Dell's AI approach

Dell sees company knowledge, not AI models, as its competitive edge.

“If you adopt ai technology but are unwilling or unable to change your operating model, you’re going to run your business just like you did before ai, but you’re going to do ai to it”

Why knowledge matters

Dell uses subject matter experts to encode practices into machine-readable skill files.

“It manifests as a markdown file, just this piece of text. But that’s a very special piece of text because it’s a piece of text that other people don’t know about”

AI agents improve

Agents build relationships in knowledge graphs and develop new digital skills.

“Those agents also improve as they work, building relationships in knowledge graphs and developing new digital skills”

Protecting knowledge

Dell warns against sharing proprietary knowledge with third parties.

“It doesn’t mean you can’t use frontier models and open models. It just means that when you design your ai system, you need to realize that the thing that is your moat is not the actual tools. It’s not even the models. It’s the special knowledge that’s now manifesting in these new forms that really captured what you know and do differently than your competitors”

Dell's advice

Companies must change how they are organized to use ai effectively.

“You’re going to have a bad experience because … if you apply agents to your company, what you are doing is redistributing work between people and machines”

What happens next

Dell's AI Factory helps companies close the gap between ai ambition and outcomes.