Artificial intelligence and machine learning are probably going to herald the most important technology revolution the world has ever seen, says John Roese, Dell EMC's global CTO. He believes AI is already pervasive, and that over half of all consumers are today interacting with systems that are driven by AI, such as digital assistants.

There are also proven returns on investments to be had, he says, mentioning that Google acquired a company called DeepMind, and then set its AI to work on improving the cooling of its datacentres. Google saved hundreds of millions of dollars, and the results paid for the acquisition.