Is anyone NOT looking into AI these days?
Turns out, yes. According to an opinion piece in the Communications of the ACM, a survey among business executives had some shocking facts. I won't rehash the whole article here, just a few juicy quotes:
Most companies are struggling to articulate AI plans
This is an extraordinary—and dangerous—"wait-and-see" mind-set.
Despite all this publicity [about GenAI], only 20% of companies defined AI initiatives as high priority, and more than 47% defined them as insufficient or "unknown".
77% said that [they] had only looked at GenAI briefly or not at all.
To those of us surrounded by AI through our work, this feels baffling. In my immediate bubble, it seems like everybody and their bog is either building a custom GPT or vibe-coding a business. Yet this survey reveals a vast number of companies that look at this technology and shrug their shoulders.
Now, I don't want to pull the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) card. Beware the hype. By all means, do things sensibly and measuredly. But do things. And don't treat it like a box-checking exercise where you bring in an expensive consultancy to run a one-day workshop on the usage of GenAI for your employees and call it a day.
I've assumed it as a given that every company would want to do something with AI, i.e., articulate an AI plan and explore where it might speed up critical workflows, take low-value drudgery away from high-paid specialists, finally make use of the vast amounts of messy data collected by the business, or any of the other emerging use-cases. It turns out that many companies haven't yet reached that level. So maybe it is time to play the FOMO card after all? Because these companies are missing out.
So here's a humble ask: If you know someone who runs a business, or a department inside a business, and they fit the profile of this post—haven't looked into AI, or don't know where to start—kindly connect them with me because I'd love to ask them questions to refine my understanding of how business leaders are thinking about AI.
