The numbers come first. At Fortune's inaugural AIQ Summit, executives said AI is no longer a side experiment but a core part of how firms operate.
Stacy Dillow, executive vice president and chief people officer at HPE, said the hardest part is not testing new tools. It is rethinking how work gets done and what structures companies built around that work.
'We've got to force ourselves to think differently because if we're not trying to change how we work, we're just trying to retrofit and put AI in a process that isn't going to give us a different answer,' she said.
Dillow also said that if someone is in the C-suite and is not doing some level of AI adoption, implementation or everyday thinking about transformation, 'you're not going to be doing your job.' She added that using AI is necessary 'to survive.'
At Palo Alto Networks, chief people officer Danielle Gonzalez said the company has introduced tools including NotebookLM, Claude and Gemini for employees to experiment with. She said a custom AI agent has reduced IT tickets by 83% and now manages workflows across HR, finance and legal.
'They're no longer calling Danielle or their HR business partner or someone in the business, but rather they're self-serving,' Gonzalez said. She said the agent queries questions and gives employees the right answer for where they sit in their respective globe.
Gonzalez said the company is also changing how it evaluates hires. Instead of asking candidates to recount achievements, it uses 'observable interviews' and hackathons to see how applicants approach problems with and without AI.
'Gone are the days where you're sitting there and you're interviewing someone and you're having them tell you all about their achievements,' she said. 'We want to see what you can do.'
She said the company is looking for curiosity, agency and people who can learn quickly and 'unlearn what they thought to be true' so they can move forward.
Drew Holler, chief human resources officer at Lennar, said workers also have a direct responsibility to keep pace.
'We're going to give you all the tools, but it's your responsibility to upskill yourself as well,' Holler said. 'We're going to give you trainings, but you, as an individual, have to upskill.'
The market has already voted on AI. Companies are not treating it as a novelty; they are treating it as leverage. That matters because the winners will be the firms that raise productivity without adding bureaucratic drag.
For workers, the message is harsher but simple: adaptability is becoming a condition of employment, not a slogan. For executives, the test is whether they can strip out old processes before the administrative state of the office swallows the gains AI is supposed to deliver.
