‘The end of the keyboard is near’: Christian Klein predicts voice translation will be the next workplace advantage

The English engineer, Henry Mill, submitted the first-ever patent for a “machine transcribing letters” in 1714. It never actually went into production, but it was a forerunner of the typewriter and then the electronic keyboard: 312 years later, Christian Klein, CEO of software giant SAP, is noting the end of an era.  

“The end of the keyboard is near,” he tells me. “When you encounter voice recognition from many of these large language models, [it] is super strong. Now we have to do some work to translate voice into business language and business data.” 

The deleterious effects of AI on the humble keyboard might not be top of the list of business leaders’ priorities when it comes to mapping out the technological future. But SAP’s prediction that “data-inputting” via typing will end in the next two to three years at the firm has significance well beyond the death of QWERTY. 

“We are now giving our coworker tool more and more skills,” Klein says. 

“The future will be, for sure, that you are not typing any data information into an SAP system. You can instead ask certain analytical questions with your voice. You can trigger operational task workflows. You can also make entries in the system with your voice—performance feedback, pipeline entries, et cetera. The technological capabilities are there, it really is now about the execution.” 

Read more: The most honest prediction for 2026: Nobody knows what’s next by Christian Klein

“Now, about the execution” is the phrase most associated with artificial intelligence in 2026. We are beyond the theoretical discussions about what artificial intelligence might be able to do and into the zone of applied AI. Software companies are creating billions of dollars in profitable revenue supplying the services of the future. 

“The future will be, for sure, that you are not typing any data information into an SAP system. You can instead ask certain analytical questions with your voice.”Christian Klein

“The future will be, for sure, that you are not typing any data information into an SAP system. You can instead ask certain analytical questions with your voice.”

SAP stands for “Systemanalyse Programmentwicklung” (which translates to “System Analysis Program Development”). The firm, headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, near where it was........

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