Smart machines will be the most disruptive change ever, says Gartner

BANGALORE, INDIA: Smart machines have the promise to be more disruptive than any of the prior technology generation, according to Gartner, Inc. In the second half of this decade, Gartner analysts expect to see dramatic growth in the availability, sale and use of smart machines. Gartner predicts that smart machines will have widespread and deep business impact through 2020.

"Smart machines will be the most disruptive change ever brought about by information technology. How people work with information will change, and we will rely on, and be aided by, smart machines. How we interact with the physical world will change, via movers and doers. We will be able to spend more time being more productive on the job and have more time to pursue other things in life with some of the gains of productivity," said Partha Iyengar, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

Smart machines can make people more effective For example, physicians can stay up to date on tens of thousands of new scientific research papers published in their discipline every year while engaged, full time, in an advanced medical practice. Smart machines can also encroach on what people do, displacing them. There can be a long-term impact on truck driver employment of automated trucks that are already in commercial use on private property in limited numbers today.

Some smart machines are little more than clever, brute force automation, as in semiautonomous vehicles such as self-driving cars or automated crash-avoidance braking systems that will autonomously apply the brakes when the car's systems detect an imminent threat to which the driver has not properly responded.

Other smart machines are genuinely smarter. They are built to exploit self-learning, machine learning and deep learning algorithms. They behave autonomously and adapt to their environment. They learn from results, create their own rules and seek or request additional data to test hypotheses. They are able to detect novel situations, often far more quickly and accurately than people. The criteria defining smart machines will continuously advance as well.

"We expect individuals will invest in, control and use their own smart machines to become more successful. Enterprises will similarly invest in smart machines," said Iyengar. "Consumerization versus central control tensions will not abate in the era of smart-machine-driven disruption. If anything, smart machines will strengthen the forces of consumerization after the first surge of enterprise buying commences."

Machines are evolving from automating basic tasks to becoming advanced self-learning systems as capable as the human brain in many highly specialized professions. As such, the next wave of job losses will likely occur among highly valued specialists during the next decade.

Gartner research has found that many CEOs are failing to recognize the widespread and deep business impact that smart machines will have through 2020.

"The bottom line is that many CEOs are missing what could quickly develop to be the most significant technology shift of this decade," said Iyengar.

"In fact, even today, there is already a multifaceted marketplace for engineering a 'digital workforce', backed by major players on both the supply and demand side. This marketplace comprises intelligent agents, virtual reality assistants, expert systems and embedded software to make traditional machines 'smart' in a very specialized way, plus a new generation of low-cost and easy-to-train robots and purpose-built automated machines that could significantly devalue and/or displace millions of humans in the workforce."

Gartner believes that the capability and reliability of smart machines will dramatically increase through 2020 to the point where they will have a major impact on business and IT functions.

The impact will be such that firms that have not begun to develop programs and policies for a "digital workforce" by 2015 will not perform in the top quartile for productivity and operating profit margin improvement in their industry by 2020. As a direct result, the careers of CIOs who do not begin to champion digital workforce initiatives with their peers in the C-suite by 2015 will be cut short by 2023.

"There are few times when IT executives have an opportunity to play a strategic leadership role in their businesses," said Iyengar. "IT leaders must come up to speed on smart machines now and open a deep dialogue with other business executives to understand where and how they can and should pursue the opportunities together. Maximum operational business advantage will go to the organizations that encourage user experimentation with the broad and heterogeneous range of virtual personal assistants that will arrive this decade."