Jo Debecker on Forbes: The Future of Engineering Is Hybrid
Writing for Forbes Technology Council, President and CEO Jo Debecker emphasizes that engineering's future won't be decided by AI alone, but by how deliberately humans and AI are made to work together.
2 minutes
30th of July, 2026
An “And” Story, Not an “Or” Story
Akkodis President and CEO Jo Debecker argues that engineering's future will be defined by how humans and AI work together, not by AI alone. Hybrid collaboration has to be intentional: organizations can automate many process steps, but still need a human control point that checks the outcome. He notes that large language models are frequently the wrong tool where an outcome must be deterministic — his advice is to build a script, not reach for an LLM. Accountability, he says, remains inescapably human: someone still has to sign off, and "the AI did it" is not an acceptable answer when a system fails.
The future of engineering is human ingenuity together with machine precision.
— Jo Debecker, President & CEO, Akkodis