In recognition of AI Appreciation Day on July 16, industry leaders from Glean, Precisely, Okta and BlueVoyant share their views on AI integration and adoption thus far.
AI Appreciation Day is an annual occurrence which happens every July 16 and is recognised globally. It’s a chance for organisations to acknowledge the transformative impact of AI – from organisational productivity gains to major healthcare advances.
While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for many years, this year has seen a significant shift in its development. We’ve been privy to the rapid adoption of Generative AI increasing, companies embracing AI agents, regular users of ChatGPT hitting 900 million and usage now widespread.
Despite AI’s obvious advantages, a persistent – and somewhat growing – concern is that it will replace jobs. IT experts often counteract this argument with a view that AI is an enabler rather than a replacement and if used correctly, a catalyst for endless growth opportunities.
Glean’s Dr Rebecca Hinds, Precisely’s Matt Waxman, Okta’s Dan Mountstephen and BlueVoyant’s Kash Sharma, share their views.
Dr Rebecca Hinds, Head of the Work AI Institute at Glean, draws on the nuances of AI and why these should be embraced rather than feared.
The debate over whether AI will replace jobs is still too binary. The most immediate change is happening inside jobs, as AI takes over individual tasks and changes how people learn, contribute and demonstrate their value. Nearly half (48%) of Australian digital workers fear AI could eliminate their role, while 58% say it has already automated meaningful work they would have preferred to keep.
But the human work has not disappeared. Employees are still supplying the context, checking the outputs, correcting mistakes and taking responsibility when AI gets something wrong. The real risk is not simply that AI replaces people, it’s that organisations automate the parts of work through which people develop judgement, expertise and ownership, while leaving them with the clean-up. Leaders should stop asking how many roles AI can remove and start asking how work should be redesigned – what AI should do, what humans must continue to own and how the productivity gains will be reinvested in people. Companies that use AI only as a headcount lever may cut costs in the short term, but they will also hollow out the skills and institutional knowledge they need to compete.
Matt Waxman, Chief Product Officer at Precisely, explores the rapid developments of AI and how organisations can truly reap its benefits.
In the last year, AI has become as foundational to business operations as the internet. While 2025 saw a boom in GenAI use, the conversation has shifted fast and this year it’s all about Agentic AI as organisations increasingly delegate decision-making to autonomous systems. But Agentic AI is only as effective as the data behind it. Without data that is complete, accurate, contextual and fit for real-time decision-making, organisations won’t just fail to unlock potential. They risk automating error at scale.
There’s still no definitive playbook for the agentic era. There are only practices, built in real time by companies willing to experiment and learn rather than wait for best practices to emerge. But that drive to move fast becomes a liability if it isn’t grounded in governance. Just under three-quarters (71%) of organisations with governance programmes report high trust in their data, compared to just 50% who don’t. Without that foundation, the benefits of AI are far from guaranteed.
Success in the agentic era doesn’t come from having the most sophisticated model. It comes from having data you can trust underneath it. The focus must shift from the intelligence of the model to the integrity of the data and the organisations that make that shift are the ones that’ll turn AI ambition into real business results.
Regardless of this momentum, concerns are being raised around AI readiness, with almost half of agentic projects forecast to be cancelled before 2028. An ineffective data strategy means organisations risk business disruption and perpetuating misinformation. As we enter an age of autonomy, where Agentic AI shifts from exploration to execution, operating without a data strategy isn’t just risky – it leaves entire organisations vulnerable to systematic AI failure.
Dan Mountstephen, Senior Vice President & GM, Asia Pacific & Japan, Okta, shares his input on the secure adoption of AI.
AI Appreciation Day is a good reminder of how fast we’ve moved past the ‘should we adopt AI?’ phase. Across APJ, the conversation has shifted entirely to execution.
The reality on the ground is that no enterprise is going to rely on a single AI platform, model, or cloud vendor. Teams are selecting diverse tools for specific jobs, creating a complex, multi-environment reality. Because of this, obsessing over the ‘right’ AI tool is a distraction. The real challenge is consistent governance.
As Agentic AI becomes deeply embedded in everyday operations, you cannot rely on a legacy grab bag of fragmented tools to secure it. Identity is the control plane. C-suites and boards are realising that non-human identities – AI agents, APIs and service accounts – need the exact same visibility, lifecycle management and strict access controls we’ve spent years building for human users. You need to know exactly what an AI agent can access, what it’s authorised to do and how to shut it down instantly if needed.
The pace of innovation isn’t slowing down. Building a neutral, independent identity foundation today is the only way to give your business the flexibility to adopt tomorrow’s AI safely.
Celebrating AI responsibly means ensuring innovation and security evolve together, not in competition. Kash Sharma, Managing Director Australia and New Zealand at BlueVoyant, offers another perspective.
Across APAC, AI has stepped up from something people prompt to something that acts on its own. A growing list of third-party agents are reading data, calling other systems and completing multi-step tasks on behalf of staff, often faster and more consistently than a person managing the same workload manually. Security teams are seeing genuine gains too: alert triage that used to take analysts hours now happens in minutes and case summaries that took up a whole shift can be ready before an analyst has finished their coffee.
However, most businesses are sitting on years of ‘security debt’. These could be – files shared too widely, permissions nobody has reviewed, accounts with more access than they need and an agent will happily draw on all of it when answering a question. The good news is this is one of the most solvable problems in security. Reviewing who has access to what, labelling sensitive data so protection travels with it and holding agents to the same identity rules as staff are all well-established practices, not new inventions. It’s housekeeping and the payoff is being able to hand agents bigger jobs with confidence.
The next 12 months will decide who gets the most out of this shift. AI agents will take on bigger jobs, working together across entire workflows rather than single tasks and the region is well placed to lead here. APAC businesses have adopted this technology faster than most of the world and the ones that pair that speed with proper controls will set the standard for what secure AI adoption looks like globally. That’s the opportunity worth talking about this AI Appreciation Day: not just what AI can do but proving it can be done right.
