Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer an experimental technology at the margins, it is becoming a core enabler of productivity, insight, and resilience across industries – but there remain cultural and geopolitical challenges which we must overcome to scale its impact. This is the clear message from over 50 senior leaders, technologists, and domain experts who contributed to the HPE AI Excellence Center launch event in Geneva, through conversational AI interviews facilitated by ComplexChaos.
While the launch itself was a milestone for Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the real story lies in the collective intelligence gathered from participants across sectors. The insights were gathered via ComplexChaos’s conversational AI, and offer a sharp lens into how AI is being operationalized today — and how broader forces like geopolitics are reshaping its trajectory.
Most participants agree that AI is already a major driver of efficiency, automation, and operational insight. Yet the benefits are not uniformly distributed.
“Early adopters report tangible returns, particularly in service delivery,” the ComplexChaos facilitator noted, “but others remain cautious due to adoption fatigue or a lack of internal readiness.”
The message is clear: culture, structure, and leadership alignment are seen as the real differentiators. As one response put it, “The real impact of AI depends less on the tools themselves and more on how organizations adapt culturally and structurally to use them well.”
This insight underscores the growing demand for AI maturity models and capability assessments that go beyond technical deployment to include skills, governance, and change management.
Another key theme that emerged is the entanglement of AI with geopolitical dynamics. From data sovereignty to regional regulation, participants consistently flagged that the ability to deploy AI is now shaped as much by political boundaries as by technological capability.
“There’s a strong consensus that AI is now deeply entangled with geopolitics,” the synthesis shows, with experts citing security, sovereignty, and ethical governance as frontline concerns.
Some see this as a healthy form of guardrailing, ensuring responsible and safe use of AI technologies. Others worry it may stifle global innovation and create fragmented AI ecosystems.
Across the board, the call was for interoperability — frameworks that enable collaboration while respecting national and regional priorities. AI cannot scale in silos, but it must also not ignore sovereign and ethical constraints.
The HPE AI Excellence Center aims to act as a catalyst for precisely these kinds of balanced, cross-sector conversations. While the center offers technical capabilities, its deeper value lies in convening a diverse ecosystem to explore the questions that matter most.
The launch enabled a moment of self-reflection — and at the closing panel – alignment on what AI needs to be next: scalable, secure, and socially responsible. At the same time, the event was an opportunity to experience how ComplexChaos’ conversational AI can capture the essence of such moments by generating a XAI-rich synthesis based on DeepMind’s Habermas Machine statements articulation.
Stefan Brock is Head of AI Excellence Center, Central Europe, Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
