Artificial intelligence is transforming the business world in ways we couldn't have imagined until recently. Just how--and what the future holds--was the topic of a panel discussion at the TIME100 Impact Dinner: Leaders Shaping the Future of AI in San Francisco on Monday moderated by TIME's executive editor Nikhil Kumar. The panelists were Ravi Kumar S, CEO of Cognizant, which sponsored the event; Athina Kanioura, chief strategy and transformation officer at PepsiCo, which also sponsored the event; and Jared Kaplan, co-founder and chief science officer at Anthropic . Ravi Kumar and Kaplan both featured on the 2025 TIME100 AI list, which highlights the 100 most influential people in AI this year, from computer scientists to business leaders to policy makers and artists. "One of the things about the public conversation about AI is that quite often it is focused on the companies behind the technology and what they are doing," said TIME's Nikhil Kumar when introducing the panel.

Artificial intelligence is one of the buzziest terms in corporate America, but organizations don't need to pursue a tech upgrade as a solution for every problem, Athina Kanioura said. Instead, Accenture's chief analytics officer says that companies -- and the executives that run them -- should meditate on the internal and external pressures that are forcing them to consider their investment. Together, these pushes and pulls form a firm's "AI narrative," said Kanioura, whose 3,000-data-scientist-strong Applied Intelligence arm at Accenture has consulted for organizations from the Golden State Warriors to Carnival Cruises. A financial institution facing trouble growing its user base, for example, may opt to automate initial customer interactions to cut costs. For Kanioura, the first step in considering investing in AI is determining the appropriate return you are seeking and whether it will complement other tech priorities, like cloud computing or data analytics.