Ep. 33: Resilience reinvented: Harnessing AI and technology

In this episode, GCCR co-leader Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles is joined by Oliver Sykes and James Houston to explore how technology and AI are transforming enterprise resilience. They discuss opportunities in anticipation, adaptation, and learning, as well as the risks of digital dependencies. The conversation highlights the balance needed to harness AI responsibly while building stronger, more agile, and transparent resilience strategies.

Transcript

Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of Emerge Stronger Through Disruption. I'm Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles, a partner from PwC UK, and I co-lead our Global Centre for Crisis and Resilience, GCCR, with Dave Stainback. Now, the aim of this podcast series is to explore the challenges facing business in the environment of constant crisis and change, and to discuss how successful business leaders can emerge stronger through that disruption.

So, we're now in the fourth episode of the GCCR Summit series in which we are focusing on major topics our crisis and resilience leaders from around the world discussed at our PwC Global Summit, and today, I'm delighted to be hosting the discussion on leveraging technology and artificial intelligence (AI) for resilience, a topic that is significantly shaping how organisations prepare for and indeed respond to disruption.

So, joining me are two of my colleagues and resilience leaders, Oliver Sykes and James Houston. Oliver, James, brilliant to have you both here today.

Oliver Sykes: Thanks, Bobbie. It's great to be here. I'm Oliver Sykes and I lead our Digital Trust and Resilience practice here in the Middle East. I'm joining you today from our office in Dubai.

James Houston: And I'm James Houston, a Risk and Resilience partner based here in London. And I'm really excited to talk about this topic with everyone because when we think about resilience today, it's really impossible to ignore the role of technology and increasingly artificial intelligence. In the past, resilience was all about backup systems, disaster recovery sites and manual contingency plans, but the world's changed. Disruptions are faster, they're more complex, and they're often digital in nature. Technology has really become the backbone, but also the pressure point of modern resilience. So, the real question isn't whether AI and tech affect resilience, it's how we use them to redefine what a resilient organisation looks like moving into the future.

Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: I couldn't agree more with you, James, and I'm sure you do as well, Oliver.

Oliver Sykes: Yeah, I do. As we think about technology and AI, they really represent a double-sided coin when it comes to resilience. On one side, they offer powerful opportunities to strengthen resilience by enabling smarter risk detection, predictive maintenance, faster recovery, and data-driven decision making that really enhances business continuity and adaptability. AI can anticipate disruptions, automate responses, and help organisations bounce back stronger.

But on the flip side, these same technologies introduce new resilience risks. Greater dependency on complex digital systems, exposure to cyber threats, data breaches, algorithmic bias and model failures that can all cascade across operations.

So, resilience in this context comes from balancing both sides, harnessing technology and AI to build stronger, more adaptive systems while embedding robust governance, transparency, and human oversight to guide against vulnerabilities that they create.

Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: That balance for me is key. James, I'm really interested. What do you see as some of the opportunities for technology and AI in resilience?

James Houston: There's no doubt that technology, when it's harnessed well, can take resilience to another level. I think we're seeing that across three main areas: Anticipation, adaption, and learning. If I go to anticipation, using AI and analytics to predict disruptions before they happen, whether it's identifying supplier risks, spotting early signals of cyber threat, or even just detecting operational anomalies. Predictive insight is transforming proactive resilience.

If I then move to adaption. Automation, intelligent workflows, they enable organisations to respond faster and smarter. So self-healing IT systems recovering, or automated rerouting of your supply chain and disruption that can really help limit the impact and reduce the downtime.

The third one, I think, is really interesting. It's learning. It's probably the most exciting opportunity. How do we move from desktop to continuous learning and improvement, simulating crises, stress testing responses, and really embedding those lessons at a scale that we never have before, turning every potential disruption, and every real disruption, into a learning loop. It's not just about recovering faster; it's about learning from that and getting stronger every time. Oliver, would you agree?

Oliver Sykes: Yeah, absolutely, James. AI offers enormous opportunities to enhance efficiency, decision making and resilience by enabling those predictive insights, automation, and faster and more informed responses to disruption.

That being said, I think these opportunities come with significant risks, and they need to be actively managed. One major concern is the growing dependency on complex and quite often opaque systems, and this is where errors, bias, or data quality issues can have far reaching consequences.

There's also the challenge of maintaining trust, so AI decisions can be difficult to explain and without strong governance, ethical oversight, and human validation, they risk undermining fairness and accountability. And I suppose my final point on this is that AI expands the digital threat surface. So, as organisations integrate AI into critical operations, they become more vulnerable to cyber-attacks, data breaches, and adversarial manipulation. And that's why it's critical that organisations balance these factors.

True resilience is all about embracing AI's potential while also embedding transparency, robust controls, and the adaptability to facilitate technology that strengthens rather than compromises the long-term stability.

Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: I really like the balance of where you're looking at that sort of opportunity versus risk.

I wonder, James, if we can drill down on AI, what do you see as some of the key opportunities for resilience with that?

James Houston: Yeah, looking specifically at AI, I think it goes beyond prediction and automation. I think we're moving from static systems to intelligent agents. Tools that don't just react, but reason, that learn and that adapt in real time. Think of the use of AI in resilience operations, helping risk and resilience teams triage incidents, recommend recovery actions and analyse huge volumes of data across an organisation instantly. Or an AI digital twin that can simulate complex disruption scenarios to help leaders plan smarter interventions.

These kinds of AI applications shift resilience from being reactive and procedural to dynamic and anticipatory. That's a fundamental change. People used to rely on static business continuity plans and PDF documents, and crisis management playbooks. In the modern world, we see the shift to a much more dynamic tech enabled capability.

It's like fire extinguishers. It's great that you have fire extinguishers around the place, but in a modern world, the small fires are one thing, but if a big fire comes along, you need that dynamic sprinkler system capability connected to a control panel with dynamic risk sensors. How can we build this more broadly into every single scenario we can think about?

Oliver Sykes: I like that James, and I couldn't agree more. Some of the most exciting AI developments in resilience are those that move organisations from being reactive to truly predictive and adaptive.

First of all, if you look at predictive analytics, it's transforming resilience in terms of planning using AI to forecast disruptions before they happen, whether in supply chains, cybersecurity, or infrastructure. So, by analysing patterns in large data sets, organisations can anticipate those system failures, identify the weak points, and then take proactive measures to prevent downtime.

I think the second point here is all around kind of AI driven simulations and digital twins, as you mentioned. They're becoming central tools and they allow companies to model complex systems from entire business operations to city infrastructures and stress testing them under different scenarios. And this means resilience strategies can then be validated and refined continuously rather than only after a real-life, real-world failure.

And another key area in this is autonomous response and recovery where AI is enabling faster, automated, mitigation actions. For example, isolating a cyber threat or reconfiguring resources during an outage.

And finally, I'd say AI governance and transparency tools are really emerging to monitor model performance. They look at bias and compliance in real time, helping to establish resilience that, you know, extends beyond technology to trust and accountability. To me, the future of resilience will be powered by AI systems that not only predict and prevent disruption, but also adapt and evolve as conditions change, and this will make resilience a living intelligent capability.

Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: Thank you both. That's a really great summary, giving our listeners a lot to think about. I guess as we look to the future, James, what are your words of advice for business leaders wanting to better leverage technology and AI in order to enhance organisational resilience? What are the key actions they should take?

James Houston: Strategically, I think it's about building trusted partnerships, both from a technology point of view with your vendors, but also internally within teams because resilience is never just about tooling, it's about integrating across your ecosystem: people, process, technology, governance. I think in today's world, AI often helps connect the ecosystem of technology underpinning your business. Let's take a complete tech failure and the need to mobilise your minimum viable company. You need to quickly pull data from a cyber vault, mobilise your business continuity operations, mobilise your comms channels. You need to prioritise the sequencing of your recovery and get your technology stood back up as soon as possible.

All of that has to be mobilised as fast as possible, dependent on the scenario, to minimise damage. How does your ecosystem of technology support that mobilisation and that prioritisation? And across all of that, the most resilient organisations keep the people in the loop using AI to empower better decisions, not replace them and, sure, use AI to enhance judgment, not to automate it away.

Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: Oliver, what about you? What's your view on what leaders should focus on in this space?

Oliver Sykes: Yeah, so look, my advice would be that leaders should really focus on balancing that innovation with assurance, and that involves harnessing the power of AI to enhance resilience while working to deploy it safely, transparently, and ultimately responsibly.

That means investing: investing in data quality, data governance, and ethical frameworks, and investing in those things as much as in the advancement of the technology itself. It's also important to champion a resilience by design mindset, so embedding adaptability, explainability, and security into every digital system rather than treating them as afterthoughts.

Equally important is fostering a culture of digital trust and agility through upskilling teams to work effectively with AI, encouraging experimentation, but also driving strong oversight and accountability.

Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles: Thank you both. You've covered a huge amount of ground there and a fantastic discussion. I know that this topic in particular is a real interest to our listeners, so I really appreciate it. And I think it's absolutely clear the points you've made that technology and AI play a critical role in building the future of resilience.

To our listeners, thank you so much for joining our GCCR Summit Series. I really hope you enjoyed it. We'll have one more episode as part of our Summit series, and in our next and final episode, we will delve deeper into resilience regulations. You can find more insights and resources on our PwC GCCR website, and please do connect with me, James and Oliver on LinkedIn, and of course subscribe to Emerge Stronger through Disruption wherever you get your podcast.

And until next time, stay resilient and prepared for whatever challenges come your way.

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