ORLANDO, Fla. – CIOs will need to strike the right balance between using AI to assist employees and overusing the technology, which can lead to a critical skills decline.
Skills atrophy appeared as a dominant theme at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo. During the keynote session on Monday, Daryl Plummer, distinguished VP analyst and chief of research at Gartner, cautioned IT executives that, “AI is stealing your skills,” a behavioral byproduct of the technology.
Plummer reiterated the issue of skills atrophy during a Tuesday session on Gartner’s top 10 predictions for IT organizations in 2026 and beyond.
“We should embrace the technology, but remember we have value that goes beyond just the technology,” Plummer said. “We have to decide which things we won’t let go and which things we will actually fight to keep. Skills atrophy will surprise you if you don’t pay attention.”
While CIOs will need to stay on their toes when it comes to skillsets, Gartner also predicts AI agents and generative AI will transform productivity tools and reshape IT skills testing. Additionally, organizations will need to prepare for fragmented AI regulation and the effects of digital sovereignty.
Below are five predictions affecting the CIO, derived from Gartner’s top 10 list:
1. “Through 2026, atrophy of critical-thinking skills, due to GenAI use, will push 50% of the global organizations to require ‘AI-free’ skills assessments.”
Rather than focusing on what new hires can do with AI, organizations will increasingly want to assess individuals’ critical thinking, coding and other skills without AI use.
Plummer said there’s a “natural tension” rising between wanting teams to do things with AI while also expecting them to do without it.
“Humans with the skills will become more rare,” Plummer said.
2. “By 2027, 75% of hiring processes will include certifications and testing for workplace AI proficiency during recruiting.”
While CIOs need to be aware of skills atrophy, they will still need AI proficient IT teams to set up organizations for future success.
Many organizations will implement AI proficiency assessments as a result, Plummer said.
AI skills are crucial for future-proofing an organization, said Bill Bacoyiannis, senior director of infrastructure and shared services at Lallemand. Bacoyiannis, whose Canada-based company specializes in fermentation products, attended the Gartner predictions session Tuesday.
“You have to be willing to invest time in AI, you have to figure out what works, what doesn’t work,” he said. “You put your human experience with the AI, you’re better.”
3. “Through 2027, GenAI and AI agent use will create the first true challenge to mainstream productivity tools in 30 years, prompting a $58 billion market shakeup.”
The rise of generative AI and AI agents will propel organizations to prioritize innovations accelerating work completion, prompting a decline in legacy formats, according to Gartner.
“We’re using the technology from 1995, and we need to change,” Plummer said. “Trigger this new competition, demand tools built for today not 1995.”
4. “By 2027, 35% of countries will be locked into region-specific AI platforms using proprietary contextual data.”
Enterprises are being affected by the rise of “digital nation state platforms” as countries place an emphasis on the value of data, Plummer said. Global companies will face challenges deploying uniform AI across markets spanning various countries, according to Gartner.
The digital sovereignty push is especially strong in the European Union. The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, launched an initiative earlier this year to expand the EU’s cloud and AI infrastructure capacity. Digital sovereignty signifies a country’s ability to control its digital destiny, which could encompass AI, cloud and other technology components.
“They are saying, ‘We want to control our AI data, our AI models and your use of those models,’” Plummer said of governments. “When they do that, we could get locked in or locked out.”
Countries outside of the U.S., China and the EU – such as Japan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – want to remain independent. It will be up to enterprises to decide what companies to partner with within those regions, which will be governed by different digital sovereignty rules.
“You have to decide who you partner with – someone who’s locked into a region, someone who’s independent of a region or just yourself,” Plummer said. “Sovereignty is something we all have to pay attention to.”
5. “By 2027, fragmented AI regulation will grow to cover 50% of the world’s economies, driving $5 billion in compliance investment.”
AI transformation has to be built on AI governance and an understanding of where new rules and regulations are coming from, Plummer said. More than 1,000 AI laws were proposed globally last year, each with varying definitions of AI, which creates a compliance challenge for organizations, Gartner said.
In the U.S. alone, businesses are navigating a growing patchwork of state laws. California recently passed Senate Bill 53, which establishes transparency requirements for many of the top AI model providers.
AI governance can either be an enabler or a barrier, and it’s crucial for executives to stay literate in AI laws and regulations to stay competitive, Plummer added.
Additionally, Plummer said governments will get involved in AI potentially in ways they haven’t yet.
“I believe governments will start taxing the use of AI,” he said.
