projected to transform every industry and profession, with expectations of creating more value than electricity, steam, or the internet over the next five years.
- Large language models are predicted to be dominated by 10 to 12 global players, with significant performance improvements expected within two years.
- Enterprises are anticipated to transition toward orchestrating specific models for distinct tasks, potentially holding hundreds of small, proprietary, domain-specific models as balance sheet assets.
- Agentic AI is expected to shift from niche experimentation to mainstream reality, with widespread adoption predicted as a matter of "when, not if."
- Copilot customers are forecasted to increase annual purchases significantly following the product's launch approximately two years ago.
- Value creation will occur through specific applications such as containing claims leakage in insurance, reducing medical inflation, and optimizing workflows in HR, supply chain, and chip development.
- Governments in Asia, particularly Singapore and China, have implemented deregulation strategies to lower barriers for AI solutions, with the region's economy already advanced in R&D and capital deployment.
- Asia's role in global innovation is expected to evolve from manufacturing to creation, with a projected four-and-a-half-fold larger GDP in certain metrics compared to the rest of the world and a massive per capita increase over the next decade.
- The primary obstacles to solving domain-specific problems, such as in banking, are identified as a lack of business process understanding rather than technology limitations.
- Technology implementation requires a significant change management component to unlock potential, as competitors' commitments necessitate similar organizational investment.
- Organizations must focus on future-proofing talent through upskilling and reskilling rather than job cuts to win the war for talent amidst existing gaps in cybersecurity and AI professionals.
- The skill set for data professionals is expected to shift toward business acumen and domain knowledge, while "AI business translators" will emerge as a critical role to bridge technology and business needs.
- Experts note that talent retention strategies must adapt to power loss in core ecosystems like the Bay Area, and the definition of expertise is broadening to allow entry into fields like cybersecurity without traditional four-year degrees.
- AI is predicted to offset jobs to achieve efficiency rather than eliminate them entirely, while simultaneously humanizing interactions through added empathy capabilities and becoming "the new math" for all professionals.
- A transition from predictive text generation to acting in physical environments via robotic stacks is expected to have tremendous positive implications.
- Skepticism exists regarding big claims on ROI, with an expectation of nuanced measurement standards differing between big tech and the broader S&P market.
- A leap of faith regarding failure and learning is considered necessary for management, boards, and employees to successfully navigate AI initiatives.
- The fast pace and compounding effects of AI as a general-purpose technology are expected to make previous strategic playbooks obsolete.
- Unification of data and platforms is anticipated to enable enterprises to begin AI initiatives very quickly.