There’s been high expectations for data becoming the rocket fuel of a new economy, with words like artificial intelligence, blockchain and machine learning tossed about like fortune-cookie promises heralding a gilded digital future. Now that these emerging technologies are reaching the mainstream, businesses are able to unlock the potential in their existing data vaults.

“For years, there’s been this hype about big data … and now we’re really starting to see some practical applications and use cases,” said Allison Dew (pictured), chief marketing officer of Dell Technologies Inc.

One of those practical applications is increased food safety: “Wal-Mart [is] using blockchain technology to decrease the amount of time from seven days to mere seconds that it takes them to identify the source of food contamination,” said Dew, who spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the Dell Technologies World event in Las Vegas.

They discussed how cutting-edge technology is entering the mainstream and the hopes and fears surrounding digital transformation. (* Disclosure below.)

Robots might be coming to get us

Among big data’s most promising use cases is artificial intelligence, technology that’s boosting the development of autonomous machines. Eighty-five percent of the business leaders in Dell’s “Realizing 2030” survey are committed to becoming software-defined within five years, yet only 50 percent are confident that a human-machine workplace partnership will be positive.

While Dew acknowledges the fears surrounding digital transformation, she is confident about the benefits of technology: “On that optimist-versus-the-robots-are-coming-to-get-us spectrum, obviously there are things that we have to look out for as leaders, as society, as businesses. … And yet if you look at the example [of AI and machine learning] minimizing child sexual trafficking … it’s hard not to be an optimist,” she said.

Traditional marketing separates high-level conversations, such as the research conducted in “Realizing 2030,” from more practical-level sales discussions, but Dew sees no problem in combining the two. “Let’s talk about some end-user compute technology together with something really simple, like a monitor, that’s going to help [the customer] be more productive. Those things don’t have to fight with each other; you just have to be honest about when you’re doing each one,” she said.

Experiencing digital transformation with her own team has shown Dell the practical challenges facing her customers. “I look at my own team’s experience … and if you come in and you ask them to do something differently, that’s actually a pretty hard thing to do,” she stated. “[However], the only way to unlock the power of the data and the power of the new technologies is to actually change how work is done.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Technologies World 2018 event. (* Disclosure: Dell Technologies, Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE