INFORMS Open Forum

 Why Artificial Intelligence Is the Future of Business
By Adam Brigden

Brigden outlines a compelling vision where AI underpins the next wave of business innovation-driving cost efficiency, accelerating creativity, and deepening customer engagement. Early-adopter organizations are portrayed as poised to achieve lasting market leadership.

This message is reinforced by broader trends: AI adoption surged globally in 2024–2025, with executives anticipating significant uplift in revenue and productivity. However, Boardroom research indicates that a substantial portion of companies remain in pilot stages and struggle to scale AI strategy effectively. Board Agenda, TechRadar Only a few organizations identify as AI "Builders"-those embedding AI across business processes for sustainable impact. TechRadar.

Meanwhile, discussions in boardrooms are increasingly urgent. Many directors' express discomfort with AI-based minute-taking while recognizing the need for human oversight in governance. Herbert Smith Freehills+10 Directors face new challenges, including potential liability due to increased data availability and the requirement to act on algorithmic insights. Board Agenda Governments and industry leaders are also emphasizing the importance of AI literacy, reskilling initiatives, and responsible deployment to keep pace with global competitors. theguardian.com ,The Times

Including empirical evidence and balanced risk assessments would make Brigden's argument even more persuasive. A richer narrative that combines visionary insight with data, ethics, governance, and real-world use cases would strongly resonate with executives, policymakers, and institutional readers navigating the AI transformation.

It is correct to label AI as the "future of business", thanks for this post, Sakera Begum!

In my work I deal with organizations that do not employ OR/MS/DA experts in their business operations. That set of organizations is quite large. You can thought-experiment it by estimating INFORMS membership by organization. These organizations are targeted by media messages that LLMs subsume & eliminate the need for human experts, and gloss over the fact that OR has deep roots and wide relevance.

A set of AI-tech companies have arisen to profit from selling LLM-powered Future of Business systems. As LLMs run out of steam, they've already flooded into Agentic AI as the Future of Business. So our OR community has to continue to message the relevance of OR/MS/DA.

My most recent attempt at this public messaging is https://www.linkedin.com/posts/revinsight-inc_decisionintelligence-activity-7355918673703813120-rUGp.

To keep this discussion meaningful and to avoid fooling yourself into thinking you are doing AI when you actually use only, say, optimization algorithms or simulation modeling, the two points should always be clearly stated:

1. Definition of the term AI that is being used. Is it a strong AI, i.e., imitation of general human intelligence (whatever it is)? Or is it a weak AI, i.e., a large language model (LLM) that produces a text output/summary for various prompts, or a virtual customer assistant answering customers' questions, or is it deep learning for solving difficult problems (whatever it is), or is it the rebranded predictive and prescriptive analytics, or anything else?
2. Specific examples of business problems that cannot be solved with the current OR/MS. and, thus, require the AI (whatever it is) to find a better solution.