Architect Tomorrow

← Articles

Architecting Human-Centered AI

· 17 min read

In a world drowning in AI announcements and proclamations about technological transformation, Selena Evans (attorney and certified business architect based in the USA) and Darryl Carr (enterprise architecture leader based in Australia) joined the podcast for an open and honest conversation about technology adoption (of course majoring on AI and its promises), human-centered design, and the role of architects in shaping a more sustainable future.

Massive thanks to them for doing this - they have already committed to appearing in more episodes which I am super excited about - look out for those in 2026!

Feel free to watch the episode below, check it out on your favourite audio podcast service and/or read the rest of this article for a summary of some of the key points…

Embedded LinkedIn content: view it on the original article

The $2 Trillion Question: Where’s the Business Case?

The conversation opened with a stark reality check about the economics underpinning current AI investments. Darryl didn’t mince words about recent industry layoffs:

“What gets lost in that story is that there’s 11,000 people who don’t have a job tomorrow, and what does that mean, and why doesn’t that register in the conversations that go alongside it. I think that’s a significant problem in the way that we’re currently having these conversations.”

Oliver brought data to the discussion, highlighting a staggering disconnect: “These things need to be generating about $2 trillion worth of revenue by 2030. It’s just staggering numbers… the whole of cloud computing is worth something like $200 billion, or not even that… So it’s like an order of magnitude more.” [Ed: Post recording note- seems Oliver’s numbers are a little old with Cloud now around $900 billion but the point still stands that AI will need to be double the current entire cloud market]

The mathematics simply doesn’t add up. Current proven use cases—primarily code generation tools like GitHub Copilot with 29% acceptance rates—generate only billions in revenue. Yet the industry needs trillions to justify current investments.

The LLM Reality Check: Pattern Matching vs. Problem Solving

Selena brought crucial perspective on the limitations of large language models, challenging the prevailing narrative:

“Almost all of the narrative that we see in the public is based on large language models… And large language models are very limited in what they can do. They’re so fun, and I love using them, and the pattern matching, it’s incredible. I think that there’s tremendous value in decision support, with them, but that isn’t how people are using them. It’s talking so much about automation, replacing jobs, and I don’t think that we’re at a place where we even have the capabilities to do that.”

She drew on historical context to make her point more forcefully:

“Look at our older architecture work where we’re relying on RPA and regular algorithmic work in business, and we didn’t… we weren’t able to get a lot of traction on that anyway, because breaking down complex tasks into logic that can be executed over time is really challenging. And LLMs break down in complexity over time, and they drift, and all of these things that need to be managed on the tail end that isn’t getting any in the hype.”

The conclusion? The financials don’t make sense, the narrative doesn’t make sense, and as Evans put it: “We’re all in this new space where we’re buying into a lot of the narratives, because we don’t have the language to really… and proof points, to really, really talk about it smartly.”

The Enterprise Reality: Legacy Systems and Complexity

Darryl brought the discussion firmly back to ground with a dose of enterprise reality:

“I used to work in the banking industry, and I cannot for the love of me, see how anybody would let loose an AI in an environment running 40-year-old COBOL systems on mainframes. That’s not going to happen, so the built environment and the business cases required to support that activity don’t stack up.”

Whilst Oliver did see value in using these tools to help understand legacy systems he refined this perspective with a nuanced view of where AI might actually provide easier value:

“The brownfield use cases, where you’ve got the enterprise mess of people, process, existing technology… I totally think that space is really, really hard for this to crack. I think creating some marketing, sort of, front-end thing, you know, very straightforward… it’s gonna knock it out of the park, because it’s just rinsing and repeating a load of code that it’s been trained on. But this messy reality of most enterprises, I think, is where these things are… the reality’s just hard to unpick.”

The Forgotten Foundation: Data and Infrastructure

Selena highlighted a critical challenge that doesn’t make headlines but determines success or failure:

“I can make a huge case that the infrastructure in so many companies is inefficient to be able to support AI. Like, just data fragmentation on its own is a huge project, but it is not anything that they get splashy value from the street and the quarterly returns… finding executives to really dig in and then stick with the really long and hard work as priorities change, and as people change jobs, and as power dynamics shift, it’s really a challenge to keep these exceptionally important foundational projects going and aligned.”

Darryl reminded everyone of lessons that should have been learned:

“Every time I’d have a conversation with somebody around RPA, I would say, you’ve got two rules to follow. Don’t automate a process when you should be integrating systems. And don’t automate a bad process. It’ll just let you do something wrong quicker. So, have we fixed those problems? No, we haven’t. We’re just layering more technology over the top of it.”

Oliver Cronk summed it up: “AI amplifies what you already have. And if it’s bad, well, it’s gonna get worse.”

FOMO and Timing: The Kodak Moment Trap

The conversation tackled a genuine concern: how do organisations avoid being left behind whilst maintaining sanity?

Oliver acknowledged the tension: “Organisations that didn’t time their transformation to e-commerce right… there’s a whole load of examples… Like, Amazon started by eating up the book market, but then went on to sell a whole bunch of other things. There’s a whole load of industries that we could kind of go and look at that’s had their Kodak moment, because they didn’t digitize.”

But he also urged caution: “Timing, for me, is, like, one of the most important things… does it make sense for you right now, or does it make sense to sort of pause, reflect, see what’s going on in the market, when are things mature?”

Ecosystem Architecture: Looking Beyond Your Walls

Selena offered a pragmatic framework for navigating uncertainty:

“I think that the immediacy is important, but then the slow deliberation, the hard work of building the models, the hard work of figuring out what it means for your industry, looking at second and third order concepts, and doing some serious futuring work around the ecosystem of your business is important for everybody.”

She continued: “Look at the entire ecosystem that you’re in and start to leave options open to yourself about how you can move through this and make sure that you’re structured to even be able to hear the signals… the truthy signals from the market, to be able to time them correctly. And that’s what architecture is so amazing, right? This long-term, short-term balance and scaffolding to move as you want to, that’s the beauty of it.”

Oliver strongly endorsed this shift: “Ecosystem architecture has come up time and time again on this podcast, and I think it’s this… I genuinely think it’s where the enterprise architect role needs to shift to. It’s like, stop just looking just within your interior boundaries, and think about what the market looks like, what the competitors look like, what your potential partners look like.”

The Human Work Technology Can’t Replace

Selena delivered perhaps the most important reminder of the entire conversation:

“Deliberate analysis and really hard, multidisciplinary work… coming up with shared meaning amongst different professionals that have entirely different worldviews. We, like, we suck at that in organizations. It is, like, a really, really challenging thing to get people to even, let alone open enough time in their schedules to be able to do that, but to get people to be that open-minded and not fall into politics traps, to be able to have those hard conversations… There’s no technology that can give… that can substitute that hard work. None.”

Flipping the Script: What if We Started with Society?

As the conversation shifted to longer-term futures, Selena challenged everyone to think differently:

“I would love if we flipped the script. What do we need to do as society to better our lot in life? What do we need to do to address the climate horizons that we are facing? What do we need to do to ensure flourishing of human and other species and biodiversity on our planet? And let’s commercialize those things. Let’s use those frames to align incentives and align capital in ways that we haven’t before.”

She warned about the consequences of not changing course:

“What I think is very likely to happen, LLM bubble bursts, we realize that we’re not going to be able to solve all the world’s challenges with these LLMs. I kind of hope that it happens fast enough that the public gets really pissed off about the consequences of it, so that with this next wave of really cool technology, gets the proper governance systems built around it.”

Her critique was pointed: “If we’re teaching computers like babies, let’s teach them that they have to do X, Y, and Z, and teach them that these are the things that we, as a society, have decided are non-negotiable. Because there are very smart people who are very worried about what these technologies will be able to do, especially if we build them in this old, extractive capitalist logic, which looks at humans as a resource versus the people to be served.”

Creating Something Better: Willpower and Principles

Darryl offered both realism and hope: “There’s absolutely a set of foundational principles that we could apply, and build these types of organisations and this type of society that we’re talking about. At the moment, the balance of power is not in that favor… But absolutely, we created this mess. It didn’t exist a little bit more than a century ago… We’ve created a problem that we could otherwise have not created. So we have the ability to create something else. But we have to have the willpower to do that.”

He also warned about how modern life is reshaping our thinking: “If you look at the work of people like Ian McGilchrist, who understands very well how the different hemispheres of the brain work, and how we’re feeding one side of the brain and neglecting the other. And it’s the feedback loop that is creating the environment that we find ourselves in now.”

The Political Reality: Polarisation by Design

Selena didn’t shy away from addressing the elephant in the room:

“The polarization is by design. That is a piece of a playbook… people on different sides of the spectrum are getting two entirely different narratives about what is going on, so we don’t have a shared reality.”

But she also saw grounds for optimism: “The power has to rest with the people and with what we demand of our governments… The idea that states can create environments that serve their communities here in the U.S. is gaining a ton of traction, and there’s a lot of state and mayor collaborations that are going on that give a lot of positive signals. So I think it can be done, but I think it’s really hard work, and I think it takes a civic duty on behalf of all the individuals involved.”

Architects as Policy Makers

This led to a crucial reframing of the architect’s role by Selena:

“Architecture provides a policy framework. Like, to have an architecture-led policy framework that looks at the purpose of organizations and institutions… the whole idea that the purpose of a system is what it does, is something that you can tie to from a policy perspective. So yes, architects, lean in. Like, let’s create civic architectures that can help society thrive.”

Darryl added his perspective on why architects matter:

“One of the reasons that architects are useful in organizations is because we provide decision support. So we are able to see holistic views of the organization that allows better decisions to be made because more awareness is brought into the conversation. And one of the things that we use in that process are principles… we need to define better principles, and we need to be able to have the conversations where those principles are applied in the decisions being made.”

Governance: The Misunderstood Enabler

Selena took on the widespread misconception that governance slows things down:

“This idea that regulation and guardrails and governance just slows things down so much—that is not based on reality. Bad governance certainly slows things down… in the way that organizations practice it very defensively and with a frame of risk aversion at all costs. Like, there are different ways to mitigate risk that are not so bureaucratic and restrictive, and a lot of that happens at the design phase.”

She explained how governance should work: “If we look at risk and opportunity at the same time, and we build conscientiously and ethically from the up, like, it doesn’t become restrictive, it becomes what Daryl says, is a design principle that you operate by… I think governance unlocks your innovation engine. It unlocks your ability to align your enterprise. It helps you develop that shared meaning that’s going to allow change initiatives to actually be successful.”

Oliver added: “Give me the freedom of a tight brief… constraints drive innovation.” See his recent talk on balancing AI Innovation and Sustainability for more on that theme: https://blog.scottlogic.com/2025/11/12/balancing-ai-innovation-sustainability-hm-treasury-id25.html

Architectural Grafting: Incremental Transformation

Perhaps the most hopeful concept to emerge from the conversation was Selena’s notion of “architectural grafting”:

“I call it architectural grafting. That’s from an actual building architect who talks about using the base of old businesses and putting new ones on top, which I just love the concept. If we can do that over time, we’ll incrementally be in such a better place and build the foundations for what is possible in the future.”

This metaphor perfectly captures the pragmatic approach needed: respecting what exists whilst building towards something better.

Words of Hope in Anxious Times

As the conversation drew to a close, all three participants offered reassurance to those feeling overwhelmed by the current moment.

Darryl advocated for simplicity: “If you took anybody involved in the changes that are occurring now, whether it’s the typical person on the street, or the tech CEO, and you said, what do you want to be in 10 years or 20 years’ time? And the first thing they’ll say is they want to be around. And they want to be happy. And it’s just trying to align those needs… Take a breath. And have the conversations that describe what that’s going to be like, and then take action based on those discussions.”

He also reframed what technology should be for: “Bring on the technology. If it’s going to enable us to have more time to be a human being and share time with people that we enjoy spending time with, that’s fine. You know, take the jobs away. Give us the freedom to be something other than a machine in a factory, as we have been for the last 150 years or so.”

Selena found hope in the community of practitioners: “I think so many of us are feeling this existential angst, and that in and of itself opens the door to considering new possibilities. And so I find a lot of hope from so many dedicated people who are doing really great work… at least to me, it feels like like-minded folks are, like, across disciplines are starting to come together in new ways. And I think that that is going to unleash magical potential.”

She also identified a broader societal shift: “I think we already are sick of feeling so extracted from all the time, and so inundated by our consumerism, and that we’re craving more connection and community… I think that there’s a lot of good work trying to solve that. If we get there, that unleashes the potential for us to move forward in different and more thoughtful ways.”

Oliver reflected on the importance of perspective: “I think it’s easy at the moment to be sort of swept up by the narratives that we’re all consuming, and taking some time to sort of pause… I’ve deliberately been getting out of the LinkedIn bubble, because I felt like I was spending way too much time being influenced by LinkedIn.”

Selena had the final word with a call to action:

“You must keep up the hope… I think that we’re starting to kind of understand the broader patterns. I think that more and more people are starting to feel the effects of those larger destructive patterns, and so as this happens more and more, people’s minds are going to start changing, and we’re going to start demanding different things hopefully, of our governments, of our institutions, including business… And so then, then we architect tomorrow as minds expand.”

Key Takeaways for Architects & Strategists

  1. Challenge the narrative - The economics of current AI investments don’t add up. Ask hard questions about ROI and business cases before committing resources.
  2. Understand the limitations - LLMs are excellent at pattern matching and decision support, but they break down with complexity and drift over time. They’re not a replacement for human judgment in complex scenarios.
  3. Fix the foundations first - Data quality, system integration, and organisational structure matter more than ever. AI amplifies what you have—for better or worse.
  4. Think ecosystem, not just enterprise - Look beyond your organisational boundaries to understand market dynamics, partnerships, and how transformation will ripple through your industry.
  5. Embrace governance as an enabler - Well-designed governance unlocks innovation rather than constraining it. Build it into the architecture from day one.
  6. Practice architectural grafting - Build on existing foundations incrementally rather than attempting wholesale replacement. Society and organisations need time to digest change.
  7. Keep humans central - No technology can replace the hard work of building shared meaning across disciplines and worldviews. This is where architects add irreplaceable value.
  8. Define clear principles - Architects provide decision support by bringing holistic awareness to conversations. Establish and apply principles consistently.
  9. Take a breath - The pressure to act immediately is real, but timing matters. Sometimes waiting for maturity is the right call.
  10. Maintain hope through action - The situation is complex, but people across disciplines are coming together in new ways. Your work matters.

See also the previous newsletter on AI principles for more along these lines:

Embedded LinkedIn content: view it on the original article

The Path Forward

Oliver summed up the podcast’s mission: “Being hopeful, optimistic, and trying to build a better… is ultimately what this podcast is all about. Yes, there’s lots of complexity out there, there’s lots of challenges, but our role in the world is to try and nudge and push things in a more hopeful direction.”

Darryl reminded us of the choice we face: “Continue to be a human being.”

We hope we modelled something something rare and valuable: thoughtful, critical analysis combined with genuine hope for a human-centered future. We demonstrated that it’s possible to be skeptical of vendor narratives whilst remaining optimistic about technology’s potential to serve humanity.

The question isn’t whether AI will transform industries—it’s whether we’ll architect that transformation thoughtfully, inclusively, and sustainably, or whether we’ll sleepwalk into tomorrow’s challenges.

Embedded LinkedIn content: view it on the original article

As Selena Evans put it: “Then we architect tomorrow as minds expand.”

The choice is ours.

New: ArchitectTomorrow.com

In other news - Architect Tomorrow now has a proper website! https://architecttomorrow.com/

Proud that we are practising what we preach - it’s on Green Hosting and uses a minimal Architecture (Markdown generated Static HTML system via Cloudflare pages). In a bit of irony we created quite a bit of this using Claude and Google Antigravity AI tools, Front end development seems to work well with these tools if you specify what you are after reasonably precisely (it did require quite a bit of back and forth). If you spot issues please do let me know.

Closing notes:

This article is based on the Architect Tomorrow podcast episode and was created with the assistance of Claude.ai - using the transcript and then human review and editing.

Want to join the conversation? Connect with the Architect Tomorrow community and share your perspectives on human-centered architecture and technology transformation.

Mentioned Resources:

Originally published on LinkedIn. Comments and discussion live there.