2026 TMT Predictions: AI in the workplace

Broad adoption of AI-generated video creates both opportunities and challenges for the workforce and HR leaders—and, in some professions, potentially changes the nature of work.

What could this mean for your workforce?

• Content core to HR processes, including recruiting (résumés and interviews), virtual collaboration (meeting recordings, posts on internal sites), and even background checks could become more difficult to verify.[1]
• Those in roles that create video content—whether in advertising, marketing, production, or social media—will likely need to integrate new tools into their work. At the same time, their unique expertise will be critical to elevating content above the baseline of AI-generated material.[2]
• New roles or teams may be needed to review and manage synthetic content, especially for platforms hosting user-generated videos. These skill sets may be increasingly needed elsewhere in the organization where synthetic content is generated.[3]

The accelerating integration of robotics and physical AI into the workplace is likely to have significant workforce impact, which may require leaders to rethink the ways in which humans and machines work together to deliver value.

What could this mean for your workforce?

• Unlike Generative AI, robotics and physical AI are poised to automate aspects of manual labor. Capacity release will likely call for workflow reengineering to optimize human time for more strategic or sensitive tasks.[4]

• Organizations that adopt robotics and physical AI will need new or evolved skill sets, such as troubleshooting robotics code, managing data protocols and integration challenges, and monitoring threats to cyber-physical systems.[5]
• Robot interactions with the real world could cause harm, property damage, or workplace injuries that introduce new liabilities. Redefining safety culture and retraining the workforce on these new challenges is likely critical to building trust and reducing risk.[6]

Disruptions to semiconductor supply chains—both in the past couple of years and anticipated in the future—could have significant implications for the workforce in the US and around the globe.

What could this mean for your workforce?

• Export controls, trade restrictions, and investments in onshore semi design and manufacturing may cause a significant reallocation of jobs from China and Taiwan toward the United States and emerging hubs in ally nations.[7]
• A more geographically distributed semiconductor ecosystem makes it harder to forecast hiring needs and build talent strategies. Organizations may need more sophisticated workforce planning capabilities to navigate unpredictable supply chains.[8]
• Increasing demand for semiconductors and data centers, paired with initiatives to reshore and nearshore talent and operations, could create demand planning, recruiting, and upskilling challenges for countries that have not historically housed these roles.[9]

The rapid advancement and adoption of agents and multi-agentic systems—and the importance that places on orchestration—is likely to alter the way humans and machines work together.

What could this mean for your workforce?

• Organizations should consider creating entirely new role taxonomies, career paths, and performance metrics that reflect human-AI collaboration to deliver outcomes. Career progression could be increasingly influenced by the ability to manage complex systems of agents.[10]
• Even entry-level roles could increasingly look like those of managers, as employees at all levels will likely need to be able to delegate work to systems of agents and review that work for quality. As these systems get more complex, this could become harder and more critical.[11]
• AI value realization isn’t only affected by tech—it’s also an adoption challenge. Trust, clear governance, human-machine work design, and aligned incentives for workers are areas requiring ongoing investment.[12]