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Perspective
06 May 2026
2 minute read
Embracing the AI vibes at the 2025 AI Forum: ‘Not a typical vendor event’
Key takeaways
- Deloitte senior leaders prioritized pragmatic, peer-led dialogue on disruption and measurable impact over traditional sales-driven engagement.
- Agentic AI is accelerating operating model decisions, elevating workforce change, data literacy, and reskilling to strategic priorities.
Embracing the AI Vibes at the 2025 AI Forum Presented by Deloitte AI Institute
The Deloitte AI Institute™ hosted its 13th annual AI Forum at Deloitte University in October 2025, convening more than 200 leaders from business and government to move beyond “AI vibes” and into measurable value. In this IDC Market Note, Senior Research Director Jennifer Hamel shares her experience, providing key takeaways from the first day of the event. The event focused on facilitating the exchange of insights among attendees, where such topics as workflow redesign, governance, privacy, and adoption rose to the forefront.
Highlights
- An inside look at plenary and breakout sessions covering a range of subjects, from industry disruption to tangible impact measurement
- The creation of an open, peer-to-peer environment that allowed leaders to navigate disruption pragmatically instead of fielding hard sales pitches
- Agentic-AI-driven tension between old vs. new ways of working, buy vs. build decisions, and “paperless” vs. “peopleless” workflows
- A trend toward employee change management, not just digital transformation—including training, data literacy, and reskilling
"He did not show the typical reverence for AI technology that most keynote speakers do at AI conferences. Instead, [Connor] Grennan urged attendees to question whether what looks like rapid adoption of GenAI tools was true adoption and to think of AI as behavioral change management, rather than digital transformation."
Image: Deloitte’s US Head of AI, Jim Rowan, takes the stage at the 2025 AI Forum.
Beena Ammanath
Executive Director, Global Deloitte AI Institute™
