GoTech World 2025: The Year We Stopped Talking About AI and Started Living With It

A reflection from our speakers on what shaped this year and what comes next.

2025 wasn't just another year in tech. It was the year AI moved from boardroom buzz to everyday reality. According to McKinsey's latest research, 88% of organizations now report regular AI use, up from 78% just a year ago. But here's the catch: only one-third have begun to scale their AI programs.

At GoTech World 2025, we gathered voices from across technology, sustainability, and leadership. What they shared wasn't just a recap, it was a blueprint for what's coming.

The AI Reality Check: Humans + Machines, Not Humans vs. Machines

Remember when we thought AI would replace us? This year taught us something different.

Angus George, Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy UK, revealed fascinating experiment results: "We’ve recently completed an experiment with one of our clients that proves this. We set three teams on a single brief – one team was pure AI, one was purely humans and one was humans and AI. Pure AI struggled to find original thought in creative execution, humans were a bit slow, humans and AI were able to go further faster."

His warning? "A pure reliance on AI will kill originality." The sweet spot is partnership, not replacement.

On the software side, Allard Buijze (Founder and CTO at AxonIQ) was blunt: "AI is going to surpass the maintenance of code from humans relatively quickly. Maintaining code, especially your own code written more than 6 months ago, is terrible."

Building for What's Coming: Are Your Systems Ready?

Here's a question for CTOs: Are your systems ready for the AI agent explosion?

Allard Buijze thinks most aren't. "For systems to thrive in a world of AI, they will need to be able to provide 3 things: context rich data, auditability or explainability, and scalability" he explained. The reason? AI agents will increase system load dramatically: "Some estimates even go as far as 1000 times as much. If your systems can’t scale, they will become obsolete very quikly. "

From the quantum frontier, Prof. Dr. Kathrin Kind sees an even bigger shift: "AI learns patterns; quantum redefines what’s possible to compute. Think of AI as a brilliant chess player and quantum as a chessboard with infinite dimensions. Put them together, and you’re no longer just playing faster, you’re playing a fundamentally different game."

The Trust Problem: Ethics Can't Be an Afterthought

As AI systems make more autonomous decisions, who do we trust when the machine is in charge?

In cybersecurity, Raj Samani painted a sobering picture: "The use of deepfakes is something that utterly scares me. We’ve already seen cases where C-suite executives have been deceived on calls by deepfake videos. The threat is very real, and currently, there’s no reliable technology to defend against it. " His solution? Make cybersecurity everyone's responsibility, not just the security team's.

The More Tech Advances, The More Humanity Matters

If 2025 taught us anything, it's this: technology amplifies what makes us human, not replaces it.

Dwayne Britton (DAY|WON Consulting) made a compelling case: "AI is already playing a leading role. But I think the future of L&D is making it more human. Because learning is deeply human. And AI might magnify that." Moreover, acording to Intuation.com, 89% of L&D professionals agree that proactively building employee skills will help navigate the evolving future of work, while 91% recognize that human skills are becoming increasingly important as AI handles more technical tasks.

Inclusion as Strategy, Not Checkbox

One of GoTech World's new stages were Women Leading Tech Stage, where we’ve stressed the importance of inclusion.

Ollie Ivanova, Gaming Marketing Lead at Microsoft, showed us her "1+1=3" principle: "By bringing together a diverse team - with different cultural backgrounds, experiences, and creative approaches - we developed a campaign that connected with new segments like parents, lifestyle communities, and underrepresented voices. The result wasn’t just a successful campaign - it was a shift in how we saw our audience and how they saw us."

Emmanuelle Luba, Founder and COO at LND Consulting Services highlighted: "Tech needs your voice, your perspective, and your creativity today. Even if the room feels intimidating, remember that you belong there as much as anyone else. Build your skills, claim your space, and use your journey to make the path wider for those who will follow.“

The Artist's Answer

Perhaps the most thought-provoking insight came from Fredrik Gran (composer and robotics researcher), who build the Robot Cellist: I’ve learned that emotion isn’t located in the performer alone, it’s located in the listener’s perception of movement and intent."

But his deeper truth cuts to what makes us human: "Art is human because it carries uncertainty, hesitation, error, and longing. Those gaps are what make it alive. AI can generate form, but it cannot experience doubt and doubt is at the core of creation."

His final thought? "That creation is a form of listening. Whether working with humans or machines, the moment one stop listening to feedback, to resistance, to silence, the work begins to die. The machines have perhaps taught me that intelligence is not only about control, but about responsiveness."

The Question That Matters

As we step into 2026, one question emerges: In a world where machines can think, what will we choose to be?

Programmers or architects? Operators or strategists? Consumers or creators? The speakers at GoTech World 2025 gave us a mirror. Technology isn't the future. How we choose to use it is.

So here's our question for you: What role will you play in 2026?

Because the technology is already here. The only thing left to decide is what we'll build with it.

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