Beyond the Model: Where Enterprise AI Value Is Moving

Laszlo Mucsi (0:00)

All right. Well, it's already July 2026 And this is our follow up with the one and only Taylor Black from Microsoft. So for the audience context, those who may have not listened to the previous one that we just released, that was recorded in 2025 in November, which was a very interesting moment in enterprise AI. And then we took a break, actually went out into the world and built real things and work with people and watch the change. And now we can just take a look at our softly and carefully made predictions from a couple of months ago, review them, audit them, and talk about what's happening today. So before we dive in, Taylor, so we did cover your background on the previous episode. People can now go and just listen if you want. You can't, if not, hang around, you will be able to enjoy this conversation and maybe revisit the other one later. So not about your background, but in 2026, let's say July 1st, today is July 9th, but July 1st, July 2026, what is Taylor Black doing today?

And maybe just give us a quick panorama with regards to your work, with regards to your work with also universities and the church, and then also in your free time, maybe just your intellectual pursuits and writing projects, just very briefly.

Taylor Black (1:39)

Yeah, certainly, certainly. Man, so much cool stuff going on. So the last two months, I've really been kind of heads down. I run a multi-day hybrid AI ML and data science conference internally for a community of about 25,000 practitioners at Microsoft.

This year was particularly a blast because about two weeks before we had the conference, Satya reached out to me and asked if he could come keynote as well. And so it's always great to have big boss support of the stuff you're doing internally.

The conference went really well, four days of about 150 different sessions, really interesting stuff. And then I've been speaking at a handful of conferences. Back in May, actually beginning of May, I ran a workshop at the Vatican, United States Embassy to the Vatican with a bunch of different industry leaders and economists and other embassies. And really all around the concept of where work is going and how to think through the labor changes that are happening as a result of this technology. But as of a couple of days ago, I just went on leave from Microsoft. I'm a foster adoptive parent. And so we started fostering a little five-year-old girl back in September last year. And so I'm taking my two months of leave right now, which I'm really grateful for because it feels like I've been building up, building up over the course of the last six months. And just have so much in my head that I need to get it out on paper, get it out in conversations with folks like you, Lasz. And I'm just really stoked to, you know, walk around the block and go camping with my little kids. And while we're wandering around, be thinking on all of this sorts of stuff. So it's good.

Laszlo Mucsi (3:29)

Absolutely. And it resonates with me a lot, not just because I would love a parent to leave.

That's one. But more because I just realized over the past couple of days, I was like really heads down focusing on just building and delivering things. And I was skipping my usual walks in the morning that I like to just, if possible, just no music, no listening to anything. It's just a time for reflection and moving from being outward facing to a little bit inward facing, but also just be able to kind of orient myself for the day. And I think that works at that scale as the daily heartbeat and the daily rhythm, but works also on the larger, it large, it works on the liturgical calendar, the entire cycle, right?

Taylor Black (4:16)

Yeah. No, you're spot on. I tell people and I strive to myself, although I'm not as, I still have a lot of work to do.

It's great to be able to build a life you don't need a vacation from. I think that speaks to kind of an internal biological, human rhythm of the kind of stuff that we can do, where if we're able to build in those walking breaks, those lunches with your kids, all that sort of thing, you feel the less the build up of this tremendous weight that you need to go off to Maui to resolve or something, so yeah.

Laszlo Mucsi (4:47)

Absolutely. So very excited for this conversation. So let's just do a very quick recap of what we talked about in November.