English | EN 
Taking the stage as Global CTO and Master of Ceremony, Michiel Boreel continued the narrative with both enthusiasm and urgency. He reminded participants that this was the 20th edition of the Executive Summit—now a fixture for reflection on the future of technology. This year’s focus, he explained, was on the evolution from deep learning to generative AI, to large language models, and now to agentic AI— systems capable not just of predicting but acting. “The shift from co-pilot to autopilot is a big one,” he cautioned. “It’s the difference between support and surrender.”
At a crossroad
Boreel positioned 2025 as a crossroads year, where society must decide between a human-controlled or AI-controlled trajectory. “We cannot leave that decision to Big Tech,” he warned.
Current adoption of Gen-AI
A live Mentimeter poll grounded the reflection in reality. On the question “What is the current stage of Gen-AI adoption in your organization?” the audience answered as follows:
- 07% – Still exploring where AI could add value
- 14% – Running limited POC’s; nothing in production yet
- 64% – Some AI solutions in production, with growing demand internally and externally
- 09% – AI-first strategy across processes, several solutions live
- 05% – AI is integral to production/services, delivering clear business value
Most participants reported that their organizations were still experimenting with AI; only 5% of the attendees answered that they had fully operational solutions that were integral to products/services.
Barriers to adoption
A second poll concerned the barriers to mainstream adoption of Gen-AI. Given a list of 9 well-known factors, the audience was asked to list them in order of importance. This is what was the result:
1- Availability of data
2- Finding the right use case
3- Cultural resistance
4- Confidentiality and IP
5- Risk Averseness
6- Funding AI Initiatives
7- Inflexible Legacy Systems
8- Technical Talent
9- Bias and Fairness Issues
“AI is still a faith-based industry,” Boreel quipped, citing Sam Altman’s own admission that billions are invested on “hope rather than revenue.” He traced the digital journey from the internet age of acceleration to the AI era of smartening—not just doing things faster but
doing them smarter.
His conclusion: “2025 is the moment of choice. We must decide what kind of intelligence –
human or machine – we want steering our future.”
Get your copy of the Autopilot Yes/No Report.
Please note – This report was created by almost exclusively using available AI-tools except for minor editorial tweaks and some limited lay-out changes.