Gartner's Top Strategic Predictions for 2024 and Beyond

Our annual list of top strategic predictions empowers savvy, forward-thinking executive leaders inside and outside of IT to examine what it means for AI to move from a tool to a collaborator and creator. Consider these predictions as you would planning assumptions: Determine the time horizon for each prediction, and evaluate near-term flags to determine whether the prediction is increasingly or decreasingly likely to come true.

Gartner’s 2024 predictions, which we expect your organization will come up against in the next three to five years, fall into three categories, and encompass the most critical areas of technology and business evolution.

• Individuals can use GenAI to create better resumes, reports, work products and interactions with others. By 2026, 30% of workers will leverage digital “charisma filters,” which make you seem better than you are, to achieve previously unattainable advances in their careers.

• Because GenAI can boost the output of the entire workforce, countries with large, inexpensive workforces will not have as pronounced an advantage. By 2027, the productivity value of AI will be recognized as a primary economic indicator of national power, largely due to widespread gains in workforce productivity.

• GenAI can help create a more diverse workforce inclusive of those in a wide range of age groups, from different educational and ethnic backgrounds, and who are neurodivergent. By 2027, 25% of Fortune 500 companies will actively recruit neurodiverse talent to improve business performance.

• There is a rapidly growing need for more electricity to power computers. GenAI amplifies energy costs and availability. By 2026, half of G20 members will experience monthly electricity rationing, turning energy-aware operations into either a competitive advantage or a major failure risk.

• GenAI can provide modernization plans, refactoring plans, testing and validation, and other capabilities to speed up modernization efforts. By 2027, GenAI tools will be used to explain legacy business applications and create appropriate replacements, reducing modernization costs by 70%.

• Supplementing the workforce with robots can help businesses grow, but this will expose the need to change business operations. By 2028, due to labor shortages, there will be more smart robots than frontline workers in manufacturing, retail and logistics.

• The rise of machine workers and customers is prompting a rethink of key business operations. Through 2026, 30% of large companies will have a dedicated business unit or sales channels to access fast-growing machine customer markets.

• While GenAI brings a great deal of opportunity, malinformation is a new threat vector. By 2028, enterprise spend dedicated to battling it will surpass $30 billion, cannibalizing 10% of marketing and cybersecurity budgets.

• CEOs must empower a single responsible executive, such as the CISO, to tackle the challenge of malinformation across the organization. By 2027, 45% of CISOs’ remits will expand beyond cybersecurity, due to increasing regulatory pressure and attack surface expansion.

• Unions have historically pressured organizations and governments to protect people before companies. By 2028, motivated by the adoption of generative AI, unionization among knowledge workers will increase by 1,000%.