Talking to the assembled multitudes at Dell Technologies World, Dell said that all types of AI applications are happening, and he urged partners and customers to invest in AI as data becomes their most valuable asset. He noted that organisations are in danger of losing their competitive edge if they are unable to implement AI and machine learning to use data.

"To be competitive in the future, you have got to use software, data and AI", Dell said. "If AI is your rocket ship, data is the fuel for your rocket. If you know how to use it, your data will become your most valuable asset - even more valuable than your applications."

He said that up to 200TB of data a day would be generated by the typical city of one million people in 2020, and the data will be generated through a great diversity of sources including smart buildings, public security, and autonomous vehicles. In this aspect, data security will become an increasingly crucial issue, according to Dell.

Dell said that a Level 4 autonomous car would generate 4TB of new data every single day in 2020, and such big data cannot be transmitted without 5G networks. He stressed that the upcoming 5G applications would fuel the development of AI, IoT, cloud architectures and edge computing.

However, Dell thought there would be issues arriving with 5G, as many telecom carriers worldwide can hardly afford the expensive network equipment.

Governments could play a specific role in this space by helping the carriers with equipment upgrades just as they did in the optical equipment upgrade.

Dell dissed Tesla founder Elon Musk for his comments about AI. He said that every technology creates good and bad things, all depending on how people use it.

"Saying AI is really bad, and we should not have AI is nonsense. We have to figure out how to use it responsibly. That is our job," Dell said.

For enterprises seeking to survive fierce competition, they have to catch up with the ongoing wave of digital transformation, Dell indicated, adding that there are no standard versions of AI solutions as different solution architectures are required to meet different core values of enterprises.