Dell Technologies Founder Michael Dell said today that artificial intelligence technologies “will be the dominant theme through the end of the decade,” and equated AI tech as “up there in the pantheon with the Industrial Revolution, electricity, and the internet” for its ongoing and lasting impact to government, business, and society.
Moreover, “artificial intelligence will out-do humans in every cognitive task,” he predicted during a policy address at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
During a wide-ranging discussion of the current and coming AI impacts, Dell said that “what deep [AI] models can do today – this is the worst they will ever perform. We’re at the beginning of a revolution in how humans get things done.”
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Government Impacts
For the Federal government, the eventual impacts of AI tech have the potential to be vast, the Dell Technologies founder said.
He pointed to findings of a new report from the Technology CEO Council that were discussed at a White House meeting he attended on Monday and that emphasize how productivity, innovation, and efficiency can transform U.S. government operations.
The report says that the use of AI capabilities – along with IT modernization and business process innovations – can “reduce operational costs and increase productivity for the taxpayer by $2 trillion over 10 years, while simultaneously improving service quality and impact.”
“Government spends at least $100 billion [annually] on technology that’s antiquated and should have been modernized,” Dell said today. “If you apply what we have done at Dell [Technologies] to the government, we would see massive returns,” he said.
Those kinds of savings, Dell said, are also available to states, cities, and county governments that are trying to improve citizen services. As part of the drive toward improving government, he also endorsed the increased use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology products.
Discussing Federal government use cases, Dell said that agencies now typically maintain “many clouds or lakes” of data, and that his company is “bringing together those disparate resources to provide more value.”
In a social media post today, Dell said he had “a productive discussion” on Monday with President Trump and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk “about enhancing government efficiency and accelerating U.S. leadership in AI and technology.”
“We are proud to be a trusted AI partner for the U.S. government and look forward to more engaging discussions with customers and policymakers,” Dell said.
Macro Policies
Discussing a broader list of policy issues, Dell talked about the need for more electric power to not only bring more data centers online, but also to satisfy demand from electric vehicle owners. That increased demand for power, Dell said, also creates the need to save on power and space by replacing outdated servers and putting in place much more capable AI servers.
The Dell Technologies founder also discussed the growing national security implications of AI tech and said that advanced technologies should be considered a “national security priority.”
“The only way to win is with AI,” he said. “It’s a constant cat and mouse game, and that will continue in the battle between good and evil.”
And on the cybersecurity front, Dell reckoned that if all of the leading cybersecurity tech companies gathered their findings they would point to “hundreds of trillions” of threat-driven events. “We need to enable our AI to deal with that volume of data and to make sense of it,” he said.
Asked to predict broader trends out to 2030, Dell replied that the future is harder to read because of the sharp acceleration in the rate of change, but offered, “There’s a much greater likelihood of positive rather than negative outcomes.”
Balancing that view, Dell pointed to earlier predictions of “fabulous” promise for social media tech, but added it would be “Pollyanna” to say that all of that promise has been realized.
DOGE Outlook
Regarding the ongoing work of the White House’s DOGE component, Dell said, “I don’t know a ton about DOGE other than what I’ve read online.”
But he said, “I talked to [DOGE Chief] Elon [Musk] yesterday, and it came up in our meetings.”
He continued, “There’s a lot about the whole modernization of government systems, and there are real opportunities there.” But, Dell added, it’s “difficult for me to work out how large that opportunity is and what is being exaggerated on either side.”
China Impact
Not all AI is ripe for government use, Dell said, pointing to large language models being developed by China-based Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co.
“Clearly it represents a lot of novel innovation,” he said. “But if we think we can stop China from getting AI, we are clearly incorrect, not just DeepSeek but other models from China and elsewhere. Every day, there are more and more models coming out.”
“It’s interesting,” he said, “that the people who are creating these models are not particularly numerous. It’s a small number of super-qualified individuals, and they are clearly in short supply.”
Looking further down the road at AI model development, Dell said, “Anything that is exciting will overshoot, there will be hyperbole, there will be excessive money, but this is enormous. Let’s do less mundane – let’s do more rewarding.”
Dell Business Impacts
On his own company’s business front, Dell said, “as we move as move to algorithms and architect data, there’s a lot to be done.”
“We need advanced semiconductors, and we need progress at every layer of the ecosystem. We are building the big infrastructure, advanced training farms, and the like at Dell,” he said.
He also noted that Dell has sold $1.7 trillion of equipment over the years, including 900 million devices, and that the company owns “an incredible vault of data on how people interact with their computers and troubleshooting customer support.”
On how Dell forces adoption of AI technologies internally, he said the “only way to do this is to be aggressive,” and that change management strategies have to come into play.
The change being wrought by adoption of AI tech, he said, “is of such a significant magnitude that you have to do it.”
“If I was a 32-year old, I would not be concerned … that my company’s doing AI,” he said.
“That’s not the question,” he continued. “The bigger question is, if I’m a 32-year-old and my company is not doing AI, [then] AI will not replace you, somebody who knows AI better than you will replace you.”
