We often hear about AI replacing workers, but Zebra’ s vision focuses on augmented collective intelligence( ACI). How are your respective industries specifically using AI to support rather than replace frontline teams?
Stuart Hubbard: To briefly explain, ACI is a conceptual framework I use to explain what Zebra and its partners see and hear when collaborating with customers. There are three key components of ACI. First, agent swarms or‘ digital workers’ instead of a single‘ all-knowing’ model. ACI utilises a network or‘ swarm’ of connected, dedicated agents. Second, it is multi-style, combining different styles of AI such as generative and classical algorithms to address complex tasks. And third, human integration, with workers contributing unique intelligence, common sense and domain expertise to the network, while AI scales these talents through decision support and automation.
Mark Thomson: Workers need a culture where they can test and learn with AI, including allowing for a margin of failure. Simply deploying AI tools will not lead to success by itself. The right culture and change management processes will support AI transformation initiatives, but without it, the narrative of fear and low user adoption becomes a risk. Employee understanding and adoption are foundational for grassroots innovation as workers become more confident.
Jason Harvey: I’ d add to Stuart’ s point by focusing on how today’ s multimodal AI models are adding new value to current IoT solutions to deliver what we call‘ ambient intelligence’ across retail, logistics and manufacturing. Think of ambient intelligence as digitised physical environments for networks
160 July 2026