By Miles Ward / 18 May 2026 / Topics: Artificial Intelligence (AI) , Gemini Enterprise , Generative AI , Digital transformation
An AI agent persists independent of your presence and takes actions on your behalf — not just returning text to a screen, but producing documents, communicating with external systems, and completing workflows end to end. That distinction from a chatbot is where most executive confusion begins, and it's where Miles Ward, CTO of AI at Insight, starts this conversation.
The episode moves from foundational definitions through increasingly sophisticated concepts. Ward explains why agent orchestration follows the same logic as the shift from monolithic software to microservices — narrowing each agent's context to a specific task reduces hallucinations and allows independent improvement. He walks through a production example at Mattel, where orchestrated agents move quality control signals from manufacturing data through multilingual supplier reports to confirmed corrective action, eliminating manual handoffs at every stage.
Ward introduces two concepts most leaders haven't encountered yet: AI harnesses — software interfaces that wrap LLM calls in familiar workflows so users don't need to master prompt engineering — and headless agents, which strip away the "thinking" display tokens that help humans feel comfortable but cost money, add latency, and expand the quality control surface area for software applications.
The most direct advice comes when Ward names three things every leader must be doing now: putting AI harnesses in the hands of software engineers (if you haven't, you're more than a year behind), deploying first-party AI tools for all employees to prevent Shadow AI from becoming a security risk, and investing in your data platform — because your data warehouse just got 10 times more valuable and AI will not do the integration work for you.
If you're making decisions about how to build, govern, or scale agentic AI — or if you've been nodding along in conversations without full clarity on the terminology — this episode gives you the definitions and the action plan.
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Have a topic you’d like us to discuss or question you want answered? Drop us a line at jillian.viner@insight.com
Miles Ward
CTO of AI at Insight
Audio transcript:
A full transcript of this conversation will be available shortly.
Marketing Manager, Insight
As marketing manager for the Insight brand campaign, Jillian is a versatile content creator and brand champion at her core. Developing both the strategy and the messaging, Jillian leans on 10 years of marketing experience to build brand awareness and affinity, and to position Insight as a true thought leader in the industry.
Chief Technology Officer of AI Innovation, Insight
As Chief Technology Officer of AI Innovation at Insight, Miles drives AI acceleration across Insight's services portfolio. His remit includes bringing together the company's AI capabilities to deliver differentiated outcomes for clients such as BlackLine and Viiz Communications; reinforcing Insight's engineering culture; and engaging with customers on their most complex and ambitious AI initiatives.
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