What does it really mean to keep people at the center of AI, when agentic systems are accelerating faster than most organizations can control them?
At AWS re:Invent, I sat down with Boomi’s Michael Bachman for a wide-ranging conversation that cut through the hype and focused on the tougher questions many leaders are silently asking.
Michael leads technical and market research at Boomi, looking five to ten years ahead and translating future signals into decisions companies need to make today. That long view set the stage for a thoughtful discussion about human-centered AI, trust versus autonomy, and why governance can no longer be considered an afterthought.
As companies rush toward artificial AI, swarms of autonomous systems, and large-scale automation, Michael shared why this moment makes him both optimistic and cautious. He explained why security, legal and governance teams need to be involved early and not adjusted later, and why observability and sovereignty will become non-negotiable as agents move from experimentation to production.
With tens of thousands of agents already deployed through Boomi, the stakes are rising rapidly, and organizations that ignore guardrails today may struggle to regain control tomorrow.
We also explored one of the biggest paradoxes of the AI era. The more capable these systems become, the more important human judgment and critical thinking becomes.
Michael explained what it means to stay informed, how to gradually scale trust in agentic systems, and why directly replacing human workers is often a short-term mentality that poses long-term risks. Instead, he argued that the real opportunity lies in expanding human capabilities, allowing smaller teams to achieve results that were previously unattainable.
Looking further ahead, the conversation focused on the limits of large language models, the likelihood of an AI research reset, and why future breakthroughs could emerge from hybrid approaches that combine probabilistic models, symbolic reasoning, and new hardware architectures. Michael also reflected on how AI is changing the way we search, learn and think, and why fact-checking, creativity and cognitive discipline are more important than ever as AI assistants become embedded in everyday life.
This episode provides an informed, forward-looking perspective on where AI is going, why integration platforms are becoming connective tissue for modern systems, and how leaders can approach the coming years with both ambition and responsibility.
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