Where AI Is Headed: A Practical Look at ANI, AGI, and Everything in Between
A New Chapter
At the start of this year, I stepped into a new role as Customer Success & AI Lead — a completely different world compared to my time as Head of Operations. It was daunting (change usually is), but I was genuinely excited to dive in and learn.
At IComm, we’ve been using Copilot for a while now. What started as a productivity tool has quickly become central to my customer conversations, presentations, and the way I help teams figure out where AI fits into their work.
This is the biggest tech shift since the smartphone, and we’ve all got front‑row seats.
First, Let’s Ground Ourselves
Before we talk about where AI is headed, let’s get clear on what we’re dealing with.
ANI, AGI, ASI: The Spectrum of Intelligence
Right now, the AI we use every day (for me, that’s Copilot) sits firmly in the first category:
ANI: Artificial Narrow Intelligence
This powers Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, every model businesses touch today. It’s brilliant at specific tasks: writing, summarising, analysing, spotting patterns, generating ideas.
But it doesn’t understand context like a human.
It doesn’t have self‑awareness.
And it doesn’t make independent decisions.
ANI works hard, never complains, but don’t expect it to think like a human.
AGI: Artificial General Intelligence
This is the hypothetical point where AI can reason across domains like humans do. Ask ten experts when AGI will arrive and you’ll get ten wildly different answers:
Some say early 2030s
Some say 2040–2060
Some say “not this century”
Translation: no one knows, which means AGI isn’t close enough to rewrite your job description anytime soon.
ASI: Artificial Super Intelligence
Beyond human intelligence. If AGI is uncertain, ASI is even more so. Estimates range from 2050 to “maybe never.” Fascinating to think about, but irrelevant to your workflows today.
The Market Momentum
AI isn’t slowing down. According to BCC Research, the global AI market will jump from $206.6 billion in 2024 to nearly $1.5 trillion by 2030 — a 40% annual growth rate.
IBM says 42% of enterprise‑scale organisations (1,000+ employees) have already deployed AI. Stanford’s 2025 AI Index shows 78% of organisations now use at least one AI capability.
Generative AI has turned experimental models into everyday utilities. Innovation isn’t just coming — it’s here.
A Quick History Lesson
AI feels new, but the journey started long before ChatGPT made headlines:
AI didn’t suddenly appear in 2022. It’s been around since the 1950s, helping build vaccines, beat chess champions, process language, and crunch data. We just noticed when it started writing our emails.
Agents: The Next Phase of ANI
One of the most exciting shifts right now? AI agents.
Agents go beyond chat prompts. They can:
Perceive information
Make decisions within boundaries
Act on your behalf (to an extent)
Interact with tools and systems
Complete multi‑step tasks end‑to‑end
In short: agents don’t just answer — they do.
Our Adopt + Innovate and engineering teams are already building agents. This space is evolving rapidly, and anyone claiming to have it all figured out… probably doesn’t. But what we’re seeing is promising — from workflow automation to knowledge retrieval. The future isn’t “a smarter chatbot.” It’s a network of specialised agents quietly getting things done.
The Job Loss Fear (And Why It Needs Context)
Every big tech shift sparks fear: printing press, electricity, the internet, smartphones. AI is no different.
If AI makes you nervous, you’re not alone. It’s human nature, change feels risky. And yes, some repetitive roles will shrink, just like milkmen and video store clerks disappeared. But those jobs didn’t vanish, they evolved into new industries and skills no one predicted.
AI will follow the same pattern. Full cognitive AI is a long way off. Work is about more than tasks, it’s judgment, relationships, context, purpose. Even I feel a flicker of uncertainty sometimes. That’s normal. But alongside uncertainty sits something bigger: opportunity. Humans aren’t going anywhere. Our work is just changing its paint, as it always has.
The Future I See
We’re heading toward a workplace where AI becomes an invisible layer — the engine that preps information, handles admin, and gets things to 70% so humans can finish strong.
The organisations that thrive will embrace this shift early — not because it’s flashy, but because it’s practical.
The future? Humans, backed by smarter tools and agents that do the heavy lifting... And that’s something worth getting excited about.
One Last Thought
Writing this wasn’t about being the smartest person in the room — I’m definitely not. I did a stack of reading because stepping into this role meant understanding AI beyond the headlines.
The real experts? Our Adopt + Innovate specialists Dan, Georgia and Dale. They live and breathe this stuff every day, helping organisations turn Copilot from theory into practical outcomes.
If you’re curious about how to make Copilot work for your business, Amplify is where it starts. It’s our adoption program designed to help teams embrace Copilot and AI tools in a way that actually sticks.
Let’s talk about Amplify and what it could look like for your organisation.