Despite apparent risks, such as copyright infringement or cybersecurity, most organizations (74 percent) believe the benefits of generative artificial intelligence (AI) outweigh the associated risks, Capgemini Research Institute said Monday.
According to the firm’s latest report ‘Harnessing the value of generative AI: Top use cases across industries’, the executives most strongly convinced that generative AI is a power for good work within the high-tech sector (84 percent).
Even at the other end of the list, a substantial 69 percent of executives within the energy and utilities and telecom sectors would bet on generative AI.
The report also showed 70 percent of executives believe that generative AI will enable organizations to widen the scope of the roles of knowledge workers.
Nearly all executives (96 percent) recognize that generative AI is a key topic in the boardroom, with the majority confirming that their leadership are strong advocates.
Meanwhile, 21 percent executives anticipate a disruption from generative AI in their industries.
40 percent of organizations across industries have already established teams and budget for the technology, with a further 49 percent contemplating doing so within 12 months.
The research also found organizations believe that the most relevant generative AI based platforms or tools for their industries are chatbots for automating customer service and improving knowledge management (83 percent) and designing, collecting, or summarizing data (75 percent).
Most executives believe that generative AI will make product and service design more efficient (78 percent) and accessible (76 percent).
They also said it will make customer experiences more interactive and engaging (71 percent) or improve customer service with automated and personalized support (67 percent).
Within three years’ time, and following the successful implementation of generative AI, executives also foresee a range of benefits.
They believe that its integration will lead to an 8 percent increase in sales and a 7 percent decrease in costs.
Alongside this, those surveyed indicated that they could expect to see a 9 percent improvement in both customer engagement and satisfaction, and operational efficiency.
“Generative AI is a transformational force for innovation in organizations, accelerating industry specific use cases to create value, and it’s no surprise that it’s already at the top of the agenda of virtually every large organization,” said Franck Greverie, Chief Portfolio Officer and Group Executive Board Member at Capgemini.
“While generative AI can enable numerous benefits for businesses and employees alike, adopting a human-centric approach while scaling the technology and implementing necessary guidelines will be key to fostering trust in the workplace,
“As businesses accelerate their generative AI journeys, they must prioritize implementing it sustainably across the organization,” he said.
According to the report, executives in the high-tech industry are the ones most convinced (84 percent) that the overall impact of generative AI will be positive.
Nearly 70 percent of executives in that industry said their organizations have generative AI pilots underway, and 18 percent stated that they have already implemented generative AI across some locations or business functions.
The top two use cases are 3D modelling for detailed shapes and predictive maintenance.
Meanwhile, the majority (67 percent) of executives across sectors see the most potential for generative AI in the information technology (IT) function – this is particularly true within the high-tech sector which holds the largest percentage of executives (86 percent) saying their organization is using or plans to use generative AI in IT.
Other areas where executives see generative AI driving value are sales (54 percent), and marketing and communications (48 percent).
According to 69 percent of businesses, generative AI will begin to provide concepts and initial designs for projects and, as such, employees’ roles will shift away from ideation and creation, to review and refinement.
This sentiment was also echoed by consumers, with 70 percent saying that they believe generative AI will make them more efficient at work, free them from routine tasks and enable them to explore more strategic aspects of their job.
The research also revealed that 69 percent of executives believe generative AI will lead to the emergence of new roles such as AI auditors and AI ethicists.
With the introduction of new generative AI-based roles, 68 percent of executives believe that integration of the technology into the workforce will require significant investment in upskilling and cross-skilling of talent.
It is also noted that nearly 80 percent of organizations understand the criticality of implementing and scaling generative AI sustainably.
Alongside this, 78 percent of enterprises understand that generative AI can have a larger carbon footprint than traditional IT programs.
However, out of the organizations that plan to train their own models (8 percent), roughly half have taken steps to mitigate their environmental impact, highlighting the need for more concrete efforts towards sustainability.
The report, which examines the transformative force of generative AI for innovation across enterprises, surveyed 1,000 organizations interested in exploring generative AI across 13 countries across the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
These countries are United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Spain, and Sweden.
Alongside this survey, Capgemini conducted in-depth interviews with ten industry executives.
The vast majority (99 percent) of organizations surveyed had annual revenue of over $1 billion, and over half (55 percent) had revenue over $5 billion.
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