In a ‚world of shattered norms.we can’t expect anything to be the same as it was last year or the year before,‘ Gartner Fellow Daryl Plummer says at the company’s IT Symposium/Xpo.
Every year, I’m interested to hear where Gartner sees technology heading for CIOs and other IT leaders. Typically, the company’s IT Symposium/Xpo conference features a session on current trends, which reflects the current state of affairs, and another on predictions for the future.
Gartner Fellow Daryl Plummer set the tone for this year’s discussion by saying we’ve been living in „a world of shattered norms, where we can’t expect anything to be the same as it was last year or the year before.“ Here are his predictions, along with my personal observations.1. By 2027, 75% of hiring processes will include certifications and testing for workplace AI proficiency.
Plummer said employers will want to hire people who are good with AI, which means individuals „should be playing with AI all the time“, including prompting. „AI provides a productivity and creativity boost to us all, but only if we ask it the right questions in the right way“, he said.
However, he said, it’s also important to understand your business processes, as that makes you more effective when you use AI. „You don’t have to worry about losing your job to AI“, he said, „You have to worry about losing your job to someone who uses AI better than you do.“
That last statement rings true to me for most people. Still, I think the percentage of people needing certifications is way too high.2. Through 2026, global organizations will require ‚AI-free‘ skills assessments to counter the atrophy of AI-related critical thinking skills.
Plummer said that we are losing critical thinking skills, noting that our kids do not remember things as well as we did at their age, because they have become dependent on technology. However, we’ve all experienced the same things happening. „When was the last time you had to read a map?“ Or written in cursive? Or driven a manual-shift car?
Atrophy happens faster than you think, he said, and we have to decide which things to let go, and which ones to keep. Individuals with specialized skills will become increasingly rare and valuable.
I pretty much agree with this. And „AI-free“ assessments will make sense for some roles in many organizations, but probably not most roles.3. By 2027, 35% of countries will be locked into region-specific AI platforms using proprietary contextual data.
Plummer, and indeed many other Gartner analysts at the show, discussed „AI sovereignty“—the goals of different nations or groups of nations to compel organizations to localize solutions through regulations and other means. China, the US, and the European Union are the three primary centers of gravity, he said, with other countries striving to maintain their independence.
He notes that if China has manufacturing data that no one else has, this will ensure it has the best data for manufacturing in AI models. He noted that contextual data will be the lure to lock people in or out of specific models, and that both governments and „digital nation state platforms“ are working on this issue.
Gartner suggests employing model distillation as a tactic to mitigate the impact of regional lock-in, as well as examining open-source models.
