SAN DIEGO — AI is a catalyst for role redesign within IT teams and is shifting CIO priorities for the types of skills their employees develop. The technology has also presented the opportunity to incorporate “AI-augmented leadership,” where CIOs, executive leadership and management can “combine human experience with machine efficiency and insights to improve their impact,” according to Gartner.
“Today, Gartner estimates that about 80% of work is done by humans without AI. We predict that by 2030, 75% of work will be done by humans with AI, and 25% of work will be done by AI,” said Tori Paulman, an analyst at Gartner, during a session at the research firm’s recent Digital Workplace Summit event.
Meanwhile, CIOs are facing a shortage of IT talent as growth in the workforce flattens.
“There’s something that you need to be aware of as leaders, which is that talent scarcity is your new normal,” said Paulman, who uses they/them pronouns.
Paulman said part of the tech talent shortage stems from a “labor force growth problem,” citing a finding from the World Economic Forum describing a global flattening in the labor growth curve due to issues that include aging populations, uneven wage growth and AI-driven automation.
AI creates ‘experience starvation’
Paulman said AI is reshaping how employees build — or fail to build — experience on the job. Given the widespread access to generative AI (GenAI) tools, in some ways AI has democratized knowledge gathering, but it doesn’t replace the value of experience. Moreover, while GenAI is ubiquitous in the workplace, it doesn’t benefit every worker equally. For example, if a junior financial analyst uses GenAI to provide investment suggestions for a fixed income portfolio, they’re highly susceptible to making a bad decision because they lack the experience, skills and discernment that a senior executive has to weigh the AI response — and use the tool productively.
“When experts use AI, they’re able to do a lot more work,” using the AI tool to do both the basics and the more high-level strategic work, Paulman said. ” We see what we call ‘experience starvation,’ which is that now there’s nothing easy for [young] people to cut their teeth on.”
Because of AI-driven disruption, 59% of the workforce will need brand new skills within the next two years, according to a World Economic Forum report Paulman referenced.
“As AI is starting to bring these new skills, and as we’re starting to skill people in new ways — automation, low code, context engineering, etc. — we’re starting to see skills atrophy in the things that we care about ,” such as diagnostic skills and demonstrating versatility of skills, Paulman explained.
In addition to seeing some skills atrophy, CIOs are noticing a reduction in skills versatility — the 2025 Gartner CIO Talent Planning Survey, which surveyed 700 CIOs, revealed that only 25% of the IT workforce is versatile today .
That combination of talent scarcity and shifting skill demands is pushing CIOs to rethink how they lead and develop teams.
Rethinking core IT skill sets
As disruption accelerates, CIOs play an important role in determining which “core human skills” are nonnegotiable for employees.
This process starts by examining where there are technical and nontechnical skills gaps.
Gartner’s CIO Talent Planning Survey found that CIOs see the most severe technical skills gaps in GenAI, AI, machine learning, data science and cybersecurity.
Looking ahead, the most important technical skills for IT workers over the next three years will be preemptive cybersecurity, multi-agent systems, context engineering, AI-native development and large language model management, Paulman said. While 80% of cybersecurity spend today is focused on reactive cybersecurity, Gartner forecasts that by 2030 50% of annual cybersecurity spending will be on preemptive or proactive cybersecurity.
The nontechnical skills that are most important to CIOs this year are innovation, problem solving, critical thinking, agile learning and creativity. Paulman said it’s worth noting that “critical thinking” was the top nontechnical skill for the last two years but dropped to No. 3 in the list this year.
“I don’t believe that that’s because critical thinking is less important,” Paulman said. “I think that what we’re seeing here is CIOs saying it’s go time. It’s time for you to innovate and solve problems.”
Action plan for addressing the tech talent shortage
The combination of talent scarcity and shifting skill demands is pushing CIOs to rethink how they lead and develop teams. To address the nontechnical skills gaps and encourage their teams to develop top IT skills — such as preemptive cybersecurity — CIOs should try using an “AI-augmented leadership” plan to manage their teams.
“AI-augmented leadership is a discipline that allows you to combine your human skills with what machines do,” Paulman said, adding that 97% of CEOs say they want leaders to combine human capabilities with machine capabilities.
Paulman outlined three areas CIOs should focus on:
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AI as a mentor. This aspect of augmented leadership involves providing an immersive environment in which employees can practice their skills and perform better within the workflow. Examples include GenAI simulators to build skills toward attaining certifications. By 2028, Gartner predicts that 40% of employees will be mentored by AI.
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AI as a reviewer. This entails using AI as an assistant to do code review or summarize the news. “Managers are using AI to do some of the stuff they don’t want to do, like time-off approval and calendar management. They’re using AI to get better at giving good feedback and spotting trends with their team.”
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AI as a sounding board. This involves using AI to develop personas of your colleagues that can act as a sounding board to challenge and advise you. “It should just be something that you are playing with so that you can improve your own skills, persuasion, management, leadership and your own preparation for things,” Paulman said.
