Interview #99 Bob De Caux, Chief AI Officer at IFS

Bob De Caux, Chief AI Officer at IFS, breaks down why the most dangerous moment for industrial AI comes after people start trusting it. He explains why agents still struggle when handed too much information, why guardrails against irreversible decisions matter far more than planning or memory, and why keeping live operational data out of external models is about uptime, not preference. Bob also dives into why chat will not replace the Gantt chart or the spreadsheet, how dispatchers who embraced automation still wanted an exceptions-based view to stay sharp, and the point where accountability moves from the company back to the vendor when a harness breaks. Finally, drawing on his early work modeling systems of ants, he warns that emergent failures between agents only appear at scale, and argues that LLMs will never solve forecasting and optimization on their own.

Free AI lessons for leaders, built on these interviews: https://tonyphoang.com/learn

Be a guest on the show: https://tonyphoang.com/guest

Live interviews at your conference: https://tonyphoang.com/live

Music and credits: https://tonyphoang.com/credits