CDI Talks AI Agents at KPMG Hackweek 2025

As a featured expert speaker, Jurgen shared Conversation Design Institute's perspective on the rapidly evolving landscape of AI Agents and the critical factors that determine success in conversational and generative AI initiatives.

In his presentation ‘CDI's Perspective and Insights on AI Agents’, he cut through the noise surrounding generative AI technologies and delivered practical insights drawn from CDI's extensive experience working with enterprises and government.

"Generative AI is more than a gadget," Jurgen emphasized during his talk, as he walked attendees through examples demonstrating how different AI models excel at different tasks.

Drawing on his experience working with teams worldwide at organizations like Lidl, PepsiCo, Vodafone, Rabobank, and Mercedes, Jurgen highlighted some of the common assumptions that are almost guaranteed to derail AI initiatives:

• "It's just an IT project": Treating AI implementation as purely technical without cross-functional involvement, especially Conversation Designers.
• "When we finish building it, it's done": Failing to plan for ongoing maintenance and improvement.
• "Just do RAG" - Over-simplifying Retrieval-Augmented Generation as a universal solution and not addressing the questions around structuring your content.
• "The LLM will fix that" - Placing unrealistic expectations on language models to solve fundamental design challenges.

Unfortunately, CDI sees organizations fall for these assumptions (especially in the age of genAI) more often than not.

A second Expert Talk was delivered by Sander Klous, Professor in AI & Audit at the University of Amsterdam and partner Data & Analytics at KPMG Advisory. Professor Klous presented his research project: ‘The Zero Person Company’.

The project is an experimental venture exploring the possibilities of running a company managed exclusively by AI agents: from an AI CEO making strategic decisions to marketing agents developing campaigns and technical agents handling product development.

Without a doubt, a fascinating look at how far AI agent technology might take us in the coming years.

Before we wrap up, CDI would like to extend our sincere thanks to KPMG and especially Chi Fung, Senior Manager KPMG Advisory, for the invitation to participate in this forward-thinking event.

Like KPMG, we believe that collaborative learning across organizations is essential in the fast-moving space of conversational and generative AI. We look forward to continuing our relations with KPMG, sharing insights and learning from each other as we collectively push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI agents in an Enterprise setting.

If you’re interested in CDI Expert Talk or would like some more hands-on support around conversational AI and generative AI implementation, please reach out.