📨 Weekly digest: 25 2025 | AI: is it still playtime?
The evolving AI consensus: beyond playtime to profit | The Daily Wild Summary
👋🏻 Hello, legends, and welcome to the weekly digest for week 25 of 2025.
The initial hype surrounding AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot has given way to a more nuanced understanding. The corporate consensus is rapidly shifting: mere experimentation hasn't yielded significant benefits.
The real value of AI, it's now clear, lies in its ability to automate specific vertical workflows.
This isn't about general-purpose AI anymore; it's about targeted, integrated solutions. Achieving tangible benefits requires a deliberate shift towards dedicated vertical software, potentially powered by AI agents.
This strategic move isn't just about implementing new technology; it necessitates a fundamental rethinking of existing workflows and the tasks that comprise them.
Many organizations have moved past the exploratory phase, where employees "played" with generative AI tools.
While these tools offered a glimpse into AI's potential, they largely failed to integrate seamlessly into core business operations and deliver a measurable return on investment (ROI). The challenge now is to move from understanding what AI can do to implementing what it should do for your specific business.
The emerging consensus points to a clear path forward:
Dedicated vertical software: Generic AI tools are not enough. The focus must be on solutions designed to address the unique challenges and requirements of specific industries or departments. This could mean AI-powered tools for legal contract review, medical diagnostics, financial fraud detection, or supply chain optimization.
Intelligent agents: Leveraging AI agents that can perform tasks autonomously within these vertical workflows is key. These agents can streamline repetitive processes, analyze vast datasets, and even make data-driven decisions, freeing up human capital for more strategic initiatives.
Workflow transformation: Implementing AI effectively is not simply about layering technology onto existing processes. It demands a critical examination of current workflows and a willingness to redesign them. This involves identifying which tasks can be fully automated, which can be augmented by AI, and how human roles will evolve as a result.
This evolving understanding of AI presents a strategic imperative:
Invest strategically: Prioritize investments in AI solutions that offer clear, quantifiable benefits within specific vertical applications.
Embrace change management: Prepare for the organizational and cultural shifts that accompany workflow automation. This includes retraining employees and redefining roles.
Focus on ROI: Demand clear metrics and a demonstrable return on investment from AI initiatives, moving beyond the "experimentation" phase to a results-driven approach.
The era of AI as a general-purpose novelty is over.
We are now entering a phase where its true power will be unlocked through targeted, workflow-specific applications.
The question for decision leaders, startup founders, and board members is no longer "Should we use AI?" but rather, "How can we strategically integrate AI to transform our core vertical workflows and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage?"
What specific vertical workflow within your organization do you believe holds the most significant potential for AI-driven transformation, and what are the primary challenges you anticipate in implementing such a change?
I am looking forward to reading your thoughts in a comment.
Yael.
Yael on AI, my personal views
Chips, ontology, and the enterprise AI's future
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📨 Weekly digest: 24 2025 | Are we outsourcing our minds to algorithms?
👋🏻 Hello, legends, and welcome to the weekly digest for week 24 of 2025.
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