Longtime Jacksonville business coach Doug Wilder says that in his conversations with clients and members of Jacksonville Business Professionals, for which he serves as president, artificial intelligence is the top subject when it comes to innovations in professional services.
“I don’t think there is any bigger topic than AI right now,” said Wilder, the president and founder of Wilder Business Success.
“Every day, people are talking about it, and I think the people who are getting tired of it are the ones who are not using it. I’m finding it’s thrilling to start thinking about all the things that can come out of AI.”
Wilder is part of a growing wave of professional services providers exploring uses for AI and adopting it in ways that benefit their businesses, from applications as simple as suggesting refinements in email messages to as complex as performing financial planning and providing nearly instant analysis of complicated legal documents and tax law.
According to survey results included in the 2025 edition of the Thomson Reuters Institute’s annual Generative AI in Professional Services Report, “about half of all professionals in the legal; tax, accounting & audit; corporate risk & fraud; and government industries use GenAI in some fashion.”
The 2026 report, which included survey results from 1,500 professionals, says that after what has essentially been a tryout and testing mode, businesses are “determining how AI fits within wider professional workflows, leading organizational leaders to accelerate conversations about AI’s value both internally and externally, and precipitate planning with AI as a central part of their professional services business strategy now and into the future.”
That shift, the report says, will include greater use of agentic AI, a next-generation version of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot.
As described by IBM, agentic AI is designed not simply to respond to human-provided prompts but to incorporate machine learning models that “mimic human decision-making to solve problems in real time.”
“Unlike traditional AI models, which operate within predefined constraints and require human intervention, agentic AI exhibits autonomy, goal-driven behavior and adaptability,” reads a page on agentic AI on IBM’s site. “The term ‘agentic’ refers to these models’ agency, or, their capacity to act independently and purposefully.”
Wilder says he advises business operators to familiarize themselves with AI, which he believes will profoundly change professional services.
“I think it’s probably within a year, if not months, that this thing just explodes,” he said.
“I mean, we’re into an explosion now, but I don’t think we’ve seen the total application of AI, and some people call it almost intelligent. I think we’re getting close to where it will be standard for AI being just about as smart as we are.”
AI in Jacksonville businesses
Through connections Wilder has made in more than 30 years experience as a business coach and his involvement in Jacksonville Business Professionals, he says he has heard numerous ways AI is being integrated into professional services operations in Jacksonville.
One acquaintance told him that business plans that once took him 20 to 30 minutes to write can now be done “in about five seconds.”
Another, who practices law, described using it to write desist letters, proofread documents, analyze family trees to help ensure that funds in probate cases are distributed equitably, and other routine tasks.
A friend who frequently gives presentations now works with AI, saving him time.
During a June 4 interview, Wilder said he had booked a meeting with the developer of an AI-powered Customer Management System that, among other things, can instantly find messages and other information by scanning platforms he uses to communicate, such as email, phone text, social media messaging and more.
Wilder said he requested the feature to save him from having to search all of his channels for messages, phone numbers, and other information.
“I’m using all of these different ways of communicating, and my thought was, ‘Boy, it’d be great to get them all combined into one powerful system that I can then look up and see how I contacted this person and look at our past conversations,” he said.
He’s also using the technology to act as editor for a book he’s writing on de-stress tools. Based on its suggestions, he added perspective from a neurologist and a psychologist who helped provide additional context and depth to the material, he said.
The accuracy issue
As AI has proliferated, stories about its inaccuracies have also abounded.
“Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I.,” read a recent New York Times headline.
“Oregon Supreme Court dismisses petition because of false AI-generated legal citations,” read another from Oregon Public Broadcasting.
“Another potential AI problem: Bored humans miss AI mistakes,” American Banker headlined a story containing a warning that “Agentic AI systems can appear to be so perfect that they lull the people tasked with reviewing them into a false sense of security, which leads to undetected errors.”
Wilder acknowledges the accuracy issues with AI and says not all business operators are embracing it for that reason.
“A lot of my clients are attorneys, and I’m not finding them being overly thrilled with AI at this point,” he said.
“They’re using AI to a certain extent. They’ll say, ‘OK, tell me about this particular law or case, or case law around a particular topic, and it will spell it out, but you still have to then go back and do the research. But it still reads all the books within seconds and probably saves them three to four hours, which is also saving the clients a lot of money.”
Wilder advises business operators to question any work done with AI.
As a friend who is a general contractor told him,”AI is the smartest intern you ever had, but it is still an intern.”
“With Alexa and Siri … sometimes it will have the wrong answer, and I’ll say I don’t think that’s the right answer, or that is not the right answer, and then it’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re right, Doug.’”
What lies ahead
The Thomson Reuters survey for 2026 showed that use of AI for individual and organizational use had grown to 40%, up from 22% from 2025. The most common technology among respondents was ChatGPT.
For agentic AI tools, the survey found that 15% of professionals say their organization was using them, but an additional 53% reported being either in the planning or consideration phase.
“This portends wide-scale agentic AI growth in the coming years, as 77% of professionals say they expect it to be a central part of their workflow by 2030,” the study stated. “While respondents report being less educated on agentic AI as compared to GenAI, a majority say they still feel it should be applied to regular work.”
Wilder said AI’s effects on professional services in Jacksonville were only beginning, as businesses determine how best to put the tools to use.
Another factor is how businesses will best reallocate time and resources that can be saved through use of AI, he said.
AI offers opportunities for businesses to streamline and reduce costs while allowing leadership and advisers to focus more on building person-to-person relationships with clients, decision-makers, contractors and others who can benefit their businesses.
In an April 2026 story, Entrepreneur magazine said agentic AI promises to further reshape how businesses operate.
“As AI moves from just helping with automating tasks, businesses are using it to analyze information for better decision-making. AI agents, for example, serve as digital assistants, helping professionals complete complex tasks such as financial data review, IT problem diagnosis or workflow management,” the story read.
“These systems support human decision-making by quickly analyzing large volumes of data, highlighting key insights and suggesting possible actions that enable leaders and employees to make more informed decisions.”
Wilder likens what’s happening with AI to the early years of changes brought about by such innovations as mobile phones and the internet.
Questions about how best to use those technologies and how they would change business operations existed early on too, he said, but businesses that embraced and adapted them benefited.
“I think it’s extremely logical that the streamlining of operations will be a huge benefit out of AI, and I don’t think that a lot of people won’t realize it until they get going with it,” he said.
“At Jacksonville Business Professionals, we’ve had three or four educational events on AI, and some people are saying they’re tired of it. But I think the people who can surf it are going to find that the AI wave is coming.”