Ziarul Financiar, ZF Live at SPEED 2025: enterprise AI adoption, trust and ambiguity

Special edition of ZF Live from the SPEED 2025 - AI @ Full SPEED conference, Ziarul Financiar, 15 October 2025, by Alexandra Cepăreanu. Speakers include me, as co-founder of Tremend, Craig Brown of EBRD, Sudeepto Mukerjee of Publicis Sapient and other Tremend speakers. My topics: AI adoption by organisations and by individuals, the trust barrier, the period of ambiguity, the SPEED acronym. The Digital Euro part: separate article.

Quotes translated from Romanian, with the original alongside.

§Two levels of adoption, in parallel

“There is adoption at the level of organisations and corporations, and there is individual adoption, at the level of the person.” („Există adopţie la nivelul organizaţiilor şi corporaţiilor, şi există adopţie individuală, la nivel de persoană.”)

AI adoption grows every day, and every new model pushes the boundary further. The two levels “go in parallel” („merg în paralel”): companies use AI, and individual people also have to make the effort themselves.

§The trust barrier

“You cross a trust barrier and become more competent at using AI.” („Depăşeşti o barieră de încredere şi devii mai competent în utilizarea AI.”)

Adopting AI means crossing a barrier at some point: the move from using AI “a little, here and there” („puţin, ici-colo”) to realising “what its real power is” („care e adevărata lui putere”), and gaining confidence.

Elsewhere. June 2026, on the stage between doing the work yourself and directing agents: “The shift does not feel good right away.” (We’re living in a new age of sense of agency)

§A period of ambiguity

“The more we embrace this ambiguity, which is normal, the faster we get used to the new context and the new paradigm of work.” („Cu cât îmbrăţişăm mai mult această ambiguitate, care e normală, cu atât ne obişnuim mai repede cu noul context şi noua paradigmă de lucru.”)

The present: “a period of ambiguity” in which “we don’t quite know exactly how it fits and where” („E o perioadă de ambiguitate, nu prea ştim exact cum se potriveşte şi unde”). Still, AI cannot stay out of our lives. It is something we face every day, and it will change all our lives, whether we want it or not.

§Five capabilities together

“Putting all five together to deliver a digital transformation process is harder.” („să le pui pe toate cinci împreună pentru a livra un proces de transformare digitală este mai greu”)

SPEED is an acronym for five capabilities needed in a digital transformation, strategy, product, experience, engineering and data, and for how they work together. My point: for many years we have seen companies that do one or a few of them well, and we still see them.