Man vs. Machine

Business leaders are divided in how they envision the future of human-machine partnerships, according to global research from Dell Technologies. Half of the 3,800 global business leaders surveyed forecast that automated systems will free up their time, while the other 50 percent believe otherwise.Similarly, 42 percent believe they’ll have more job satisfaction in the future by offloading tasks to machines, while 58 percent disagree.

Vanson Bourne conducted the quantitative research, which follows Dell Technologies’ seminal story, Realizing 2030: The Next Era of Human-Machine Partnerships. That study forecasted that by 2030, emerging technologies will forge human partnerships with machines that are richer and more immersive than ever before, helping us surpass our limitations. Business leaders agree: 82 percent of respondents expect humans and machines will work as integrated teams within their organization inside of five years.


But leaders are also split on whether the future represents an opportunity or a threat, and torn by the need to mitigate these risks. For instance:

  • 48 percent say the more we depend upon technology, the more we’ll have to lose in the event of a cyber-attack; 52 percent aren’t concerned.
  • 50 percent of business leaders are calling for clear protocols in the event that autonomous machines fail; the other half abstained.
  • 45 percent say computers will need to decipher between good and bad commands; 55 percent don’t see a need.

Given the promise of monumental change—fuelled by exponentially increasing data and the applications, processing power, and connectivity to harness it—56 percent speculate that schools will need to teach how to learn rather than what to learn to prepare students for jobs that don’t yet exist.

This thinking corroborates IFTF’s forecast that 85 percent of jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t been invented yet.

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