At a defining moment for business and technology, artificial intelligence is transforming how organizations operate — and introducing new complexities for the leaders responsible for what comes next.
So how are companies adapting and shaping technology's next era — from compute ROI and cybersecurity to regulation and quantum computing?
CNBC is convening technology executives, industry experts, and CNBC journalists at the annual Technology Executive Council Summit in New York today to discuss the increasingly central role that technology leaders are playing in this transformation.
The TEC Summit is an exclusive event for members; learn more about the TEC and apply for membership at www.cnbccouncils.com/tec .
Yesterday, CNBC's Workforce Executive Council held its annual Summit , and the discussion of how human resources professionals help workers adapt to this new AI age was at the top of the agenda.
Walmart , the biggest private employer in the world, asked its 2.1 million associates in June that exact question for the first time, trying to get a sense of how one of the most diverse workforces is experiencing AI.
What it found, based on more than 1.7 million survey responses, is that while workers have different levels of familiarity and comfort with AI, training and experience with the technology matters.
Seventy-seven percent of Walmart's office-based associates said are excited about AI's potential to improve their work, Walmart Chief People Officer for Associate Experience and Digital Maren Waggoner told CNBC's Leslie Picker at the WEC Summit.
And as for Walmart's U.S. frontline associates, 84% said they are confident using digital tools, a reflection of the AI-powered tools that many of them are now using in their roles, she said.
"We've given them certificates, we've given them training programs and tools, and so they're using it in their day-to-day," Waggoner said.
Jill Bruning, chief technology officer of Amentum and a member of the CNBC Technology Executive Council, said at the WEC Summit that strategy should be evolved to be humans in the lead.
"There's an AI curve, and we see it. It's going up and it's going fast and has a lot of attributes to it; it's quicker than anything we've seen before," Bruning told CNBC's Susan Caminiti. "So when you think about people on that curve … that gap is getting bigger every day."
Bruning said she doesn't know if leadership is adapting fast enough to the technology, and that is creating additional challenges with upskilling as well as what tasks are being delegated to AI.
"So your delegation skills are different, and then how do we tell the agents what to do? How do we define that role? She said. "That's human over the loop, not in the loop. We're still in charge."
For more from the CNBC WEC Summit, you can see the full live blog here .
Here are some of the top tech-focused headlines from CNBC this morning:
This year's TEC Summit is focusing on what is coming next in AI, whether that's how companies are adapting their strategies based on the advancement in the technology to how they're controlling the costs related to that build out.
Discussions will also center on AI regulation, agents, how workers are using the technology and where this acceleration of AI is taking society.
