Decoder with Nilay Patel · Monday, September 28, 2026
Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO of Atlassian, discussed how AI is poised to enhance, not replace, core business processes managed by tools like Jira. He emphasized that while AI can automate routine tasks, human intuition and judgment remain critical for complex exceptions.
“So, we think about Jira as a human reference to work. Uh, and when we say that, it's a really interesting term because the work is not done in Jira.”
“Uh, that's why agents and AI and other things, they're going to increase the speed of those processes. In a lot of ways, they will increase the reliability, the quality, the consistency of output of certain processes.”
“But there's going to be customers that need a lot more complex exceptions. They have, well, I want to pay 90 days in this way and I want this thing and that thing and. That needs to go to a human for intuition and judgment.”