Gartner Forecasts: AI Makes You Lazy to Think and Creates New Dependencies

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Gartner presented a whole bouquet of forecasts on artificial intelligence at its recent symposium in Barcelona. Gartner analyst Gene Alvarez emphasized the importance of the expected challenges: “IT leaders are facing a pivotal year in which profound disruptions, innovations, and risks will spread at an unprecedented pace.”

In the central presentation, it was first emphasized that by 2027, “75 percent of all hires will require certifications and tests for AI competency.” However, acquiring these new skills is not so easy, according to Gartner analyst Leigh McMullen, because “traditional educational institutions are significantly lagging behind demand.”

The second forecast is based on a widely noted study by Microsoft: “AI makes you lazy to think!” it says concisely. This means that within the next year, the decline in critical thinking skills due to the use of GenAI will prompt many companies to introduce “AI-free” competency assessments. “If we use AI like a magician, it can set us back ten years,” warns Gartner.

The New Dependencies

The third prediction concerned digital sovereignty. According to Gartner, by 2027, more than a third of all countries will use regional AI platforms with proprietary contextual data. This sounds like national sovereignty, but according to Gartner, it actually amounts to a new dependency. “Whoever controls the contextual data controls the value creation,” is the conclusion of the market researchers.

Regarding the new AI agents, Gartner believes that by 2028, 80 percent of all customer-facing processes will be handled by multi-agent systems. The reasoning is plausible: agent systems absorb routine, and routine is the biggest block of costs and frustration. And so, the use of AI agents will increase rapidly. “By 2028, 90 percent of all B2B purchases will be handled by AI agents,” according to the remarkable forecast. This means that products must become machine-readable; otherwise, they will not exist for AI agents.

Deaths Will Become Liability Cases

It is known that AI can also be dangerous. Gartner predicts that by 2028, more than 2,000 lawsuits for death by AI will arise. The reason: “Many autonomous systems that operate without robust safety logic inevitably create liability cases.” The often-lacking transparency is therefore no longer a philosophical question but falls into the category of forensics and claims settlement.

A particularly steep thesis states: “By 2030, 20 percent of all money transactions will be programmable.” This means that money will also transport rules and specifications, making money transactions context-sensitive and giving AI agents economic power.

The next forecast states that by 2027, the cost-benefit gap in process-oriented service contracts can be reduced by at least 50 percent through the new development of AI agents. AI agents already recognize implicit knowledge, which leads to new assets. For example, continuous, innovation-based pricing.

A clear warning concerns the many compliance activities: “By 2027, fragmented AI regulations will affect half of the global economy and cause five billion dollars in costs.” The forecast is because there are already around 1,000 AI legislative initiatives worldwide, without a uniform definition of AI. This makes AI governance a lottery game.

Many Forecasts Make Overview Difficult

In parallel, there were further forecasts, for example, for software development. In the report “Software Engineering Trends,” Gartner wrote in the summer: “AI-native software development is now standard; LLM-based applications and multi-agent systems are indispensable.” In Barcelona, this statement was further supported: “Developers must fully align their basic tools, delivery pipelines, and quality metrics with AI.” Another forecasting instrument is the “Emerging Technology Adoption Radar.” It ranked more than 100 technologies along time horizons between one and eight years. There, one finds trends that rarely make the headlines, such as disinformation security, digital twins of organizations, quantum AI, or homomorphic encryption. Interesting was the note that the core of the technological shift is not functionality but trust.

Another presentation was titled “Top Strategic Technology Trends.” According to Gartner, these include AI-native development platforms, AI supercomputers, multi-agent systems, domain-specific models, proactive cybersecurity, and geopatriation as a new constraint. Overall, Gartner had so many forecasts that practically no buzzword was left out. What is needed is a coordinated classification of the individual trends and a well-founded overall ranking. On the positive side, it should be noted that Gartner, despite the undeniable potential of AI, adopts a subtly critical stance. There were repeated references to neo-Luddite movements, national AI bans, and a possible societal backlash against AI through surveillance and loss of control.

Exaggerated and Yet Along the Urgent Questions

The Gartner forecasts exaggerate – as always – but they follow a real tectonic shift triggered by AI. It is not the mentioned years that are decisive, but the directions: AI agents are reorganizing value creation, regulations are fragmenting markets, data is becoming geopolitical, and productivity tools are facing a generational change. The open questions concern governance, skills, and politics. For IT professionals, it will be important whether the forecast of 100 percent AI use in all their work turns out to be a technological necessity or a marketing gag.

(kbe)