When AI shapes the business situation, CIOs face crucial moments. Their roles have expanded, changed, and in some cases completely redefine. Five years later, CIOs may be seeing radically different landscapes thanks to these technologies. Here's how AI is redefined: The role of the CIO And the main responsibility that CIOS is likely to undertake in the next few years.
Transitioning from human to agent labor management
CIO It has always played a key role in fostering organizational and cultural change, especially when it comes to helping employees adapt to new technologies. and AI agents are embedded in the workforceCIOs can face double challenges. Help employees work with intelligent agents while ensuring that those agents are designed and managed to effectively collaborate with humans.
According to a recent Gartner survey, only 17% of CIOs surveyed do this, with 69% expecting to do so by 2030.
The CIO will launch a major or joint lead workforce plan with key human resources officers (CHROs) and other business function leaders, setting up roles and responsibilities, onboarding agents, and management of their performance.
They are responsible for building a hybrid “human agent” culture where employees navigate new questions such as “What is the role of an agent in my team?” Or, “How can I raise concerns about agents?” and start navigate and even create new models for semi-autonomous employees, including legal, ethical and security frameworks.
Act as the best information and product representative
CIOs take on more technology responsibilities beyond enabling business (such as customer initiatives) and non-learning responsibility (such as ESG efforts). For this reason, they not only make it possible, but also play a greater role in shaping their business strategy.
In this expanded role, CIOs are responsible for topline metrics as well as cost- and efficiency-focused metrics. They manage the brand, customer and ethical implications of emerging technologies. Some people take full ownership of these results.
According to a Gartner survey, 79% of CIOs believe that five years from now, they will own the lifecycle of their products, from ideas to market delivery, and focus on driving revenue through platforms, data and AI-enabled services. They are responsible for working with new stakeholders, including investor relationships, market research, and venture capital. Customer experiences and acquisitions are regularly at the forefront of the heart.
Manage your AI portfolio for topline growth
CIOs always manage their IT portfolio, and that remains the same. They strategically align it to business goals to ensure cybersecurity Infrastructure Managementarchitecture, applications, data, and other core IT domains.
However, many CIOs now expect to take on a new kind of responsibility. Management of Enterprise's AI portfolio. This is a completely different area, shifting focus from cost and operations to top-line growth, product and service innovation, and AI-specific practices and outcomes. In fact, 90% of CIOs report to own or own an enterprise AI portfolio within five years.
They are responsible for starting the Enterprise AI portfolio, the ethics and measurement of the portfolio ROI enables new result AIknowledge, foresight, innovation, etc. This is enabled by new teams and roles within the IT department, such as AI ethicists and AI asset managers.
What CIOs can stop: Building and deploying most AI
Before AI, the CIO and his team led enterprise technology decisions, from vendor selection to system design and deployment. Today, 85% of CIOs report that they primarily own the talent needed to deploy AI. However, within five years, that number will drop to just 53%.
AI Guardrails and a distributed governance model allow AI to guide non-technical leaders in assessing and deploying AI tools without losing control. This requires extensive AI literacy in the enterprise. The CIO leads Enterprise AI Learning Development efforts focus on teaching and transferring IT technical skills, allowing businesses to evaluate, build and deploy AI.
CIOs become like urban planners, designing AI “city” and others build it and enable federated innovation. Naturally, it limits its support to only the most complex and high-stakes solutions for production.
Ultimately, IT and business units formally blend. For example, a CIO may report to the CEO of a business unit (or vice versa).
The core responsibility remains, but it is done differently
Many of the CIO roles have evolved, but some core responsibilities will remain for the next five years. What's changing is how the CIO performs them. They will continue to manage the budget, procurement and infrastructure of enterprise technology, but AI will restructure the nature of these tasks
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Budget: From managers to orchestrators. Instead of managing a static IT budget, CIOS oversees a more real-time, AI-driven IT budget. They behave more like conductors than gatekeepers. AI may even act as budget stakeholders by proposing investments, supporting them with forecast ROIs, and competing for funding. CIOs need to balance human and machine priorities in continuous multi-agent negotiations.
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Procurement: From buyers to ecosystem curators. CIOs will move from purchasing an all-in-one platform to building flexible, configurable architectures. This means that interoperability and agility are prioritized over long-term vendor lock-in. AI-powered procurement agents scan the market, strengthen contract negotiations and execute purchases. The CIO oversees this intelligent market and ensures governance, alignment and strategic fit.
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Infrastructure: From operators to ethical architects. Infrastructure increasingly manages performance tuning, resource reallocation and real-time adaptation. CIOs will focus on shaping infrastructure that is more autonomous, adaptable and align with business goals. CIOs are responsible for ensuring that the system is able to respond to emotional contexts, prioritize fairness, and embed ethical protection measures in sensitive areas, particularly legal and customer use.
Forward thinking
Over the next five years, CIOs will move from traditional control points to planning key human workforces, driving product and revenue outcomes, and managing their enterprise AI portfolio. As business units use AI to gain more autonomy, CIOs will focus on transforming core responsibility. It oversees adaptive, AI-driven systems, intelligent sourcing, and ethical and autonomous infrastructure tailored to human values.
