Deloitte: Engineering in the Age of AI

Rob Valk, Principal and Engineering Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Deloitte Australia, says the biggest challenges in enterprise AI aren’t technical – but about adoption, safety, compliance and data privacy. 

Rob observes research from METR showing frontier models can handle tasks requiring over two and a half hours of human work – but succeed only 50% of the time.

This capability doubles every seven months, creating constant tension between what’s possible and what’s practical.

Software engineering is being disrupted heavily. Agentic engineering tools offer astounding productivity gains but re-assert the importance of strong management skills.

Scaling agentic AI systems requires more than technology – it demands compliance, reliability and explainability. 

Rob’s message: AI needs careful implementation, strong governance and focus on human outcomes.