The New Stack Podcast Human Cognition Can’t Keep Up with Modern Networks. What’s Next?
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Jan 7, 2026 Sunil Nambier, Client Engagement Lead at IBM Network Intelligence, shares insights on the complexities of modern network operations. He discusses how IBM's strategic acquisitions aim to enhance enterprise AI by providing essential infrastructure. Nambier highlights trust as a major barrier to AI adoption, due to risks and fragmented data. He introduces AI agents that can detect pre-outage patterns and improve incident response times. He also emphasizes the need for knowledge management to combat the skills gap in network operations.
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Networks Have Outstripped Human Cognition
- Modern distributed and software-defined networks have exceeded human cognitive capacity due to rising complexity.
- This complexity lowers signal-to-noise ratio and makes human-only operations impractical.
Tribal Knowledge Creates A Skills Bottleneck
- Veteran engineers hold tribal, tacit knowledge that is hard to transfer to new hires.
- Monitoring tools are getting so complex that they themselves require deep expertise to operate effectively.
Trust Breaks Down Without Clean, Timely Data
- Trust is the biggest barrier to AI adoption in operations because wrong recommendations can cause outages.
- Data silos, fragmentation, and lack of real-time access erode trust and block deterministic automation.