It has been a week when history has been made.

For mankind the Artemis  II space mission has boldly gone where no man has been before and brought back with it the first pictures of the dark side of the Moon.

Rightly it has been heralded as a history leap for the manned space flight future.

Humans have been further from earth  than ever before and will herald not only the next steps to a return to the lunar surface but also embolden many to dream of a manned flight to Mars.

It is true that the trip to the far side of the Moon could have easily been carried out by a mechanical probe, with no human on board the capsule. However, the trip was much more than a lunar orbit.

It was a sign that humans were still masters of our own destiny.

While the world and the scientific community rejoiced at the images that have been captured back on earth this week has seen another giant leap, but this one was for how AI will redefine how the world does business.

Accountancy and consultancy giant EY announced the global roll-out of enterprise-scale agentic AI in Assurance, marking a fundamental shift toward AI-transformed audits.

The new releases are part of a multibillion-dollar investment to audit technology which will continue as part of the EY ‘All in’ global strategy.

EY explained it is directly embedding a new multi-agent framework, integrated with Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Foundry and Microsoft Fabric, into EY Canvas – the single, global Assurance technology platform that processes more than 1.4 trillion lines of journal entry data per year. Encompassing the daily workflows of 130,000 Assurance professionals across 160,000 audit engagements and more than 150 countries and territories, EY added these capabilities will help audit teams orchestrate complex tasks, processes and technologies, and address risks more dynamically, while accessing continuously updated auditing and accounting guidance — at unprecedented scale and speed.

Janet Truncale, EY global chair and CEO, said: “The rapid growth of data, and the new complexities of assuring AI, demand that our people and technology evolve faster than ever. EY’s human-led, AI-powered audit of the future is a market-leading example of enterprise AI in action, delivering greater value, deeper insight and increased confidence for our clients and stakeholders—accelerated by our continued investment under the All in strategy.”

While there is a stress on the new system being people driven the huge majority of the burden will now be assumed by AI.

Be in our interplanetary aspirations or our most mundane of business processes technology is set to be an integral part of everything we seek to achieve, and it will likely  come with as many risks and rewards.

Jon Guy, Editor,

Emerging Risks