No real increase in companies’ use of artificial intelligence
There is no real increase in companies’ use of artificial intelligence despite the global focus on the possibilities with this new technology. While the use of gen AI might spur the adoption of other AI tools, we see few meaningful increases in organizations’ adoption of these technologies. The percent of organizations adopting any AI tools has held steady since 2022, and adoption remains concentrated within a small number of business functions”, consultancy McKinsey says in a report.
Just 23% of respondents in a survey say at least 5% of their organizations’ EBIT last year was attributable to their use of AI—essentially flat with a previous survey.
Market research firm Gartner says the mass availability of generative AI, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Bard, is a top concern for enterprise risk executives.
“Generative AI was the second most-frequently named risk in our second quarter survey, appearing in the top 10 for the first time,” says director Ran Xu at Gartner.
“This reflects both the rapid growth of public awareness and usage of generative AI tools, as well as the breadth of potential use cases, and therefore potential risks, that these tools engender.”
Third-party viability was the top fast-emerging risk that organizations are monitoring most closely in the Gartner survey. Financial planning uncertainty was the third ranked risk, followed by cloud concentration risk. China trade tensions rounded out the top five risks that were split between issues symptomatic of the current broad macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility, and technology-related concerns.
79% of companies in the McKinsey survey say they’ve had at least some exposure to gen AI, either for work or outside of work, and 22% say they are regularly using it in their own work.
“While reported use is quite similar across seniority levels, it is highest among respondents working in the technology sector and those in North America.”
Less than a year after many of gen AI tools debuted, one-third of respondents say their organizations are using gen AI regularly in at least one business function.
The expected business disruption from gen AI is significant, and respondents predict meaningful changes to their workforces. They anticipate workforce cuts in certain areas and large reskilling efforts to address shifting talent needs, the report says.
40% of those reporting AI adoption at their organizations say their companies expect to invest more in AI overall thanks to generative AI, and 28% say generative AI use is already on their board’s agenda.
The most commonly reported business functions using these newer tools are the same as those in which AI use is most common overall: marketing and sales, product and service development, and service operations, such as customer care and back-office support.
According to the survey, few companies seem fully prepared for the widespread use of gen AI—or the business risks these tools may bring.
“Just 21% of respondents reporting AI adoption say their organizations have established policies governing employees’ use of gen AI technologies in their work. And when we asked specifically about the risks of adopting gen AI, few respondents say their companies are mitigating the most commonly cited risk with gen AI: inaccuracy.”
“Respondents cite inaccuracy more frequently than both cybersecurity and regulatory compliance, which were the most common risks from AI overall in previous surveys.”
“Just 32% say they’re mitigating inaccuracy, a smaller percentage than the 38% who say they mitigate cybersecurity risks. Interestingly, this figure is significantly lower than the percentage of respondents who reported mitigating AI-related cybersecurity last year (51%). Overall, much as we’ve seen in previous years, most respondents say their organizations are not addressing AI-related risks”, the McKinsey report says.
“Hiring for AI-related roles remains a challenge but has become somewhat easier over the past year, which could reflect the spate of layoffs at technology companies from late 2022 through the first half of 2023. Smaller shares of respondents than in the previous survey report difficulty hiring for roles such as AI data scientists, data engineers, and data-visualization specialists, though responses suggest that hiring machine learning engineers and AI product owners remains as much of a challenge as in the previous year.”
“Looking specifically at gen AI’s predicted impact, service operations is the only function in which most respondents expect to see a decrease in workforce size at their organizations. This finding generally aligns with what our recent research suggests: while the emergence of gen AI increased our estimate of the percentage of worker activities that could be automated (60 to 70%, up from 50%), this doesn’t necessarily translate into the automation of an entire role.”
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