By Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
Publication Date: 2025-12-16 20:48:00
Employers are shelling out millions on artificial intelligence (AI) tools to boost productivity, but workers are still getting stuck using a tiny fraction of the tech’s potential, according to a presentation from a top executive in the space who advises Fortune 500 companies on strategy and tech adoption.
Allie K. Miller, the CEO of Open Machine, addressed the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference last week in San Francisco. Speaking from decades of experience at companies including IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS), she argued that AI actually has four different, increasingly useful interaction modes. Miller, who helped launch the first multimodal AI team at IBM, said that AI can be a microtasker, companion, delegate, or a teammate, depending on the desired outcome.
The problem, Miller said, is that most users never get beyond the first mode, using AI as a “microtasker,” basically a glorified search engine, returning results for simple queries.
Her central critique…
