2024 Year in Review : The Year AI Stopped Being Magic and Started Being Useful

‍Remember the first time you used Google? That moment when you realised the world's information was suddenly at your fingertips? We're living through a similarly transformative period with artificial intelligence, and at Move 37 in 2024, we've had a front-row seat to seeing this happen.

Date:
December 2, 2024

Since 2017, we've been immersed in the world of AI development, but 2024 has been a pivotal year for how businesses and individuals interact with this technology. Working alongside some of Australia's most innovative organisations, we've seen not just how AI has evolved technically, but more importantly, how it’s changing the way people work, think, and tackle challenges.

Building organisational AI brains

One of our most exciting areas of work this year has been developing what we call "organisational brains" - AI-powered systems that transform how companies understand and utilise their institutional knowledge. 

Think of it as having a brilliant colleague who's read every document your company has ever produced, understands every process, and can explain complex ideas to anyone, in their language.

We've seen firsthand how these systems can bridge communication gaps between different departments. When a CFO and a CMO need to understand the same initiative, the AI can adapt its explanation and areas of focus to match each executive's perspective and priorities. It's like having a universal translator for organisational knowledge.

AI orchestration : music to our ears

A lot of us have worked in, or are currently working in, companies where digital transformation projects seem to consume years, masses of human effort and millions of dollars. 

What’s been super encouraging this year is that we’re seeing that AI can serve as a sophisticated interface layer that makes key aspects of this kind of work more efficient and much less painful. Rather than completely rebuilding legacy systems, we can now use carefully engineered AI interfaces to make existing infrastructure more accessible and useful.

In practice, this means a customer service representative can interact with multiple backend systems through a single, intuitive AI interface. It means HR platforms can become more responsive and human-centric. It means product catalogs can become dynamic, intelligent resources rather than static databases.

The AI Agents are here

This year marked our first major deployments of AI agents - autonomous systems that can navigate complex workflows, make reasoned decisions, and take action. 

For one ASX-listed company, we developed an agent that's revolutionising how they handle routine operations, helping making decisions that previously required hours of logging into different systems, trawling through data or searching through knowledge bases.

Go to where the work is

One crucial lesson from our work this year: chat interfaces aren't always the answer. We've developed AI solutions across multiple platforms - from sophisticated web interfaces to Slack bots, Google plugins, and command-line tools. 

The key is meeting users where, and how they work, ideally not making them adapt to another platform. We’re desperate to have our AI applications and tooling used, not just deployed. We’re learning a lot about collaborating with internal teams to make sure that our products don’t just work, but are in fact a delight to use every day.

Learning, Adapting, Improving

In 2024, we’ve also continued to apply a lot of focus to the Move 37 methodology and practice itself. Experimentation and iteration have always been at the heart of building effective AI. We start small, test ideas in real-world conditions, and refine based on what we learn. 

It’s how we make sure these systems stay useful over time.

A big part of this process is creating evaluations and benchmarks that fit the specific needs of the business problems we’re solving. We recognised the importance of this early on, and it’s become an essential part of our AI engineering methodology — practical, focused, and geared toward real progress. This approach also tackles safety and reliability, making sure our AI isn’t just effective but dependable and secure.

Looking Ahead

As we barrel towards 2025, we're seeing parallels to the early days of the internet. Just as we once had to explain what a website was before discussing its potential impact, we have often find ourselves providing AI primers before diving into specific opportunities. The understanding gap is vast out there - some organisations are deeply versed in AI capabilities, while others are just beginning to grasp its potential.

But we're seeing it happen - that instant when someone realises AI isn't just about chatbots or image generation, but about fundamentally transforming how we work with information and make decisions.

And while 2024 was mostly about individual worker’s AI education and exploration, it’s now strikingly clear that 2025 will be the year of accelerated enterprise adoption. We’ve really found it inspiring to see companies and teams move from individual prompting to workflow design to building incredibly innovative AI applications. Some are uncovering whole new IP and growth opportunities on the back of these efforts. We’ve felt privileged that organisations have trusted us to help architect and deliver on these initiatives and build out their visions and roadmaps for the coming years.

About Move 37

We build AI that works. No buzzwords necessary — just intelligent systems that solve real problems and create new opportunities. We start with your organisation’s needs and end with tools people actually want to use. Think of us as your AI studio: we design, we build, we maintain and we make sure it lasts, and gets even more useful over time.

Wondering what we might build together? Let’s talk.