We spoke with Christian Buckner about the future of organisational AI and its potential to alter STEM careers.
For Christian Buckner, the SVP of analytics and IoT at multinational technology company Altair, “the future of intelligent automation is not about adding AI to yesterday’s workflows, it’s about reimagining workflows themselves”.
He explained that systems must become more interconnected, contextual and adaptive, but for that to happen, organisations must implement agentic AI that is “supported by a unifying fabric of knowledge and governance”. Essentially, companies can achieve this not by dismantling the systems already in place, but by activating them in new and creative ways.
“The winners won’t be those who adopt AI the fastest, but those who rethink how intelligence, action and human expertise interweave to build resilient, forward-looking organisations,” said Buckner.
AI evolution
According to Buckner, agentic AI represents the logical next step in intelligent automation. While traditional AI tends to be used passively, in that it analyses, makes suggestions and waits for human input, the evolution of agentic AI and its integration into wider company operations represents a paradigm shift.
“These are autonomous systems capable of perceiving context, making decisions and acting on their own to drive outcomes. Their purpose is not simply to process information but to continuously interact with complex environments, adjusting, learning and orchestrating workflows dynamically.
“The potential is enormous, agentic AI can transform businesses from being reactive to becoming proactive and self-optimising, with workflows that adapt in real time to shifting conditions.”
As it stands, Buckner is of the opinion that, while agentic AI is being utilised to an extent, there are a number of key areas in which organisational leaders are failing to fully leverage AI’s potential.
“Most organisations are focused on external-facing use cases like customer service bots or marketing automation. But some of the most transformative opportunities are internal, supply chain resilience, maintenance planning, workforce optimisation and R&D workflow acceleration,” he said.
“In sectors like manufacturing, finance, aerospace and life sciences, the opportunity is not just faster service but fundamentally smarter, self-adjusting operations. Yet because these areas are complex and often tied to legacy systems, they’ve been slower to adopt agentic approaches – something that modern data fabrics and agent frameworks are now poised to change.”
Career change
AI is a great divider, insofar as there are many schools of thought around its potential, efficacy and whether or not it is a positive or a negative consequence of the digital world. According to Buckner, STEM careers are likely to experience two profound changes as agentic AI evolves.
“First, it will shift technical roles from building static systems to designing dynamic ecosystems. Engineers, data scientists and technologists will increasingly focus on how to guide, shape and supervise evolving agentic behavior rather than crafting static applications.
“Second, it will amplify the importance of interdisciplinary fluency, success will require understanding not just coding or statistics, but also ethics, governance and system design at the organisational level. In short, agentic AI will turn STEM careers from building blocks into system architecture and stewardship roles.”
New roles will emerge, he said, such as AI orchestration architect – who design agent-based workflows across complex systems. Organisations will also be looking for knowledge engineers to build and maintain the semantic fabric that agents have to navigate.
There will be a demand for governance specialists who can ensure compliance, ethical use and operational transparency, as well as AI operations analysts who monitor and optimise live agentic ecosystems.
“It will create entirely new career paths at the intersection of data, automation and enterprise strategy. In many ways, agentic AI will require STEM professionals to become the architects and stewards of intelligent, adaptive organisations.”
For Buckner, the key to implementing this new tech, without massively disrupting workflow and employee productivity, will involve organisations building around existing infrastructure, not against it.
“Organisations have years, if not decades, of investment in their current systems. Seamless integration of agentic AI means creating a connective fabric that overlays existing data, tools and workflows without forcing rip-and-replace initiatives.
“Think of it as adding an intelligent layer that activates and harmonises what’s already there. If agentic AI has access to the right context, clean data, system connections, historical operations, it can plug into daily work without disruption, automating selectively and scaling gradually as trust and competence are built.”
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