The fol­low­ing Util­i­ty Voice was authored by Marc Rosson, Com­mu­ni­ty Con­nec­tor at Utility.Community.

We are all on the AI jour­ney in dif­fer­ent ways and with dif­fer­ent focus­es. Some util­i­ties are work­ing to pro­tect and secure their infor­ma­tion. We want to assure our cus­tomers that the infor­ma­tion they entrust us with is secure and pri­vate. As is typ­i­cal for util­i­ties, we are risk-averse and do not adopt tech­nol­o­gy that does not have a sol­id track record, ide­al­ly with anoth­er peer util­i­ty already hav­ing demon­strat­ed their success.

Some util­i­ties have start­ed their adop­tion process by learn­ing about the tech­nol­o­gy, doing pilots, and seek­ing to under­stand the busi­ness case for adop­tion. Every ven­dor on the mar­ket, includ­ing SAP, is invest­ing in this tech­nol­o­gy (see Espres­so ses­sion on ²⁄₁₉) and com­ing up with dif­fer­ent use cas­es where it makes sense. Inter­est groups have formed with­in our util­i­ty communities. 

Busi­ness lead­ers are all ask­ing three ques­tions: How can AI respond to reg­u­la­to­ry issues, save mon­ey, or gen­er­ate rev­enue? Ques­tions are easy, answers are not, and it’s more than just a tech­nol­o­gy issue. It’s about how our staff and our cus­tomers see AI and where it fits into our exist­ing risk-averse busi­ness models.

IT groups are being asked to adopt, approve, secure, and inte­grate this tech­nol­o­gy from mul­ti­ple ven­dors into our solu­tions, while mak­ing sure that every­thing is still reli­able, secure, and pri­vate as the busi­ness is work­ing to oper­a­tional­ize the val­ue proposition.

It is a lot, but util­i­ties have accom­plished many things in the past, and this will be one more accom­plish­ment. We are up to this chal­lenge if we do it togeth­er. I encour­age all of you to con­tin­ue the jour­ney and, most impor­tant­ly, share with each oth­er. Get involved with your key ven­dors to pro­vide guid­ance and input. Share what you learn with each oth­er, and togeth­er we can imple­ment this tech­nol­o­gy in our own way, with­in our own cul­ture, and deliv­er val­ue while keep­ing our val­ues in place.

Those of us who have been in this indus­try for a long time have watched this evolve from hum­ble begin­nings. For exam­ple, in 1987, I took a semes­ter class in Assem­bly lan­guage as part of my com­put­er sci­ence major. The final project was to write a C com­pil­er. It only under­stood sim­ple math and had to sup­port 2+2=4 in C.

This past week, on Feb­ru­ary 5^th, Anthropic’s AI Claude Opus 4.6 was used by its team of AI agents work­ing for over 336 hours con­tin­u­ous­ly to build a C com­pil­er using the pro­gram­ming lan­guage Rust. On Jan­u­ary 1^st, it could only run for 7 hours before stop­ping. This AI wrote a C com­pil­er with over 100,000 lines of code that can com­pile all of the mod­ern com­put­er sys­tems writ­ten in C, includ­ing Lin­ux, in under two weeks.

It is an excit­ing and some­times stress­ful time to be involved in this jour­ney. The speed is unbe­liev­able. A roller­coast­er can be scary with sharp turns, speed, and ups and downs. You may even feel a lit­tle ill after the ride. But the adven­ture, excite­ment, and thrill shared with those we go on it with is a mem­o­ry we nev­er for­get. The ride must be done togeth­er. Two peo­ple in every car. Do not go at it alone.

In addi­tion to the SAP Espres­so ses­sion on the new Self-Ser­vice Util­i­ty AI Agent, you have anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn from indus­try lead­ers at the upcom­ing Next Gen­er­a­tion Enter­prise Archi­tec­ture Forum. While the in-per­son event is sold out with over 400 par­tic­i­pants, you can join the free live stream, gain insights from the ses­sions, and con­tin­ue the dis­cus­sion with us after­ward. I look for­ward to hear­ing your ideas and con­tri­bu­tions to our community.

To get involved and keep up with the lat­est, join ASUG’s Util­i­ties Com­mu­ni­ty.