AI leaders urge pragmatic adoption beyond the hype

Technology leaders are using AI Appreciation Day to call for a more pragmatic, grounded approach to adopting artificial intelligence in retail, healthcare, and enterprise IT. They say the focus should shift from hype to data foundations, workflow change, and resilience.

In retail, independent grocers and smaller chains face growing pressure from larger competitors with deeper data and analytics capabilities. Many still rely on fragmented systems for core commercial processes, said Ravi Achanta, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of RSA America.

"AI Appreciation Day should be more than a celebration of artificial intelligence; it should be about championing better business decisions. Working with independent grocers and smaller retailers, we see that AI represents a chance to achieve the kind of business visibility and insight that has long given larger chains a competitive edge. But that potential can only be realized with the right foundation. When customer, promotion, eCommerce, and loyalty data remain trapped in disconnected systems, AI simply amplifies those silos instead of delivering meaningful intelligence. Retailers that unify their commerce data and connect their operations using AI will improve margins, personalize shopper experiences, and compete with far greater confidence. That's the AI worth appreciating," said Ravi Achanta, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of RSA America.

Retailers are under pressure to reconcile data spread across loyalty programmes, online storefronts, and in-store point-of-sale platforms. Without that step, machine learning tools risk surfacing partial or misleading insights, suppliers say.

Healthcare specialists are making a similar case for workflow integration over headline-grabbing pilots. In many systems, clinicians still spend substantial time on documentation and administration even as demand rises.

Clinical staff often view AI as a way to reclaim time rather than replace expertise, said Ganesh Padmanabhan, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Autonomize AI.

"When people talk about appreciating AI, they often focus on what the technology can do. I think we should appreciate it for something much more important: its ability to give people their time and expertise back. In healthcare, some of our most experienced clinicians spend huge portions of their day navigating administrative processes instead of caring for patients. AI gives us an opportunity to change that. Not by replacing clinical judgment, but by making that expertise available more quickly, more consistently, and at a far greater scale. If AI allows a nurse to spend more time with patients instead of paperwork, or helps someone access treatment days or weeks sooner, that's something worth celebrating," said Padmanabhan.

Healthcare organisations are experimenting with tools that summarise medical histories, triage referrals, and surface similar past cases. At the same time, Chief Information Officers face questions about data quality, auditability, and regulatory compliance as they roll out these systems.

Security experts point to a different set of concerns as AI systems become more embedded in operations. Over the past year, large language models and autonomous agents have taken on more tasks, from code generation to IT operations support.

That places AI directly in the path of critical business processes and data protection, said Geoff Burke, Senior Technology Advisor at Object First.

"Last year on AI Appreciation Day, I cautioned my peers on the hidden cybersecurity dangers associated with AI. Since then, many of my concerns have materialized, from highly sophisticated AI-generated attacks to accelerated vulnerability exploitation. That's not to say I am against AI - I'm a user of it myself - but the efficiency and technological advances we've seen from AI haven't come without cost. An AI agent with too much autonomy and inadequate guardrails can cause major vulnerabilities, blind spots, and challenges that may outweigh the positives. However, as long as companies are aware of and realistic about these risks, they can take action to mitigate the consequences should an AI agent malfunction and delete important data, for example. Part of this preparation should include building recovery and resilience into the foundation of IT infrastructure with Absolute Immutability, ensuring backup data cannot be modified by anyone, not even the most privileged admin, attacker, or agent," said Burke.

Enterprise technology strategists also highlight how difficult it is to turn pilots into production deployments. Many organisations have launched generative AI experiments, but executives report fewer examples of systems operating at scale across lines of business.

The most significant work often begins after the first proof of concept, said Ali Tehrani, Senior Vice President of AI Strategy & Enterprise Architecture at Presidio.

"AI has made inspiration the easy part. The hard part-and the part worth celebrating-is the discipline it takes to move from a promising idea to a foundation you can build on, to a solution that's validated, to something that actually scales across the business. On AI Appreciation Day, the milestone worth celebrating isn't launching AI-it's making it stick," said Tehrani.