Organisations must create significant and sustainable value through their Gen AI initiatives
to continue investing in the technology.
While pilots have been promising and led to more investments, Deloitte’s Q3 2024 report titled The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise – which polled 2,770 senior leaders across 14 countries globally – said this has also led to escalating expectations and new challenges.
The report found that two thirds of organisations globally are still investing in Gen AI, and three quarters are putting their money around data life cycle management due to Gen AI.
Many Gen AI efforts today are still at the pilot or proof-of-concept stage. However, the majority or nearly 70 per cent of respondents in the report said their organisation has only moved less than a third or 30 per cent or fewer of their Gen AI experiments fully into production.
“We are seeing continued enthusiasm for Gen AI across organisations, and leaders are deriving the most value from the technology by deeply embedding it into critical business functions and processes,” said Costi Perricos, Generative AI Leader, Deloitte Global.
“The top benefits of Gen AI are extending beyond improved efficiency, productivity and cost reduction, with more than half (of respondents) pointing to increased innovation, improved products and services, enhanced customer relationships and other types of value."
- Costi Perricos, Generative AI Leader, Deloitte Global
Deloitte said the excitement is also being tempered by reality — and value cases with strong ROI and a clear path to scale will be essential.
What are the Gen AI challenges?
During this pivotal phase, Deloitte said companies – in particular C-suites and boards – are beginning to look for clear returns on their investment.
There is also a chance that their interest in Gen AI could wane if initiatives do not pay off as much, or as soon, as expected. “Will organisations demonstrate the patience and perseverance needed to unlock the transformational potential of Gen AI?,” the report asked.
“Businesses and governments alike are navigating a dynamic landscape and are struggling to keep pace with the rate of technology innovation. The challenge is to unlock the benefits of Gen AI while facing regulatory uncertainty, orchestrating governance and building trust. (This is) no small task,” said Jim Rowan, applied AI SGO Leader.
What are the roadblocks to Gen AI?
The report quoted a senior director and head of a Generative AI accelerator in the pharmaceutical industry identifying a number of pressing issues: “The heritage of our processes and approaches, that is what’s really holding us back right now. Two is that the performance of the LLMs still needs to be improved … (Three) Data readiness; data is going to be problem forever ... (and Four) Deep Generative AI understanding as well. There’s not enough people who understand and can drive transformation.”
As enterprises look to scale, the Deloitte report said unforeseen roadblocks were exposed - with data-related issues causing more than half of surveyed organisations to avoid certain Gen AI use cases. Solving for data deficiencies has emerged as a crucial step in addressing the Gen AI-specific demands of data architectures.
Three of the top four reported barriers to successful Gen AI deployment are risk-related, including worries about regulatory compliance; difficulty managing risks; and lack of a governance model.
Currently, these are considered even more significant than other critical barriers such as implementation challenges, a lack of an adoption strategy, and difficulty identifying use cases.
Likely driving these concerns are also risks specific to Gen AI, like model bias, hallucinations, novel privacy concerns, trust, and protecting new attack surfaces.
To help build trust and ensure responsible use, the report said organisations are working to build new guardrails and oversight capabilities. The top actions being taken include establishing a governance framework for using Gen AI tools and applications; monitoring regulatory requirements and ensuring compliance; and conducting internal audits/testing on Gen AI tools and applications.
Deloitte’s report aims to help business leaders make informed decisions about AI policy, strategy, investments, and deployments. The survey covered in this report was fielded to 2,770 director- to C-suite-level respondents across six industries and 14 countries between May and June 2024. Industries included: Consumer; Energy, Resources & Industrials; Financial Services; Life Sciences & Health Care; Technology, Media & Telecom; and Government & Public Services.
The survey data was augmented by insights from 25 interviews with C-suite executives and AI and data science leaders at large organisations across several industries.
