AI Event Series: AI in Business – Beyond the Hype

Beyond the Hype: What Businesses Really Need from AI Now

Hosted on 20 November 2025

There is no shortage of conversation around AI. New tools, new models and new claims of transformation continue to arrive at pace, often accompanied by the familiar language of disruption, urgency and inevitability. For most businesses, the real challenge is no longer understanding that AI matters. It is working out where it genuinely adds value, where expectations need tempering, and how to make decisions that are commercially useful rather than performative.

That was the focus of Level39’s latest event in our AI series, AI in Business: Beyond the Hype – Myths, Realities, and Real-World Opportunities, which brought together founders, advisors and industry experts for a discussion centred on business reality rather than technological spectacle

Setting the Stage: Inclusion, Responsibility, and the Future of AI

Opening the event, Tram Anh Nguyen, Co‑Founder of CFTE and Chairwoman of Global Women in AI, emphasised that conversations about AI must go hand‑in‑hand with conversations about access, inclusion and accountability. As AI increasingly shapes industries, who participates in building the technology will define its impact -economically, ethically, and socially.

This framed the evening’s core question: How do businesses cut through the noise and make decisions that support performance, resilience and growth?

A Candid, Practical Panel Discussion

Moderated by Professor Terence Tse (Nexus FrontierTech, AI Native Foundation), the panel brought together:

• Ben Goldsmith – Founder, Goldsmith Communications
• Renaud Huck – NED / Chair / Senior Advisor / Fintech Mentor
• Martin Boeckle – Founder, antX
• Vered Zimmerman – Founder, FinText

Key Themes Discussed

1. Practical Value Over Headlines

AI’s most powerful impact today is often practical, not dramatic.

Rather than wholesale transformation, organisations are seeing value in:

• Streamlining repetitive processes
• Speeding up analysis and experimentation
• Improving access to information
• Reducing friction across workflows

2. Start With the Problem, Not the Technology

Too many teams begin their AI exploration by asking, “Which tool should we adopt?”
The more important question is:

“What problem are we trying to solve – and does AI genuinely help?”

The panel stressed that clarity at the outset is what separates meaningful adoption from AI theatre.

3. Judgement Still Matters

AI cannot be pushed to perform reliably in every context. Some tasks tolerate automation; others require precision, context and human oversight.

Success hinges on:

• Understanding which tasks can handle approximation
• Knowing where human judgement remains irreplaceable
• Designing systems where AI and people complement each other

4. Readiness > Adoption

Many organisations already have AI tools, but few are extracting true value from them. And that impact depends on organisational readiness, not access.

Common barriers include:

• Poor data quality
• Fragmented processes
• Lack of ownership
• Cultural resistance
• Insufficient internal capability

5. Redefining Roles, Not Replacing Them

The discussion moved beyond simplistic narratives about job loss. AI is more likely to reshape roles than eliminate them.

Emerging priorities include:

• Capability building
• Adaptability
• Domain expertise
• Understanding value creation and risk

Tram Anh underscored in her introduction that diversity cannot be an optional parallel conversation. Representation in leadership, visibility of role models and access to opportunity will all shape the kind of AI ecosystem that emerges. That is not only a social consideration; it is a strategic one. Technologies shaped by a narrow set of perspectives tend to produce narrower outcomes.

Level39’s Role: Connecting Reality and Innovation

For Level39, this is exactly why these conversations matter. Our role is not simply to host discussions about AI as a trend, but to create a space where the technology can be examined through the lens of business reality: how it is being applied, where it is being misunderstood, and what founders and industry leaders need to consider as adoption deepens across sectors.

As AI evolves, the need for spaces that can convene practical, cross-sector dialogue will only grow. The market does not need more noise. It needs more honest conversations about implementation, responsibility and value creation. It needs more room for nuance, and it needs stronger connections between the people building the technology and the people working out how to use it meaningfully.

Final Thought: Precision Over Hype

The core message of the evening was clear:

Moving beyond the hype doesn’t mean scaling back ambition – it means becoming more precise.

Precision in the problems you choose.
Precision in how you measure value.
Precision in the kind of future you want your organisation to build with AI.

That is where the real opportunity lies.