There is no "reality" other than business requirements. That's the context for a workflow. You probably meant that the requirements aren't agile enough to meet the changing world outside. That's a different problem, I think. You can't bypass requirements and expect workflow to dynamically adapt to the changing reality. If that's the direction with AI-driven business re-engineering, then we are back to the chaos, exposing the business logic directly to the outside world.

Rules are the context for a workflow and they have to be updated as the environment changes and that is what I've observed. YMMV.