The CIO Agenda for AI (with IBM Consulting)

CIOs are accountable for AI results but often not in control of how AI is actually used across the business. Andy Baldwin, Senior Vice President of Consulting Offerings and Growth at IBM Consulting, explains how CIOs regain visibility and control as AI moves from small pilots to industrial scale.

He describes the real cost of scaling AI, right-sizing models to cut token cost, governance and observability, cyber and post-quantum risk at the board level, workforce reskilling, and modernizing legacy systems without breaking them.

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This episode brought to you by Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo™: https://cxo.news/KGg8XY

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YOU’LL DISCOVER

✅ Why two-thirds of CIOs are accountable for AI but not in full control of how it is used

✅ How IBM runs its own AI program (Client 0) and tracks 60 different models on a single observability layer

✅ Why right-sizing models beats defaulting to an expensive frontier model, the Ferrari-to-the-corner-shop problem that drives token cost

✅ How one AI deployment ran to a $25 million compute cost in six months, then was re-architected down to roughly $2 million

✅ Why AI adoption is a contact sport, not a technology you throw over the fence and hope gets used

✅ Why cyber threats and the post-quantum encryption risk have moved up to the board level

✅ How IBM is reskilling 15,000 to 20,000 people whose skills face declining demand

✅ How to modernize legacy by preserving the system of record while reimagining the engagement layer

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 The CIO accountability gap

3:31 Why AI adoption is a contact sport

9:18 Democratization forces a governance rethink

10:31 The real cost of scaling AI

17:01 Writing controls versus enforcing them

19:32 When AI becomes the business model

29:49 From efficiency to reinventing the business

36:07 Quantum and cyber reach the boardroom

41:33 Soft landing or jobs apocalypse

46:59 Proving control and successful pilots

49:54 Modernizing legacy without breaking it

53:06 Accountability and the CIO’s next move

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Show notes, transcript, and summary: https://www.cxotalk.com/episode/ibm-consulting-cios-new-agenda-for-ai

Episode 924

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