AI agents are changing work — and Dell’s John Roese says it’s just beginning

2026-06-24 · Source: AI – SiliconANGLE · Field: Technology & Digital — Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Human Resources & Workforce Development, Corporate Strategy & Leadership · Depth: Intermediate, extended

Summary

Dell Technologies' global CTO and chief AI officer, John Roese, reveals insights from the company's nearly two years of operating autonomous AI agents, emphasizing their profound impact on work composition and organizational design. Roese notes that AI agents extract specific work types from jobs, necessitating a redefinition of roles rather than outright job replacement. Dell's research identified five work categories: Productivity, Hygiene, Coordination, Expert (agent-performable), and Human Element (human-centric). This shift demands a "massive organizational design exercise" to prevent jobs from becoming 30% utilized. Furthermore, the rise of "tokenomics" and usage-based API services for advanced models is compelling CIOs and CFOs to rethink capital expenditures, favoring hybrid AI strategies to control costs and optimize performance by selectively placing token consumption.

Key takeaway

For Directors of AI/ML and CTOs evaluating AI agent deployment, you must proactively engage in organizational redesign and job redefinition. Recognize that agents will absorb specific work types, freeing human capacity for higher-value, human-centric tasks. Implement a hybrid AI strategy to manage "tokenomics" and CapEx, ensuring cost-effective and secure token consumption by matching agent work types to appropriate infrastructure, rather than relying solely on usage-based API services. This approach prevents underutilized roles and optimizes AI investment.

Key insights

AI agents redefine work by extracting specific tasks, necessitating organizational redesign and hybrid AI for economic control.

Principles

• Jobs are containers of multiple work types.
• Agents extract work, not replace jobs.
• Hybrid AI optimizes token consumption.

Method

Dell analyzed 6,400 job descriptions, categorizing work into Productivity, Hygiene, Coordination, Expert, and Human Element to understand agent-human work rebalancing.

In practice

• Classify company work into five types.
• Redefine jobs based on agent capabilities.
• Implement hybrid AI for cost control.

Topics

• AI Agents
• Organizational Design
• Tokenomics
• Hybrid AI
• Workforce Transformation
• Capital Expenditures

Best for: VP of Engineering/Data, Executive, Director of AI/ML, CTO, HR Professional

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by AI – SiliconANGLE.