Ameya Kanitkar is the Co-founder and CTO of Larridin, a Bay Area-based startup building an organizational platform powered by AI.gettyThe launch of ChatGPT in 2022 started a massive cycle of AI experimentation and deployment. But the era of excitement around AI is winding down. Now, it’s time to prove value. ​In my experience leading engineering teams adopting AI tools, I've found that many are struggling to translate that adoption into meaningful business outcomes.One reason is that the biggest opportunities often don’t come from AI assistants, which deliver surface-level productivity gains. Instead, they come from understanding workflows, repetitive decisions and hidden operational frictions that shape how businesses create value every day. The AI-Native Inflection PointWhat’s happened in software engineering represents the biggest transformation the field has seen in two decades.Teams that once relied on human-coded systems now operate with AI at the core. ​Gartner predicts that by 2028, 90% of enterprise software engineers will use AI code assistants. The role of developers is shifting. They’re designing and orchestrating software development done by agents, instead of typing in code and debugging entirely by hand. ​​​​And the results are staggering. I've seen five engineers deliver what once required 25. ​​Truly Strategic AI Opportunities With AI being implemented everywhere, companies often focus on low-value use cases like meeting notes, email drafting and basic reporting, rather than efforts that deliver real business impact. ​While efficient, they primarily optimize existing workflows rather than change how work gets done. According to Deloitte, only 34% of organizations are using AI in a way that meaningfully transforms core business processes.The most valuable AI opportunities often emerge from discovering and altering the invisible, domain-knowledge-level work that happens across businesses every day. These are the recurring five-minute routines that go unmeasured, like reconciling spreadsheets, checking policy documents or reformatting reports.Multiply those actions across hundreds or thousands of employees, and the silent inefficiencies are massive. Because this work isn’t captured in conventional metrics, it rarely surfaces as an automation candidate.Automating the task-extraction process is where organizations create the most value. AI can now scan how teams interact with different software tools, revealing hidden friction points that consume time and focus.​One large sales team I observed averaged 32 minutes per customer outreach because employees had to juggle seven different applications, repeatedly moving between platforms to research prospects, update CRM records, prepare outreach materials and log activity for reporting. By automating five of those steps, outreach times dropped to under 20 minutes.These aren’t the most visible or most sophisticated use cases, but their scaled impact on productivity and cost can be extraordinary.Higher-Level Human WorkThe real value of AI starts with efficiency by handling repetitive tasks, freeing workers to focus on more strategic, creative and judgment-driven activities, such as higher-quality decision-making and revenue generation. However, quality AI output still depends on human direction. AI lacks taste and judgment. It can produce impressive quantities of content lacking a single useful insight. ​The human contribution now centers on steering creativity, curating meaning and deciding what success looks like. This type of cognitive work is mentally intense, and many teams using AI report feeling more productive, yet more exhausted. Leaders must design environments that help employees channel this intensity productively, rather than letting it spiral into burnout—or, as a recently coined term describes it, “AI brain fry,” which is the exhaustion from excessive oversight of AI tools.Finding Untapped AI OpportunitiesSome functions naturally hold abundant untapped AI potential. Knowledge and operations roles, particularly in accounting, legal, banking and roles that are governed by regulatory compliance, typically involve considerable repetitive logic and document-heavy processes that are ideal for automation.Signals that AI initiatives are strategic rather than merely efficient include:• AI enables the workforce to operate at a higher level of abstraction than before.• AI exposes new ways of operating, not just speeding up traditional processes.• AI produces measurable time savings that scale across an entire enterprise, not just helping a few people.When a new initiative changes the conversations teams have, not just how quickly they finish existing tasks, then AI is influencing strategy.How To Find High-Value AI To move your organization toward an AI-native future and capture true value, enterprise leaders should consider the following steps:• Automate task excavation. Move beyond manual surveys or expensive consultants. Use technology to gain visibility into your tech stack and identify the small tasks that make up a role. This helps combat the "death by a thousand cuts," where minor frictions drain a company's productivity.• Target the unmeasured knowledge work. Look for areas where invisible and time-consuming tasks are frequent but unmapped. Automating small tasks across the entire workforce can be where the most significant impact resides.• Adopt an AI-native mindset. Change how you view labor. Instead of asking, "Can I use AI for this?" ask, "Why are humans doing this work in the first place?"• Focus on outcomes, not activity. The only metrics that matter are productivity and financial gains. Measure success by how much you’ve unlocked your team to focus on high-level work they actually enjoy, not just prompt volume. Capturing real value from AI requires a shift in how leaders think about work itself. The most effective approaches move beyond surface-level automation, redesigning work around what humans uniquely need to own versus what can be delegated to systems. For leaders, creating the right conditions—clear workflows, thoughtful design and ongoing enablement—is critical to scaling AI effectively.​Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?