4 Snapshots From the Future, Compliments of the Gartner IT Symposium

Gartner held its largest event of the year, the IT Symposium, in sunny Orlando this week, replete with a buyout of EPCOT for all attendees. A nostalgic spin on the Spaceship Earth ride was both hokey and informative; its explanation of the evolution of technology was a keen reminder of just how fast things can change.

The conference is focused on CIOs, CTOs and software procurement teams who scanned the showroom floor for all the newest tools and technologies. At the same time, there were substantial future-facing insights to be had during their keynotes. Here are the four biggest takeaways:

1. The Future of Employment (i.e., Your Data Will Be More Important Than Your Work)

Much of the conference focused on data organisation for AI use, such as preparing the organisation for AI transformation. But following an insightful discussion with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, we stayed to listen to Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer as he continued the conversation into Gartner’s “Top Strategic Predictions for 2025 (and Beyond) for the Coming AI Wave.” He shared 10 specific predictions, but two stood out:

The Good: Organizations Will Adopt Anti-Digital Policies. This means that the value of human-to-human contact will increase with the adoption of AI technology. This vision is a positive one: As the AI agents work, we’ve freed up time to be more “human.”

The Bad: The Corporate LLM Will Want Your Data. The concept of AI digital twins is not new, but it will be new in that future employment agreements stipulate that companies will own your data and how you worked at the company. Basically, they will be able to clone your value to an AI. Daryl’s advice was to start thinking about how you structure “royalties” for your data even after you leave the job.

2. The Future of Software

Agentic AI and AI “bots” are all the rage. No longer is the discussion about AI making humans more efficient using tools; we are in a world where AI agents will automate the work at scale. Deploying these agents at scale (in the millions) is not that far away, but it begs the question: Who will monitor all these agents? Seems like the next layer of governance AI agents is just around the corner. Look for many Agent Smith/Matrix references coming your way soon.

3. The Future AI and Automation

As with all conferences, AI is the top topic (duh) — the shift with this crowd entailed “how to operationalize” the tools within your organisation. We heard insights from Adobe VP of Digital Employee Experience Toni Vanwinkle that even Adobe, which produces AI tools for many of us, faced significant hurdles in deploying the tools for their staff. Her insights focused on finding a legal team that was as excited about the coming AI wave as the other teams. Legal is critical in the application of tools as well as setting guidelines.

4. The Future of Work

There is palpable fear and excitement for the future of work and how AI will transform the workplace experience. In a discussion with Gartner Senior Director Analyst Uma Challa, we heard about the generational gaps between teaching the current workforce how to apply AI and how the coming generations will simply expect AI’s omnipresent use. That transition will create some dissonance within organisations. We need to start preparing for the change management now.

We also got to take in a session, “AI Will Transform Work: But When and How?” given by Gartner Senior Principal Analyst Jennifer Carter. She painted a vivid future where autonomous AIs will always be working (they don’t need to sleep) and the human roles will be to govern and direct. Additionally, her insight around AI companions as your “pocket coach” who are constantly helping you perform better at work was a compelling, positive view of how we can get more from the machines.

This forward-looking content makes one wonder how soon the quaint ways of 2024 will look hokey in retrospect. The excellent news is that Gartner (and EPCOT) will be there to remind us.