There has never been a technology that has dominated conversations quite like artificial intelligence (AI). Over the past few years, AI has transformed industries, accelerated innovation, and reshaped the way people work.
Despite its significant benefits, it has also raised concerns about its long-term impact, creating considerable uncertainty and fear.
AI Appreciation Day, observed every July 16, serves as an opportunity to celebrate the technology’s achievements and reflect on the challenges and responsibilities that accompany its rapid adoption.
Not just the “sexy” stuff
For Don Boxley, CEO and co-founder of DH2i, AI Appreciation Day is a reminder to look beyond the headlines and appreciate the often-overlooked technologies that make AI possible.
“Generally, when people talk about AI, they almost always jump straight to the models. They want to talk about GPUs, NVIDIA, training, inference, all the ‘sexy’ stuff. That’s fine and good. But AI doesn’t know anything on its own. All that information that makes it so useful needs to come from somewhere.”
Boxley said organisations should pay just as much attention to the underlying data infrastructure, particularly databases such as SQL Server, because “AI doesn’t suddenly become intelligent enough to work around it” when those systems fail.
He added: “Let’s remember that while it is critical to spend time thinking about how to make AI smarter, easier to use, and faster, we also need to remember that none of that matters if the data can’t answer when AI calls.”
People at the centre
No matter how sophisticated AI becomes, technology has little value if it is too complex for people to use effectively.
At the end of the day, AI is about people.
Matthew Oostveen, chief technology officer for Asia Pacific & Japan at Everpure, said AI’s greatest value lies not in replacing humans, but in empowering them to make better decisions.
“As AI becomes embedded across every industry, its real value won’t come from replacing people, but from helping them make faster, smarter and more informed decisions. Realising that potential means putting people—not just algorithms—at the centre of AI. The future of AI isn’t simply about automating routine tasks; it’s about combining AI’s speed with human judgment to address its inevitable blind spots and make better decisions where the stakes are highest. However, even the best human judgement cannot overcome a fundamentally broken data foundation.”
The future of AI
As AI continues to rapidly evolve, the next phase of its development will be far more demanding, according to Anoop Dawar, chief strategy officer of Deepgram.
“We’ve seen Salesforce acquire Fin, SpaceX pay $60 billion for Cursor, and OpenAI stand up a $10 billion deployment company, three very different bets on the same scarce thing: teams that can make AI agents work reliably in the real world, not just in a demo. That capability has quietly become the most valuable asset in software because these are probabilistic systems that drift and have to be measured and monitored continuously to stay accurate. And it gets hardest in voice, real-time, unforgiving, no second take, which is exactly where the next phase of this race will be won.”
For Oostveen, AI Appreciation Day should be more than a celebration of technological progress: “This AI Appreciation Day, it’s worth celebrating how far the technology has come. But to get the most out of AI and empower people to confidently work alongside it, we must be willing to commit to the less glamorous work of getting our data in order. AI is only as good as the data foundation it stands on.”
