When the fine folks at GlobalData issued me my corporate laptop, I was surprised to see that it came with a touchscreen. I’ve been working at a computer for decades at this point, and while I’m not opposed to using a touchscreen interface, it’s just not something I’ve ever really thought of as a “work thing.” The way I see it is that touchscreens are for mindlessly scrolling on my phone or selecting items on my Nintendo Switch, not for paging through financial reports and RFPs.

I have occasionally dabbled with using the touchscreen just to see if it’s something I could adapt to. The reason for this is that I see my kids use alternative interfaces all the time. My son does have a gaming PC, but also uses an Oculus headset device. And my daughter prefers her iPad to a computer for Roblox and drawing. They also use their Alexa devices to set reminders and alarms for their busy days.

With generative AI raising the salience of natural language interfaces, I have found myself wondering what the corporate systems of 20 years from now might look like. I think there’s an assumption that we will be using natural language to query AI agents using the traditional keyboard interface, but there might be a greater vision worth looking considering.

After all, a keyboard and mouse are ideal for precision writing and clicking. But theoretically, nothing is more precise than a well-articulated voice prompt. I could probably have written this blog entry a lot faster if I was dictating it. I don’t, because the average dictation software isn’t quite up to where I want it to be, and I would still need to hand-edit any “talkos.” But that’s now.

I could see a future for insurance systems where the maturity of AI leads to voice being the primary interaction device, and even touchscreens replaced by motion and gesture detection. And if that seems unlikely, consider that those changes are already happening in home technology – and home technology is always an indicator of where corporate tech will have to go to meet the next crop of employees where they are most comfortable. (Think about how unthinkable mobile development may have sounded in 2002, but how ubiquitous it was by 2012.)

The employee experience is going to be crucial with insurance facing a retirement surge and institutional knowledge of the business needing to be communicated and preserved. The byzantine, menu-diving paradigm of insurance systems up to this point might not be the best equipped interface to manage the transition to the next generation of insurance knowledge workers.