Looking Ahead to the World Economic Forum in Davos

The AI revolution promises a future where technology works for people, allowing us to focus on impactful work rather than mundane tasks. This is not a time to fear change but to embrace the opportunities AI presents, particularly in areas such as creativity, innovation, and human connection. Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach explains why the World Economic Forum in Davos provides an ideal platform to discuss these advancements.

Imagine a world where work isn’t about tasks and to-do lists but about the impact we can drive. A world where we can move from people working with technology to one where technology truly works for people. That’s the promise of the AI revolution, and it’s happening right now, before our eyes. 

This isn’t a time to fear change; it’s a time to embrace the incredible opportunities ahead of us. And there couldn’t be a better time to bring leaders of business, academia, and government together to define what’s next than at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20.

We’re on the verge of a whole new era where technology helps us automate the mundane, freeing us up to focus on what truly matters: creativity, innovation, and genuine human connection. 

To dig deeper, we will be publishing a global study tomorrow on AI and its potential impacts on uniquely human skills. Our study asked respondents about six categories of human abilities—communication, creativity, empathy, ethics, judgment, and leadership—and we see that people uniformly believe that AI is good news for the human capabilities that will propel organizations into the future. The findings challenge the narrative that AI will replace humans, revealing instead that AI will be a catalyst for a skills revolution where humans work alongside advanced technologies to achieve transformative results.

Igniting a Human Skills Revolution

The World Economic Forum brings together leaders from all over the world to do one central thing: Look ahead. I like to tell my Workmates there is a reason why the windshield in your car is bigger than the rearview mirror!

At Workday, we believe that AI will ignite a skills revolution. The skills revolution will redefine our relationship with work, making our businesses more competitive, relevant, and enduring. Technology, especially AI, has enabled this all-encompassing shift toward human-centered businesses.

Creating this future requires collaboration among forward-thinking leaders willing to reimagine growth through more human-centric means without sacrificing profitability.

What will leadership look like in this new world of work? I believe we will be freed to lead with heart. If I think back on the best managers and leaders I’ve known, I realize they were both motivational and inspirational. It takes heart to be an effective leader. It takes authenticity. It takes connection. My hope is that AI-enabled leadership will free us to focus on these critical leadership levers instead of the tasks that can weigh us down.

But creating this future requires collaboration among forward-thinking leaders willing to reimagine growth through more human-centric means without sacrificing profitability. Big picture, we’re trying to build a fruitful relationship between humans and AI helpers. At a practical level, this will necessitate strong partnerships between companies and individuals.

I often say that with all tectonic shifts, people find a way to peacefully coexist with new technologies, and it will happen with AI as well. As we learn to peacefully coexist, it will drive a step function change in human and company productivity.

Many companies will need external expertise to navigate challenges like ROI uncertainty, data privacy and security, and integration difficulties. Most companies cannot manage the AI journey alone, and they shouldn’t have to. That’s what we’re here for. 

A Future Built on Trust

Customers partnered with us on their journeys to the cloud, and now they’re turning to us to harness the power of AI to boost productivity, efficiency, and cost savings. Workday is in a unique position to give them the ultimate advantage. We’ve been delivering AI capabilities to our customers for nearly a decade, building AI into the core of our platform. That means that AI features and functionality are embedded natively in all our applications. And with more than 70 million users generating more than 800 billion transactions per year on our platform, the volume of clean, trusted data that Workday and our ecosystem can leverage for AI is simply unmatched. 

We know that AI innovation won’t truly reach its full potential unless it’s used responsibly and ethically—and in a way that keeps humans at the center. I’m proud that Workday has been leading by example in our commitment to the responsible development of AI technologies for our customers, the deployment of AI for our employees, and the ongoing advocacy for AI regulation that positively impacts the world. Leaders are eager to realize the benefits of AI, but they want to work with partners they can trust. Workday has a long history of keeping our customers’ most critical data—about their people and their finances—safe from the beginning. We take this same trustworthy approach with AI.

I’m looking forward to discussing these topics and more, and learning from the forward-thinkers (especially our customers) at Davos.

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