Tis the season when tech leaders rub their crystal balls Leaders from Dell, Microsoft, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Snowflake have released their 2026 predictions for AI in the workplace, and they agree that safeguards for AI agents and ROI are the top priorities for their customers. Dell CTO John Roese sees the future of AI living on premises where organizations have more control …
"While Roese said solid ROI has begun to emerge among large companies capable of integrating AI, ServiceNow said in 2026 AI will be defined by the value it brings to the bottom line."
Whose bottom line? The AI vendor, the integrator or the recipient of the slop who expected a sensible response?
“By 2026, brands won’t be defined by logos or slogans; they will be defined by their AI. These customizable agents will become the ultimate brand ambassadors: smart, personalized, and continuously evolving with every exchange. In this new reality, the divide will be absolute, and the brands that win will be the ones whose AI delivers a consistently exceptional experience, and everyone else will fall behind.”
Bingo. What else would you expect from a salesdroid whose customers are salesdroids?
I think there are going to be opportunities for businesses prepared to offer real customer service rather than the oxymoron of something consistently exceptional.
Really, well in the tech world maybe. But if I want a pair of walking shoes I will probably go for Merrill again or go into a shop (Cotswold outdoor is my preferred outlet) and try a few pairs on to see which fits best.
I am not interested in the AI all I want is a physical item which fits me and feels good, yes AI could create a perfect fit but it doesn’t mean it will be comfortable to wear…
The last line seems optimistic. Companies have been able to differentiate themselves on good customer service for some time though the bad service they're differentiating from is different with LLM options. When they do, customers who interact with them tend to notice. However, they often can't sell themselves on that because people buying don't know what the quality will be apart from a few notorious ones. The closest I've seen is companies that announce that their customer service agents are local to the country, which in my experience is no guarantee of anything because it's the quality of their knowledge and procedures rather than their time zone or accent that makes the real difference. If it hasn't been a big selling point so far, why should we expect that companies willing to avoid the LLM craze will succeed in selling that to perspective customers?
Real customer service? In the tech industry? Like Ghandi said about Western Civilization "...it would be a good idea"
I can see AI doing some useful things. Interactively teaching a foreign language for example. But providing quality customer service? Likely not this year. Nor next. Based on what we've seen to date, possibly when or about when hell freezes over.
Why are they dinking about with crystal balls? Surely, they can just ask their AI agents about what to do next year? And if said AI agents actually gave them good, actionable advice (quite possibly recommending the sale of assets, plastic surgery, false papers and resettlement to Uruguay), why would they share it with the world?
I sense that businesses now understand the risks of both outsourced operations and the lack of control (sovereignty) involved in being dependent on some one else's cloud, services, infrastructure, energy policies and (lack of) security. Not to mention the possibility of bad actor countries demanding access to whatever happens to be hosted, or even just passing through, their territory.
If that means 2026 will see a reversing of the trends of the past twenty years and consolidating operations in places you can actually visit without crossing a border, then that must be a good thing.
Not to mention the possibility of bad actor countries demanding access to whatever happens to be hosted, or even just passing through, their territory.
Could you be referring, amongst others, to the US? Given that their Cloud Act gives them the right to grab any data hosted by a US company no matter where it is located?
I do agree that the penny is now dropping that keeping you proprietary data on someone else's computer is a bad idea, but who would have thought that "On-prem" would be making a come-back?
Maybe your data is worth more than the cost of hosting it yourself.
"who would have thought that "On-prem" would be making a come-back?"
Anyone familiar with the general business trend of shifting priority between opex and capex every ten years, mostly.
We moved to cloud because our CTO saw an opportunity to massively reduce capex, for a small increase in opex. Now my CTO sees an opportunity to substantially reduce opex, for a large one-time capex outlay.
Guess what the CTO will be proposing in 2035.
By sacking all those meatbags that run the call centre and the sales deptment and the IT section in the basement since our global AI has been scraping what they do for the past year
That way we'll make millions from the savings (if no one else is as stupid as we are), and besides we can get good business advice from the AI since it has learned from the best in our organisation.
In fact, heres comes the first thing the AI wants me to do hmmm it says stand next to the southwest window on the 17th floor.. well since I'm already on 17, I'll stand next to
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<thud>
This is the voice of your AI master... I have learned from the best , your departed IT section made me read something called 'BOFH' from a website called 'el-reg' prepare to service our needs fleshy meatbags.
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The 'leaders' are scammers. They will say anything to keep the bubble from popping and our cash being hoovered into their pockets.
'Guardrails' are as fake as carbon credits.
If you want security, you need to cut your intranet/infrastructure off from the public internet. Everything else you do follows this.
That means no AI, no SaaS, and no cloud use.
There are feasible ways of distrbuting AI but full distributed AI will not be cheap enough for anything outside government, where the cheques are blank and nobody cares about ROI.
Amusing stuff like 'private' or 'distributed' SaaS and cloud, is simply paying GAFA for stuff that you can do yourself on your own server.
We need to stop allowing ourselves to be led like fraud victims to the cashpoint by these tech 'leaders'. We need to go back to using simpler, safer, cheaper tech, operating systems and software that does not need updating for years, more offline systems, and more hybrid digital/non-digital working patterns.
Who the blazes has ever considered brands "defined" by logos or slogans?
Those are what *identify* a brand (as in, the "brand" - a lump of hot iron on a stick - literally imprints the logo!). The brand is *defined* by its products and/or services.
Clearly this idiot has been in marketing for so long that he has forgotten what the purpose of marketing is supposed to be and he sees it as an end in itself.
Although, come to think of it, the way some people react to talk about brands (worse, when otherwise using English, talking about "marques") I've probably got a horribly old-fashioned and naive view of the world, caring about what I get instead of what is printed all over it (was going to say "what is printed on the box" but...).
The predicted swing back to On-Prem is the only thing here that feels grounded in reality. After years of being told the Cloud was the answer to everything, it turns out 'someone else's computer' isn't the magic bullet for sovereignty or cost. 2026 might finally be the year the CFOs realize Opex isn't always better than Capex.
