I, Project Manager: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace

Within the next five years, an app's capacity to work with AI will be more important than its mobile or cloud capabilities. In a recent Gartner report, aptly titled, "Conversational AI to Shake Up Your Technical and Business Worlds" authors Tom Austin, Mark Hung, and Magnus Revang argue that artificial intelligence will be so ingrained in the workforce that AI integration will be essential by 2021. Businesses will rely on conversational artificial intelligence (think virtual personal assistants in the vein of Siri or Amazon Alexa) instead of individual apps. Instead of scores or hundreds of apps (of which individuals typically depend on 4-to-6 in any given day), we expect [business] people to rely on multiple agents that will learn their needs and preferences and do their bidding, providing proactive, context-sensitive support almost everywhere. When I first read this report, I got excited--after all, who wouldn't want a helper that could integrate all of your systems into one, that could provide differing support based on needs and changing contexts?