Microsoft on the Future of the Human-AI Agent Work Environment

“The average knowledge worker is interrupted every two minutes during work hours,” according to Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Jared Spataro. “You’re getting an email, a meeting kind of request, a chat coming in, and if you do the math, that’s 275 times a day.” On this episode of Tech Disruptors, Spataro joins Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Technology Analyst Anurag Rana to discuss emerging trends in the way employees work and how AI is already changing the game. The two define the “Frontier Firm” and discuss why this is a big year for such organizations. They also talk about the introduction of new research and analyst AI agents and the future of head count and staffing needs.

Helping small businesses manage all things human resources — payroll, benefits, tax compliance and employee onboarding — is Gusto’s central focus, which presents unique challenges given the fragmented customer base. Chief Technology Officer Mike Tria outlines the company’s product-portfolio suite and the evolution of the human-capital management industry over the past 10 years from a technology angle. In this Tech Disruptors podcast episode, BI analyst Niraj Patel sits down with Tria to discuss Gusto’s appeal across small and medium-sized business (SMBs), the leverage of its technology infrastructure (Ruby on Rails) to scale up for asynchronous workloads, the software ecosystem, its “Gus” AI solution and more.

“I think people should stop thinking about contact centers as a thing that is sort of about being responsive and reactive, and instead, really how do we fundamentally change the way you think about the way you talk to customers,” says Pasquale DeMaio, Amazon Web Services’ vice president of Amazon Connect. “In that sense, I think the status quo is really our competition.” In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, DeMaio and Anurag Rana, Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior technology analyst, touch on several pressing topics related to contact center-as-a-service, among them being AI automation, data integration challenges and the shifts in enterprise and end-user expectations for customer service.

US tariffs won’t change the cyclical journey in tech, with artificial intelligence set to be the dominant force for years to come the same way the Internet was, according to Rodrigo Liang, CEO of SambaNova, which builds AI hardware and software platforms. Liang joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s analyst Mandeep Singh on the Tech Disruptors podcast to discuss SambaNova’s cloud’s differentiation for inferencing workloads. They also talk about the demand for AI infrastructure, adoption of open-source large-language models and focus on power efficiency as AI compute remains scarce.

Artificial intelligence is opening up new possibilities for computer simulation, offering lower costs and expedited processes in manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, financial services, energy and other industries. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, Jim Scapa, founder and former CEO of Altair, speaks with Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Niraj Patel about the company’s portfolio expansion and broader customer reach beyond these verticals. He discusses the major consolidation drivers in simulation technology that have fueled recently announced M&A, including Siemens-Altair. Scapa offers his insight on Altair’s unique pricing model, differentiators among simulation-software technologies, customer retention, the impact of third-party generative-AI models, instantaneous design and simulation enabled by AI technology, and more.

There has been a buildout of platforms for various marketplace sectors in the past 15 years, though ridesharing essentially remains a duopoly. Lyft’s CEO David Risher talks to Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior tech analyst Mandeep Singh about the ridesharing marketplace in this episode of Tech Disruptors. David also discusses the company’s positioning in the autonomous-vehicle segment and his views on the technology, alliances and challenges involved in scaled adoption.

“Security is not a technology problem; security is a people and culture problem,”Amazon.com Chief Security Officer Steve Schmidt tells Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Anurag Rana. In this episode of Tech Disruptors, Schmidt discusses how enterprises should be thinking about all things cybersecurity, ranging from vendor assessment, permissioning, auditing and compliance and regulatory reporting. Additionally, the two go over how AI is affecting security and changing the behavior of bad actors, especially amid a shortage of cybersecurity professionals.

“The metric that we need to keep an eye on is the number of qubits,” Simone Severini, Amazon Web Services’ director of Quantum Technologies, tells Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Anurag Rana. Also important “is the quality of the qubits and the way people try to scale,” he says. On this episode of Tech Disruptors, Severini and Rana discuss the basics of quantum computing and how qubits differentiate themselves from their classical counterparts. Additionally, the two go over several potential use cases for the technology and the time line to fault tolerance.

“You manage your workforce in a system like Workday; you have to do that with your digital workforce as well,” Workday Chief Technology Officer Jim Stratton says as he breaks down the company’s thinking behind its recently released Agent System of Record. In this episode of Tech Disruptors, Stratton joins Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Anurag Rana to discuss generative AI in HR and financial software and the different approach Workday is taking from peers in areas such as AI agent integration and monetization.

As enterprises across industries seek to leverage artificial intelligence in their workflows, demand is mounting for specialized models designed for specific tasks and verticals, creating new opportunities for companies that manage the entire AI life cycle, such as DataRobot. In this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast, the company’s CEO, Debanjan Saha, joins Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Software Analyst Sunil Rajgopal to discuss the evolving AI-solutions landscape, the importance of predictive analytics and the value of being cloud-agnostic and on-premises-friendly. They also cover DataRobot’s revenue model, the future of enterprise apps and the competitive dynamics of the AI space.