Michael Dell pushes on into the AI era amid mega mergers and Donald Trump tumult

"When you apply the new computer science – the AI, the machine intelligence and deep neural networks, you have the possibility to re-imagine every aspect of business in society, right from education to healthcare to everything ... We're seeing this as 'game on', as all of our customers are activated, to figure out what to do with all of this data."

Dell was speaking shortly after Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella had espoused his views on how technology companies would define ethics in the coming era, where concerns are rising that increasingly powerful computers could wreak havoc on employment and even pose a threat to humanity.

He says he believes that while it was important for companies to be a part of societal decisions, they should not presume to make them in place of governments. He also says he falls in the camp that believes more good than bad is going to emerge from coming advances.

"There are certainly impacts on humans, both good and bad, that have to be thought through, [but] a lot of great sci-fi movies and books are about horrible things that could happen with technology; turns out, that most of that is wrong ... I like those movies just as much as the next guy, " Dell says.

"You know, that Netflix series Black Mirror? I watch that to get a sense for what not to do ... we definitely think about that stuff. Anytime something new happens, there's going to be fears – people will be scared, but you have to embrace the future, that's the only way, because it's not going to slow down."

Big decisions

In a similar vein Dell says the pace of change at the company that bears his name will not decrease any time soon, after he made two of the biggest calls in the industry in recent years.

In 2013 he pulled off a $US25 billion deal to take the publicly listed Dell private, in what Forbes described as the nastiest tech buyout ever, then he upped the ante even further with the surprise move to pick up EMC for a cool $US67 billion.

Dell says the record breaking deal for EMC almost happened much earlier in 2008-2009, when the boards of directors of both companies got together and worked it out, but events conspired against it.

"We had consultants all over the place doing analysis of how it would work, but then we ran into this thing called the Global Financial Crisis and the bankers said 'forget about it, it's not going to happen right now'," Dell recalls.

"So it was actually a long, long wind up leading to this."

He says the scale of the decisions he has taken do not phase him, and to a large degree he trusts his instincts honed over decades in a rapidly changing sector.

While there are no obvious mega deals on the horizon, he says he certainly would not resile from future big moves.

"This is a business where you're quick or you're dead ... you change or you die. If you're doing the same thing you were doing a few years ago, you're finished," Dell says.

"They are not capricious decisions, they are things you think about and consider for quite some time before you do it. But look, I started the company when I was 19 years old in my dorm room ... couldn't afford a garage and I had a thousand dollars, and, it's been going well.

"So I kind of listen to my own voice, listen to people around me and figure out what to do for each step along the way."

Merger progress

In the year since his company acquired EMC, Dell says the company is starting to benefit from the "portfolio effect", whereby it is winning big customers because it can offer a wide range of services, rather than requiring a company to shop around for various suppliers.

He said the merger had gone much smoother than other large scale tech industry mergers of the past, like Hewlett Packard and Compaq, because the two companies had complimentary rather than competing products, and also because they had already enjoyed a courtship of sorts in a long-term commercial partnership that dated back to 2001.

"I really believe that if we hadn't had the prior period of an alliance, we wouldn't have taken this step, or at least it would have been highly risky," Dell says.

"We already knew that, not only did the businesses go together very well, but the cultures went together well as well."

Dealing with Trump

Aside from the trials of running a corporate giant, Dell has also found himself sucked into the fractious political climate in the US.

He faced criticism for his decision to remain as a member of the White House manufacturing council to advise President Trump, despite others including Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and Merck boss Kenneth Frazier stepping down after the president made controversial remarks about clashes between white supremacists and protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.

However, Dell says critics of his decision to advise the President mistook his involvement in discussions with political support. He said that it made sense for him to make use of having a platform to raise concerns with the President first hand, and that he was merely continuing the approach he had taken for decades.

"I went to the White House when President Reagan was there, and then I went when the first President Bush was there, and I went when President Clinton was there, and the other President Bush, and then President Obama and now President Trump," Dell says.

"When I'm asked to go to the White House, I'm not going because I'm a Republican or a Democrat, I'm going as a business person. If they ask us to come, we'll come. If they ask us what we think, we'll tell them.

"If we want to have our opinion heard then it's a lot easier to speak, that doesn't mean we agree or disagree with any of the presidents, and many times we don't agree. But if we don't agree, it's good to be there so we can tell them."

Keeping going

Having built his company and then run it in various iterations over so many years Dell says he has no thoughts towards retiring, and feels like he has another 30 or 40 years left in him.

As well as the main Dell Technologies business, he also runs private investment firm MSD Capital and Dell Technologies Capital, also formed recently to provide the company with a vehicle for backing emerging tech companies. He says the ability to keep being involved in new ideas and a sense of purpose in his work means he has no intention of slowing down.

"I'm having a great time, I think it's really fun and I think what we do is super important and really matters," he says.

"It's interesting work and it makes a big difference in the world, so if somebody told me I couldn't do it any more, I'd be pretty depressed because I just love what I do."