Are we entering the 'age of intent' in digital interaction?
Thoughtworks Technology Podcast
Thoughtworks
4.5 • 58 Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2025
⏱️ 45 minutes
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Summary
The 'age of intent' is a phrase that's been around for a number of years. However, with the rise of AI agents in 2025 it has the potential to become a key trend for 2026. It describes a new way of thinking about digital interaction in which the gap between human intention and output are reduced even further through AI assistance.
Thoughtworks' APAC CTO Sarah Taraporewalla has been exploring the age of intent in recent months; she's written a series of blog posts that tackle what this new phase of digital interaction means for businesses and how they can prepare themselves.
On the latest episode of the Technology Podcast, Sarah joins host Lilly Ryan to discuss the concept the age of intent and its implications for the future of digital experiences.
Read Sara Taraporewalla's series on the age of intent:
The interface is dead. Time for the age of intent: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/generative-ai/the-interface-is-dead-time-for-the-age-of-intent
From prototype to transformation: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/generative-ai/the-age-of-intent-from-prototype-to-transformation
What it takes to become an intent-ready organization: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/generative-ai/the-age-of-intent-from-prototype-to-transformation
Rethinking value in the AI economy: https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/generative-ai/the-age-of-intent-rethinking-value-in-AI-economy
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to the ThoughtWorks Technology podcast. I'm Lily Ryan. I'm one of your regular hosts. |
| 0:13.4 | And with me today is Sarah Tara Parwala, the CTO of APAC here at ThoughtWorks. Sarah's written an |
| 0:20.7 | article series recently over the last couple of months, |
| 0:23.6 | exploring what happens to businesses when users stop navigating interfaces |
| 0:27.6 | and simply express what they want to AI systems. |
| 0:31.6 | She's calling this the age of intent. |
| 0:33.6 | I'm really interested to hear more about it. |
| 0:35.6 | Sarah, welcome. Please tell us, what is the age |
| 0:39.3 | of intent? Is that the one we're in now? Thanks, Lily, for having me. Yes, I don't think I'm the |
| 0:45.7 | only one calling it the age of intent. It's definitely the phase that we're moving into. I think |
| 0:53.8 | you can really classify what we have been doing in digital business today |
| 1:00.0 | as much more website and mobile driven, |
| 1:04.1 | where people have to fill in web forms with complete sense of data |
| 1:08.2 | in order to get responses from the servers. |
| 1:12.5 | We're rapidly moving to this intent-based world, |
| 1:17.6 | where we're, instead of saying a specific thing that we need to do, |
| 1:22.7 | we just describe the intent that we're trying to have, |
| 1:26.5 | and describe that context that we need. |
| 1:29.2 | So we're ending up more fuzzy with our interactions. And as a result, there's some changes |
| 1:34.6 | that we need to do and think about as we build out our digital products. |
| 1:39.3 | This is like a five-part piece, that series that you've put together for ThoughtWorks Insights. |
| 1:46.4 | I've read through it, and there are quite a few of these little avenues that you've gone |
... |
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