CIOs forecast all IT work will involve AI-human collaboration by 2030

Chief Information Officers expect artificial intelligence to be embedded in all IT work by the end of the decade, a shift that will significantly change how Australian technology teams operate across both the public and private sectors.

According to findings from a survey of more than 700 CIOs conducted in July 2025, by 2030 none of the IT workload will be performed solely by humans. Instead, 75 per cent of tasks will be completed by humans supported by AI, while the remaining 25 per cent will be carried out autonomously by AI systems. For Australian organisations facing ongoing skills shortages and productivity pressures, this evolution is expected to accelerate the adoption of AI-enabled workflows.

The report highlights the need for organisations to strike a balance between two critical factors: AI readiness and human readiness. Both are seen as essential to discovering, delivering and sustaining value from AI technologies, particularly as Australian businesses and government agencies scale their use of AI.

"While not all AI is ready to deliver value, humans are even less ready to capture value," said Alicia Mullery, VP Analyst at Gartner. "AI readiness means AI can help you find value and effectively meet the needs of specific use cases. Human readiness is about whether you have the right workforce and organisation to capture and sustain AI value."

Gartner's analysis suggests the impact of AI on global employment will remain neutral through 2026. However, the growing prevalence of AI-augmented and AI-driven tasks is expected to generate more than 500 million net new human jobs globally by 2036. In Australia, this is likely to translate into increased demand for roles supporting AI governance, security, data management and compliance.

"AI is not about job loss - it's about workforce transformation," said Daryl Plummer, VP, Distinguished Analyst, Gartner Fellow and Chief of AI Research for the Gartner High Tech Leaders and Providers practice. "CIOs should start transforming their workforces by restraining new hiring, especially for roles involving low-complexity tasks, and by repositioning talent to new business areas that generate revenue."

The recommendation to slow recruitment for low-complexity roles aligns with efforts by Australian CIOs to improve productivity and manage costs. However, Gartner notes that this approach alone will not be sufficient. To fully capture value from AI, employees will need to adapt to working alongside AI in fundamentally different ways as skill requirements continue to evolve.

"AI will make some skills less important, such as summarisation, information retrieval and translation, as AI is ready to automate or augment these tasks," said Mullery. "But AI also creates a need for entirely new skills. These AI skills are fundamentally different from most skills. Where skills were traditionally about doing tasks better, AI skills are about making you better - a better motivator, better thinker and better communicator."

Developing these capabilities will require more than technical upskilling. Gartner recommends organisations periodically test employees to ensure critical core skills are retained, warning that overreliance on AI tools could erode essential capabilities, particularly in key Australian industries and government services.

The report also emphasises the importance of assessing AI readiness across financial, technical and vendor-related dimensions. A separate Gartner survey from May 2025 found that 72 per cent of CIOs believe their organisations are either breaking even or losing money on AI investments, a finding that mirrors the cautious approach many Australian organisations are taking as they move from pilots to production.

From a technical standpoint, capabilities such as search, content generation and summarisation are already considered mature. However, AI accuracy and autonomous agents still require further development. Gartner analysts warn that value delivery will remain uncertain unless organisations invest in reliability and governance processes, particularly as autonomous systems are introduced into core Australian business operations.

Vendor selection is another key consideration, with Gartner noting that hyperscale providers are well suited to large-scale deployments, while industry-specific start-ups can address targeted use cases. Research-led vendors may offer advanced AI capabilities but lack scale. Gartner also stresses that every AI procurement decision has sovereignty implications, a factor of particular importance for Australian organisations managing data residency and regulatory obligations.

The report concludes that organisations looking to extract value from AI must address technological and human readiness in parallel, building technical capability while preparing their workforces for an AI-centric future.