{"id":91691,"date":"2026-07-01T06:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T06:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/91691\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T06:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T06:20:15","slug":"why-the-trust-but-verify-mindset-can-hinder-agentic-ai-adoption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/91691\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the ‘trust but verify’ mindset can hinder agentic AI adoption"},"content":{"rendered":"

Building trust into agentic systems is key to delivering value but it requires specific policies and processes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Image:<\/p>\n

Tony Nicol, CEO, Vivanti<\/p>\n

Organisations are increasingly focused on AI projects, with a smaller interest in seeking help with keeping the lights on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have two types of conversations \u2014 one is all AI and the other is more traditional help with operations,\u201d Tony Nicol, CEO, Vivanti, said<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAll of their project focus is now on AI-centred work, with very little in the middle,\u201d said Nicol, speaking at last week\u2019s Google Cloud Summit<\/a> in Sydney.<\/p>\n

Since the initial excitement, and uncertainty, about AI, Nicol has found the conversations are shifting from experimental AI projects to practical, quantifiable use cases.<\/p>\n

The goal is to build organisational capabilities and C-level executives are driving AI investments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not CIO driven. This is the first tech change I can remember that is C\u2011level driven and CFOs, CEO are saying \u2018we know we’ve got to do something, here’s the money, let’s do something with AI\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Nicol initially advocated for AI to tackle the \u201clow-hanging fruit\u201d or simpler executions but he now believes it\u2019s better for organisations to adopt end-to-end agentic processes for higher value.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe might have picked some use-cases that seemed straightforward and easy to quantify and validate, but now they’re thinking about to roll out a whole raft of many, many use-cases,\u201d he told CRN Australia.<\/p>\n

He argued that it\u2019s better if the whole end\u2011to\u2011end process is agentic with humans in that loop, not humans controlling the agentic.<\/p>\n

When you do that, you get agents talking to each other, turning what used to be very manual, error\u2011prone, labour\u2011intensive processes into flows that happen in seconds and minutes, not days and weeks, he said.<\/p>\n

So profound is the agentic transformation, isn\u2019t automating one small task \u2014 it\u2019s re\u2011wiring entire business processes so agents do the heavy lifting.<\/p>\n

Nicol agrees with the Gartner view that organisations need to be fundamentally rethought for an AI\u2011native world, but, he stresses, \u201cit\u2019s not just on the technical side\u2026 [it\u2019s] people and process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nicol, who was an early AI practitioner and founded a large data services company, has seen first-hand how AI is being operationalised. However, he believes that the typical \u2018trust but verify\u2019 mindset prevalent in large organisations can hinder AI adoption.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat works for humans, but with AI the hard question is: how do you build \u2018trust but verify\u2019 into the system?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer is not to abandon AI experiments, but to build trust but verify into the AI stack itself \u2014 by grounding models in corporate data, enforcing policies at run\u2011time and adding strong observability.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t just write policies for agents \u2014 they need enforceable policies and observability built in, so you always know who did what, when, and can keep tuning the system,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The success of a partner services company is built on trust, not just providing the cheapest solution to prove value. For local partners competing with large consultancies and even the services are of global hyperscalers and systems integrators, Nicol said they can\u2019t feasibly compete on cost alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe focus should be on providing specialised services and long-term support,\u201d he ended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Building trust into agentic systems is key to delivering value but it requires specific policies and processes. Image:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[179,7493,24,9913,2194,2349,7893,48245,48246],"class_list":["post-91691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agentic-ai","tag-agentic-ai","tag-agentic-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-transformation","tag-google-cloud","tag-hyperscalers","tag-system-integrators","tag-tony-nicol","tag-vivanti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}