The final AI Monday of the spring season gathered a full room in Helsinki to examine a question that now sits at the center of every industry: what happens to human work when AI systems begin to think, act, and collaborate alongside us?
The evening opened with Professor Petri Ylikoski from the University of Helsinki, who offered a sober sociologist’s view on the changing nature of expertise. Generative AI, he argued, does not replace experts outright—it reshapes their role. Where expert work once centered on producing knowledge, it is increasingly shifting toward evaluating, editing, and taking responsibility for machine-generated output. Ylikoski also raised a concern that echoed throughout the evening: if early-career tasks are automated too quickly, organizations may lose the very apprenticeship paths that create tomorrow’s specialists.
Niina Hagman of DAIN Studios then expanded the conversation from individuals to organizations. She described how the rise of agentic AI—AI systems that not only generate ideas but take actions—marks a genuine break from the past. Instead of viewing AI merely as an assistant, she argued, companies need to redesign entire processes around human–AI collaboration. In this model, AI becomes a co-worker: able to retrieve information, trigger actions across systems, and work through multi-step tasks. For Hagman, the real leadership challenge ahead is not technology adoption, but building the skills, roles, and structures that allow these new “colleagues” to operate safely and productively.
The final session brought a more radical—and more urgent—vision from Mikko Alasaarela (Agion) and Teemu Linna (Sitra). Alasaarela predicted that AI agents will perform most organizational work by the end of the decade, with early adopters already achieving staggering productivity multipliers. Linna provided the institutional counterpoint: Sitra is now moving toward an “AI-first” operating model, introducing agent teams for specialists, rethinking decision-making, and exploring how public-sector organizations can adapt at the speed required.
Across all three talks, a common thread emerged. AI is no longer something organizations pilot on the side—it is rapidly becoming the new default infrastructure of work. The speakers differed in their tone, but agreed on three essentials: expertise will change, not vanish; agentic AI will drive the biggest shift; and Finland’s ability to move fast will determine whether it remains a leader or becomes a late adopter.
